basque/Basque/bask

[Steve Kl.]

On Wed, 17 Apr 2002, Lynne Murphy wrote:

> 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?

Well, I'll chime in as the AHD4 pronunciation person. I pronounce bask and
basque and Basque identically. This is how it was represented in AHD3, and
there was no indication that this pronunciation should have been edited,
and it jived with my pronunication, so I left it the same in AHD4.

Every time I've heard Basque -- I knew a Basque in Chicago, a friend of
mine went to a Basque restaurant in Las Vegas where there's a large
concentration of Basques, and how I hear announcers say it, it's been with
the IPA 'ae' / Americanist short-a. In fact, I'm not sure how else it
might be pronounced.

Do you say it like the pear (bosc) or with a long a of paste?

-- Steve