basque/Basque/bask

[Benjamin Fortson]

I've never heard Basque pronounced with a back vowel, myself. I've always
pronounced it as [baesk], as has every linguist and non-linguist that I've
ever heard say it...

Ben

On Wed, 17 Apr 2002, Lynne Murphy wrote:

> The British pronounce 'basque' (a word they seem to use a lot more than
> Americans do) so that it sounds like 'bask'.  (They may very well pronounce
> the language/people name 'Basque' the same way, but we have an American
> Basque scholar here, so locally we have a back-vowel in Basque.)
>
> Now, I thought this was just another instance of the British doing weird
> things with 'a' in foreign words (e.g., they say the first vowel in salsa,
> taco, and fajita as /ae/), but I've just noticed that my AHD4 says that
> 'bask' and 'basque' and 'Basque' are all pronounced the same (with /ae/).
> Is that right, or is AHD a bit loopy here?
>
> Lynne
>
>
> Dr M Lynne Murphy
> Lecturer in Linguistics
> Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
> School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
> University of Sussex
> Brighton BN1 9QH
> UK
>
> phone +44-(0)1273-678844
> fax   +44-(0)1273-671320
>