StevenPA
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 p.1 #25 · Bokeh - What exactly makes it? | |
Well this turned out to be a longer post than I expected, and yes, I have far too much time on my hands tonight! My apologies in advance for that. 
Jman13 wrote:
Please - tell me how the average American would pronounce Schadenfreude if they have no German language background or have not heard the term before. I would be that less than 2% would have the 'oi' sound for the 'eu' vowel combination, and that less than 20% would pronounce the final 'e'.
Actually, that's one way that children were/are taught how to read in our public school systems. It's called phonics: "sounding it out". And adults do it too when they encounter unknown or foreign words. Literacy is one of the greatest human phenomenons, and we rely on it heavily, sometimes the detriment of pronunciation, as your example of not pronouncing the final 'e' suggests. English speakers apply their own spelling rules, for better or worse.
Paul's assertion was that the Japanese way of pronouncing bokeh is the "correct" way, and I disagree with that. It's the original way, okay, but English speakers have adopted "bokeh" because we have no equivalent word. We've made "bokeh" our own and changed its pronunciation. The same thing happened with "restaurant", though much longer ago. "Restaurant" is a word that came directly from French; the whole damn word came over, just like "bokeh". But English speakers would be called lunatic if they insisted that "restaurant" be spoken with a French accent for "correctness". Can you imagine? "Okay, honey, are you ready to go to the /ʀɛstɔʀɑ/?" Geez, that sounds ridiculous. In English, it's /rɛstərɒnt/, and no one is going to argue that, I hope.
"Karaoke" is another good example. That's a word that came right straight over from Japan. But if you pronounced it like the Japanese do (/kɑːrɑːoʊkɛ/), no one in America is going to know what they heck you're talking about. But if you say /kæriːoʊkiː/, hey, people are going to get it straight away. Does that mean all Americans are pronouncing it "incorrectly"? Certainly not. Most Americans would argue that they pronounce it 100% perfectly fine. Indeed, pronouncing in the Japanese way is probably going to interfere with comprehension in English.
Or how about words like "computer" or "fax"? Do only English speakers pronounce those words "correctly"? Surely not. And what if you speak with an Osaka accent, Tokyo accent, Cockney accent, Southern accent? Well then the waters are muddied further! Who's "correct" isn't even an issue for people other than little old ladies teaching Grammar at elitist boarding schools.
To conclude...  I guess the point that I was trying to make is that adopting foreign words because they don't exist in English does NOT mean that we are also screwed with "incorrect" pronunciation. In fact, the opposite can be argued, that by applying its own linguistic rules to borrowed words, all the languages of the world pronounce everything perfectly within their own language. 
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The word has Japanese origins. Great, wonderful. But that doesn't make the way it's pronounced in other languages inferior, which is what the label "correct" insinuates. I guess we had just better call it "outfocus" or something like that because even if we did master the Japanese language, we'd still probably have a foreign accent and thus say bokeh "incorrectly". Sorry for being pedantic.