those low vowels again

[Arnold Zwicky]

reporting on ehud barak and yasir arafat produces many opportunities
for seeing what english speakers do with low vowels in words adapted
from other languages.  "barAk" has one relevant accented vowel, but
"yAsir ArafAt" has three.

i became aware of this yesterday when i had a moment's impression that
a radio announcer was pronouncing "yasir arafat" in an odd way.  what
was odd that all three vowels were back (or at least nonfront).  this
is unusual; what i mostly hear from american english announcers is a
back vowel in "yasir" and two front vowels (sometimes raised,
depending on the speaker's dialect) in "arafat".  occasionally, all
three vowels are front

the second vowel of "barak" is almost invariably back - the first,
unaccented, vowel is almost always a schwa, of course - so that
"barak" and "arafat" contrast in their vowel qualities.  no
accommodation to one another, not even phonetically.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)