Why do Americans pronounce the word 'pasta' in such a strange way?
Given the apparent influence of Italian-Americans on American culture it really seems to be a linguistic oddity.
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Mamapolo2016 · F
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@ChipmunkErnie PATÉ is French, and the acute accent shows the 'e' is pronounced "eh", rhyming with "hay"; but lengthening the "a" might be by American regional accents.
PASTA is Italian and both letters 'a' are hard. Again, any change to them is by regional accent.
'
These have a parallel in England.
Here, some of the Southern accents place an 'r' in some hard-a words (e.g. castle and bath become carstle and barth. Not all though, so a Southern English child on the beach might make a sand-carstle, but not a sarnd-carstle. This effect is not heard in England's many Midlands and Northern accents.
I don't think they call pasta, parsta though. Despite living in Southern England, I've only ever heard it called pasta - hard, short 'a', but with slightly stronger stress on the first 'a'. Some English do tend to pronounce it as nearer past-er, though. Ending a word with a hard 'a' is not universal across the English language, but regular to the Graeco-Roman words (formula, crematoria, fora, stadia; etc.), so is common in Italian.
England is very rich in regional accents, often subtly different over only some tens of miles or even across the major conurbations around for example, London, Bristol and Birmingham. A true Cockney would probably spot a West London voice immediately, for example - and neither would sound like Dick van Dyke's character in the film Mary Poppins!
It doesn't mean we pronounce all non-English words correctly though, despite our geographical nearness to so many different countries. Most English pronounce Paris for example as that, not Paree - and Welsh (Celtic) and Scots (Gaelic) place-names can be right tongue-twisters for their non-native speakers!
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[To place the accent on PATÉ I typed it in 'Word', using the 'Insert Symbol' tool, then copied it to here; but until I post this I won't know if it will work! This site's basic text-editor does not provide accents.]
PASTA is Italian and both letters 'a' are hard. Again, any change to them is by regional accent.
'
These have a parallel in England.
Here, some of the Southern accents place an 'r' in some hard-a words (e.g. castle and bath become carstle and barth. Not all though, so a Southern English child on the beach might make a sand-carstle, but not a sarnd-carstle. This effect is not heard in England's many Midlands and Northern accents.
I don't think they call pasta, parsta though. Despite living in Southern England, I've only ever heard it called pasta - hard, short 'a', but with slightly stronger stress on the first 'a'. Some English do tend to pronounce it as nearer past-er, though. Ending a word with a hard 'a' is not universal across the English language, but regular to the Graeco-Roman words (formula, crematoria, fora, stadia; etc.), so is common in Italian.
England is very rich in regional accents, often subtly different over only some tens of miles or even across the major conurbations around for example, London, Bristol and Birmingham. A true Cockney would probably spot a West London voice immediately, for example - and neither would sound like Dick van Dyke's character in the film Mary Poppins!
It doesn't mean we pronounce all non-English words correctly though, despite our geographical nearness to so many different countries. Most English pronounce Paris for example as that, not Paree - and Welsh (Celtic) and Scots (Gaelic) place-names can be right tongue-twisters for their non-native speakers!
.
[To place the accent on PATÉ I typed it in 'Word', using the 'Insert Symbol' tool, then copied it to here; but until I post this I won't know if it will work! This site's basic text-editor does not provide accents.]
ChipmunkErnie · 70-79, M
@ArishMell Pate's origin is French, but like thousands of other words it is now also English. That's one of the great things about English -- we adopt words from any language as our own if they work for us. As to not pronouncing them as they're originally pronounced in another language, there is no reason why we should.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@ChipmunkErnie I think many of the changes in pronounciation reflect basic language differences in the treatment of common syllables, or of ones common in one language but not the other.
E.g. "is", always phonetic in English, with a hard or soft 's', sounds like "ee" in French.
No reason why we should adopt then change words? Apart from the phonetics, they is equally no reason to change adoptees if they can fit our spoken language easily, other than to cope with a different alphabet - and even then the translation should respect its original. Indeed, especially so with proper nouns.
Hence nowadays we pronounce or even spell, many proper nouns more closely to their own language, taking differing alphabets into account. E.g. Mumbai (ex-Bombay), Beijing (ex-Peking), Kampuchea (ex-Cambodia).
My atlas (open since March at the Baltic Sea - Black Sea page, to help me understand the war in Ukraine) spells all capital names at least phonetically, but adds the Anglicised versions in lighter font in parentheses: "MOSKVA (Moscow)", "WARSZAWA (Warsaw)", "KYYIV (Kiev)", BRUXELLES (Brussels)" and so on.
This also applies to some ordinary nouns. The formal spellings of the metric-based, ISO-SI units of length and volume end in "...tre", not "...er"; to reflect their French origins.
'
I gave the close-to-home example of Gaelic and Celtic. You could not expect an English resident to address a letter to someone in Llanfairpwyllgwyngyll, to write "Thlanvairpwulthgwungulth" on the envelope, even though that is somewhere near it phonetically; well, as far as my Anglian linguistic skills allow! Let alone would we cod-Anglicise it to something like "Lanfairpulgwingil". :-)
("LlanfairPG", as it is often abbreviated, is the Anglesey town whose railway station name was famously extended to 50 or so letters long, in the 19C by the railway company for publicity. And a word to the wise... If you visit Wales, singing Sospan Fach - Llanelli RFC's anthem - in English, is Just Not Done.)
E.g. "is", always phonetic in English, with a hard or soft 's', sounds like "ee" in French.
No reason why we should adopt then change words? Apart from the phonetics, they is equally no reason to change adoptees if they can fit our spoken language easily, other than to cope with a different alphabet - and even then the translation should respect its original. Indeed, especially so with proper nouns.
Hence nowadays we pronounce or even spell, many proper nouns more closely to their own language, taking differing alphabets into account. E.g. Mumbai (ex-Bombay), Beijing (ex-Peking), Kampuchea (ex-Cambodia).
My atlas (open since March at the Baltic Sea - Black Sea page, to help me understand the war in Ukraine) spells all capital names at least phonetically, but adds the Anglicised versions in lighter font in parentheses: "MOSKVA (Moscow)", "WARSZAWA (Warsaw)", "KYYIV (Kiev)", BRUXELLES (Brussels)" and so on.
This also applies to some ordinary nouns. The formal spellings of the metric-based, ISO-SI units of length and volume end in "...tre", not "...er"; to reflect their French origins.
'
I gave the close-to-home example of Gaelic and Celtic. You could not expect an English resident to address a letter to someone in Llanfairpwyllgwyngyll, to write "Thlanvairpwulthgwungulth" on the envelope, even though that is somewhere near it phonetically; well, as far as my Anglian linguistic skills allow! Let alone would we cod-Anglicise it to something like "Lanfairpulgwingil". :-)
("LlanfairPG", as it is often abbreviated, is the Anglesey town whose railway station name was famously extended to 50 or so letters long, in the 19C by the railway company for publicity. And a word to the wise... If you visit Wales, singing Sospan Fach - Llanelli RFC's anthem - in English, is Just Not Done.)
ChipmunkErnie · 70-79, M
@ArishMell Ah the good old days before someone in the media decided to replace "k" with "q" when transliterating from Arabic. I have books old enough to spell "Iraq" as "Irak", which makes more sense. And in the 1920s we were still using canon (can't type the accent over the "n") and not yet "canyon". And I remember the traditional transliterations from Chinese discussed in a college course often made no sense at all.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@ChipmunkErnie Well, those illustrate the point about translating from different alphabets, not just languages. Even the NW European alphabets differ slightly, as you show there.
I don't know who the "someone in the media" may have been but I have seen the Islamic Scriptures referred to about equally as both Q'ran and Koran, without question.
It must make translating art literature, especially poems and even more so, songs, extremely hard because you don't want to lose too much of the original sense, rhythms, colloquialisms, etc. Many non-Arabic Muslims learn Arabic so they can read the Prophet Mohammed's original, apparently quite lyrical, words. It's probably to avoid harming the works that so many of the best-known European art-songs and operas are rarely translated, but instead are performed in their own languages.
I recall a former merchant-seaman telling me you have to be very careful with trying your Spanish in South American ports, because a mis-pronounced letter can convert one or two innocent words into very non-innocent ones indeed.
The English used to adopt French-isms when they wanted to sound posh - le bon mot was a common one. The French didn't seem to mind this affectation; but found it hilarious that no-through-roads in British housing-estates and the like were often sign-posted to mean that, with cul-de-sac; which is apparently Rather Rude in its native country!
As for the fad for giving coffee drinks, cod-Italian names.... My brother-in-law tells of a relative who ordered a latte in a cafe in Italy, and was baffled to find not a trace of coffee flavour in it.
I don't know who the "someone in the media" may have been but I have seen the Islamic Scriptures referred to about equally as both Q'ran and Koran, without question.
It must make translating art literature, especially poems and even more so, songs, extremely hard because you don't want to lose too much of the original sense, rhythms, colloquialisms, etc. Many non-Arabic Muslims learn Arabic so they can read the Prophet Mohammed's original, apparently quite lyrical, words. It's probably to avoid harming the works that so many of the best-known European art-songs and operas are rarely translated, but instead are performed in their own languages.
I recall a former merchant-seaman telling me you have to be very careful with trying your Spanish in South American ports, because a mis-pronounced letter can convert one or two innocent words into very non-innocent ones indeed.
The English used to adopt French-isms when they wanted to sound posh - le bon mot was a common one. The French didn't seem to mind this affectation; but found it hilarious that no-through-roads in British housing-estates and the like were often sign-posted to mean that, with cul-de-sac; which is apparently Rather Rude in its native country!
As for the fad for giving coffee drinks, cod-Italian names.... My brother-in-law tells of a relative who ordered a latte in a cafe in Italy, and was baffled to find not a trace of coffee flavour in it.