chard

[James Harbeck]

>And don't forget Pinochet (Pee-no-shay).

Not to mention [klare'] for claret (should be [klE'rIt]), [fraI'SEne]
for Freixenet, vichyssoise with the last [z] left off, al dente as
[al da~'te] rather than [al den'te], [hela'to] rather than [dZela'to]
for gelato, several East Asian words with ei being pronounced [aj]...
I once heard Mein Kampf pronounced [ma~ ka~].

I gotta admit, the [beI-ZIN] one drives me nuts, though. Man, the
correct sound for the j is almost identical to the English
pronunication of j! But because it's a foreign word, it couldn't
possibly be that, could it... One finds that if a person hears a
foreign word pronounced two ways, one of which seems sensible and the
other of which is surprising (or at least not as English-sounding),
the person will likely tend to assume that the surprising
pronunciation must be correct, or else why would it have been used?
And, yes, many people get very slap-happy with assorted rules picked
up from this and that foreign language, because they don't really
know the languages in question and just have a sort of general muddle
of "foreign" pronunciations that they apply where it seems
appropriate.

James Harbeck.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org