Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1998 20:43:53 +0000 From: Mark Ovens <marko@uk.radan.com> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@flood.ping.uio.no>, Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, Ollivier Robert <roberto@keltia.freenix.fr>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Regulated names (was: Crazy Laws) Message-ID: <36854A89.B393D402@uk.radan.com> References: <Greg Lehey's message of "Sat, 26 Dec 1998 13:16:44 %2B1030"> <368378AB.969463E2@uk.radan.com> <Your <4.1.19981224112052.05a31740@127.0.0.1> <4.1.19981224174155.03dd8670@127.0.0.1> <368378AB.969463E2@uk.radan.com> <4.1.19981225181200.05a201b0@mail.lariat.org> <xzpg1a3mzhe.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <19981226131644.I12346@freebie.lemis.com> <4.1.19981226104824.05822710@mail.lariat.org>
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Brett Glass wrote: > > At 03:30 PM 12/26/98 +0100, Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote: > > >BTW "connoisseur" is a funny example of a French word that has been in > >the English language for so long that it's no longer spelled the same > >way in French; most of the "oi" diphtongs have become "ai" (franois > >-> franais, connotre -> connatre) but the English have kept the > >archaic spelling in most cases (connoisseur, reconnoitre) but not all > >(reconnaissance) > > The funny thing is that when the English adopt a word from another > language, they cannot seem to use it as-is. They seem to feel COMPELLED > to shift at least the accented syllables and often the vowels. Whereas Americans simply _remove_ (mainly) vowls from English words :-) > For example, I was recently asked in an English resatuarant if I'd like a > piece of "GA-teau." I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I think the English pronounciation of "gateau" is identical to the origianal French. > And almost daily, we hear Microsoft referred to as > a "JUG-ger-naut" (the original Hindi is "ja-ga-NATH," a name for > the god Vishnu). > Partly of course this comes about because of sounds in one language not existing in another and therefore the majority of the population _can't_ pronounce them properly. We had a couple of Spanish students working at my local pub during their summer holidays and they said that they had a lot of trouble with words like "shop" because there is no "sh" sound in Spanish, so they tend to pronounce it "sop". Also the way the same letter is pronounced in different languages affects it. The letter 'J' has a soft sound in many languages, e.g. the (male) name Jean in French or Scandinanians pronouncing "jump" as "yump", whereas in English it has a hard sound, e.g. the (female) name Jean. Additionally we tend to tail-off the ends of words, i.e. hardly ever accent the last syllable. Of course regional accents and dialects play a big part as well, e.g. In northern England where I'm from words like bath, grass, and glass are pronounced with a short 'a', as in cat, whereas down south where I now live they are pronounced "barth", "grarss", and "glarss". This happens everywhere though, think of the different way words like process, lever, and semi are pronounced by people from different areas of the US. > And so on.... > Hopefully it will go on. I am finding this thread extremely interesting (and educational), more so than talking about boring old Unix ;-). That's one of the great things about the international nature of the Internet. > --Brett > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message -- Trust the computer industry to shorten Year 2000 to Y2K. It was this thinking that caused the problem in the first place. Mark Ovens, CNC Applications Engineer, Radan Computational Ltd Sheet Metal CAD/CAM Solutions mailto:marko@uk.radan.com http://www.radan.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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