Comments on: Fricative or Affricate?

By: licia

licia — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:56:41 +0000

current Italian spelling is Gengis Khan; presumaby it has changed since Marco Polo’s times to match pronunciation ['jɛnjis]

By: Graham

Graham — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:02:21 +0000

Abdul makes the valid point that Genghis Khan may show the same sort of regional variation that the Arabic ‘masjid’ has undergone in European languages. However, the first mention of Genghis in the English Pronouncing Dictionary is not until the 14th edition (Jones and Gimson, 1977), and the only pronunciation given there is the one with an affricate: [ˈdʒeŋɡɪs]. [ˈɡeŋɡɪs] doesn’t appear until the Ramsaran revision of the 14th edition in 1988. My interpretation of this sequence of events is that while [ˈɡeŋɡɪs] may have been quite common before that, [ˈdʒeŋɡɪs] was considered to be the ’standard’ English pronunciation.

By: Jesús Bermejo

Jesús Bermejo — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:38:40 +0000

Hola, Graham:

Mi inglés no me permite entender apenas nada, pero aprovecho para saludarte.

Hoy, 22/02/2008, aniversario de la muerte de Antonio Machado, te invito a pasarte por mi blog.

Un abrazo,
Jesús

By: Abdul

Abdul — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 01:01:37 +0000

Note about phonetic symbols in my comment:

Phonetic symbols read well in Firefox browser. In Internet Explorer many symbols may not appear. Please note also that the voiced velar plosive [g] may appear in some browsers as [Y].

By: Abdul

Abdul — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:50:46 +0000

I think it is not a ‘mistake’ that the name Genghis Khan is pronounced [ˈɡɛŋɡɪs ˈkɑ:n]. When names (and indeed other lexical items) transfer from one language into another, they witness all kinds of phonological changes in order to accommodate themselves with the recipient languages. The name is pronounced in Arabic as [ˈdʒɪŋki:z ˈχɑ:n]. Other alternative (regional) pronunciations can be with an initial [ɡ], [ɟ] or [ʒ], depending upon which realization of the consonant ‘Jīm’ (ج) is used. When the Arabic word ‘masjid’ ([masdʒɪd / masʒɪd / masɡɪd]) was introduced into European languages, the latter realization possibly underwent phonological change where [ɡ] was devoiced into [k] in English “mosque” [mɒsk]. In German the choice was for [ʒ] to be devoiced into [ʃ] in Moschee.