Pronunciations

[Damien Hall]

>I looked up the pronunciation of "fillet" and heard fi let for both US 
>and UK (though fi la was listed but not spoken as a secondary 
>pronunciation). I've never heard a USAer say fi let, and if one did, I 
>suspect s/he would receive condescending stares. Am I correct?

I'm British and speak BrE, but am married to an American. Since I'm a 
linguist and my wife is an archaeologist and a student of ancient history, 
I have had a conversation about exactly this with her! I assume that the 
FreeDictionary transcription 'fi let' means IPA /fI lEt/ or /fi lEt/, and 
'fi la' means /fI le/ or /fi le/. If so:

- my wife says that no American would say 'fi let' for a steak, and that's 
also my experience from five years living in the States. In BrE, it's the 
other way around: I've never heard a speaker of BrE say 'fi la' for a 
steak; it's always 'fi let'. However, in both AmE and BrE, the 
pronunciation 'fi let' is the only one used for the band of cloth worn 
around the head by women in the Ancient world (particularly Greeks, I 
think). So maybe the 'fi let' pronunciation, when attributed to AmE, is 
referring to this meaning?

>BTW my 
>British-trained Indian relatives say ba let, but the pronunciation for 
>site gave the pronunciation for for US and UK as ba la. Any comments or 
>corrections?

I have never heard 'ba let' (IPA /bae lEt/?), or any pronunciation with a 
final 't', in either AmE or BrE. In both AmE and BrE, the word 'ballet' 
ends with IPA /e/, but the difference is in the stress: AmE usually 
stresses this word (and many other borrowed French disyllables) on the 
final syllable, whereas BrE nativises it more and stresses the first 
syllable. But it's not entirely surprising to learn that Indian English is 
different: Indian English may have its roots in BrE, but it often diverges. 
I had the impression that the divergence was usually syntactic and 
stylistic, but clearly in some instances at least it's lexical / 
phonological too.

Robert, had you thought of posting this to the ADS-L? I'm sure someone 
else, or some other people, there would have good things to say on these 
questions.

Damien Hall

-- 
Damien Hall

University of York
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
Heslington
YORK
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UK

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