on pronouncing "gyros" (recycled Linguist List posting)

[Lynne Murphy]

David Bowie said:

> Pronunciation note--the most usual way these were advertised (in Bavaria and
> Baden-W¸rttemberg, in any event) was with the spelling "D–ner Kebab", but a
> few places listed them as a "D–ner Kebap", pronounced identically in most
> but not all of Germany. Anyone know which spelling most closely matches the
> Turkish?

Could that just be (as my historical linguistics prof used to say) German
final devoicink?

BTW:  Everytime I see that I've got incoming mail from David Bowie, I get this
adrenaline rush.  I'm not sure this is good for my system.

We have doner kebabs (at my neighborhood takeaway they're listed as "doners")
here in Brighton, though I've not had one yet.  In Johannesburg, we had
schwarmas (and I've also had them in LA and Champaign, IL--spelling varies,
especially.  For a while I had a theory about the spellings being different
depending on whether the restaurant proprietors were Hebrew or Arabic
speaking.  But I've forgotten which spelling was which).   But I never thought
schwarmas were the same as gyros.  Schwarmas seem to have a lot of vegetation
(usually cabbage/lettuce, onions, cukes, tomato), but the gyros I've had don't
have all that green junk.

Lynne the carnivore