On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 2:10 PM, Jan Heine <heine94@earthlink.net> wrote:
> At 1:51 PM -0600 9/25/08, Mitch Harris wrote:
>
>> On the other hand Singer is such a familiar word in English, both as
>> an ordinary noun and as a proper name, that its path toward
>> anglicization is smoothed and few people will object to hearing
>> "singer" for an A.Singer bike when it is said by a native English
>> speaker on soil where English is widely spoken.
>
> Absolutely. In fact, in the U.S., I refer to Alex Singer as if he had been a
> London, rather than Paris, builder. But in France, I use the French
> pronunciation.
>
Looking again at what I wrote I don't want to give the impression that using Frech pronounciation for A.Singer would be wrong in any way. Just to different purposes as Jan says. So in the states you could pronounce it to someone as "sanjear" as a part of explaining that it's a French bike, and I imagine that both pronouciations could be comfortable for someone in the US. Unlike a French word like Gitane, where even in the states you'd help someone to not say "Git--tayne", but "Jit-tayne" would be a minimal acceptable level of anglicization.
Mike trumps this all with the Hungarian "zinger" but it sounds like A.Singer himself Francified his name's pronounciation as many do who move to France (?).
Sometimes the anglicized version is correct, even when mistaken, as in the Boston Celtics. Down the road where they do "keltic" studies, they still take catch the "Seltics" game.
Mitch Harris, where "harris" is the anglicized version (since 1066) of a version of the French pronounciation of Henry. And where Mitchell is the Francified (since 1066) version Micel, an anglo-saxon name. Little Rock Canyon, Utah, USA