/zh/ replacing /dzh/?

[Dennis R. Preston]

Frenchification (as the unmarked "foreign" pronunciation) is also a
good MA thesis (which I have never seen). I'm always amazed to hear
Hungarian words (with their stress unfailingly on the first syllable)
rendered with a French stress (on the end, of all places!). I have
even head classical announcers deliver barTOK and koDALY, made even
funnier by their almost correct rendition fo the -daly syllable.

dInIs






At 10:14 AM -0700 9/25/02, Anne Gilbert wrote:
>Fritz:
>
>  > BTW, no one (at least that I have seen) has mentioned the Taj Mahal. TaJ
>or TaZH?
>  > Fritz Juengling
>
>... As for TaJ or TaZH Mahal, I've heard both.
>Anne G

It's not so much that we're allowed to anglicize foreign names, which
as dInIs points out (re Paris, Vienna, Spain, China, etc., we do all
the time), but that we "correct" the standard (English)
pronunciations of names like "Beijing" and "Taj" (with the affricates
that presumably did a pretty good job of representing the original
pronunciation) to the hyper-foreign, Frenchified forms (with the
fricatives) in the vain belief that NOW we're really doing a better
job of it.  I almost always hear and, to be honest say "Taj Mahal"
with a fricative, but I'll get around to reforming that once I've
mastered the affricate on "Beijing".

larry

--
Dennis R. Preston
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Languages
740 Wells Hall A
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
Office - (517) 353-0740
Fax - (517) 432-2736