Old pronuciation of "Los Angeles"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 13:00:55 -0400, Mark A. Mandel
<mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU> wrote:

>Funny you should mention this just now. Just last night I was reminiscing
>to my wife about the time a number of years ago when this same question
>came up, either here or on the LINGUIST List. I hypothesized then that it
>had come from a Spanish pronunciation with a velarized /n/: /lOsaNxElEs/.
>English-speakers would hear [N + homorganic obstruent] where the
>orthography has <ng>, and borrow it into English phonology as /Ng/. QEF.
>
>Does anyone remember where this exchange occurred?

The archive remembers.

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9909E&L=ADS-L&P=R610



--Ben Zimmer