Re: French phonetics

Dear Francesco,

I don't see how any of the following matters, but as far as I know
this is by far the best way to render the Russian names by means of
French phonetics.

Would the learned people of Italy really use the precise pronunciation
of Sandawe names?
Would the learned people of Italy really use the precise pronunciation
of Arabic names?
Would the learned people of Italy really use the precise pronunciation
of Bedřich Hrozný (Bedr^ich Hrozny')?

French orthography has certain rules. I don't think that the typical
French stress on the last syllable is really that important - you
cannot change the language. Do you think Czechs pronouns Lenin as
[ljenin] (which is not the precise pronunciation to be sure, the /n/
is palatal)??? No, we simply say ['lenJin]. You confuse orthography
with pronunciation and transliteration, I'm afraid. French orthography
cannot "invent" new combination for new sounds. How do you render R in
French names in Italy? How do you write/pronounce Czech raised /r^/?
How do you render clicks???

How do you mark the stress French names? Chopin is written as Chopin
in Czech, but it is pronounced ['s^OpE:n], i.e. initial stress,
mid-open /o/ and mid-open /e/. How on earth does that matter in any
way??? Shall we force the Japanese to use the Latin alphabet when they
write Leoš Janáček and make them pronounce /l/ instead of the native
/r/??? And how do you write/read/transliterate the Chinese names???

Francesco, this is rather pointless.

Best,

Petr

2009/2/1 Francesco Brighenti <frabrig@...>:

>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet"
> <fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:
>
>> What's wrong with "Pouchkine", "Lénine", "Gorbatchev", "Poutine" ?
>> This is a standard translitteration into French phonetics.
>
> In a weekend spirit, let me make the following reasoning.
>
> "Lénine": French pronunciation <le'nin>
> But Russian pronunciation is <'ljenin>
> The French transliteration results in a wrong stress
> (And let us pass over the wrong rendering of Russian /je/, which is
> shared by most of other foreign renderings of Lenin's name, although
> here in Italy learned people write it "Lenin" but generally
> pronounce it correctly as <'ljenin>)
>
> "Poutine": French pronunciation <pu'tin>
> But Russian pronunciation is <'putjin>
> The French transliteration results in a wrong stress
> (In Italian or English renderings: no stress problems)
>
> "Pouchkine": French pronounciation <push'kin>
> But Russian pronounciation is <'pushkjin>
> Wrong stress again!
> (In the Italian or English renderings: no stress problems)
>
> I could go on endlessly with examples of words, selected from any
> language of the world, that the "very scientific" rules applied to
> the standard transliteration into French phonetics would invariably
> turn into words with wrong stress (and dubious renderings of vowels).
>
> That is what most irritates me. All other languages are made
> subservient to the "rules" of French phonetics inasmuch as the
> latter must be evidently the "correct" ones, no matter if the rest
> of the world don't speak that way!
>
> Now the French have also turned their new First Lady, the Italian
> top-model Carla Bruni (Italian pronunciation: <'carla 'bruni>) into
> <caR'la bRy'ni>: wrong stress again, both in her first name and
> surname! I would like to suggest the French government to officially
> spell this name as "Cârla Brûni" to avoid its mispronunciation in
> France (let's pass over the inevitable use of the French R to
> pronounce it, although that type of R is certainly not found in the
> original...). But this, of course, would never be possible because
> it would go against the "scientific rules" of French phonetics!
>
> Happy weekend!
>
> Francesco
>
>