'kimono' pronun & use

[Dennis R. Preston]

On the surface that would appear to be true, but we certainly want to
know the original pronunciation  of items as they enter English. For
example, a variety of another language which has significant vowel
reduction (although not necessarily "schwa-ing") would it seems to
me, be a better candidate for English laxing-centralizing than a
language with very little change in quality of its unstressed vowel
tokens.

dInIs

>How the way "kimono" is pronounced in Japanese doesn't seem to me to
>be a concern of the AMERICAN Dialect Society.
>L. Urdang


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
A-740 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 432-3099
Fax: (517) 432-2736
preston at msu.edu