| Revision as of 16:00, 29 December 2014 edit200.83.101.225 (talk) use your own words. also rm redundancy← Previous edit | Revision as of 15:23, 30 December 2014 edit undoDenisarona (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers160,650 editsm Reverted edits by 200.83.101.225 (talk) to last version by Snorlax MonsterNext edit → | ||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
| {{refimprove|date=March 2012}} | {{refimprove|date=March 2012}} | ||
| A '''hyperforeignism''' is a non-standard language form resulting from an attempt to apply the rules of a foreign language to a ] (for example, the application of the rules of one language to a word borrowed from another) or, occasionally, a word believed to be a loan word. The result |
A '''hyperforeignism''' is a non-standard language form resulting from an unsuccessful attempt to apply the rules of a foreign language to a ] (for example, the application of the rules of one language to a word borrowed from another) or, occasionally, a word believed to be a loan word. The result reflects "neither the... rules of English nor those of the language from which the word in question comes."<ref name="wells">{{cite book|title=Accents of English: An Introduction|first=John Christopher|last=Wells|publisher=]|year=1982|isbn=0-521-29719-2|page=108|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=UJQwf05yzqYC&pg=PA108&dq=Accents+of+English:+An+Introduction#v=onepage&q=Accents%20of%20English%3A%20An%20Introduction&f=false}}</ref> For example, "]" is sometimes spelled or pronounced with an ] (''habañero''), which is not the correct ] form from which the English word was borrowed.<ref name="dictionary"></ref> | ||
| In an extreme form, this can also apply to words that have a foreign origin but have since been assimilated to follow the general rules,{{clarify | reason = What general rules?|date=August 2014}} or even words that are not foreign at all but are misperceived as foreign. | In an extreme form, this can also apply to words that have a foreign origin but have since been assimilated to follow the general rules,{{clarify | reason = What general rules?|date=August 2014}} or even words that are not foreign at all but are misperceived as foreign. | ||
Revision as of 15:23, 30 December 2014
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Hyperforeignism" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
A hyperforeignism is a non-standard language form resulting from an unsuccessful attempt to apply the rules of a foreign language to a loan word (for example, the application of the rules of one language to a word borrowed from another) or, occasionally, a word believed to be a loan word. The result reflects "neither the... rules of English nor those of the language from which the word in question comes." For example, "habanero" is sometimes spelled or pronounced with an ñ (habañero), which is not the correct Spanish form from which the English word was borrowed.
In an extreme form, this can also apply to words that have a foreign origin but have since been assimilated to follow the general rules, or even words that are not foreign at all but are misperceived as foreign.
English
In English, hyperforeignisms are seen in loan words from many different languages.
Afrikaans words
In Afrikaans, the letter combination sch is pronounced (as in 'school'), except at the end of a word where it is pronounced . However, most English speakers pronounce it as ("sh") in all positions, following the rules for German, in words such as Rooibosch and veldschoen.
Chinese words
Some English speakers pronounce Beijing with /ʒ/. In fact, the Standard Chinese sound represented by ⟨j⟩ in Pinyin (/tɕ/) is an affricate similar to the "g" in "gin". The same applies to Mahjong.
French words
French-derived forte, [fɔʁt] (used to mean "strength" in English as in "not my forte"), with silent final "e" is pronounced /ˈfɔːrteɪ/, by confusion with the Italian musical term of the same spelling, but meaning "loud", which is pronounced [ˈfrte]. The double hyperforeignism with a stressed final syllable, /fɔːrˈteɪ/ is also heard.
The noun cache, which means and should rhyme with "stash", but is sometimes pronounced /kæʃeɪ/, as though it were either cachet or caché.
The word cadre is sometimes pronounced /ˈkɑːdreɪ/ in English, as though it were of Spanish origin. In its French original, the final "e" is silent [kɑdʁ], whereas it is a schwa in common English pronunciations.
Speakers of American English typically pronounce lingerie /lɑːnʒərˈreɪ/, excessively depressing the first vowel of the French [lɛ̃ʒʁi] to sound more like a "typical" French nasal vowel, and rhyming the final syllable with English ray, by analogy with the many French loanwords ending in -é, -er, -et and -ez.
Similarly, the French spelling repartie (pronounced /rəpɑːrˈtiː/, "rejoinder") was changed to English spelling repartee, "banter", giving rise to a hyperforeign /rəpɑːrˈteɪ/.
Legal English is replete with words derived from Norman French, which for a long time was the language of the courts in England and Wales. The correct pronunciation of Norman French is often closer to a natural contemporary English reading than to modern French: the attempt to pronounce these phrases as if they were modern French could therefore be considered to be a hyperforeignism. For example, the clerk's summons Oyez! ("Attention!") should have a final consonant, but whether it is /z/ or /ts/ is uncertain.
The Norman French language furthermore gave Southern England some ancient family names that were once associated with the aristocracy, which should be given their natural English pronunciation. A good example is Lestrange which is sometimes mistakenly pronounced with its natural and contemporaneous French inflection.
The word parmesan, though it denotes an Italian cheese, derives its spelling from French and should therefore be pronounced /ˈpɑːrməzɑːn/. However it is often mispronounced as /ˈpɑːrməʒɑːn/ in American English under the influence of the Italian name for the cheese, parmigiano (pronounced [parmiˈdʒaːno] in Italian).
Final consonants
Many English speakers who have limited familiarity with the French language may erroneously omit the last consonants in words like Vichyssoise /z/, in the chess term en prise, in prix fixe, in mise en scène, and in coup de grâce in which some omit the final consonant /s/, although it is pronounced in French [ku də ɡʁɑs].
There are many instances connected with proper nouns. Some speakers may omit the final z or s in pronouncing names such as Saint-Saëns, Duras, Boulez, and Berlioz, though in French the final letter in these words is pronounced as /s/ for the first two words and /z/ for the last two words.
"Claret" is often thought of as a French loanword and mispronounced /klæˈreɪ/, losing the "t". In fact it is an Anglicised (and genericised) version of the original French clairet, and the "t" should thus be pronounced, with the stress on the first syllable: /ˈklærɪt/.
Indian-language words
The j in the name of the Taj Mahal or raj is often rendered /ʒ/, but a closer approximation to the Hindi sound is /dʒ/. (j in most other Roman-alphabet spellings of words associated with languages of India is best approximated /dʒ/.)
Another example is the pronunciation of Punjab as /ˈpʊndʒɑːb/; a closer approximation to the original is /ˈpʌndʒɑːb/ . The letter u in this case represents the Hindi neutral vowel, with a sound similar to that of the u in English cut.
Italian words
The "g" in Adagio may be realized as /ʒ/, even though the Italian original has an affricate /dʒ/. Similarly English-speaking musicians render the Italian word mezzo as /metsoʊ/, though in Italian that word is pronounced /ˈmɛd.dzo/. (In Italian, "z" is pronounced as /ts/ in some words, but not that one.)
The word bruschetta, particularly in American English is commonly rendered as /bruːˈʃɛtə/ with an English 'sh' sound, probably as a result of Americans' familiarity with words and surnames of German origin containing 'sch', which would be pronounced this way. An approximation that is more reflective of Italian phonology would be /bruːˈskɛtə/ and the authentic pronunciation in Italian would be /bruˈsket.ta/.
A similar problem afflicts the brand name Freschetta, which is routinely pronounced with the 'sh' sound in commercials. The type of cherry, maraschino, the Italian astronomer's name Schiaparelli and the surname Schiavo are also liable to this mispronunciation.
A similar effect can arise from confusion between Italian and Spanish. For example, Shakespeare spells the name of the principal male character in The Taming of the Shrew as "Petruchio". This was intended as a phonetic representation of the Italian name Petruccio, presumably following either Spanish or English spelling conventions, both of which use "ch" for . The name should therefore be pronounced /peˈtrut.tʃo/, like the Italian name. The common pronunciation /peˈtruːkijo/, which assumes that Shakespeare's spelling is genuinely Italian, is therefore a hyperforeignism: in Italian there is no name "Petruchio" so spelled.
A barista is a worker in a coffee shop: Californians will often substitute "baristo" for a male barista, when in fact "barista" is invariable in gender in Italian and Spanish (as are other words ending in the suffix -ista).
The word "latte" (milk), as in "caffè latte", is often misspelled as latté or lattè, despite having no accent on latte in Italian as it has the stress on the "a".
Spanish words
The digraph ch of Spanish is generally realized /tʃ/, similarly to English. Hyperforeign realizations of many Spanish loanwords or proper names may substitute other sounds. Examples include a French-style in the surname Chávez and in Che Guevara, or a German-influenced or Greek-influenced in machismo. The z in the Spanish word "chorizo" is sometimes realized as ts by English speakers, which is the pronunciation of the double letter zz in Italian, but never in present-day Spanish.
Some English speakers add a tilde to Spanish words where it does not belong, such as habañero for correct habanero and "empañada" for correct "empanada". The latter changes the meaning in Spanish from "breaded" to "fogged up" and perhaps even "diapered".
The surname of the Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, is usually pronounced /pinoˈtʃet/ in Chilean Spanish, similarly to how the name would pronounced if read phonetically in English. English speakers, however, often pronounce the name /ˈpiːnoʊʃeɪ/, applying French pronunciation rules.
The South American beverage, mate, is frequently spelled "maté" in English, adding an accent which, in Spanish, changes the pronunciation and meaning of the word ("maté" means "I killed" in Spanish). The accented spelling does, however, serve a purpose, indicating to English speakers that the word has two syllables and is not pronounced like the English word "mate".
Russian
In Russian, many early loanwords are pronounced as native Russian words with full palatalization. Hyperforeignism occurs when some speakers pronounce these early loanwords without palatalization. For example: тема ("theme") -> тэма, текст ("text") -> тэкст, музей ("museum") -> музэй, газета ("gazette") -> газэта and эффект ("effect") -> эффэкт.
Swedish
An example of hyperforeignism in Swedish is the common use of "chevré" in "chevré" for "chèvre cheese", which is pronounced quite different from the original French "chèvre" (possibly by false analogy with the Swedish "grevé" cheese, grevéost).
Similarly "entrecôte", which also can often be spelled "entrecoté", or "entrêcotè", or some other combination of and ` or ´. More often than not it is pronounced without the ending "t" sound.
For comic effect
The silent "t" in "Report" in the title of the parody pundit show The Colbert Report is a hyperforeignism used for comedic effect. It is a play on the host's surname, Colbert (pronounced /koʊlˈbɛər/).
In the BBC sitcom Keeping Up Appearances, Richard Bucket pronounces his surname like the water vessel, but his snobbish wife Hyacinth insists on /buːˈkeɪ/ (like bouquet), à la française. Series creator Roy Clarke said he got the inspiration for this character trait after meeting someone with the surname "Bottom" who insisted it was pronounced /boʊˈtoʊm/ boh-TOHM.
Similarly, some people jokingly give retailer Target the pseudo-French pronunciation /tɑːrˈʒeɪ/ tar-ZHAY, as though it were an upscale boutique.
See also
References
- ^ Wells, John Christopher (1982). Accents of English: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. p. 108. ISBN 0-521-29719-2.
- www.merriam-webster.com: habanero (variant spelling)
- ^ Merriam-Webster, Inc (1994). Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (revised ed.). Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster. p. 516. ISBN 0-87779-132-5.
- Pronounce Names
- Quinn, Sue. "Mispronounced food words: can you say chorizo?". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 8 May 2014.
- "Hispanic Play Food Set".: "Serve up awareness for Hispanic cultures... Eight-piece play set includes tamale, enchilada, taco, quesadilla, empañada, rice, beans and flan."
- "Empanadas Grande (recipe from Chi-Chi's)".: "Bake 1 empañada at a time on lower oven rack 12 to 18 minutes…"
- "Pinochet" in Wells, John C. (1990). Longman pronunciation dictionary. Harlow, England: Longman. p. 537. ISBN 0-582-05383-8.
- "FAQs: Pronunciation and Spelling". Yerba Mate Association of the Americas. Retrieved 2008-11-27.
- See inogolo:pronunciation of Stephen Colbert.
- Jaworski, Adam; Coupland, Nikolas; Galasiński, Dariusz, eds. (1998). Metalanguage: Social and Ideological Perspectives (3rd ed.). The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 290. ISBN 9783110178777.
- Muy, Ylan Q. (21 June 2006). "Where Target Is Always 'Tar-zhay'". The Washington Post. Retrieved 27 September 2011.