[porsh] and other British English (was: Coup de grace)

[Damien Hall]

Fritz Juengling said:

=================

"I think you are suggesting that 'porsch' is a spelling pronunciation.  I agree
with that.  But why should a spelling pronunciation take over?  English
speakers must have seen the cars before they heard any German speaker sayh the
name of the car.?
Still seems odd that a name, and a well-known one at that, should be
mispronounced."

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It doesn't strike me as odd really.  Whether or not British English speakers
saw
Porsches before they heard any German speaker say the name, I think there would
be a frequency effect that would lead to the spelling pronunciation taking
over, since most British English speakers who used the name of the car would be
doing so after having seen it written on the car rather than after having heard
a German say it.

The reason it doesn't strike me as odd is my own observation that Brits do
nativise a lot;  of course, 'a lot' is relative, and it only becomes obvious
that 'a lot' of nativisation goes on in British English when you compare that
amount with the smaller amount of nativisation done by, say, Americans.
However common the name, I'm therefore not surprised to see it nativised;  the
(Don) ['kwiksuht] example is another very good one.  The work I mentioned
before statistically supports the idea that Brits tend to nativise much more
than Americans.  I was interested to hear from Susan though that the 'native'
American pronunciation of 'Porsche' may actually be the same as the British
one.  That's one more indication that my theory, which I admit is based mostly
on French and Spanish words, needs to be more nuanced.

=================

Then:

"Don't the Brits also say 'Don joo-un' instead of 'don (h)wan' and 'don
kwikset'
instead of 'don kee-ho-tay/tee'?  Ouch!  (I can't even give in to 'kwiksotic'
even tho I am not a Spanish speaker).  I'd be interested to see some
nativisation or pronunciation studies."

================

Well ...  'Don joo-un', as far as I'm aware, is only the Byron poem.
Elsewhere,
it's usually [don hwan], as, for example, when you're using the name to refer
to someone who's a 'Casanova', a 'ladykiller' (to mix my metaphors - sorry).
And, yes, I do, unapologetically(!), say 'don kwikset' (the last vowel is a
schwa).  Call it inverse snobbery if you like, and I think maybe it *is*, but I
think many Brits would think it was pretentious to use the actual Spanish
pronunciation in an otherwise English phrase, and I'm pretty sure that use of
the Sp pronunciation in an English context is limited to specialists:  literary
people and Hispanicists.

So, if you/one say(s) [ki'hoteh / ki'hoti] for 'Quixote', can someone tell me
how 'quixotic' is pronounced?   That, of course, is just an English word, so it
would seem really strange to me to pronounce it any other way than the English
[kwIk'sotik].

Fascinated,

Damien Hall
University of Pennsylvania