• evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
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    27 days ago

    Exactly! Rapidly changing accent for single words leads to poor understanding, which is the whole point of speech.

    A loanword is not a word randomly spoken in another language, it’s a word taken from one language into another, which often involves a change in pronunciation.

    If you dont acknowledge that, you’d have to acknowledge that the entire French language is just poorly pronounced Latin, which is insane.

    “Burrito” is a Spanish word for a little donkey, but it’s also an English word for a food item, and they are not typically pronounced the same. Someone fluent in both languages will pronounce them differently depending on which language they are speaking.

    • zaph@sh.itjust.works
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      27 days ago

      I doubt you pronounce tortilla “tour-till-uh” or Coup d’état “coop-dee-tat.” Sometimes we change the pronunciation and sometimes we don’t.

      • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
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        27 days ago

        Yeah, but I would argue that when I say “pass me a tortilla” I’m saying “tortilla” in English, which has mostly the same pronunciation as the Spanish (though I think the “t” is pronounced differently).

        The fact that “coup d’etat” is pronounced mostly the same might just be happenstance.