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<html><head></head><body>Herb Stahlke wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:s9a672df.019@gw.bsu.edu">
<div class="text-plain"><pre wrap>A strange thing is happening to American English stress on words
ending orthographically in <el>.</pre></div>
</blockquote>
In medicine, there is a position (supine, head down) called the Trendelenberg
position, named after a certain Dr. Trendelenberg (this is in any medical
dictionary). In my experience this is virtually always pronounced like /trEn'<a class="txt-link txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:dEl@nbRg/">dEl@nbRg/</a>.
According to anecdote, Dr. T. pronounced his name /'<a class="txt-link txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:trEnd@l@nbRg/">trEnd@l@nbRg/</a>. The way
the story goes, Dr. T. attended a seminar. The speaker said "... TrenDELenberg
position ..." and there was a shout from the audience: "It's TRENdelenberg!"
A little later the position was mentioned again, and again the shout was
heard: "It's TRENdelenberg!" The speaker then asked: "Who is that yelling
back there anyway?" Answer: "It's TRENdelenberg!" I don't know whether the
story's exactly true, but certainly the incorrect stress on /El/ occurs
a lot, and not only at the end of the name.<br>
<br>
I think it is the unfamiliar names which have this incorrect stress. I probably
do it myself quite often. I don't think you'll hear EnGELS, but Wiesel is
less well known. If a name doesn't seem English, one might try to pronounce
it phonetically as if it were from a familiar language -- Spanish, German,
French -- and it is at least the popular impression that these languages
have much less centralization or schwa-formation in unstressed vowels than
does English. Then once the full vowel is chosen, the stress will tend to
follow it: so once I've decided that Wiesel is /vizEl/ (seems German, and
the popular conception is that German is relatively schwa-free), the stress
(AT LEAST secondary stress) will tend to go to the second syllable to keep
it from being /viz@l/. I would pronounce Daniel /'<a class="txt-link txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:d&nj@l/">d&nj@l/</a> but I wouldn't know how to pronounce, say, Danyell -- I'd probably guess /d&n'jEl/.
Also: perhaps there's influence from French, which at least seems to have
last-syllable stress (and which has lots of '-el', '-elle' words) and Spanish.
Consider 'cartel', on the TV news all the time. [Here I use & = IPA ash and I don't distinguish @ from unstressed I usually.]<br>
<br>
There are parallels. In Detroit I knew a street named Devonshire, usually
pronounced /'<a class="txt-link txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:dEv@nSajR/">dEv@nSajR/</a>. (There are also Goethe [usually /'gowTi/ with T
= theta IIRC] and Freud [/frud/] streets in Detroit.) But in Chicago there
is a major street named Devon, virtually always pronounced /d@'vAn/ [A as
in Chicago 'pop' /pAp/, 'pa' /pA/]: apparently the general impression is
that this street was named after a Frenchman named de Von.<br>
<br>
-- Doug Wilson<br>
<br>
<br>
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