Fedder
John McEnroe and the other American commentators call Federer "Fedder" with just a hint of a drawn-out 'r,' like, "Fedderr", to gesture at the third syllable.
British talk show host Jonathan Ross pronounced it "Federuh," revealing the sometime-usefulness of a phonetics that turns open vowel sounds into 'r' sounds and the opposite ('r' sounds into open vowel sounds).
On the other hand, both the New York and Boston accents do that too, so you'd think he'd be called "Federuh" over here too.
Quien sabe.
The tension mounts. Nadal tonight!
posted by La Misma at 4:14 PM
1 Comments:
I was trying to figure out what I meant by my phonetic comments. "Er" isn't an open vowel sound. What was I on about?
When I was in school in England, my friends kept telling me about a cool cafe they'd been going to called the Mocker. When I finally went there I found the name was Mocha. So that's what I meant about them adding an 'r' to something.
But this doesn't explain why Americans wouldn't pronounce the second 'er' in Federer's name. Except laziness.
6:01 AM
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