Borrowed-a names

[Douglas G. Wilson]

On 8/10/2011 1:13 PM, David Bowie wrote:
>
> There are, i think, two things going on here:
>
> 1. The pronunciation of names is relatively unpredictable from spelling
> (e.g., 'Thomas' starts with [t] rather than theta), and this includes
> what syllable is stressed.
>
> 2. Borrowed-a is regionally variable (e.g., how do *you* pronounce
> 'plaza'?), particularly when combined with unpredictable stress location.
>
> My personal-history case: Jeanne and i are both from areas where
> borrowed-a is pretty much consistently [a], never [æ]. (That last
> character's the a-e ligature, if it didn't come across right.) Our
> oldest, Sadra [sadr@] was born shortly before we moved to Utah, and we
> never imagined anyone would have any trouble at all with her name. The
> Wasatch Front of Utah, though, shows variation in borrowed-a treatment
> (e.g., consistent Nev[æ]da, variation between Color[æ]do and Color[a]do,
> p[a]sta, pl[æ]za, and so on), and people there were very confused about
> how to pronounce her name, [sadr@] or [sædr@] (or [sedr@], which is a
> rather different issue).
>
> For Jeanne and me, any pronunciation of Tamara as [tæm at r@] is strange,
> since you simply *can't* have a [æ] there. (You might could have
> [tam at r@] if you're gonna have first-syllable stress, i suppose.) I can
> imagine that for people from certain other areas (i'd like to hear from
> any Canadians on the list for their intuitions, for example), [t at mar@]
> could be equally strange.
--

But isn't the stressed first-syllable vowel virtually always /&/ (IPA
"ae" ligature) in several comparable words ("tamarack", "tamarind",
"tamarisk", even "tam-o'-shanter")?

I suppose I would use a guess-pronunciation like /ta'mara/ (or
more-Englishy /t at mar@/) if I figured the name to be an import of unknown
origin, but I would not bet much on my guess.

I think most folks would pronounce an unfamiliar name by analogy with
other words which they use or see (e.g., in the current case maybe
"camera"), without any thought of borrowing or origin. I myself would
not know offhand whether, say, "tamarack" or "tamarind" was a loan-word
or if so from what language; I think the average person wouldn't know
offhand even how to find out and furthermore would never think of trying.

I would guess that in my neck of the woods, judging from comparable
cases including one in the immediate family, an unfamiliar name written
"Sadra" would be pronounced (by strangers) /s&dr@/ (with "ae" sound)
about 70-80% of the time.

-- Doug Wilson

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