on pronouncing gyros (recycled Linguist List posting)

[Grant Barrett]

On Thursday, March 23, 2000, A. Maberry <maberry at U.WASHINGTON.EDU> wrote:
>On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, A. Vine wrote:
>
>> I've seen a remarkably similar sandwich in other countries (England, possibly
>> Belgium, maybe even parts of Germany) called "doner kebabs," which might account
>> for the distribution of the responses to the person on the
>Linguist list.
>
>Do[umlaut]ner kebap is the Turkish version of a dish that I imagine is
>pretty common throughout the Middle East. In Egypt, as best I recall, it
>is called "shwarma".

Both doner kebab and shawarma or shwarma are served throughout New York in Middle
Eastern restaurants and even a some not-so-Middle-Eastern restaurants. In one of those
typical New York juxtapositions there's a late-night Turkish corner joint on the same
block as the famous Katz deli on Houston Street. The Turkish joint serves the doner
kebab, Katz's serves that great pastrami we've talked about before.