At 11:54 PM -0500 3/25/11, Aaron Rabushka wrote:
...but it is sometimes neVAYduh, MO (with either mizzuREE or
mizzurUH trailing along)
Aaron J. Rabushka
arabus...@austin.rr.com
Yes, distinctive regional pronunciations will always be with us.
They always seem like distortions to outsiders (which in a way seems
to be the whole point--separating "us" from "them"!).
All my geography teachers--and almost all TV talking heads--pronounce
the mountain range about which Copland wrote (or didn't!) as
Ap-pa-lay-chan. But the folks who actually live here in that
mountain range pronounce it as Ap-pa-laa-chan (same vowel as the
initial vowel).
A nearby small town, Pulaski, is pronounced Pew-LAS-ki.
And of course there's the famous Cairo, Illinois, whence the famous
syrup, "Kay-ro."
Americans, quite aside from the inevitable regional dialects, have a
deserved reputation as terrible linguists, since the same language is
spoken (admittedly in different ways) across an entire continent.
Unlike in Europe, where when you travel you have to switch languages
every 3 hours! But I can't see much of a reason to take PRIDE in
mispronouncing words borrowed from other languages.
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:john.how...@vt.edu)
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
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