Don't touch my phonemes (PS)

[Rick Mc Callister]

[snip]
>Similar is 'Don Quixote', where the British tradition is 'KWIKS- at t',
>while the US one is 'kee-HOH-tay'.  Astoundingly, John Wells
>recommends the first not only for Brits but even for Yanks.
>I think he must be wrong here.  I never, ever, heard 'KWIKS- at t'
>before I came to Britain, and I didn't believe it when I did
>hear it.  Even so, my US dictionary gives 'KWIKS- at t' as a second-
>choice pronunciation.  Does anybody in the US really say this?

	Not that I ever heard. Not even from uneducated people. You do hear
"key-oh-dee" a lot, i.e. something like /kiowDi, ki'owDi/
	There is, however, quixotic /kwIksa:DIk/

>And do most Brits really still say 'KWIKS- at t'?  Not at my university,
>I think.

>Another example is the name 'Goethe', which is a little harder to
>anglicize.  In my experience, most academics use a German-style
>pronunciation.  However, John Wells recommends for Brits what I will
>write as 'GUR-t@', except, of course, that the <r> there is not
>pronounced.  Amazingly, he gives 'GAY-t@' -- something like 'gator' --
>as the preferred US pronunciation, even though I don't think I ever
>heard this in my 25 years in the States.  Can any Yanks confirm this?
>My US dictionary gives *only* the German-style pronunciation, which
>is what I usually heard in the States, except that my high-school
>English teacher called him 'GUR-thee', a pronunciation I have never
>heard from anyone else.

	It's still "GUR-tuh" /g at Rt@/, although I have heard ignorami say
"Go-eth"
	Midwesterners DO tend to pronounce German-American names with <oe>
as /e, eh/  as in "donkey shane" (danke schoen) but Goethe is still /g at Rt@/

>In the other direction, the tradition in Spain has usually been to
>hispanize foreign names.  So, for example, the name 'Shakespeare'
>has traditionally been pronounced 'shah-keh-speh-AH-reh', with five
>syllables, stress on the fourth syllable, and completely Spanish
>phonology apart from the retention of the non-native esh.  In recent
>years, however, it has come to be regarded as more fashionable to
>reproduce the English pronunciation as closely as possible, typically
>producing something like 'SHEH-keh-speer'.

	In Latin America /chespir/ with stress on first syllable is the
most common version. "chaquespeare" is an old fart pronunciation. It's also
used ironically and sarcastically as a noun in the same way that Americans
use Einstein. My Asturian student says the same usage occurs in Spain,
where he says it's /sheikspir, sheikespir/ with accent on first syllable.
There was a popular Mexican sitcom called "Chespirito" with a buffoon as
the main character

>Some years ago, a
>distinguished Spanish academic appeared on TV, and he used the
>traditional five-syllable version.  He was widely laughed at,
>even though he was merely expressing a preference for the traditional
>policy over the modern one.  But I have the impression that the
>traditional policy is very much on the way out in Spain, on the
>whole anyway.  Yet Spaniards, in my experience, still pronounce
>'Mozart' as though it were a Spanish <Mozar>, with theta, final
>stress, and no /t/.  Is this still the norm in Spanish?

My wife, who is Costa Rican, says /mosart/ with the stress on the final
syllable; but I've often heard it without the /t/
[snip]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701