--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...>
wrote:
>
>
> 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 "C�rla Br�ni" 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
>
You might be interested in the following point: as you say, many
French speakers pronounce foreign names according to French rules of
pronunciation. Well, in English, I have noticed time and again that
many English speakers, particularly those who are not especially
interested in languages or linguistics, pronounce all foreign words as
if they were French words, and pronounced according to French rules of
pronunciation. I.e. all foreign languages are considered varieties of
French, with French pronunciation. Well, actually, what I've noticed
is that, although the letter "j" is pronounced normally [dZ] in
English, if it is in a foreign word or name, such as "Beijing" or
"Maharaja", it is always pronounced [Z], as though the word is French,
even though the source language pronounces it more or less as in
English, approximately [dZ]. I don't know why so many Anglophones
believe that if a word is foreign, it must be pronounced according to
French rules of pronunciation.
Another case: when I was learning Spanish recently here in Ottawa,
several of the students in my class consistently pronounced the
Spanish preposition <en> "in, on" as [A~], i.e. as though it were the
_French_ preposition <en>. What is even more unbelievable is that the
Spanish teacher, a man from Peru, never corrected the students, and
when I was forced to speak up to correct them, they still continued to
pronounce Spanish <en> as [A~]. I don't know why so many Anglophones
believe that all foreign languages follow the pronunciation rules of
French.
Hope this was of interest,
Andrew