more soccer broadcasts

[Douglas G. Wilson]

On 7/3/2011 3:44 PM, victor steinbok wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       victor steinbok<aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      more soccer broadcasts
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>
> ....
>
> Another interesting bit from the same source is that he pronounces the "s"
> in the middle of Brazilian names as "sh". In particular, I noticed this for
> "Costa" and "Ester"--two names where I would have never expected it. It's a
> bit less clear with "Cristiane" (in fact, clearly absent in the last mention
> I just heard) and absent between vowels (Rosana). But he does the same thing
> with Norwegian names (Giske, Stensland). I know the tournament is being
> played in Germany, but does this pronunciation make any sense?
--

I think for Portuguese "s" before voiceless stop there is dialectal
variation, with European Portuguese conventionally having "palatalized"
/S/ ("sh") and Brazilian Portuguese conventionally having /s/ (e.g., as
shown in the first bilingual dictionary to come to my hand) although
apparently variable according to region (e.g., according to Wikipedia
["Brazilian Portuguese"], Sao Paulo has /s/, Rio de Janeiro /S/). I
myself am ignorant of Portuguese in all dialects.

I can't say anything useful about Norwegian at all.

This may give the commentator et al. too much credit, but I suppose it
is possible that the names' pronunciations sometimes follow
specifications by the respective (named) individuals themselves or by
some team representatives or interpreters or something like that.

-- Doug Wilson

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