Re: French phonetics

From: Rick McCallister
Message: 62723
Date: 2009-02-01

--- On Sun, 2/1/09, Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:

> From: Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arnaud@...>
> Subject: Re: [tied] Re: French phonetics
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Sunday, February 1, 2009, 1:45 PM
> >> I doubt every learned French speaker would render
> Francesco with
> >> the [s] instead ot [ts^]. That's a claim that
> would have to be
> >> backed up by a statistical survey.
> >
> > In this particular case, I assure you *I* am a
> statistical-survey-
> > walking. I have met hundreds or thousands of French
> persons during
> > my life, and the best they could do was to pronounce
> Francesco as
> > [fRANs^e'sko] (with [s^] as in Chinois).
> >
> > Best,
> > fran'ts^esko
> >
> =========
>
> It's a pity you have never met any of the French people
> of Italian origin !
> A couple of millions, I guess.
> I know so many people who can speak standard or dialectal
> Italian.
> Not to speak about all the people who learn Italian at
> school or on their
> own.
>
> Does Francesco exist in Spanish ?
> That may explain -s-
>
> Arnaud

Sure, it exists in Spanish and in much of Latin America, Francesco an Francesca are more common than Francisca and Francisco. Giovanni --in a hundred different spellings-- is extremely common. Italian, Arabic and American names are extremely popular there