Hyperforeignism

Template:Short descriptionTemplate:IPA notice 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 Template:Angbr in habanero is pronounced as [n] in Spanish, but English-speakers often pronounce it as , as if the word were spelled habañero.

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.

Intentional hyperforeignisms can be used for comedic effect, such as pronouncing Report with a silent Template:Angbr 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

Examples:

• parmesan (from French ), sometimes as in US English.
• Mandarin Chinese names like Beijing (with [tɕ], which sounds like [dʒ] to English speakers) with /ʒ/: .

French words

A number of words of French origin feature a final Template:Angbr 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 Template:Angbr (meaning "seal" or "signature") or Template:Angbr (meaning "hidden"). In French, the final Template:Angbr 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 Template:Angbr 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 /z/.

A common pattern is pronouncing French loanwords without a word-final , as with derrière, peignoir, and répertoire. This is actually permissible (especially in informal contexts) in French for words like quatre and fenêtre, where the /r/ follows a consonant, but not for words such as derrière, peignoir, and répertoire, where the /r/ follows a vowel and must be pronounced. For infinitives ending in /er/, such as aimer and parler, the /r/ is never pronounced. In Metropolitan French /r/ is optional as a 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 /s/, 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.

Speakers of American English typically pronounce lingerie .

Hindi words

The Template:Angbr in the name of the Taj Mahal or raj is often rendered , but a closer approximation to the Hindi sound is /dʒ/.

Italian words

The Template:Angbr in Adagio may be realized as /ʒ/, even though the soft Template:Angbr of Italian represents an affricate [dʒ].

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.

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.

Spanish words

The digraph Template:Angbr of Spanish generally represents [tʃ], similar to English Template:Angbr. Hyperforeign realizations of many Spanish loanwords or proper names may substitute other sounds. Examples include a French-style [ʃ] in the surname Chávez and in Che Guevara, or a German-influenced or Ancient Greek-influenced in machismo. The Template:Angbr in the Spanish word chorizo is sometimes realized as by English speakers, reflecting more closely the pronunciation of Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr in Italian and Italian loanwords in English. This is not the pronunciation of present-day Spanish, however. Rather, the Template:Angbr in chorizo represents [θ] or [s] (depending on dialect) in Spanish. Also, the -Template:Zwjes suffix in many other loanwords such as Angeles () is less usually pronounced in the United Kingdom and often Australia like ease (i.e., ), hence Los Angeles () is also . Phonetician Jack Windsor Lewis described the most common one, with , as a spelling pronunciation based on analogy with Greek words ending in -Template:Zwjes, "reflecting a time when the classics were familiar if Spanish was not".

Swedish words

The Swedish word smorgasbord (smörgåsbord) is often pronounced by English speakers with a [ʃ] at the start instead of [s].

Other languages

Malay and Indonesian

In Malay and Indonesian, some words of non-Arabic origin are mistakenly reanalysed as coming from Arabic and then respelt more similarly to Arabic loans, with some of these respelling forms sometimes even becoming standard. Some respellings of such kind include:

Hyperforeignisms in Malay and Indonesian

Malay/Indonesian word	Hyperforeign spelling	Etymology
'difference'	(standard in Malay)	From Sanskrit
'heaven'	(standard in Malay)	From Sanskrit
pihak 'side'	fihaq	Of Malayo-Polynesian origin (cognate with Iban 'side' and Hiligaynon 'to cut in half')

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.

Norwegian

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

Polish

Hyperforeignisms sometimes occur in Polish with English loanwords or names. One example would be the name Roosevelt, which is pronounced , 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—, , 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.

The letter c in the surname Arctowski makes the sound , but many people mispronounce it with because of the mistaken assumption the word is of English/Latin origin and derived from the term Arctic, while it actually comes from the German Artzt. When the n ame was transliterated into other languages that use different scripts, some languages follow the correct pronunciation (Russian Арцтовский, Ukrainian Арцтовський, Azeri Artstovski (this one uses Latin but nonetheless transliterated), Armenian Արցտովսկի, Chinese 阿茨托夫斯基 or 阿爾茨托夫斯基), others use the faux-English pronunciation (Egyptian Arabic اركتوسكى, Standard Arabic أركتوسكي, Tamil ஆர்க்டோவ்சுகி), while some use a yet another mispronunciation (Japanese アルツトウスキー, which contains the correct sound but includes the incorrectly anglicized ending with ow pronounced as in place of and the very English-style lengthened .) An important note is that the /k/ mistransliteration is not caused by the lack of the phoneme in certain languages – in other loanwords with , either a combination of and letters or a "flattening" to a plain would be expected, not the sound which is relatively far off and completely unjustified.

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. Mark Janse, Brian D. Joseph, & Angela Ralli. Lefkosia: University of Cyprus.
• Joseph, Brian D. (2019), ‘The Greek of Ottoman-era Adrianoupolis’, in The Morphology of Asia Minor Greek: Selected Topics. Ed. Angela Ralli. Leiden: Brill, 2019, pp. 315–32.