Watched the final part of the National Spelling Bee on ESPN Saturday Night. Two of the contestants lost out on the spelling of “foreign” words, boudin and fusuma. I don’t speak Japanese, and my French is atrocious, but I thought that the moderator may have mispronounced both of these, or at the least made them so flat and midwestern that he made it all but impossible to intuit the spellings.
For fusuma, he said “foo-suh-mah”, with a very distinct schwa in the middle syllable. The girl, from Kingston, Jamaica, asked if it couldn’t be pronounced “foo-soo-mah”, and he said that no, his pronunciation was correct.
For boudin, he gave two pronunciations, “boo-dan” and “boo-dane”, IIRC, neither of which is how I would pronounce this word. The (incredibly bright, IMO), nine year old offered a pronounciation which to me seemed correct, but again this was rejected.
Two parts to the question:
What is the proper, phoneticised pronunciations of these two words.
Why doesn’t the National Spelling Bee use native speakers to pronounce foreign words instead of relying on a guy who sounds as if his only escape from Kansas is his yearly trip to torture bright children in Washington, DC?
I think the theory is that these words are part of English now and are pronounced in a sort of hybrid English/foreign style.
I know from just visiting Japan that it is very hard for a native English speaker to pick up the pace and intonation of Japanese because it is so different from English. The vowel sounds are much shorter and there is no emphasis placed on any syllable. All are emphasized equally.
If the guy pronounced “fusuma” as if he were Japanese, the kid would be even more lost.
It just seems a little illogical that the actual pronunciation of the word, though foreign in origin, is not at least an acceptable alternative pronunciation once it’s used in English.
BobT, it seemed that both of these kids knew the likely native pronunciations but were thrown by the Websterizations of these words.
And my mistake for placing Dr. Bailly accent as from Kansas, he seems instead to be from Colorado, a whole state away.
ShibbOleth: And what about words from foreign languages with sounds that do not occur in English? My favourite example is Nguyen, which is correctly spelled in Vietnamese as Nguye^~n and has a velar nasal in initial position (not a possible sound in English) in addition to the glottalized vowel in the final syllable (again, not a possible sound in English for this particular word’s sounds).
Monty, is there an example of a word from another language, which cannot be pronounced in English, yet is adopted “as is” into English?
To the best of my knowledge Nguyen is just an extremely common last name, but I don’t speak Vietnamese, so it could also mean something. Thai has this same phoneme; for example ngiap means silent/calm. While difficult to pronounce, it’s not impossible for a native English speaker, admittedly with a great deal of practice. And there are better approximations than what’s likely to ever appear in Webster’s.
The point of my question in the OP was whether it was possible that the nine year old or thirteen(?) year old in question accurately pronounced the word with it’s native pronunciation yet were told that they had the wrong pronunciation. The one part of that has been answered (yes, it’s possible).
I would still like to know what is the correct native pronunciation of those two words, though.
The point is, though, ShibbOleth, that the correct pronunciation in English is different than the word’s correct pronunciation in its source language. I think resume (from French) might fit your criteria. AFAIK, the French vowels are somewhat different than their counterparts in English.
Aha! Just remembered one: Fuji (the mountain in Japan). Japanese doesn’t really have an F (labio-dental) sound; it has an approximant of that–one merely brings the lower lip close to, but not touching, the upper teeth. I suppose you would say that the Japanese F is somewhat in between an F and an H in English.
Yes… foo-suh-mah would be an incorrect pronunciation in Japanese, with that spelling. Japanese vowel sounds are always the same, they won’t change contextually like English vowel sounds. Also, what Monty says in the preceding post is right, that F and H sounds in Japanese are very similar. F sounds mostly like a ‘hoo’ with extra air (while a Japanese person would say it sounds like ‘hu’, and the characters for fu and hu are identical.
so if the word were properly Japanese, it would be foo-soo-mah with short vowel sounds, not long ones.
boudin: boo-dan, where the a is like the a in ‘pat’. (The vowel should be nasalized, technically, according to the site – if you can do that. Otherwise, just pronounce the n sound after the vowel.)
In French, I would pronounce the word as ‘boo-den’, where the vowel is nasalized and the ‘e’ isn’t as long as the ‘e’ in ‘den’.
boudin: boo-dan, where the a is like the a in ‘pat’. (The vowel should be nasalized, technically, according to the site – if you can do that. Otherwise, just pronounce the n sound after the vowel.)
In French, I would pronounce the word as ‘boo-den’, where the vowel is nasalized and the ‘e’ isn’t as long as the ‘e’ in ‘den’.
It’s not really between an “f” and an “h”.
The “f” is Japanese is actually a voiceless bilabial fricative. Your lips should be in the same position as you would pronounce “p”, ie the lower lip just about to touch the upper lip, but instead of bringing your lips together you force air through.
