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<DIV><FONT size=2>Herb Stahlke writes:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2><BR>"A strange thing is happening to American English stress
on words ending orthographically in <el>. Surnames and one or two
other words are showing up with final stress. It's pretty universal with
Nobel, but I'm hearing Wiesel frequently pronounced
[wi'zEl]..."<BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Like Dennis R. Preston, "I see no reason to doubt that it is
modeled on French for the obvious cultural stereotypes", at least not in many
cases. This is certainly true for <no'bEl>, which, by the way, is how
members of the Nobel family pronounce their name. Thus, in this case, the
stress is not a recent development in American English, but a perfectly
correct pronunciation.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>In Sweden, there are many other names ending in -el or -ell
(e.g. Sergel, Mankell, Kernell, von Dardel, de Dardel), but the spelling gives
no clue to the stress: <'sEr.gel> or <ser.'gEl>, <'mAn.kel>,
<tcher.'nEl>, <fon 'dAr.del>, <d@ dar.'dEl>. You simply have
to know.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>In other cases, the American stress change is certainly due to
a lack of knowledge of the pronunciation in the original language (e.g.
Trendelenberg), sometimes adopted even by the bearers of the name, e.g. the CNN
news anchor Mr. Begleiter, pronounced by everyone on the channel (thus
presumably by himself) <'bEg.lai.ter>, even though the German prefix be-
is always unstressed.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Jan Ivarsson, Sweden</DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>