LL-L 'Names' 2006.10.31 (11) [E]

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Subject: LL-L 'Names' 2006.10.31 (11) [E]


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L O W L A N D S - L * 31 October 2006 * Volume 10
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>  
Hi Luc,
 
Thank you for commenting on my remarks concerning stress shift. The more I think of it the more I realize that the situation in Flemish Belgium is far from consistent as to the stressing of  foreign (French) names. Two examples come to my mind now. Two of the aunts I had in Melkwezer (East-Brabant) were called Maria and Julia. The names were pronounced with the stress firmly on the final vowel 'a'. Where I live (Diest) two of my acquaintances carry the same name, but both names have the stress on the first syllable! It is true that Diest is further away from the linguistic border, but I'm not sure if that carries any weight here. 
I went through the telephone directory (the portion for Diest). The following French family names are pronounced with the stress on the 1st syllable:  Delobel, Demanet, Derison, Dujardin, Dumortier, Dumoulin, Nicasi, Renson, Renty, Rethy.
Are pronounced like in French: Delporte, Deltour, Delvigne, Deprez, De Reze, De Roy, Dubois, Ducomble, Dumont, Dupont and all other French names.
It now strikes me that in the first group (Delobel, etc) the names with De- and Du-  all have three syllables, all of them having a clear vowel in the last syllable, in contrast with names in the second group which have either two syllables or three, of which the last one has a mute e.
There are two special cases: Bonroy (I heard older people pronounce it as /bonroei/) and Jacob (pronounced exactly as a French name!) (whereas Jacobs is pronounced in the Dutch way.
I don't see any other rationale behind the pronunciation of French names.

Kind regards,

Roger Hondshoven

Guess it must be a geographical thing then my neighborhood (Western
Brabant), both young and old still seem to say "Mèrcedes" and not "Mercédes".
Same goes for some people I happen to know in Bruges, but I admit they're not
exactly spring chickens anymore :-D . I think it could well be that Northern
Dutch/German influence primarily enters Belgium through the provinces of Antwerp
and Limburg, before moving south-west.

You're right about Flemish often shifting stress in French (and other foreign)
words/names to the first syllable, but around Brussels this is much less the
case, e.g.:

in the rest of Belgium, "Maria" is often heard as "Marìa" or "Mària", but here we
say "Marjà"
"Louisa" is always "Louisà" around here
same for "Leona", being pronounced like "Leonà"
"auto" becomes "ottò"
"Opel" is always "Opèl"
...

Surely this is due to Brussels and Wallonia, which are both within range of
Halle, the city where I'm living. That's why it struck me all the more that
precisely in this border region, people were stressing the first syllable in
"Mercedes".

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

PS: Pronunciations I mention are those of genuine dialect speakers, not of people
speaking a mishmash that I'd like to label "Missingsch-Flemish". 

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