More Frenchified?

[Dennis R. Preston]

larry,

Give an ear to classical music stations and you will hear
Frenchification in languages other than French, in this case
final-stress placement. Since it is my father-tongue, I suppose I am
oversensitive to this in Hungarian (which always places stress on the
first syllable) when such oddities as barTOK and koDALY (the latter
even with, amazingly, more or less correct realization of the final
-daly syllable) surface.

dInIs



>At 10:30 PM -0700 9/20/01, Kim & Rima McKinzey wrote:
>>On the phone to the reservation person for the Westin Hotel chain, I
>>asked if she knew how one got from the airport to the hotel in
>>question.  She said, several times and very clearly, that I'd have to
>>talk to the "conseeAIR."
>>
>>Could this be because this sounds more French than concierge?  It's a
>>new one for me.
>>
>I'm sure it is.  The hyper-Frenchification I've noticed most often is
>"COO D'GRAH" for coup de grace.  The rule seems to be "don't
>pronounce the last consonant", period.  At least in your case the
>reservation person might have had extra motivation for avoiding the
>final -rzh cluster, but there's certainly no similar excuse for
>avoiding [gras].
>
>larry

--
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736