You say potetto, I say potatto

[pne]

Amy showed me one of Stella's CD cases and said, "Look, /kEts/!"

I said, "Ah yes, Cats!" and she responded, "No, *kets*".

Which is how it's pronounced in German, since it typically turns English /æ/ into /E/.

I suppose this means that /æ/ and /E/ are separate phonemes for Amy. (I wonder whether she'd consider /æ/ and /a/ separate, though—whether she'd hear, for example, "cats" and "Katz'" as distinct or would consider them essentially the same. The distinction isn't phonemic in either language, after all, unlike /æ/ vs. /E/.)

Comments

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

Did she mean the musical "Cats"? I guess she might think of it as a proper name, which is pronounced "kets" (at least by Germans).

[pne.livejournal.com]

Did she mean the musical "Cats"?

Yes.

I guess she might think of it as a proper name, which is pronounced "kets" (at least by Germans).

True. It's possible that she did think of it as a proper name with a fixed pronunciation, rather than an approximation of an English word.