Anglicised languages
I’ve found that a lot of native English speakers, when speaking to other native English speakers, say foreign words in a blatantly Anglicised way. This seems to happen even when the speaker can speak the foreign language quite well. I don’t know if it is because they feel uncomfortable ‘trying too hard’, or for another reason. I generally try to use the correct pronunciation, or my best approximation, but many other people don’t.
A friend brought up a good point, though. For words that are commonly used in English, we use the English version. Unless you are French, saying Paris as Paree will make you look fairly pretentious to other English speakers.
There has to be a middle ground somewhere, though. Somewhere where you are not a poseur but not being offensive to speakers of the foreign language. Where do you think that line is?
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Alex said,
January 26, 2011 @ 5:28 pm
I’ve recognized myself and others do the same thing (I’m from the US). I think what is typically the case is that, because the sound systems of other languages are different from (American) English, it requires the speaker to either take a longer time to pronounce the foreign word or to pause to think of how to say it ‘properly’. Having to stop mid-sentence and think of how to pronounce a foreign word messes up the rhythm of one’s speech.
Also, some people either can’t or just don’t know how to pronounce something in another language. My mother sometimes tries to maintain the ‘correct’ pronunciation of foreign words, such as Italian words (she studies Italian). However, she finds it impossible to trill her [r]s. So, when she says one isolated Italian word that has an [r] in it, she 1) tries to trill but fails and messes up the rhythm of her speech, or 2) pronounces the vowels correctly, but rhoticizes the [r].
I would say that this isn’t limited only to native English speakers. In Italy (my current location), people pronounce English words according to Italian pronunciation and stress. Cantonese speakers (my fiance is from HK, as are many of our friends) tend to map Cantonese tones and rules of pronunciation onto isolated English words quite a lot.
I think there should be a distinction drawn–one which you don’t make in your post–between the pronunciation of foreign words in isolation (i.e. 1 foreign word in a string of native language speech) and in linguistic context (i.e. a non-native speaker of a language).