naming a language

[Sydney Lamb]

So also the common pronunciation of Bengali with a low central
vowel ("ah") in the 2nd syllable instead of a low back rounded
vowel.   - Syd

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009, Paul Hopper wrote:

> And (while we're on the subject) the instances in which a
> British pronunciation spelling gets rephoneticized: The Korean
> name "Park", for example, pronounced with -r-; South Asian
> names whose orthographic -u- (phonetic [a] or schwa) is
> pronounced as [u] ("Moombay" for Mumbay sometimes; "Poonjab"
> for Punjab is almost universal).
>
> - Paul
>
>
> > Other examples of such behavior: Pronouncing Barcelona with a th for c
> > (not being aware that there's no th in Catalan, or for that matter than
> > Catalan even exists) Pronouncing e.g. Ataturk with a tapped or (God
> > forbid) uvular r (not being aware that the Turkish r is in this case
> > closer to English r) Kiswahili (like 'the English') Writing e.g. Munster
> > cheese with an umlaut Trying to say 'Boston' with a Boston accent by
> > fronting the first vowel as in 'Harvard Yard' (should be a mid-back vowel)
> > Pronouncing e.g. Colcester as 'Colster' or Cirencester as 'Cirenster' by
> > analogy with 'Worcester' and 'Gloucester' Pronouncing Jogjakarta as
> > 'Yogyakarta' Arabs speaking Hebrew saying the Haifa neighborhood Neve
> > Sha'anan with an ayin even though it's written with an alef Jews speaking
> > Arabic saying e.g. al-quds beginning with an ayin although it's written
> > with an alef. There are quite a few of these. John
> >
> >
> >
> > Quoting Paul Hopper <hopper at cmu.edu>:
> >
> >> Mikael,
> >>
> >> Good point. The insistence on endonyms often results in irritating
> >> errors. One advantage of changing Beijing back to Peking would be that
> >> we'd no longer have to hear news announcers saying the -j- as a voiced
> >> palatal fricative--apparently following the rule that you can never go
> >> wrong if you pronounce a foreign word as if it were French.
> >>
> >> John Verhaar used to get very irritated at "Bahasa Indonesia" instead
> >> of "Indonesian", and once commented that it would be like always
> >> referring to German as "die deutsche Sprache". Even in linguistic works
> >> I've sometimes seen "Bahasa Indonesian"--as if Bahasa were the name of a
> >> region or something (cf. Canadian French).
> >>
> >> - Paul Hopper
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> I have often wondered why there is such a passion for endonyms among
> >>> linguists. It is one thing to avoid exonyms that the speakers might
> >>> find offensive, but apart from that, I have a hard time seeing the
> >>> point in using endonyms at any cost.
> >>>
> >>> There are plenty of cases where there is a relatively established (in
> >>> the linguistic literature) English term for a language, where later
> >>> publications have opted for a new name, and where I can see no other
> >>> effect than growing confusion. For people dealing with more than one
> >>> or a few languages (such as typologists), this implies that you have
> >>> to make an effort to know which language is which.
> >>>
> >>> Having the same L1 as two of the previous posters, I would certainly
> >>> not see any benefit in the linguistic community adopting ”svenska” for
> >>> my language, rather than the more usual ”Swedish”. That would simply
> >>> strike me as ridiculous, and indeed, no linguists use the endonym when
> >>> writing in English. Yet, I somehow suspect that if the language in
> >>> question were spoken primarily in a third world country, some
> >>> linguists would have preferred that option.
> >>>
> >>> Should the aim be to somehow to avoid Eurocentricity (or perhaps
> >>> rather ”national-languages-of-the-first-world”-centricity”), isn’t it
> >>> Eurocentric in itself to use one naming strategy for these languages,
> >>> and restrict another to everything else?
> >>>
> >>> Even if one term is used more than another in the already existing
> >>> literature, there may be reasons to choose another one. What the
> >>> speakers themselves call their language, however, is not a strong
> >>> reason to do so, in my view. Unless, of course, you happen to be
> >>> writing in that particular language.
> >>>
> >>> In a way, this can be compared to toponymical changes. There is a
> >>> point in using Harare or Volgograd instead of Salisbury or Stalingrad,
> >>> since the older names are, if nothing else, reminders of former
> >>> régimes presumably not supported by the people who inhabit these
> >>> cities today. But need we say Beijing and Guangzhou for what used to
> >>> be been Peking and Canton? If so, must we start saying “the United
> >>> Arab Emirates in Arabic”? (And should it be standard Arabic or the
> >>> colloquial?).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Mikael Parkvall
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> -- Prof. Dr. Paul J. Hopper Senior Fellow Freiburg Institute for Advanced
> >> Studies Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg Albertstr. 19 D-79104 Freiburg
> >>  and Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of Humanities Department of
> >> English Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > This message was sent using IMP, the Webmail Program of Haifa University
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Prof. Dr. Paul J. Hopper
> Senior Fellow
> Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
> Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
> Albertstr. 19
> D-79104 Freiburg
> and
> Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of Humanities
> Department of English
> Carnegie Mellon University
> Pittsburgh, PA 15213
>
>
>


Sydney M. Lamb			http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lamb/
Linguistics and Cognitive Sciences
Rice University, Houston, TX