pronounced as /notice/A hyperforeignism is a type of qualitative hypercorrection that involves speakers misidentifying the distribution of a pattern found in loanwords and extending it to other environments, including words and phrases not borrowed from the language that the pattern derives from. The result of this process does not reflect the rules of either language. For example, habanero is sometimes pronounced as though it were spelled with an (ñ) (habañero), which is not the Spanish form from which the English word was borrowed.[1]
Hyperforeignisms can manifest in a number of ways, including the application of the spelling or pronunciation rules of one language to a word borrowed from another; an incorrect application of a language's pronunciation; and pronouncing loanwords as though they were borrowed more recently, ignoring an already established naturalized pronunciation. Hyperforeignisms may similarly occur when a word is thought to be a loanword from a particular language when it is not.
Intentional hyperforeignisms can be used for comedic effect, such as pronouncing Report with a silent (t) in The Colbert Report or pronouncing Target as, as though it were an upscale boutique.[2] This form of hyperforeignism is a way of poking fun at those who earnestly adopt foreign-sounding pronunciations of pseudo-loanwords.
Similarly, speakers who echo hyperforeign pronunciations without the intention of approximating a foreign-language pattern are also not practicing hyperforeignization; thus, pronouncing habanero as if it were spelled habañero is not a hyperforeignism if one is not aware that the word has been borrowed from Spanish.
In English, hyperforeignisms are seen in loanwords from many different languages. Many are isolated examples, showing a particular pattern applied to multiple words and phrases, though some patterns can be identified.
Replacement with postalveolar fricatives and is one common mark of hyperforeignisms in English. This leads to pronouncing smörgåsbord (with initial pronounced as /link/ in Swedish) as, parmesan (from French in French pronounced as /paʁməzɑ̃/) as (the cheese itself is Italian, and this pronunciation may also have been influenced by the Italian word for the cheese, parmigiano, which has a postalveolar affricate: pronounced as /it/), pronouncing forte (strong point) as as if it were the Italian forte (the basis for forte, the musical notation for "loud") instead of the French pronunciation that sounds close to the English fort, and Mandarin Chinese terms like Beijing (with pronounced as /link/, which sounds like pronounced as /link/ to English speakers) with pronounced as /link/: .
In Dutch, the letter combination (sch) represents in Dutch; Flemish pronounced as /sx/ at the beginning of a syllable, and pronounced as /link/ at the end. However, most English speakers pronounce Dutch words such as Rooibosch and veldschoen with pronounced as /link/, more closely following the pronunciation rules for German spelling. In contrast, certain well-established Dutch surnames and place names in the United States dating to colonial times, such as Schuyler, have (sch) pronounced as, which is relatively closer to the Dutch pronunciation.
The cluster /sx/ is not present in English phonology, and is found difficult by most native speakers, so that some level of correction away from the Dutch original is inevitable.
A number of words of French origin feature a final (e) that is pronounced in English but silent in the original language. For example, the noun cache is sometimes pronounced, as though it were spelled either (cachet) (meaning "seal" or "signature") or (caché) (meaning "hidden"). In French, the final (e) is silent and the word is pronounced in French pronounced as /kaʃ/. The word cadre is sometimes pronounced in English, as though it were of Spanish origin. In French, the final (e) is silent in French pronounced as /kadʁ/ and a common English pronunciation is .[3]
Legal English is replete with words derived from Norman French, which for a long time was the language of the courts in England and Wales. The correct pronunciation of Norman French is often closer to a natural contemporary English reading than to modern French: the attempt to pronounce these phrases as if they were modern French could therefore be considered to be a hyperforeignism. For example, the clerk's summons "Oyez!" ("Attention!") is commonly pronounced ending in a consonant, or pronounced as /link/.[4]
A common pattern is pronouncing French loanwords without a word-final pronounced as //r//, as with derrière, peignoir, and répertoire. Yet at once, this is a normal pronunciation in French vernacular of North America (both Canadian French and Acadian French, by opposition with Metropolitan French probably used for making this comparison): /r/ is optional as word ending, whereas the vowel just in front of it is always long, contrasting with vowels being almost always short in word-ending positions.[5]
Another common pattern, influenced by French morphophonology, is the omission of word-final consonants. Hyperforeign application of this tendency occurs with omission of these consonants in words with final consonants that are pronounced in French. This occurs notably in the term coup de grâce, in which some speakers omit the final consonant pronounced as /link/, although it is pronounced in French as in French pronounced as /ku də ɡʁɑs/; omitting this consonant instead sounds like coup de gras, meaning a nonsensical "blow of fat." Other examples of this include Vichyssoise,[3] the chess term en prise, prix fixe, sous-vide and mise en scène. There are many instances of this sort of omission connected with proper nouns. Some speakers may omit pronouncing a final pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/ in names such as Saint-Saëns, Duras, Boulez, and Berlioz, though these words are pronounced in French with a final pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/.
The Norman French language furthermore gave Southern England some ancient family names that were once associated with the aristocracy. An example is Lestrange which is sometimes pronounced with its natural and contemporaneous French inflection, though it is more often pronounced like the English word strange, .
Speakers of American English typically pronounce lingerie,[3] depressing the first vowel of the French in French pronounced as /lɛ̃ʒʁi/ to sound more like a typical French nasal vowel, and rhyming the final syllable with English ray, by analogy with the many French loanwords ending in (é), (er), (et), and (ez), which rhyme with ray in English. Similarly, the French-derived term repartie ("rejoinder") was changed to English spelling (repartee) ("banter"), giving rise to a hyperforeign .
Claret is often pronounced, without a final pronounced as /link/. However, it is historically an Anglicised (and genericised) version of the original French clairet, with the (t) more typically being pronounced and the stress falling on the first syllable: .
Moët, a brand of French champagne, is often pronounced with a silent T. However, the name is Dutch, and its native pronunciation is [moɛt] .[6] Similarly, another winemaker, Freixenet is also pronounced with its T as fɾəʃəˈnɛt in the original Catalan.
The (j) in the name of the Taj Mahal or raj is often rendered pronounced as //ʒ//, but a closer approximation to the Hindi sound is pronounced as /link/. The (j) in most words associated with languages of India is more accurately approximated as pronounced as /link/.
The (g) in Adagio may be realized as pronounced as /link/, even though the soft (g) of Italian represents an affricate pronounced as /link/.
The name of the principal male character in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is spelled (Petruchio), intended to be the Italian name Petruccio pronounced as /it/, reflecting more conventional English pronunciation rules that use (ch) to represent pronounced as /link/. However, the name is commonly pronounced, as though Shakespeare's spelling was genuinely Italian.
Substituting baristo for a male barista, when in fact barista is invariable in gender in Italian and Spanish (as are other words ending in the suffix -ista) is a hyperforeignism. In Italian (and Spanish), the gender is indicated by the article; il (el) barista for a male and la barista for a female.
The word latte ("milk"), as in caffè latte, is often misspelled as (latté) or (lattè), implying stress on the final syllable. However, latte has no accent mark in Italian and has the stress on the first syllable. This may be an analogy with French words such as frappé pronounced as /it/, where there is such an accent mark.
Italian (sch), as in maraschino, bruschetta, or the brand name Freschetta, is often mispronounced as English pronounced as /link/ rather than the correct [sk], due to greater familiarity with the German pronunciation of (sch).
The (j) in Beijing is often rendered as pronounced as /[ʒ]/, but a closer approximation to the Mandarin sound is pronounced as /[dʒ]/. The Pinyin letter pronounced as /j/ is pronounced pronounced as /[tɕ]/.
Because the Russian loanword dacha (дача pronounced as /ru/) looks like it could be German, the pronunciation, with a velar fricative, shows an attempt at marking a word as foreign, but with a sound not originally present in the source word. The more common pronunciation is, which sounds closer to the original Russian word.
The digraph (ch) of Spanish generally represents pronounced as /link/, similar to English (ch). Hyperforeign realizations of many Spanish loanwords or proper names may substitute other sounds. Examples include a French-style pronounced as /link/ in the surname Chávez and in Che Guevara, or a German-influenced pronounced as /[x]/ or Ancient Greek-influenced pronounced as /[k]/ in machismo. The (z) in the Spanish word chorizo is sometimes realized as by English speakers, reflecting more closely the pronunciation of the double letter (zz) in Italian and Italian loanwords in English. This is not the pronunciation of present-day Spanish, however. Rather, the (z) in chorizo represents pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/ (depending on dialect) in Spanish.[7]
Some English speakers pronounce certain words of Spanish origin as if they had an eñe or Ll when they do not in the original language. For example, the word habanero is pronounced pronounced as /es/ (with an n) in Spanish. English speakers may instead pronounce it, as if it were spelled (habañero); the phenomenon also occurs with empanada, which may be pronounced as if spelled (empañada). The city of Cartagena, Colombia, is very commonly pronounced as if it were spelled (Cartageña).
The South American beverage, mate, is frequently spelled (maté) in English, adding an accent which, in Spanish, changes the pronunciation and meaning of the word (maté meaning "I killed" in Spanish). However, the accented spelling may serve a purpose, as it is interpreted by some English speakers to indicate that the word has two syllables and is not pronounced like the English word mate . Following Spanish orthography though, the only correct place to add an accent which matches the natural stress of the word (and therefore does not change its pronunciation) would be on the A, máte.
Hyperforeignisms sometimes occur in Polish with English loanwords or names. One example would be the name Roosevelt, which is pronounced in Polish pronounced as /ˈruzvɛlt/, as if it started like ooze, even though a natural Dutch pronunciation would be closer to the English one.
Polish loanwords from Japanese are often subject to hyperforeignism. The names of three of the four main islands of Japan, Honsiu, Kiusiu, and Sikoku, are already Polish transcriptions with close approximations of Japanese sounds—in Polish pronounced as /ˈxɔɲɕu/, in Polish pronounced as /ˈkʲuɕu/, and in Polish pronounced as /ɕiˈkɔku/—but are often pronounced with changing native pronounced as //ɕ// into foreign pronounced as //sj//. Other Japanese words use English-based (Hepburn) transcriptions, which causes further problems.
Phenian, a now obsolete Polish name for Pyongyang, which was a transcription of Russian Russian: Пхеньян, is commonly pronounced in Polish pronounced as /ˈfɛɲan/, as if ⟨ph⟩ represented the voiceless labiodental fricative (/f/) like in English.
In Norwegian, like in Swedish, entrecôte can be pronounced without the final pronounced as /link/. This might also happen in pommes frites (french fries), and the pronounced as /link/ is often removed in the pronunciation of Béarnaise sauce.[8]
In Russian, many early loanwords are pronounced as native Russian words with full palatalization. Hyperforeignism occurs when some speakers pronounce these early loanwords without palatalization. For example: тема ("theme") is normally pronounced pronounced as /ru/. A hyperforeign pronunciation would be pronounced as /ru/, as if the word were spelled (тэма). Similarly, текст ("text") is pronounced pronounced as /ru/, with the hyperforeign pronunciation being pronounced as /ru/, as if it were spelled (тэкст). Other examples include музей ("museum") pronounced as /ru/ → pronounced as /ru/, газета ("newspaper") pronounced as /ru/ → pronounced as /ru/ and эффект ("effect") pronounced as /ru/ → pronounced as /ru/. The variation is attributable to the tendency to use (е) in foreign words after a consonant, even if it is not palatalized.