The Pronunciation Thread

i say it missyle (or miss aisle, if you will) but every one else seems to say miss ull (or at very best miss ill). i just generally assume that "ull" or "ill" is the american pronunciation (like pronouncing mobile "mo bull") and therefore incorrect (sorry).

so which is it? are there brits and others who say miss ull and mo bull and americans who say miss aisle and mo byle?

I say hou/z/es. Who says hou/s/es?

she says "moun-ten"

what is wrong with this you ask

if you are an american you will be LAUGHED AT if you pronounce the "t"

this is not the classic "substitute 'd' for 't' rule" as in the word "water", this is a peculiarly american habit of actually swallowing the "t" whole, in the back of one's throat

made famous and exaggerated by a certain sitcom wherein characters would yell to all parts of the house after discovering some particularly ruinous situation: "maaaaar! iiiin!!!!!!!!" ("martin") and the increasingly popular / decreasingly hilarious "no you DI-INT!!"

anyway i am told that i am wrecking her accent, teaching her wrong: but THIS IS THE ONLY RIGHT PRONUNCIATION on this continent, which is WHERE SHE LIVES

Gi-llanders not Gillon-does!

yeah ... but that's the RIGHT way to say it.

spanakopita

figure that out.

σπανακοριτα

with the stress on span and kop - how else?

sand-widges or sand-witches orsand-ha-witches ?
Eeeeeasy: "sang-witches"

bury: rhymes with "worry" or sounds like "berry"?
roof: rewf or ruf?

my favorite: footballers play DEE-fense. Do brits ever say DEE-fense?

Why do some midwesterners say EYE-talian? I doubt they say EYE-tal-y. They likely do say EYE-ran and EYE-raq.

Congratulate me I'm the Andy f'ing Rooney of ILX.

"rhymes with 'worry'" is only plausible if you pronounce "worry" so it rhymes with "furry" rather than "lorry".

But when I say "bury" it sounds like "berry". I grew up in the American Midwest and I don't think my accent was affected much by eleven years, college through grad school, spent in New York, or by seven years, through the present, living in Northern California.

I want to point out that I'm amused that you chose "ph" rather than "f" to represent that sound.

This sentence is wrong in more ways that I can count.

Though down the country, furry rhymes with worry rhymes with lorry.

So what do you rhyme furry with, Sam?

Similarly: glass, grass, bath?

I should have pointed out that down the country furry and worry stay mostly the same, but lorry becomes lurry.

However, I don't extend this to places overseas - I don't call Paris "Pa-ree".

When I lived in Manchester, I asked for clarification of the pronunciation of Bury. People from Bury say Buh-ry rather than Berry, but the consensus was that this was considered ridiculous to everyone else and not to be followed.

Shrewsbury = Shrewsbury to the working class and Shrovesbury to poshos, whether or not one is local.

Pronunciation of 'scone' is for me determined by the 'what's the fastest cake in the world?' joke... geddit?

I was originally brought up to say "scoan" but then at school everyone said this was really posh and people who didn't go foxhunting should say "scon". However, since my mother comes from a lower class background than any of the people who told me that, maybe it IS the other way round. I never much liked scones anyway so I haven't needed to say it for years.

I thought I agreed on the rule about pronouncing placenames as the locals would but on reflection this only extends as far as halfarsed attempts not to lengthen the vowel in Glasgow or Newcastle (or I guess Castleford or wherever).

My dictionary's pronunciation guide tells me not to schwa-ify the last syllable of "inchoate", but that sounds so precise and laboured. Is it right?

(Half of the "I pronounce [X] like [Y] posts" just leave me wondering, "But how do you pronounce [Y]?")

"I pronounce [X] like [Y]" posts

i gather it's probably the former, but i like the latter better

(sits in corner)

OK, she's Canadian, so she pronounces it Moohn-tin, but its her name, she can pronounce it how she likes.

"FYE-ERRR" that is how that is pronounced, everyone I know says it like that. However I do not understand this "t" dropping nonsense, I can't even figure out how that would work, if I try to say it like that I cannot.

My sister is like physically incapable of pronouncing the letter g if it is anywhere in a word besides the very start, which is odd.

(in Texas "fire" is pronounced "far," obv)

i love the collegian bicoastal accent (er i wrote 'college girl' there which may be poor on my part, but i associate it with a) a girl in my program, b) a girl i uh met in d.c. and c) kathleen hanna) where the vowels are overrounded and at the front of the mouth, sort of valley girl (again with the girl thing, sorry!) but not really.
conv. btw aforementioned girl b. and me:
b: we could hang out on my reef.
g: what?
b: is that okay?
g: your reef?
b: my REWF.
g: haha oh your ROOF
b: dewn't make fun of me, minneapolis

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Pack"
To: darren
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 6:47 PM
Subject: Social with Ming Campbell MP

Just a reminder that the Lib Dem spring social is a buffet supper with Ming Campbell, the Liberal Democrats' Shadow Foreign Secretary.

It's from 7:30pm on Wednesday 3rd March at 20 North Grove, Highgate. The recommended price is £8.50 (£4.50 for pensioners / claimants, children free).

Funny, trying to teach my Spanish English-teachers who have Britsh-tinged-Spanish-accents to pronounce words, I've decided that British English has fewer distinct vowel sounds. At least the "short" vowels: like the a in cat is a short vowel, or the i in bit.

But now that you mention it, all the vowels in combination with R are different for Brits, but not for Americans. We just say stuff differently.

But surely fillet is distinct from filet - the latter is meant to be pronounced as the French would, the former has been anglicised with the extra "l" to allow it to be pronounced, er, fillet.

ah, dictionary tells me: fillet and filet are both correct spellings but have essentially the same meanings, though the former can be pronounced both ways and the latter only the hard t way (yet the filet entry gives the example of filet mignon with the pronunciation of filay...). I suppose my issue is that these are French words whose pronunciation has been changed, yet there are other French words whose pronunciation stays the same. I just wonder about how arbitrary that change is, y'know, why it happens sometimes and not other times.

POYM!

*neither would i, what in the hell are you talking about

It's VAHZ, Laurel (in this country anyway).

(xpost, JBR, my teachers insisted on PO-YIM! Or POME!)

XP: Robyn, do you do the flat "a" in drama and pasta? See, now that gives me a real shudder, but I think all the Canadians I knew (and loved) in college used both of them!

but she sure as hell does say DRAHH-ma.

(Markelby to thread about pasta, obviously)

Please no.

I say drama/pasta in a way that I'm finding hard to write out phonetically. Yes, but I'm sure it's that flat a way b/c I know americans say it slightly differently. (This has kinda come up lately b/c I was watching online videos (from that roxy thread) and trying to figure out if the guys were Cdn, which I was sure they were - and was right! But in a lot of American tv, actors are trained to have a more neutral accent, so I don't get to hear it too much. haha, and then sometimes I watch Dr. Phil and THERE YA GO all over the place. Neat.)

One day, when I have a foyer, I'm going to become sooo snoooty about it.

Do these words sound the same when you say them - marry, merry, and Mary?

Er...Jim Carrey is Carrey, not Carey, and it's pronounced carry.

Isn't this kind of weird? I only picked up when I worked with some Americans a few years ago. Presumably, Americans differentiate between 'bag' and 'beg', and 'bad' and 'bed', and 'man' and 'men' etc., but once you add 'rry' to an 'a' or an 'e' they end up sounding the same.

Drandma?

As opposed to what (seeing as the whole of America just told me that marry/merry/Mary sound identical in Teh USA)?

The funniest pronunciation story I heard lately was that the much-mocked "Coe-lin Powell" thing is all a misunderstanding that can be traced back to George Bush Snr's incompetence.

Well, I'm not american, I talk proper(*), so carrey rhymes with marry and carey would rhyme with hairy.

recently whenever I've heard anyone talking about him it's always been pronounced Carey

Really? Hmm, maybe I'm wrong then, I'm not sure now.

(*) I don't really, I'm from manchester. :-)

Wtf, these are all pronounced the same. We need more sound clips.

Please no.

-- jaymc (jmcunnin...), February 6th, 2006 11:02 PM. (jaymc) (later)

Oi.

Thea wd be Thay-a if she had Greek relatives.

Ha, I'm too embarrassed to sit talking into my computer, my flatmates will hear me and think I'm mental.

Oh, and while I'm here, can somebody tell me how to pronounce Faure (the composer)? I think knew, once, and I seem to remember it sounding like it had a 'v' in there or something. But I've forgotten and now it confuses me.

Yeah, I'm realizing that the Thea I know is of Greek extraction, so maybe that's why she pronounces it as such, but it never occurred to me that other pronunciations were viable.

carey = like care-ee (same as in america)

but carry = like cat-tree but w/o any ts in it
(lady bracknell also pronounces carry and kerry the same, like kedgeree w/o the dge)

english carry really IS more like curry than carey

yes, more voice clips, no matter the mental label.
Last one from me, I can't help it.

Click above for a 4-second mp3 of "marry...Mary...merry" (with unintentional delay effect).

Yerz (as they say in LA),

Thea-trickle
(a nickname from when I was a child. xpost to mark s)

ch = k sound, no? why does everyone prounounce it like it's german?

I have heard people say VAYSE (or more, VAYZE, really) but not British people. Some Americans, I thought.

I'm "Thea" in a non-Greek-sounding way, jay. Rhymes with "see ya!"

i had always thought 'scoan' was a northern thing but apparently not.

how do people say "vista"?

This totally weirded me out when I met Robyn and s1ocki earlier this year! The latter, in particular, was telling a story about some beef he got into with his former housemates, and was like, "Ach, so much dramma. Dramma, dramma, dramma." Astoundingly, "cilantro" was also pronounced with this flat A.

We also have a street called "Chouteau" but since we say it "Cho-toe" I really don't know how to make a run at "Gratiot."

But then I used to say Berwick as Burr + wick instead of Berrick and Kyneton as Kin-e-t'n (similar to kinetic) instead of Kine(as in pine)-t'n so who knows.

Gosh, listening to Alba's voice in the clip up there - how absolutely gorgeous is his accent! Some different pronounciations to the Aus version though.

How do you say Ciara?

see-air-uh, like sierra nevada

you could always listen to some of her songs, she says her name on many of them

i have a friend called Ciara who pronounces it "keera". i can't be arsed to listen to a ciara song to find out how she pronounces it.

/lexbait

eh, your loss

i always thought it was key-arr-uh, but i got laughed at when i actually said it like that.

thought she pronounced it see-ar-ah.

i.e. the last way i would think of pronouncing it from looking at it.

you can pronounce the name a number of ways but...have you never heard, eg, missy elliott's 'lose control'? "my name is ciara for all you fly fellas"?

yeah that's where i'm getting see-ar-ah from i think, if i remember right.

Here's one I've never figured out since I only see the word in print: How do you pronounce "quixotic" in English? Is it "quick-zah-tic"? Because the name of the book and character Don Quixote, most people pronounce the Spanish way, like Key-hoe-tay.

Knowing Spanish has made it hard for me to purposely mispronounce Spanish words in English (place names I grew up with in California excepted). For example, I've gotten made fun of for pronouncing the name of Coldplay's last album the correct Spanish way.

It's a little bit modern and American to pronounce Quixote in that "Spanish" way -- the old-world academic rule (in English, obviously) took after the British willful-mispronunciation thing, and said Quick-soat, and I think "quixotic" as an adjective may have gotten entrenched in those days. (There's also a subgroup that says "Don Key-SHOAT" -- I don't know what defines that group or where it comes from, but it's definitely a group.)

quick-zoh-tic for me.

i get made fun of for correctly pronouncing foreign words, mainly Spanish, all the time.

^^ The main memory I associate with the above is a lower-level English lecture class in college where an older German man began speaking and left 100 kids going "did he just say Don Quick-soat? wait wait WTF did he just say Don Jew-an?"

Knowing Spanish has made it hard for me to purposely mispronounce Spanish words in English (place names I grew up with in California excepted).

My first experience with political pronuniciation - that is, pronunciation politics, pronunciation as a political tool - was as a schoolkid in California, and some administrator or teacher at the assemblies or awards ceremonies would make a point of pronouncing place names the Spanish way, even though most everyone said them the Americanized way. They would also do this with all student last names of Spanish origin, even if the kid never pronounced their name that way.

Ah, yeah -- in Colorado I'd have a teacher like that every few years, including one who would actually make kids, like, repeat their own last names with the proper pronunciation.

Wow - Colorado teacher. At my schools, they only did that with the kids w/Spanish last names, except in foreign language classes. But for me it raised the issue, how much time can elapse before the current pronunciation is the proper one? My family left Scotland almost 400 years ago, probably no one has pronounced the way someone in Scotland would for centuries.

^^ uh, that's 300 years ago. But still.

At my schools, they only did that with the kids w/Spanish last names -- well, yeah, same with mine, but that was like 60% of everyone

well, yeah, same with mine, but that was like 60% of everyone Mine was closer to 50% - we also had a significant number of kids with Italian names that would occasionally get the "viva la raza" treatment

The elementary school program I work for just had a ceremony where we handed out certificates and announced the kids' names. My co-workers were handing me the Spanish-named certificates cause they thought I could pronounce them better. The general rule I used in pronounciation was to pronounce them with a Spanish accent if I had mostly heard the name that way and if the parents spoke primarily Spanish, but like "Johnny Diaz" pronounced the American way. The Russian kids got shafted though; no one could pronounce their names right.

There was a discussion of "quixotic"/Quixote on another pronunciation thread a few years ago.

thought that straphanger was a new word for stranger and was pronounced 'stra-fanger'

Do you often pronounce the "t" in often? I find it grating...

UK-centric (or Prolapse-fan-centric) cousin to Straphanger: is Deanshanger "Dean's Hanger" or "Dean Shanga" or, uh, something else? I looked at a bunch of wikipedia articles and websites about the village but apparently they all thought this was too bloody obvious to answer.

I sort of randomly 50/50 pronounced the "t" in "often"; once read that "offen" was the historical pronunciation until people started pronouncing it as it was spelt and started to drop the "t", but got a bit self-conscious that none of the people I talked to did

Used to pronounce Toupee "too-PWAH" and Tupelo "too-PWAY-lo". Don't know why, don't know why.

DOes anyone say "ornery" anything like it looks? I've never heard anyone say it any way but "awnry."

ornry.

ennui

I do.

You pronounce it like the MO guy here, Crabbits?: http://www.forvo.com/word/ornery/#en

This is the first time I've heard that pronunciation. Mine is closer to the CA guy's. Or this:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?ornery01.wav=ornery

Honestly, though, I pretty much never say this word.

Actually, the "onry" guy seems to be just inside the KS side of the KS/MO border.

i say it a lot because i'm an ornery mofo. and i say it like the ohio person. orn-ry.

aw yeah just like MO guy
I get the feeling the kind of people who say "awnry" are the people who use the word all the time
eg everyone in my family calls every little kid an awnry bugger

Yeah, I'm on par with Merriam-Webster pronunciation. I probably say it more often than any 21st century person should.

revive inspired by this facebook post from my hometown friend: "What a beautiful day...woke up to a new niece.... she's got a lot of catchin up to do to be as ornery and cute as my other two nieces:) I love you all:)"
like so weird to look at this three-syllable worn with all these extra letters but hear her voice in my mind saying it totally differently

KS/MO would be Midland US English?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_English_regional_phonology#The_Midland

I brought this up on the "cereals" thread but it didn't go anywhere there: do you pronounce "bilingual" like "bi-ling-wuhl" or "bi-ling-you-uhl"? Everyone here (US, UK, NZ) seems to use the former: http://www.forvo.com/word/bilingual/
Yet the latter seems pretty common in Canada, at least in Ontario.

The same person says "bi-ling-wuhl-ism" but "bi-ling-you-uhl" here (latter around 1:40):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0kmoCdUzlQ&feature=player_embedded

bi-ling-wul

"arvo peart" - kudos

Wait, listening to it now, she does say "bi-ling-you-ul-ism".

Okay, this is getting weird.
http://www.dailydot.com/lol/77-days-pronunciation-book-youtube-countdown-theories/

Did someone mention this yet in "evidence of 77 entering the collective unconscious"?

|||

1

Uhhhh, that was a cat post, not actually me.

eerie

2 days

A THEORY
http://www.dailydot.com/fandom/battlestar-galactica-reboot-pronunciation-book/

that theory seems like nonsense, all of those "connections" are super vague

span-a-kop-i-ta
with the stress on span and kop - how else?

can't really explain why i do this but i'll cop to sometimes saying spanako-PEE-tah with maybe a slight stress on spa

That's how I pronounced it. Never actually heard anyone else say it out loud until very recently.

Yeah, I always thought it was pronounced the Guayaquil way (and pronounced the first syllable the same as the first syllable of "Spanish"). Had no idea this was considered correct: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spanakopita

I'm not sure I've heard people say this word out loud either.

But I hasten to emphasize that in my mind the "normal" way to say it is span-a-KOH-pa-duh

In Greece Guyaquil's pronunciation (spanako-PEE-tah) would would be considered that of a disgusting savage.

So, something happened with Pronunciation Books: the entire world went crazy that horse_ebooks was ran by a Buzzfeed employee, nobody decided to go play their ARG they'd been promoting for five years or however long.

*Book, singular

what the
http://www.ibtimes.com/pronunciation-book-horseebooks-revealed-long-term-art-project-new-bear-stearns-bravo-website-emerges

Yup. The game actually looks kind of fun, but a) the tone is completely different from the blank-spookiness of PB, and b) you have to pay for it. So... yeah, I don't know if this will take off.

How do you guys say "artisanal"? I normally here a flat, no-syllable-heavily-emphasized version (ar-ti-suh-nuhl) which is kind of awful, but once in a while I hear the even more awful "ar-TEE-suh-nuhl"). I hate this word.

Ar-tiz-uh-null here.

Ar-TIZ-uh-null

I kind of avoid it, though, since it's either resented as pretentious or over-used in place of home-made or hand-made or hand-crafted.

AR-ty-SUN-holé

I always said artie's anal, I imagine that's wrong?

I use it to laugh at these guys: http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/10663843.Brighton_ice_cream_parlour_thief_steals___5k/

I’ve noticed more and more people pronouncing “adversary” with a stress on the second, instead of the first syllable.

This is good, btw:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/11/pronunciation-errors-english-language

pronounciation

First graf of that article reminds me of the episode of "How I Met Your Mother" where Ted doesn't know how to pronounce "chameleon."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yGMhG98ebY

Realised the other day that I and everyone I know pronounce ketamine so that the final syllable rhymes with "chin" but when I say eg dopamine I'd have the last syllable rhyming with "sheen"

Also I meant to ask, how does everyone say prowess? I'd only ever heard it as the 1st syllable rhyming with "how" but then I heard an Wilson on tv say it so it rhymed with "ho". He is unspeakably posh tho

I used to pronounce Awry like the the first sound in AWkward and the last bit of tREE.

loved that guardian piece

my own pronunciation has so many random errors in it, i think as a child i would read a lot but never actually say certain words out loud ever so the wrong pronunciation stuck? the other day my bf laughed at me because i pronounced subsidence "sub-SIGH-dence". until i was 15 i pronounced massacre as though it was french.

i've recently noticed that it's really hard to say "research" with the emphasis on the second syllable!

(i say prow-rhyming-with-how for prowess too)

You can say 'sub SIGH dence' imo??

Your grandmother might not like the way you pronounce tune. She might place a delicate "y" sound before the vowel, saying tyune where you would say chune.

Don't like either of these pronunciations.

i've recently switched from saying "REE-surch" to "ruh-SURCH" — for some reason it feels... comfortable?

actually, come to think of it, it might be due to the proportionate stresses of vowels in japanese. the "search" part looks longer so it should sound longer, maybe?

sub-SIGH-dence is pretty much how to do it

you would say chune no

I pronounce often and schedule wrong all the time :(

subside

subsidence

do you though? xpost

offen/off-ten
skedule/shedule

both acceptable, neither is right or wrong

erm that was a typo, it was because i didn't pronounce subsidence like that

i pronounced it "SUB-sid-ence"

I sigh at subsidence too. xp - aha

Like lex I always knew a bunch of words through reading that I had never heard irl; clearly recall a friend's mum taking great pleasure in laughing at me for pronouncing esoteric" as EE-zott-er-ick.

Also: "gibberish" with a hard g, "blossom" as blozzom, I'm sure I can keep coming up with these.

gibberish with soft g more common but hard g just as good really

I used to get laughed at for pronouncing "polo" as "pole-oh", not "po-low"

nah hard g not an option xp

i've recently switched from saying "REE-surch" to "ruh-SURCH" — for some reason it feels... comfortable?

This might be one of those two syllable words which have a different stress pattern depending on whether they are being used as a verb or a noun (e.g. 'record'). Compare: This is my favourite Beatles RE-cord / Did you re-CORD Eastenders last night? I'm not sure.

nah hard g not an option xp

wot R u gibbering about?

Your grandmother might not like the way you pronounce tune. She might place a delicate "y" sound before the vowel, saying tyune where you would say chune.
----
Don't like either of these pronunciations

Then how on earth do you say it?

I think my problem with schedule and research is that I get stuck on the word, flipping between pronunciations, like a malfunctioning robot.

otm

Then how on earth do you say it?

Toon.

Gibberish with a hard g? That is ridiculous. Def not an option.

Toon

Ah yes, I temporarily forgot about America. A bit of an oversight.

I used to get laughed at for pronouncing "polo" as "pole-oh", not "po-low"

I'm not sure what you mean, but it might be like the 'wholly' v 'holy' thing discussed here: ILX accent/homophone survey

Gibberish with a hard g? That is ridiculous. Def not an option.

wot R u gibbering about?

Seperated by an enormouse otian

Gibbering hard g gibberish soft imo

Finance

I mean, fucks sake, finance.

Minister for finance.

Gibbering hard g

Are you mad?

I used to get laughed at for pronouncing "polo" as "pole-oh", not "po-low"

I'm not sure what you mean, but it might be like the 'wholly' v 'holy' thing discussed here: ILX accent/homophone survey

― he is looking only the ball (Nasty, Brutish & Short), Tuesday, March 11, 2014 2:38 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Probably a south-east england thing.

skedule/shedule

both acceptable

Yes, i believe Audrey Hepburn clarifies this in Roman Holiday.

I Thought it was US = skedule, UK = shedule ?

Dotty Parker to Herbert Marshall - "I think you're full of skit."

I used the word "hoof" yesterday to some absolutely-English-fluent Francophones yesterday and they didn't know the word, couldn't believe it was pronounced that way, confused the hell out of me-- is there any other word in English that sounds like "hoof" or obeys this extremely exceptional singular/plural weirdness, hoof vs. hooves i.e.

I mean, I say "hoof" to rhyme, vaguely, with neuf (or a softer oeuf) but why then does "roof" have a more expected 'oo' sound

roof, rooves.

xp!

roof xps!

Oh yeah, people from across the pond say it like "deerhuff", I forgot. I say it with the longer 'oo'.

and wife wives

Not roof/rooves anymore, right? People just generally say "roofs?"

xxp

knife/knives

There's a LOT of US regional variation in the pronunciation of "roof." (As well as "root" and other double-o words.)

In Canada it's "kaniffa" iirc

Not roof/rooves anymore, right? People just generally say "roofs?"

I think the plural with the 'f' is acceptable in English, but frowned on in formal writing? Hang on, I will see if I can find a guide.

Hm, apparently it's more like the other way around! According to wikipedia:

roof -- roofs (commonly voiced as /ruːvz/ to rhyme with hooves, but rooves is a rare archaic spelling)

Then there's the whole dwarf/dwarfs/dwarves deal.

Pronounce the v's people.

i would always say rooves.

Even dwarfs started small.

Why do you people need to talk about more than one roof?

It's not so much the f/v thing that seems specifically idiosyncratic, it's that particular "oeu" vowel sound in "hoof" that I can't place anywhere else in English at-the-moment... not to mention the shift to "oo" on the plural.

Nobody rhymes "roof" with "hoof", do they? (outside of that one bizarre and awesome English accent that also rhymes "book" with "duke")

It's pronounced seven Emily

an NGO called Roofs for the Roofless iirc

book rhymes with duke in scotland and roof rhymes with hoof everywhere no?

I mostly rhyme roof with hoof, fgti! Occasionally I slip around between 'uh' and 'oo', and that's more likely to happen with hoof, but they're usually the same. Some British accents would pronounce them both as 'ruff' and 'huff', too.

Is "vague" pronounced like "bag" or like "bayg"?

Nobody rhymes "roof" with "hoof", do they? (outside of that one bizarre and awesome English accent that also rhymes "book" with "duke")

― continually topping myself (flamboyant goon tie included), Tuesday, March 11, 2014 4:46 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

errr.... me? I can only imagine Scots-based dialects pronouncing these differently?

I get told I'm strange for pronouncing 'room' and 'broom' more like 'rum' and 'brum' occasionally. Not sure if this is an affectation or because of my Scottish dad or something?

huh! ok. apologies to Britishers, then. I say "roof" with the longest oo imaginable and rhyme "hoof" with the Anglicized pronunciation of oeuf, i.e. Shia LaBeouf. (When speaking French it's a rounder eu on oeuf)

The way I say oeuf that'd be like saying 'herf'? That I would find weird.

Language! She is crazy!

xps I'm kind of mystified at this "oeu"-pronunciation of 'hoof'. I would say it with the 'oo' sound in 'food','moon', and 'roof'. I think some people say it instead with the 'oo' sound in 'good', 'book', and 'took'. I've never heard anyone say 'hoeuf'.

I get told I'm strange for pronouncing 'room' and 'broom' more like 'rum' and 'brum' occasionally.

I'm not actually sure where people would pronounce it that way, I'm thinking Birmingham but that might be the Brum connection. But it's definitely not unheard of.

though "good" and "book" don't rhyme to me, the "oo" in book yes is identical to the "oo" in "hoof", now that I think about it. I think the "f" just elongates the vowel sound in a misleading way. All online recordings of "how to pronounce 'hoof'" pronounce it to rhyme with "roof", by the by, so maybe Canada is crazy

Let's not get too worked up with one of English's crazy inconsistent Anglo-Saxon remnants!

good, book & hoof all identical to me

in high school i had a friend from connecticut who pronounced roof as "ruff"

I used to get mocked for saying "tooth" rhyming the "oo" with "book", "hook", etc instead of "truth". I managed to mostly train myself out of that one, but then I dunno how much of that was my original accent vs just getting it wrong.

Is tomorrow Wensday for you lot?

Yep.

Col. Poo - 'tuth' is a valid accent too. We're Brits, we can do pretty much anything with our vowels.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ley7lv3UmE1qbxrc3o1_500.png

Nobody rhymes "roof" with "hoof", do they?

Midwestern/Great Lakes American here -- for me, "roof" has the same long-oo vowel sound as "toot" and "room," whereas "hoof" has a shorter sound like "book."

Then again in A Hard Day's Night Paul's grandfather pronounces "room" closer to "hoof" and "book" closer to "toot" so idk.

Then there's the whole dwarf/dwarfs/dwarves deal.

dwarrow

dwarrowmac

No, there can be only one.

"hoof" has a shorter sound like "book."

yes americans say buck

-ow/-iow is a Celtic plural ending, why would you put that on a Germanic word like Dwarf?

quoth the doubtless infallible online dictionary of etymology -

Old English dweorh, dweorg (West Saxon), duerg (Mercian), "very short human being," from Proto-Germanic *dweraz (cf. Old Frisian dwerch, Old Saxon dwerg, Old High German twerg, German Zwerg, Old Norse dvergr), perhaps from PIE *dhwergwhos "something tiny," but with no established cognates outside Germanic.

The shift of the Old English guttural at the end of the word to modern -f is typical (cf. enough, draft). Old English plural dweorgas became Middle English dwarrows, later leveled down to dwarfs.

"tuth" for "tooth" really threw me when I moved to the Westcountry. Tuthache.

OK I got one for you: how do you pronounce 'sloughing' (like sloughing away dead skin)? An American friend of mine said it today as in 'sluff' but in my head I've always thought of it as Slough the town.

I'd definitely say it with the 'ff' sound.

Definitely "sluffing."

"dwarves" was coined by Tolkien iirc?

Tolkien, a writer whose reputation dwarfs his talents.

Oh here we go: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000293.html

yeah that's interesting. instinctively prefer dwarfs as a verb & dwarves as a noun. as is noted in the following article there are similar words w/ inconsistent plural forms like staff, wharf, beef & turf

staff - staves

my worst one was infra-red pronounced in-FRARED and i did that after college; thought they were different spectrums

though "good" and "book" don't rhyme to me, the "oo" in book yes is identical to the "oo" in "hoof", now that I think about it. I think the "f" just elongates the vowel sound in a misleading way. All online recordings of "how to pronounce 'hoof'" pronounce it to rhyme with "roof", by the by, so maybe Canada is crazy

Wait, what is the difference between the vowels in "good" and "book"? Sometimes my "good" deteriorates into something close to a "gid" but I think it's basically the same vowel. And, yeah, I'd use the same vowel in "hoof" but pronounce "roof" with the vowel in "moon". I had a friend from the Chicago area who used the "book" vowel in "roof" though. Actually, I've heard some people in Saskatchewan pronounce "room" with the "book" vowel!

Interestingly, the American here agrees with us about "hoof" but the Canadian doesn't: http://www.forvo.com/word/hoof/

I tend to think the dwarfs / dwarves thing is more about inconsistent verb / noun usage, and the verb being taken for the noun (or the other way around).

Because I'm also much happier with dwarfs as the verb and dwarves as the plural noun.

But when I try to think of other examples of disparate verb/nouns, right now I can only come up with "he scarfs his food" and "he wears scarves around his neck".

Wolfs/wolves, loafs/loaves...

he wolfs his food down. he ate 3 loaves.
he loafs around all day. with the other sleepy wolves.

right, i'd also suggest that the employees sense of staff might be derived from the verb & thus is pluralized differently from the sticks

Staff -> staves iirc

Hoof/hooves!

Err... behoof/behooves!

Please ignore me.

When a dwarf does a runner, would you say the dwarf "hoofs it"?

Yes, unless they're actually a satyr.

#keepignoringmeplz

i was shocked to find last night that my bf pronounces the word "adequate" with a hard k sound, like "attakit"

What on earth?

i wasn't even trying to correct him; i just had no idea what word he was saying!

Is he from a particular place or has he just been mispronouncing it his whole life? It's kinda endearing to tell you the truth.

Adequa state

I think kw for q is slowly losing traction. I hear "korter" all the time now for quarter.

he's from louisiana, but i've never heard anyone else pronounce it like that

fwiw he also pronounces "thermos" like "thur-moze"

i think it's endearing too! just surprising.

Uh, thur-moze otm

thur-muss

ther-mos

unw? j.......n are you reading thermos as a plural of thermo

could U be? thermos beautiful girl in the world?

eigh wud dai fore yew

OK, so apparently I've been pronouncing "baton" wrong my whole life? Always thought it was buh-TAWN, but I just listened to a newscast where it was referred to as a BAA-tun.

So how have you been pronouncing Baton Rouge?

Always thought it was buh-TAWN

that's how michael johnson always says it tbf

Slaithwaite

So how have you been pronouncing Baton Rouge?

― Root It Oot (Tom D.), Tuesday, December 23, 2014 8:16 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The second way, but I've never considered it as the same thing that a cheerleader twirls or a police beats someone with.

Even though it is?

Always thought it was buh-TAWN, but I just listened to a newscast where it was referred to as a BAA-tun.

And BAA-ton?

fwiw i have relatives in louisiana who rhyme baton with satin

That's what I was trying to convey with the second pronunciation.

I'm just faking my way through being able to write words phonetically.

regional dialects ftw
there is no "wrong" if people understand you

also http://ipa.typeit.org/

Yes there is no such thing as mispronunciation &c but there's a weird mispronunciation I've been hearing more & more (basically from listening to US podcasts) that I can't help but find grating: this bizarre mangling of the word "processes" so the last syllable sounds like the last syllable of "indices", "theses" &c. It's obv an example of overcorrection & not a big deal but it sounds dumb as hell imo - god knows how the first person got it in their head to start doing this, having presumably heard other people speak before

Oh, I've heard that one lots of times. I never really knew where it came from. Is it new? I don't know if I personally know someone who does it. I also don't think I know anyone who drops the "h" in "historical" or "hotel" when speaking English or who pronounces "detail" like dəˈtāl, although I've heard all of these on TV.

who pronounces "detail" like dəˈtāl

What vowel sound are the "process-eez" people using in the first syllable? I use the same long "o" in "process" and "project" (as a noun) that I use in "program(me)" but I don't think anyone else in the US does. Does anyone outside Canada pronounce "project" with a long "o"?

Does anyone outside Canada pronounce "project" with a long "o"?

Yes.

processeees people are all american so use the short "o" sound which is more common over there I think

as far as being new, it's new to me at least

often have to suppress a slight cringe with hypercorrections but with this I lean towards confidently stating it's bad

"remember to tip your waitresseees"

loves his word sounds

Not that it matters much, but I am utterly puzzled by how to pronounce: Mafeking.

It's mentioned in a few Monty Python sketches.

I use the same long "o" in "process" and "project" (as a noun) that I use in "program(me)" but I don't think anyone else in the US does. Does anyone outside Canada pronounce "project" with a long "o"?

As an American I can say that long-o "process" is a Canadian tell for me.

It's mentioned in a few Monty Python sketches.

That doesn't get me any further than I was before.

Three years on I’m still pretty sure process-eez is bad, what the fuck are you doing Americans

This is war and you will have to hit the mattress-eez

Maff/e/king

... can't get the schwa symbol to work.

modern mafeking is renamed mahikeng ("place of rocks" in setswana) but the batswana people still generally call it mafikeng, which gives a good idea of how the locals say it

english english pron is maff-uh-king with maff the emphasised syllable and uh as just the colourless placeholder vowel

... what mark said.

Looks like I’ve been mispronouncing “piquant” all these years, at least in my head, never say it out loud.

http://www.blogissues.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/schwa_world_operations_manual.jpg

Pick-wannt?

Peek-want

pee-kont for me

Think mark is right about the schwa in the second syllable.

I lived on Mafeking Street for a while, and more than one taxi driver thought I was taking the piss and refused to drive me there.

How to say the 'o' In 'cognac'?

I use long "o" as in blow, but I think I've heard people say it like "aw."

I can't image either way would get you snickered at in a high-end liquor store.

I've only ever heard "aw" I think?

cone-yack is the other one

https://i.imgur.com/je6fQzl.jpg

What? It’s a short ‘o’. No one says Cone-yack surely?

In the US cone-yack is common.

Like the ou in cough

As a provincial American, I've often heard it pronounced cone-yack. As a person who tries, with varying success, to figure out how French people would say a word in French, I lean more toward cun-yack. But as a provincial American who most often converses with other provincial Americans, I will lapse into cone-yack as often as not.

Whats with yack?

Its guhnak

As a person who tries, with varying success, to figure out how French people would say a word in French, I lean more toward cun-yack.

Here you go:

https://forvo.com/word/cognac/#fr

Ha, I went to Forvo after I posted. I pronounce it mostly like the English speaker TopQuark, although maybe I have been saying something like Khan-yak or Kayn(e)-ak. I started thinking about this because I got hit with a cone-yack today.

And I just now enjoyed listening to the way this borrowed word is pronounced by speakers of different languages.

Just noticed Forvo has the pronunciation written out as well. For that sound it has ɒ, the open back rounded vowel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_back_rounded_vowel

Whereas for French it has the neighboring ɔ sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mid_back_rounded_vowel

Also see: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cognac

Kog-knack

In any case, this seems like a classic case of trying to approximate a vowel sound that we don't have in English and getting on either side of it. Also now comparing saying it in English versus saying it in French, or even saying the Spanish version coñac. For those two I feel my lips pursing a bit.

Hey, Wiktionary led me to what seems to be a pretty nice French dictionary I never came across before. https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/cognac

Dutch version uses the same vowel sound but the "gn' is pronounced a little differently and there is a strong accent on the second sylllable.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

i say Cone-Yak and Khan-Yak depending on the moment but more often hear it colloquially referred to as "yak" or by brand.
i also do not drink so it's less of an issue but i did tend bar for a year or two.

I recently heard someone use the word "epoch", pronouncing it somewhat close to "epic". It struck me that I'd never heard this word spoken out loud as I'd always imagined it would be "ee-pok".

That's how I'd say it.

I said “epock” in my head until taking a course where a teacher said “epic” thousands of times

"eepock" is "standard" Brit pron

Think in US it is eh-puck

But yes I see U.K. pronunciation is as you say

TS Khans vs. Yaks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGO-SldLrNA

just call it brandy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTqTE7aNjZQ

In Japanese cognac and konjac are not only homophones but share identical katakana which makes menu misreading interesting sometimes.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/86/Conrack1974.jpg

Ha!

just call it brandy

― mahb, Tuesday, March 16, 2021 5:51 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i once asked for a pint of guinness and a cognac in a glasgow pub and the bartender said "you can have a pint of guinness and a brandy

If it's not an appellation d'origine contrôlée, sure.

Just heard a shitty, soppy old '50s song where the singer pronounced 'fingers' as if the break between the syllables came after the 'g'. 'FING-ers'. I pretty much barfed all over myself when that happened.

Is .wav wave or wav?

I have never thought of it as wav.

I think i know it's wave, but the pronunciation of a schoolmate from 20 odd years ago (southwest UK) has left me unable to move forward. I don't think this is like gif/jif where there was debate - and settlement? it's gif, right? - but curious if this is regional or just me and that one dude

i've never heard anything other than a "wave" file. gif vs jif is a fight where if you care you lose

Didn't the inventor of the GIF format publicly announce it's jif?

jif is the correct pronunciation of GIF, which is the acronym for Giraffe Information File.

Giraffe Interchange Format, surely.

Who interchanges giraffes?!

Didn't the inventor of the GIF format publicly announce it's jif?

yes. then many years passed, and a lot of people who were born after the format were invented pronounced it in a different way. at this point, many people began losing by fighting about which way was best

I would say 'wav', fwiw.

i always used to say wav. I think I knew it was probably "wave" but I read things phonetically

Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave"[8])

waff, or gtfo

like "suave"? Have never heard anyone ever say that.

i say it, but only as i use their products every morning.

*looks in peepcam*

"suave"

In the UK at least, Wav, like suave, never heard it called a 'Wave' file by anyone that has to actually deal with them in almost 30 years in audio.

What is it called? A wavv? New to me but seems good

Yeah, like 'have' with a w

my problem is i'm thinking of sin waves and triangle and square waves

just basic building block components of sound. i know that's different than the filetype and all of that. i just associate them that way, may be alone in that

Regex

Hard or soft g?

sgoth niseach while you're at it

always heard/decided it was soft g but that might be because it feels easier to say