[Ads-l] old pronunciation of "Los Angeles"

[Wilson Gray]

On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 4:42 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Jul 2, 2017 at 7:03 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> > On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 8:53 AM, Jonathan Lighter <
> wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > When I naively suggested, some years ago**, that a / g / * in the
> middle
> > of
> > > a
> >
> >
> > * Insert ... ~"sounded bizarre"?
> >
> >
> > > straightforwardly English pronunciation of "Los Angeles," Wilson
> observed
> > > that both the / g / and the now universal / J / (if you see what I
> mean)
> > > sounded normal to him.
>

In Los Angeles, one occasionally overhears Spanish-speaking people, of whom
there are a large number in that city - the so-called _chicanos_ - speaking
the phrase "Los Angeles." To the untrained ear, the engma+gamma used in
their language bears an uncanny resemblance to the engma+g of English, so
that Spanish _angeles_ is reproduced as English "angle- at s."

There are also people who pronounce the final -es of "Los Angeles" as
"eez." This is undoubtedly due to the influence to the joke in which a
patron brings a pair of ripped pants to a Greek tailor who asks,
rhetorically, "Euripides?" The patron replies "Yes. Eumenides?"

That pun is the same, thigh-slapping, killer-diller, now, that it was, a
century ago!
-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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