Anglicization

[Laurence Horn]

Nobody on the thread has mentioned the influence from the immortal song...


Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
Friendly old girl of a town
'Neath her tavern light
On this merry night
Let us clink and drink one down
To wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
Salty old queen of the sea

(etc.)

from the movie Hans Christian Andersen, which certainly wouldn't get
it wrong (although it is a bit puzzling that the title "Beautiful
Beautiful Copenhagen" doesn't appear in the song). As you can check
at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEwdroXuL8A.
The name of the friendly old girl of a town appears over a dozen
times in the song, each time as [kop at nhag@n]-with-an-"ah" (although
it doesn't need to for the sake of rhyme, since there's no line
ending with "noggin", floggin'", or "toboggan" in the song).

LH



At 11:11 AM -0400 10/9/10, Herb Stahlke wrote:
>The last time I flew SAS, when we were nearing the end of the flight,
>the pilot, a Swede, announced that we were coming in to [SYbnhAvn],
>where [Y] is ASCII IPA for a close mid front rounded vowel.
>
>Herb
>
>On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 10:56 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>  Subject:      Re: Anglicization
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  At 10:28 PM -0400 10/8/10, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>   When I was in the Army, the Danes complained - to no
>>>avail, of course - of the practice by visiting GI's of using the
>>>"German" pronunciation of Copenhagen, with German-like "ah" in the
>>>third syllable, erroneously considering it to be more "Danish" than
>>>the usual English pronunciation with "ey."
>>
>>  Without having heard this from a Dane, I have heard this from
>>  *some*one (or more than one).  I'm planning to be in Copenhagen (if
>>  only briefly) for the first time in 65 years this spring so I'll try
>>  to check it out.
>>
>>>...
>>>For those totally unfamiliar with Danish, the local pronunciation of
>>>"Copenhagen" sounds a lot more like, roughly, "Curb 'em, houn' " than
>>>like either the German or the English pronunciation.
>>>--
>>  Presumably the speaking 'houn is saying "Curb 'em" with a British
>>  rather than U.S. pronunciation here (the way donkeys say "Eeyore"),
>>  even though you might normally expect dogs to be rhotic.
>>
>>  LH
>>
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