LL-L "Phonology" 2008.06.07 (04) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  - 07 June 2008 - Volume 04
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From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2008.06.07 (01) [E]

Beste Fred,

Kilometer is not the only word of this type. We also pronounce *ki*logram, *
ki*localorie, *ki*lojoule and *ki*lowat. Our pronunciation follows the
official rule for the pronunciation of the Dutch Compound Noun, which says,
very freely translated,                                "When we pronounce a
compound noun the Stress will fall on the first part of the noun, but the
noun will have the gender of the second part."


                    Take
"*wereld*tournooi"  and  "*wereld*kampioen": both Compound Nouns are
pronounced with stress on the first compound, but *wereld*tournooi is a
neutral "het" noun because it is het tournooi; *Wereld*kampioen is a "de"
word because de kampioen is a noun with common gender.

Just to make you happy we say "stad*huis*" and we say *Rotter*dam and Amster
*dam*. Go figure! De taal van mensen is, net als de mens zelf, illogisch.

Prettige Zondag. Jacqueline
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From: Danette & John Howland <dan_how at msn.com>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2008.06.07 (01) [E]

Hello, everyone.

Fred van Brederode brought up an interesting point when he wrote:

"... what everyone does is not necessarily the right thing.

The pronunciation of kilometer as kil*o*meter is completely analogous with
the pronunciation of words like barometer and thermometer. The analogy may
be the very reason for it. Most words ending on …*o*meter however are
instruments of measurement. For that reason one might rather think that a
kil*o*meter is an instrument for measuring kilo's, than a measure of
distance.
When indicating the distance of a thousand meters, a more proper
pronunciation would probably be: *ki*lometer, stressing the first syllable.
We do the same thing with *ki*lobytes when a thousand bytes are meant. Why
change it when it comes to meters?

*Ki*lometer may be more proper, but even if it is, it still seems odd to be
the only one pronouncing the word properly.

The bottom line is I brought myself into the situation of finding both ways
of pronunciation odd."

Does this discomfort result from the fact that speakers of germanic
languages have stronger accents than other european languages?  Our tendency
to accent the first important syllable is in contrast to the less accented
(and therefore more open to different pronunciations and nuances) original
forms of italic and hellenic roots and coined terms. Look at the English
pronunciations of *pho*tograph, pho*to*graphy, and photo*graph*ic. This
convention is well accepted and regular but may have little to do with Greek
patterns of emphasis.

In English we do not consistently indicate that a word is borrowed from a
foreign language by moving the accent. We say either "ho*tel*" or "*ho*tel"
depending on dialect or suitability for desired speech rhythms. It seems to
me that saying "*ki*lometer" makes it sound like an imitation home-grown
word. That is how I pronounced it as a child, knowing the word only from the
written language. This sounds "right" to my English-Saxish conditioned
brain. It also sounds very wrong for a word made up of mediterranean roots.
Hence the dilemma that Fred and I both share.

Be well.
John Howland

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Phonology

Fred,

As alluded to by John above, this stress pattern makes a lot of sense to the
average speaker of American English because it is a case of analogy and
application of "Greek stress." "Greek stress" falls on the antepenultimate
syllable, even if it does not do so in the donor language, as in "análogy",
"apócalypse", "híerarchy", "archepélago", "metamórphosis", "écstacy",
"geógraphy", "cáliper", "hármony", "théorem", "théory" and "ephémeral". This
appears to be an old rule in which fairly frequent stress pattern in Greek
(e.g. διάμετρος *di**ámetros*) has been generalized.

Words containing "metre" ~ "meter" (< μέτρον *m**étron*) tend to be analyzed
and thus stressed as Greek loans, such as "diámeter", "micrómeter",
"barómeter", "thermómeter", "speedómeter", "tachómeter" and "odómeter". Seen
in this light, the pronunciation "kilómeter" makes sense. However, it is not
consistently applied, as in "céntimeter" (not *"centímeter") and
"míllimeter" (not *"millímeter"). It has been said that this Greek pattern
should only apply where "meter" is a measuring instrument. This is a rule of
thumb only, considering the case of "diámeter". But remember that the US are
still steadfast in their refusal to join the rest of the world in using the
metric system. So the average American isn't all that familiar with those
"foreign" units of measure.

I don't think there's any right and wrong, just dialectical variation. And
there are other cases in which Americans find non-American stress patterns
very strange, such as "contróversy" (vs US "cóntroversy") and "applícable"
(vs US "ápplicable").

In general, however, American English is more flexible when it comes to
stress assignment. It is less ready to Germanicize words, especially words
of Romance origin. (This may be because of long-term exposure to Spanish,
French and many other languages). British "gáraazh" ~ "gáridge" for "garage"
(US "garáazh") and "hárass" (US "haráss"), for example, sound very strange
to US American ears.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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