(urth) Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?

[António Pedro Marques]

No dia 24/05/2011, às 13:48, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> escreveu:
> Antonio Pedro Marques: my instictive reading of Dorcas was
>> DAWRK-us (gave up on IPA), possibly not that far from the
>> AmE pronunciation,but not being acquainted with the name I
>> switfly considered door-KAZZ, seeing as there was a guy
>> nearby looking for a KAZZ.
> 
> Yes, that is to my point. An AmE speaker seeing the name "Cas" even if he/she 
> knows it to be a nickname, will not be sure whether to pronounce it "cass" as
> in "Cassandra" or "Kazz" as in "Casdoe".
> 
> But seeing the name Dorcas, we do not think of "cass" or "kazz" as
> the pronunuciation of the second syllable. For us it is "kis" or "kus". Antonio, 
> I am thinking in your language the name Tomas' is pronounced in a way in which
> "Mas" could be an extractible nickname. Not so for the English Thomas.

Indeed. In fact it's toMÁS so it could be shortened to MÁS, though it isn't. Cf joSÉ -> ZÉ, joaQUIM -> QUIM.

>