LINGUIST List 3.273

Fri 20 Mar 1992

Disc: Raising, French Pronunciation

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. , Summary: Canadian Raising
2. Stavros Macrakis, 3.260 French pronunciation of `Gougenheim'
3. jack, French and Dutch name pronunciation

I have so far received 20 responses to my query about
"Canadian" raising, that is, the phenomenon whereby
words like 'write' have a different vowel than words like
'ride' (roughly [/\i] vs. [ai]). It became apparent that
this distinction is much more widespread than I had believed,
both in the US and in Canada. Almost all respondents had
some examples which appear to show that this distinction
is phonemic. For example, quite a few speakers had 'hide'
(meaning 'conceal') with [/\i] but 'ride' with [ai]. Even
more speakers have [/\i] in one or both of 'cider' and
'spider'. US speakers appear to have more examples of this
sort than do Canadian ones, and indeed a couple of the
Canadian speakers who wrote in did not have any such examples
(at least not within the small set of examples I asked about,
viz., 'hide', 'cider', 'spider', 'writer', 'rider').

I am planning to send out a longer questionnaire soon. If
anyone who has not responded so far would like to receive it,
please contact me.

"Wayles Browne, Cornell Univ." <JN5JCORNELLA.bitnet> asks:

> Where can I find out how to pronounce the name of the French
> linguist Gougenheim? ... Is there any dictionary which gives
> pronunciations of verbs and of proper names...?

A very useful work for this is Pierre Fouche's "Traite de
Prononciation Francaise" (Paris: Klincksieck, 1959). Fouche attempts
to be systematic, but gives lists where he could find no rule. If you
want more of a dictionary, I believe the second volume (Proper Nouns)
of the Petit Robert gives pronunciations.

There are three issues in the particular word `Gougenheim':

G before e/i/y (section VI.A."G".1 Remarque IV, parag. 3, p. 286)
"Noter de plus, dans les noms allemands portes par des Francais,
l'opposition Krueger, Naegelen, avec [zh], et G(o)ugenheim, avec [g]."
(no general rule is given)

medial EN (with following oral consonant) (section IV."en".A.3
Remarque III, p. 173) "Les noms etrangers portes par des Francais ou
designant des localites francaises se prononcent avec [e~]:
Baldesnsperger, ..., Benveniste, ..." But the case -enheim isn't
clearly covered.

final EIM (section IV."eim" Remarque II, p. 163) "Les noms allemands
en -eim se prononcent [em] lorsqu'ils sont portes par des Francais."

This leaves the two possibilities ?[guge~em] and [gugenem], of which
the latter seems more likely.

There has been some tendency (documented in Fouche) to move from
completely French pronunciations to something closer to the original
pronunciation in foreign words. This tendency is more pronounced in
Belgium, where in particular Flemish words are pronounced using
close-to-Flemish conventions.

	-s

I agree that pronunciation of names should be given in French Dictionaries,
especially since these are not always pronounced as our teaching of French
spelling/pronunciation relationships would indicate. Thus the late
Professor Cons of the College de France occasionally had to correct
people who addressed him, saying, with strong feeling, <</ko~s/ je vous
en prie, monsieur, /ko~ss/," even lengthening the /s/ as he said it!