LINGUIST List 8.1186

Sat Aug 16 1997

Qs: AAL#,Vietnamese,Spanish

Editor for this issue: Brett Churchill <brettlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. A L Sellami, Re: 8.1182, Confs: URLs for DGfS/CL 97, ALS-98
2. Antony Dubach Green, Vietn[a]m
3. Sue Gass, Spanish frequency word list

Message 1: Re: 8.1182, Confs: URLs for DGfS/CL 97, ALS-98

I am trying to become a member of the Association of Applied Linguistcs.
Could anyone help as to what I should do. Does anyone have the full
address/fax number/e-mail of the association?

Thanks for your help in anticipation.

Abdel-Latif Sellami
a.l.sellamidurham.ac.uk

Maybe someone who knows more about Vietnamese than I do can confirm or
deny this, but I believe that Vietnamese has two low vowel phonemes, a
front one (roughly IPA Cardinal 4) and a back one (roughly IPA Cardinal
5). And I believe that the name Vietnam contains the FRONT vowel in the
second syllable, so that the common American pronunciation Vietn[ae]m is
actually closer to the native pronunciation, and the variant Vietn[A]m
(to rhyme with 'bomb' in most American accents, or 'arm' in RP) is
really a kind of hypercorrection, a "hyper-foreignization". (A
phenomenon I've noticed in other loan-words: Americans at least, and
maybe other English speakers, tend to use the voiced alveopalatal
fricative [3] where foreign words actually have an affricate, because
the fricative sounds more foreign. Examples include 'arpeggio', 'Taj
Mahal' and 'Beijing', each of which has an affricate that could be very
reasonably imitated by the English 'j'-sound [d3], but which a lot of
people pronounce with the 'zh'-sound [3], as a "hyper-foreignization".)

I am looking for a Spanish frequency word list--computerized, if possible.
Any advice would be appreciated. Susan Gass
Sue Gass
English Language Center
Michigan State University
1 CIP
E. Lansing, MI 48824-1035

Phone: 517 353-0800
FAX: 517 432-1149
e-mail: gasspilot.msu.edu