Re: French phonetics

Then tell me, Francesco, how do the Italians pronounce McDonald, where
is the stress in the Italian pronunciation.

Also, tell me, do the Italians really pronounce François [frAN'swa]
with the nasal vowel, uvular R, final stress and [sw] group? I'm
asking because, since those sounds are strange to the Czech mouth and
ear, we pronounce it as ['fran.so.a], i.e. initial stress, no
nazalized vowels, three syllables (period = syllable boundary). ;-)

Best,

Petr

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

>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Petr Hrubis <petr.hrubis@...> wrote:
>
>> I don't see how any of the following matters,
>
> I had premised mine was kind of a weekend joke :^)
>
>> but as far as I know this is by far the best way to render the
>> Russian names by means of French phonetics.
>
> Isn't there really any practical way to avoid the constant shifting
> of the stress to the last syllable in French transliterations or
> transcriptions of foreign names/words (with the latter being
> historically always treated as if they were French terms)? Or is
> this the same case as that with the Japanese
> transliteration "makudonarudo" for McDonald (etc.)?
>
> I gave the example of Italian because we generally RECOGNIZE that
> foreign words are subject to different phonetic rules when we try to
> pronounce them. For instance, when an Italian reads the French name
> François he does not pronounce it as <fran'kois>, although this
> would be the "natural" pronunciation of it for us. On the contrary,
> when a French utters my name, Francesco, he/she invariably
> pronounces it as <'franse'sko>, as if it were a French word.
>
> Are you saying that it would be impossible for the French to
> pronounce Mme Carla Bruni's name with correctly applying the Italian
> phonetic rules instead of the French ones (thus: <caR'la bRy'ni>)?
>
> So goes for all other foreign names pronounced by native French
> speakers, whether they are transliterated from a non-Roman script or
> not. They are, to make ot clearer, treated as if they were
> some "bizarre" French names. No effort is made to pronounce them
> correctly.
>
> Regards,
> Francesco
>
>