Don't touch my phonemes (PS)

[Eduard Selleslagh]

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

[Ed]
On the other hand, 'Quixotic' seems to be pretty universal (pronounced
kwikzotik).

[snip]
>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'.  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.

[Ed]
He still has pretty fanatic followers. I know some personally.

> 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?

>Larry Trask

[Ed]
Here in the South (Alicante, Murcia) litteral application of Spanish
pronunciation rules (plus dropping of final occlusives) to foreign words is
still the norm. Even on (national) TV they do that almost all the time.
Sarajevo (with jota and bilabial b), sometimes even Basinton (Washington),
Nueva Yor (no k), etc. They simply cannot(?) say 'sh' and say 's' or
affricated 'ch' instead, insert epenthetic e's,  and can't distinguish long
and short vowels. Final m is always a nasalized final vowel (punto-co~ =
dot-com). etc.etc.The dynamic accent follows the same Spanish rules.

Among the native Castilian speakers, younger educated people (say post-1985
education) from Madrid, certain (far from all!) younger academics and
people with a lot of contacts outside Spain are the only ones, in my
experience, who try to pronounce English words properly (mainly because
they actually know some English). Catalans do their best, and and have the
advantage of their richer native phonemic inventory; contrary to
Castilians, they use dark l, for instance, and sh, etc..
Note that the upper class tends to send its children to 'English' boarding
schools, often located in (N.) Ireland (actually some died in the Omagh
bombing, on a bus trip).

Ed. Selleslagh