basque/Basque/bask

[Mark A Mandel]

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?

I seldom speak of basques (though maybe it will rise a bit in my
vocabulary now that my wife has taken up making doll clothing), but I've
used the word "Basque" for 40 years, and always as /b ae s k/, same as
"bask".

-- Mark A. Mandel, born in the USA