going tonto

[James Smith]

Of course, Jew-an is perfectly good french for Juan.



--- Scott Sadowsky <lists at SPANISHTRANSLATOR.ORG>
wrote:
> Jim Landau:
> >For example, take the name "Don Juan".  Byron
> turned it into "Don
> >Jew-an" ("funny, you don't look Jewish") and
> Shakespeare didn't hesitate to
> >name characters "Don John".
>
> Not to defend Byron or anything, but this
> pronunciation may have an
> alternate explanation.  In medieval Spanish, the
> grapheme <j> represented
> /3/, a voiced postalveolar fricative (as in the <z>
> of <azure>) -- it
> didn't acquire its current values (anything from /h/
> to /x/ to /ç/,
> depending on the dialect and what follows it) until
> sometime after the
> colonization of the Americas began.
>
> So it's at least theoretically possible that the
> "Jew-an" pronunciation
> (['d3u·an]) is a British adaptation of the older
> Spanish form, [3wan], and
> not the modern one, [xwan].
>
>
> Michael Newman:
> >Why shouldn't English speakers pronounce  foreign
> borrowings
> >with English phonological rules or use spelling
> pronunciations
> >for that matter?
>
> I'm with you on that as far as lexical items go, but
> when it comes to
> proper names I think it's reasonable adapt foreign
> ones in such a way that
> they at least vaguely resemble the original, within
> the constraints of the
> phonological system of the language doing the
> borrowing, of course (e.g.
> you can't squeeze tones out of an English speaker no
> matter how hard you try).
>
> And in spite of their general ignorance of foreign
> languages, English
> speakers are remarkably effective at this.  Spanish
> speakers, in contrast,
> for the most part don't even try -- they simply
> replace the original name
> with the closest Spanish equivalent whenever
> possible (George Washington >
> Jorge Washington, (Queen) Elizabeth > (la Reina)
> Isabel, William Tell >
> Guillermo Tell, Shimon Perez > Simón Pérez, Binyamin
> Netanyahu > Benjamín
> Netanyahu, São Paulo > San Pablo, etc.)
>
> Cheers,
> Scott
>
>
_____________________________________________________________
> Scott Sadowsky  --  Spanish-English /
> English-Spanish Translator
>
> sadowsky at spanishtranslator.org ·
> sadowsky at bigfoot.com
> http://www.spanishtranslator.org
>
_____________________________________________________________
> "Más sabe Dios por viejo que por diablo."
>     -- Nicanor Parra


=====
James D. SMITH                 |If history teaches anything
South SLC, UT                  |it is that we will be sued
jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com     |whether we act quickly and decisively
                               |or slowly and cautiously.

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