English words beginning with <j> pronounced [Z]?

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:20 AM +0000 1/22/08, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>Borrowed French words like genre ~zhaanru, (where ~aa sounds like
>"ah" and ~u like "uh".)  Also Jacques, ~zhaaks.

Seems like if someone is going to bother with the /Z/ for "Jacques",
they'll go the whole hog:  /Zak/, not /Zaks/.  (For Shakespeare, I
believe it was anglicized to something like /Jakwiz/.) And the riddle
posed by Nadia Gabriel below originally specified an initial <j>, not
<g>, FWIW.

LH

>
>Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems"
>at authorhouse.com.
>
>
>
>
>>  Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:42:43 -0500
>>  From: laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
>>  Subject: Re: English words beginning with  pronounced [Z]?
>>  To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>  Sender: American Dialect Society
>>  Poster: Laurence Horn
>>  Subject: Re: English words beginning with  pronounced [Z]?
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  At 1:56 PM -0500 1/21/08, Charles Doyle wrote:
>>>A while back, didn't we discuss a word pronounced [ZUZ], a noun
>>>referring to a quick shake given to something? I have no idea how
>>>the word might be spelled!
>>>
>>>--Charlie
>>
>>  Most posters who seemed to know (or at least seemed to be confident)
>>  had it as "zhuzh", and cited Queer Eye for the Straight Guy as the
>>  vector. (Steve Kleinedler may have nominated it for one of the WOTY
>>  categories a couple of years ago.)
>>
>>  LH
>>
>>>_____________________________________________________________
>>>
>>>---- Original message ----
>>>>Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:19:07 -0500
>>>>From: Dennis Preston >
>>>>In LIN 101 we teach students that /Z/ (the second sound in 'azure'
>>>>the last sound in 'garage') is a silly sound (like ng) which can
>>>>occur internally and finally but never initially. In final position
>>>>it is giving way to /dZ/, and here in good-talking and linguistically
>>>>secure Michigan, people surveyed were not sensitive to the final /dZ/
>>>>pronunciation as nonstandard.
>>>>
>>>>dInIs
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>>>-----------------------
>>>>>Sender: American Dialect Society
>>>>>Poster: Nadia Gabriel
>>>>>Subject: English words beginning with  pronounced [Z]?
>>>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>
>>>>>Dear all,
>>>>>
>>>>>A question out of a friend's curious brain - he is French,
>>>>>currently taking
>>>>>lessons to improve his English:
>>>>>
>>>>>Do you know of words, common word or proper names, in the English language
>>>>>that begin with the letter  but that are pronounced without the [d]
>>>>>sound, just the [Z] sound?
>>>>>Or, to put it another way, words where the initial  is pronounced as in
>>>>>French?
>>>>>
>>>>>I can't think of any!
>>>>>An advanced search in the OED Online ("Entries containing Z
>>>>>in Pronunciations") retrieves only one word: jinricksha, jinrikisha,
>>>>>*n.*,
>>>>>from Japanese.
>>>>>
>>>>>I'd be grateful for any comments!
>>>>>  (I must add I didn't read all the article under the entry for
>>>>>the letter J,
>>>>>which also appeared in the results of my search - Wonderful OED)
>>>>>
>>>>>Thank you,
>>>>>
>>>>>  Nadia Gabriel
>>>>>  Librarian & Translator
>>>>>
>>>>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>--
>>>>Dennis R. Preston
>>>>University Distinguished Professor
>>>>Department of English
>>>>Morrill Hall 15-C
>>>>Michigan State University
>>>>East Lansing, MI 48864 USA
>>>>
>>>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>  > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>Helping your favorite cause is as easy as instant messaging. You IM, we give.
>http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Home/?source=text_hotmail_join
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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