Don't touch my phonemes (PS)

[Larry Trask]

This is a follow-up to my earlier posting, on foreign words and
names.

It is noteworthy that there are at least two ways of treating
foreign words and names: nativization and retention of foreign
phonological features.  These often compete.

For example, take the Spanish name 'Don Juan'.  In Britain, the
tradition is to anglicize this name, and so to pronounce the last
part as 'JOO- at n'.  This is obvious in Byron's poem 'Don Juan', in
which the name is constantly rhymed with things like 'new one' and
'true one'.  In the US, the tradition is to retain the Spanish
pronunciation as far as possible, and hence to say 'HWAHN', or,
these days, 'WAHN'.  But the second pronunciation has been steadily
gaining ground in Britain, and it is now recommended by John Wells
in his pronouncing dictionary as the preferred UK pronunciation,
though the traditional 'JOO- at n' is still listed as a permissible,
but disfavored, alternative.

Similar is 'Don Quixote', where the British tradition is 'KWIKS- at t',
while the US one is 'kee-HOH-tay'.  Astoundingly, John Wells
recommends the first not only for Brits but even for Yanks.
I think he must be wrong here.  I never, ever, heard 'KWIKS- at t'
before I came to Britain, and I didn't believe it when I did
hear it.  Even so, my US dictionary gives 'KWIKS- at t' as a second-
choice pronunciation.  Does anybody in the US really say this?
And do most Brits really still say 'KWIKS- at t'?  Not at my university,
I think.

Another example is the name 'Goethe', which is a little harder to
anglicize.  In my experience, most academics use a German-style
pronunciation.  However, John Wells recommends for Brits what I will
write as 'GUR-t@', except, of course, that the <r> there is not
pronounced.  Amazingly, he gives 'GAY-t@' -- something like 'gator' --
as the preferred US pronunciation, even though I don't think I ever
heard this in my 25 years in the States.  Can any Yanks confirm this?
My US dictionary gives *only* the German-style pronunciation, which
is what I usually heard in the States, except that my high-school
English teacher called him 'GUR-thee', a pronunciation I have never
heard from anyone else.

In the other direction, the tradition in Spain has usually been to
hispanize foreign names.  So, for example, the name 'Shakespeare'
has traditionally been pronounced 'shah-keh-speh-AH-reh', with five
syllables, stress on the fourth syllable, and completely Spanish
phonology apart from the retention of the non-native esh.  In recent
years, however, it has come to be regarded as more fashionable to
reproduce the English pronunciation as closely as possible, typically
producing something like 'SHEH-keh-speer'.  Some years ago, a
distinguished Spanish academic appeared on TV, and he used the
traditional five-syllable version.  He was widely laughed at,
even though he was merely expressing a preference for the traditional
policy over the modern one.  But I have the impression that the
traditional policy is very much on the way out in Spain, on the
whole anyway.  Yet Spaniards, in my experience, still pronounce
'Mozart' as though it were a Spanish <Mozar>, with theta, final
stress, and no /t/.  Is this still the norm in Spanish?

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: 01273-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: 01273-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)