Piotr to Pete Gray:
>So you haven't heard yet. L'Acad�mie has recently abolished the
> >distinction between H muet and H aspir�, and /lezariko/ is now fully
>legitimate.
Thanx, P. While I do hear "le hero" pronounced /l@? ero/ all the
time (and this _is_ the proper pronunciation), I have never heard
"les hero" pronounced anything other than /lez ero/. The word
"hockey" is another one. Using a glottal stop in the plural feels
kinda awkward. I regularly watch programs in french as well to keep
up to snuff. This doesn't seem to be the accepted pronunciation
from what I know. I think it's because anyone who speaks French
for a length of time comes to associate the /e/ segment of "les",
or the elided /ez/, as _the_ indicators of the plural, despite the
h-muet thing. The glottal stop is somehow "singular" sounding,
methinks. So, it's pronounced /le/ before consonants other than
"h" and /lez/ otherwise, but never /le?/, afaih.
Have you heard /le? ariko/ somewhere, Pete? Even if you have, it
doesn't explain the Cajun pronunciation, which in itself, derives
from Acadian French pronunciation.
That reminds me: How do you spell the letter /aS/ in French???
"Ache"? "Hache"?? Guillaume, le sais-tu? I still forget how to
write it in English for god's sakes :)
- gLeN
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