hyperforeignism

A hyperforeignism is a type of hypercorrection where speakers identify an inaccurate pattern in loanwords from a foreign language and then apply that pattern to other loanwords (either from the same language or a different one). This results in a pronunciation of those loanwords which does not reflect the rules of either language. For example, the in '' habanero'' is pronounced as in Spanish, but English-speakers often pronounce it as , as if the word were spelled ''habañero''. The reason is that English speakers are familiar with Spanish loanwords such as piñata and jalapeño, and incorrectly assume that all (or most) Spanish words have in place of .

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 in ''The Colbert Report'' or pronouncing Target as , as though it were an upscale boutique. This form of hyperforeignism is a way of poking fun at those who earnestly adopt foreign-sounding pronunciations of pseudo-loanwords.

English

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 an initial in Swedish) as ,
*''parmesan'' (from French ) as in US English. The cheese itself is Italian, so this pronunciation may also have been influenced by the Italian word for the cheese, ''parmigiano'', in which the ''g'' is an affricate ()
*Mandarin Chinese names like ''Beijing'' (with , which sounds like to English speakers) with : .

Another pattern is substituting aspects of the pronunciation of a loan word with elements learned from other languages; for example, 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, which is close to that of the English word ''fort''.

Dutch words

In Dutch, the letter combination represents at the beginning of a syllable, and at the end. However, most English speakers pronounce Dutch words such as ''Rooibosch'' and ''veldschoen'' with , following the pronunciation rules for German spelling. In contrast, certain well-established Dutch surnames and place names in the United States that date to colonial times, such as Schuyler, have pronounced , which is closer to the Dutch pronunciation.

The Dutch cluster /sx/ is not present in English phonology, and is found difficult by most native speakers, so that some level of shift from the Dutch pronunciation is inevitable.

French words

A number of words of French origin feature a final 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 (meaning "seal" or "signature") or (meaning "hidden"). In French, the final is silent and the word is pronounced . The word ''cadre'' is sometimes pronounced in English, as though it were of Spanish origin. In French, the final is silent and a common English pronunciation is .

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 .

A common pattern is pronouncing French loanwords without a word-final , 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.

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 , although it is pronounced in French as ; omitting this consonant instead sounds like ''coup de gras'', meaning a nonsensical "blow of fat." Other examples of this include '' Vichyssoise'', 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 or in names such as Saint-Saëns, Duras, Boulez, and Berlioz, though these words are pronounced in French with a final or .

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'' , depressing the first vowel of the French 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 , , , and , which rhyme with ''ray'' in English. Similarly, the French-derived term ''repartie'' (, "rejoinder") was changed to English spelling ("banter"), giving rise to a hyperforeign .

'' Claret'' is often pronounced , without a final . However, it is historically an Anglicised (and genericised) version of the original French '' clairet'', with the 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 oɛt. Similarly, another winemaker, Freixenet is also pronounced with its T as in the original Catalan.

Hindi words

The in the name of the Taj Mahal or '' raj'' is often rendered , but a closer approximation to the Hindi sound is . The in most words associated with languages of India is more accurately approximated as .

Italian words

The in '' Adagio'' may be realized as , even though the soft of Italian represents an affricate .

The name of the principal male character in Shakespeare's ''The Taming of the Shrew'' is spelled , intended to be the Italian name ''Petruccio'' , reflecting more conventional English pronunciation rules that use to represent . 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 spelled or to clarify that the ''e'' is pronounced, in analogy with French words such as ''frappé'' where there is such an accent mark.

Italian , as in ''maraschino, bruschetta,'' or the brand name ''Freschetta'', is often pronounced as English rather than the correct , due to greater familiarity with the German pronunciation of .

Mandarin Chinese words

The in ''Beijing'' and ''mahjong'' is often rendered as , but a closer approximation to the Mandarin sound is . The Pinyin letter is pronounced or .

Russian words

Because the Russian loanword ''dacha'' (дача ) 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.

Spanish words

The digraph of Spanish generally represents , similar to English . Hyperforeign realizations of many Spanish loanwords or proper names may substitute other sounds. Examples include a French-style in the surname '' Chávez'' and in ''Che Guevara'', or a German-influenced or Ancient Greek-influenced in ''machismo''. The in the Spanish word ''chorizo'' is sometimes realized as by English speakers, reflecting more closely the pronunciation of and in Italian and Italian loanwords in English. This is not the pronunciation of present-day Spanish, however. Rather, the in ''chorizo'' represents or ( depending on dialect) in Spanish.

Some English speakers pronounce certain words of Spanish origin as if they had an Ñ or Ll when they do not in the original language. For example, the word '' habanero'' is pronounced (with an /n/) in Spanish. English speakers may instead pronounce it , as if it were spelled ; the phenomenon also occurs with ''empanada'', which may be pronounced as if spelled . The city of Cartagena, Colombia, is commonly pronounced as if it were .

Other languages

Hyperforeignism may be applied to Native American names, sometimes by the people themselves after the language ceases to be spoken. Chumash, for example, may be pronounced , as if the ''Ch'' were French, though the Chumash pronunciation was an aspirated much like an English ''ch'', and Sooke (with a silent ''e'') has been respelled ''T'Sou-ke'', though there is no ''t'' or ''e'' in the original language.

Polish

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—, , and —but are often pronounced with changing native into foreign . 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 , is commonly pronounced , as if ⟨ph⟩ represented the voiceless labiodental fricative (/f/) like in words of Greek origin.

Norwegian

In Norwegian, like in Swedish, entrecôte can be pronounced without the final . This might also happen in ''pommes frites'' (french fries), and the is often removed in the pronunciation of Béarnaise sauce.

Russian

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 . A hyperforeign pronunciation would be , as if the word were spelled . Similarly, текст ("text") is pronounced , with the hyperforeign pronunciation being , as if it were spelled . Other examples include музей ("museum") → , газета ("newspaper") → and эффект ("effect") → . The variation is attributable to the tendency to use in foreign words after a consonant, even if it is not palatalized.

Modern Greek

Several varieties of Greek, such as that spoken in Tyrnavos, may retain front rounded vowels in Turkish loanwords, e.g., ''dʒüdʒés'' 'dwarf,' from Turkish ''cüce'.'' The loanword ''baldürs'' 'vagabond' in the Tyrnavos variety, ultimately from Turkish ''baldır'' 'calf' (body part), 'stem' (of a plant) was noted by Brian Joseph as a hyperforeignism, since the pronunciation of the older form ''baldur'' from which the word was borrowed could have been more directly adopted into Greek. Here, the replacement of /u/ with the front rounded vowel /ü/ is done by analogy with other Turkish loanwords.

Italian

Patrizia Giampieri observed that many pseudo-English words can be found in Italian, such as ''autostop'' 'hitch-hike' and ''flipper'' 'pinball machine.' Perception of English as a prestige language among some Italian speakers may explain the popularity of hyperforeign vocabulary items such as these.Giampieri, Patrizia (2013), "A taxonomy of English hyperforeignisms and borrowings in the Italian language: when communication breakdown occurs." p. 7

See also

*Metal umlaut

References

Notes

Bibliography
*Giampieri, Patrizia (2013), "A taxonomy of English hyperforeignisms and borrowings in the Italian language: when communication breakdown occurs."
*
*Joseph, Brian D. (2008), "On some hyperadaptations in Greek and in Greece." In ''MGDLT 3. Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory, ed. by Mark Janse, Brian D. Joseph, and Angela Ralli. Lefkosia: University of Cyprus.''
*Joseph, Brian D. (2019), "The Greek of Ottoman-era Adrianoupolis." In book ''The Morphology of Asia Minor Greek'' (pp. 315-332).
*{{citation
, first=John Christopher
, last=Wells
, author-link =John C. Wells
, year=1982
, title=Accents of English: An Introduction
, publisher=Cambridge University Press
, isbn=0-521-29719-2

Language varieties and styles
Linguistic error
Phonology