"Neanderthal/ ~tal"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>I say / ae / and so did he.
>
>   Presumably William King also said both / ae / and  "th" (do we have an
> ad-hoc symbol for "theta" ? I recently used / D / for "edh").  The reason
> is that swaydo-"correct" foreign pronunciations in English seem to be
> chiefly a 20th-21st C. phenomenon. Remember Lord Byron's "Don Juan"
> rhyming with "new one" and "true one."  Or was he just joking ?
>
>   I used to pronounce English "junta" more or less as in Spanish till I
> saw the old OED opting for / dg /.  So I switched - for the snob appeal,
> you understand - which has now backfired,  / h^nt@ /  being the choice of
> all right-thinking media persons today.
>
>   Not / xunta /.
>
>   English "Mexico, Mexican" may be next.

I use an English spelling pronunciation, meaning (I suppose) that I see the
word "Neanderthal" as fully naturalized: "Neander" like "Leander", "thal"
like in "Rosenthal" with /T/ (= theta). Since I learned about Neanderthal
man before I had any idea of non-English pronunciations, this is natural
enough, I guess.

I think one can also 'justify' a scientific-Latin-type pronunciation
/neandertal/ also, following "H. neanderthalensis". This 'happens' to be
close to the German pronunciation, according to my primitive notions.

I surely say "Peking man" /pikIN/ and not "Beijing man". "Peking duck" too.
And I don't call any dog breed "beijingese" either.

IMHO, the English reflex of Latin /r/ or any German /r/ is an English /r/
... whichever one you use.

If you see "junta" as a fully naturalized English word I guess you might
say /dZVnt@/. Apparently I see it as Spanish-ish because I say /hUnta/ or
maybe /xUnta/. I think either /h/ or /x/ can be considered the English
reflex of Spanish /x/. I don't know why anybody would use /hV/ as in
/hVnt@/. But then I don't know why "margarine" has a /dZ/ either.

-- Doug Wilson


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