Pronunciation of French words in English

"By the way Lazar, I'm impressed by your French. I didn't think French was very popular in the US as a second language. "

Why? French and Spanish are the two most popular languages taught in secondary schools, ands down. German's probably a distant third. And Spanish has only become really popular recently.

I was going by this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_in_the_United_States
I always thought Spanish was the 'default' second language in the US, like French is here. Other languages are sometimes available, but at a lesser level. For example, we have French immersion starting in kindergarten, but no Spanish immersion, German immersion, etc. and the courses for those languages generally only start in high school. (Though I heard of a Japanese immersion programme in Alberta.) I thought the situation in the US was pretty similar.

You know, it largely seems to depend on two things: what teachers your school has available, and what ethnic background predominates in your area (if any). My first high school (in NY) happened to only have a Spanish teacher. The second offered Spanish and French. My last high school (on an army base in Japan) offered Spanish, French, Japanese, and Chinese. (The last only because our principle happened to speak Chinese and had teamed up with his brother-in-law to devise a course.)

But other places might have a strong German background, and teachers who can speak it and are willing to teach a course -- I bet the midwest is dotted with high school German teachers! -- and I remember Kirk mentioning that his high school in California offered an absolutely bewildering array of languages, due to the large post-immigrant ethnic populations in his hometown (he mentioned unusual things like Portuguese and Assyrian!)

I thought it was interesting that, given our large Italian background in upstate NY, no one offered Italian classes. So there are no hard and fast rules -- I lived in a rural area, and we were probably lucky to have the teachers we had!

Because the US doesn't have the same situation as Canada, with two equal and official languages, there's no real impetus to have widespread immersion classes for the kiddies, like your kindergarten French classes. Sometimes you will find them here and there, though -- one of my childhood friends went to a German afterschool program once she moved back to the States, and so kept her German long after I lost mine, and here in New Mexico we do have bilingual grade school education options in Spanish and English. But nothing mandated by the government, or anything like that.

It's always struck me as jarring when someone breaks into full Spanish or French accent (or whatever language) to pronounce a term or a name in the middle of an English sentence. It also seems ostentatious. North Americans may remember a Saturday Night Live bit where a reporter used an extreme, exaggerated Spanish accent to pronounce Hispanic names while otherwise speaking standard American English.

Also, while the typical English speaker might be able to come up with a fair approximation of a native French or Spanish pronunciation, what will he do when he encounters a Vietnamese, Farsi, Polish or Amharic name? How could you ever learn all those sound systems?

I think the best way to handle foreign terms in English is to pronounce them using the closest native phonemes. I think this would apply equally to someone using an English name or term in the context of a foreign language.

I agree that isn't not necessary to switch to a fully native accent when pronouncing a foreign word, no matter what it is, but I think we can do better than we sometimes do. One thing that always annoys me is how Italian and Spanish words that end with "e" always get pronounced with an "eeee" sound: "guacamole" becomes "gwa-ca-moh-lee" rather than "gwa-ca-moh-lay"; "Liberace" becomes "lih-ber-ah-chee" rather than "Lee-ber-ah-chay". The -ay sound isn't exact either, but it's more natural than the native Spanish/Italian -eh sound, and much closer than the -ee sound, which corresponds to "i" in the original languages. It certainly wouldn't sound like an incomprehensibly thick accent; we say French words with a terminal -ay sound all the time.

- Kef

>>But other places might have a strong German background, and teachers who can speak it and are willing to teach a course -- I bet the midwest is dotted with high school German teachers! -- and I remember Kirk mentioning that his high school in California offered an absolutely bewildering array of languages, due to the large post-immigrant ethnic populations in his hometown (he mentioned unusual things like Portuguese and Assyrian!) <<

It is traditional for middle and high schools here to offer German, and there are German immersion programs available here as well. Furthermore, it is likely so that more people take German here than in other parts of the US where it is offered. I myself have known some people who speak German reasonably well from having learned it in school here (and have been able to do things like order coffee at a particular coffee shop in German - which I did just for the hell of it, not even knowing that the person at the counter actually spoke German).

That said, though, knowledge of German is practically nonexistant here in the general population outside of individual words (whose usage may not be quite the same as in actual German - for instance, in the case of the word "Gesundheit") outside of people who had taken German in school. While many German names may have pronunciations that differ from how someone without knowledge of German would anglicize them, these pronunciations are today largely without actual understanding of German phonology and rather are largely a mixture of fixed pronunciations and non-standard anglicization conventions (for instance, the last name "Luedke" is likely to be pronounced ["L\I:tki:] rather than the usual anglicization ["5u:tki:] or the actual Standard German pronunciation ["lYtk@]).

The subject of thread has broadened a little bit, so I'll ask another question. What do you all think about using [x] in foreign words? (loch, Bach, Channukah, etc.). I generally think of it as kind of pretentious, though I suppose for Scots, /x/ is a regular phoneme. The worst one, for me, is Munich ["mju:.nIx], because that's not even the name of the city in German!

I have heard that many schools in the United States are teaching Spanish as a second language as early as Elementary School. However, when I was in school, foreign languages were not generally taught until High School, and we were given a choice between Spanish, French, and German. I suppose that some schools in the Southwest and California might have had an earlier and more in-depth Spanish program, but in the northern part of the country, very little emphasis was put on learning Spanish or any other foreign language.

<<It's always struck me as jarring when someone breaks into full Spanish or French accent (or whatever language) to pronounce a term or a name in the middle of an English sentence. It also seems ostentatious. North Americans may remember a Saturday Night Live bit where a reporter used an extreme, exaggerated Spanish accent to pronounce Hispanic names while otherwise speaking standard American English. >>

Given that both my French and Spanish are terrible, I would probably say the words using my natural dialect. However, in the case of German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, and even Polish names, I would use a pronunciation similar to the one found in the person's respective country when pronouncing the name. However, it is simply because I am somewhat familiar with the names, and I see no reason to Anglicize them. I even find myself using the traditional pronunciations with American families that have surnames that are of German or Scandinavian origins. I wouldn't be caught dead pronouncing Johansen as Joe-Han-Son; it is always Yo-hahnson, complete with a rounded "O" sound.

<<What do you all think about using [x] in foreign words? (loch, Bach, Channukah, etc.). >>

I don't do it. Loch and Bach end in a K sound when I say them, and Channukah just becomes Hannukah.

I will harden my H just a little more than usual for Spanish names like Jose, but not to the extent of that tearing-wallpaper noise. (And I always unaspirate my T's and alter my O's for Spanish names. I can switch the R to a flapped R, too, but I can't roll a RR to say my life. So my Spanish pronunciation is only a gringa approximation!) But that's because it's the norm here to try to say them right. I wouldn't bother in New Jersey.

>>Given that both my French and Spanish are terrible, I would probably say the words using my natural dialect. However, in the case of German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, and even Polish names, I would use a pronunciation similar to the one found in the person's respective country when pronouncing the name. However, it is simply because I am somewhat familiar with the names, and I see no reason to Anglicize them. I even find myself using the traditional pronunciations with American families that have surnames that are of German or Scandinavian origins. I wouldn't be caught dead pronouncing Johansen as Joe-Han-Son; it is always Yo-hahnson, complete with a rounded "O" sound.<<

Even though I myself know how to pronounce German names according to Standard German pronunciation, I still tend to use canonical anglicization conventions for such names here. For instance, German /y:/ tends to map to /i/ (traditionally) or /ju/ or /U/, German /Y/ tends to map to /I/ (traditionally) or /ju/ or /u/, German /9/, /2:/, and /E:/ all map to /e/, German /@/ maps to /@/ except word-finally, where it instead maps to /i/, German /C/ maps to either /S/ or /k/, German /a/ tends to map to /E{/ (GA /{/) and German /a:/ tends to map to /a/ (GA /A/). Similarly, r-vocalization is not applied and rather rhotics are pronounced as in the dialect here (of course, having a uvular approximant for a rhotic does not hurt). Note that German-type coda devoicing is generally not applied except in some names in which it is frozen (such as pronouncing "Koenig" as ["ke~:nIk] Such is not strictly followed, of course, as sometimes /a/ or /a:/ are mapped to /e/ and sometimes /a/ is mapped to /a/ rather than /E{/. Last but not least, all the usual details of the phonology of the dialect here apply. While I normally know how such "should" be pronounced in Standard German and that the canonical pronunciations used here are not necessarily "correct", I am so used to them and most people here would not really recognize the Standard German pronunciations offhand except in cases where they are very close to the canonical pronunciations here.

Polish names here are a different story; they vary between being horribly anglicized beyond recognition (and pronounced as if they were using English spelling, outside of the cases of "sz", "cz", and "rz') to being quite close to actual Polish pronunciation aside from the sibilants (as the usual English sibilants are used in their place) and the finer points of phonology (which follow the normal phonological rules of the dialect here). I use the canonical pronunciations if I know the ones in use just because people will recognize them, but if I see a Polish last name that I have not actually heard spoken with a particular pronunciation repeatedly, I will try to approximate Polish pronunciation within the bounds of the phonology of the dialect here (for instance, I still use English sibilants in the place of Polish ones); however, such is often limited by the fact that diacritics likely have been lost along the way and the character "ł" will most likely have been replaced with "l".

<< but I can't roll a RR to say my life >>

I've always been puzzled by this... I've been making the RR-sound long before I studied any foreign languages. (My elementary school Spanish classes don't count. They only made sure that we pronounced "J" like an "H" and that we pronounced the "Ñ" with a Y sound. ;))

Here's how it's done:
Hold your tongue at the alveolar ridge, the place where you would normally 'tap' the R. Now the trick is to just keep it there while you exhale. Don't try too hard to hold it in place... if you do it right, your tongue should automatically flap against the roof of your mouth and you'll produce an unvoiced RR sound. Then just engage the vocal cords at the same time -- go "rrrr" -- and there you have it!

- Kef

One trend I've noticed in this era when so many Arabic-derived names are in the news is for newscasters to pronounce the postvocalic 'h' in some contexts but not others. When it's word-internal as in 'Rahman' or 'Ahmed' it seems to have become fashionable to pronounce it, usually as 'k', but sometimes as 'kh'. When it's word-final as in 'Fatah' or 'Abdullah' it's still silent.

Whichever way they decide to treat it, I wish they'd be consistent. Anybody else notice this?

Dude, I took Spanish for three years. Everyone tells me it's so easy. I just sound like I'm gargling.

Some people can do it, and some people can't. I'm resigned to my fate.

But did you at least try it my way? Anybody who can do the alveolar tap can do the trilled R. It's just a matter of knowing how.

Here's another way to try: Hold the tongue at the alveolar ridge. Now make a "t" sound and "hold" it; don't let the tongue slip away from the ridge. Your tongue should vibrate. It's just a matter of doing that and engaging your vocal cords at the same time.

Perhaps we should start a thread in the Language forum about this? Even if you've taken Spanish for three years, that doesn't mean you're not giving up too easily... ;)

- Kef

Yeah, I tried it. No good; didn't work. My tongue didn't flutter.

Good thing I'm not a lesbian! ;)

Did you ever see the movie Spanglish? Do you remember the scene where the maid was trying to teach Tea Leoni how to do it? Her husband walked in (also non-Spanish speaking) and he could do it, too. Hell, I think by the end of the scene even the DOG could do it. But not poor Tea Leoni, and she was getting all kinds of frustrated.

I know how she felt.