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From: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com (Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428)
Subject: Re: Alpha Bravo phonetics: the quickie version
Message-ID: <DyJrKK.4xp@tigadmin.ml.com>
Sender: usenet@tigadmin.ml.com (News Account)
Reply-To: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com
Organization: Merrill Lynch Europe
References: <3247F91C.72E4@kronos.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 13:17:07 GMT
Lines: 57

In article <3247F91C.72E4@kronos.com>, Larry Krakauer <larryk@kronos.com> writes:
-->Mark Odegard wrote:
-->: I've offered /'keI bEk/, /'kE bEk/, even /'k@ bEk/. This of course is
-->: with a midwesterny-Californian American English "accent".
-->
-->: For those unfamiliar with the version of the IPA we use here on a.u.e,
-->: here's a translation:
-->
-->: [eI] is the "ei" in "eight".
-->: [E] is the "e" in "end".
-->: [@] is the schwa, the "u" in "but".
-->
-->: To this, there is the "w" pronunciation, /'kw@ bEk/ or /'kweI bek/,
-->: and (probably) the one everyone will stigmatize, /'kwi bek/ ([i] is
-->: "long e", as in "queen"), wherever the stress is put.
--> ....
-->: For myself, /'kE bEk/ seems closest to what I do, roughly "keh-beck",
-->: with the first vowel being that in "Ken", "keg", or "kept".
-->
-->In the 4 out of 4 US dictionaries I've looked at, the "w" pronunciation
-->(in one variant or another) is listed as the standard English pronunciation,
-->and some variant of /keI bEk/ is listed as the French.
-->
-->My question is, where does /'kE bEk/ come from?  It's not the French
-->pronounciation, because there's an accent aigu over the first "e":
-->
-->   In ISO-8859 characters:  Qubec
-->         ASCII convention:  Que'bec
-->
-->Thus the first "e" sound is a French phoneme that doesn't exist in
-->English at all.  It's the French version of "ay", as in "day", but
-->it is short and pure, so it's NOT /eI/, the English diphthong version
-->at all.  But certainly, if you're trying to mimic the French
-->pronunciation with English phonemes, /keI bEk/ is MUCH better than
-->/kE bEk/.  So:  where did THAT pronunciation come from?

You seem to have answered your own question.  /kE'bEk/ (I've never
heard /'kEbek/) is as close as we can get to the French pronunciation
using the phonemes of English.

As for your assertion that "/keI bEk/ is MUCH better than /kE bEk/"
I strongly disagree.  Personally I find it MUCH worse.  I wonder
what a French-speaker would make of it.  (If I try and say
/keI'bEk/ I end up saying /ke'bEk/.)

In the UK the standard pronunciation has always be /kw@'bEk/ or
/kwI'bEk/.

When I first heard /kE'bEk/ I assumed that it was some kind of
PC-motivated sop to Quebecois national sentiment, adopting
a pseduo-French pronunciation rather than the traditional
English one.  Is this the case or have anglophone Quebeckers
always used such a pronunciation.

-- jP --


