precipee

[Charles Doyle]

And speaking of (pseudo?) Frenchification, have y'all been noticing that Chris Matthews and one or two other reporters say the last element of "Port-au-Prince" as [prans], or maybe (by Mark's rule) even [pran]? Sort of like "lingerie."

--Charlie



---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:19:58 -0500
>From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> (on behalf of Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>)
>Subject: Re: precipee
>
>Looks like an extension of what I think of as "French loanword final consonant deletion", as in /ku: d@ gra:/ ("koo duh grah") for "coup de grace". At some point the speaker (or an antecedent in the oral transmission chain) learned that "French final consonants aren't pronounced" -- a beginner's rule of thumb for French orthography -- and misapplied it to consonant *sounds*. I don't think of "precipice" as being French any more, but maybe this person did.
>
>m a m

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