the kaBOOL rule

[Dennis R. Preston]

I think there are two things at work in the Kabul pronunciation. One
is the Frenchification (stress placement, Frank's 'kaBOOL' rule) and
the other appears to be the generally held belief that only English
has a schwa (or such reduction as would lead to syllabic /l/,
etc...). They are working arm-in-arm here of course. If I was as
clever as Frank, I would come up with a dandy name for a no-schwa
rule.

dInIs

PS: I have no doubt that the no-schwa rule is based in hours and
hours spent in some foreign languages classes learning those
languages without a schwa or at least hearing them or words from them
spoke just so. I hvae observed Spanish classes whin which an enormous
amount of time (better spent learning some more words in my opinion)
has been spent drilling just the lexical item 'casa' so that the
second vowel is produced with less schwa-like realization.

>At 01:26 PM 12/5/2003, you wrote:
>>Yeah, imagine how irate us Hunkeys get when Kodaly and even Bartok
>>get syllable-final stress under this rule.
>
>Many years ago Frank Anshen (are you on this list, Frank?) referred to this
>tendency as the 'Kabool Rule' (this was long before we learned the
>'correct' way to pronounce 'Kabul', not to mention Qatar.
>
>Geoff