Re: French phonetics

--- On Sun, 2/1/09, Francesco Brighenti <frabrig@...> wrote:

> From: Francesco Brighenti <frabrig@...>
> Subject: [tied] Re: French phonetics
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Sunday, February 1, 2009, 4:07 PM
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister
> <gabaroo6958@...>
> wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Arnaud Fournet
> > <fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:
> >
> > > Does Francesco exist in Spanish? That may explain
> -s-.
> >
> > Sure, it exists in Spanish and in much of Latin
> America, Francesco
> > and 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.
>
> Of course, you are here pointing to a by-product of the
> massive
> Italian immigration into to Latin America (especially to
> Brasil,
> Argentina, Venezuela) which took place during the first
> half of the
> 20th century. Indeed, the Spaniards (of Europe) don't
> use these
> Italian forms of the name, and they only know of Franciscos
> and
> Franciscas.

Actually, these names seem to be most common where the Italians didn't go in great numbers: Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico. While I was in El Salvador, the most common names in my classes were Giovanni, Francesca, Jennifer, Aisha, Freddy, Ronnie, William, Francesco, Omar, etc.

>
> Therefore, no Spanish influence can, in my opinion, be
> traced in the
> French pronunciation of Francesco with [s] or, at best,
> with [s^].
>
> The problem is, in case, the lack of the [ts^] phoneme in
> French.
>
> Regards,
> Francesco