Pronunciation

Okay, I know this one is a minefield. I'm not talking about regional dialects or the difference between English and American English. I'm talking about people who speak as if they have never seen the word in print.

I've just been yelling at the tv trying to get through (unsuccessfully) to the sports announcer who was insisting on talking about a 'pentathalon'. He has an autocue. Did the autocue operative mis-spell the word and did the announcer - whose job it is, after all, to know what various sporting events are called - decide to include that extra 'a' so as not to embarrass a colleague? Or has he really been in the sport business for several years without ever finding out the name of the events he is paid to discuss.

I suppose the most-quoted example of this kind of talk is 'noocular' in place of nuclear and I once had a friend who was capable of torturing at least an extra two syllables into pretty much every word she said, perhaps she is the reason I'm now so sensitive about the issue. The point is, though, that so many of the people who do this are readers. if they were people who, for whatever reason, did not or could not read the printed word I could understand it but don't they ever come across the problem word in print and think 'hmm, I wonder if that's the correct spelling - it doesn't look like the way I say it' and then maybe even go away and look it up? Or, come to that, don't they ever listen to what other people are saying and think 'hmm, that's not the way I pronounce it - must check it out when I get home'? I think I just answered my own question.

The newsreader on our Government funded TV always pronounces February as Feb-u-ry and it drives me crazy. I keep on thinking that I should use her twitter address, which helpfully flashes onto the screen, to remind her how the word is spelt.

In Suffolk, where I live, interpolated syllables are part of normal speech.

With so many English words that aren't pronounced as they are spelled, why would you expect anybody check the spelling when deciding how to pronounce a word.

I'm sure I've come across the name for this extra syllable affliction but I can't remember it . Anyone? Give it a name and it's easier to talk about? I admit to having trouble with 'sporadic/sparodic' which isn't quite the same thing

I remember as a teen finally hearing someone say 'genre' out loud and thinking, oh my god, it's not jen-EAR! Then there's 'epitome' and 'Hermione' which I know but some of my friends do not.

Misspell

I can remember getting into an argument in High School where I was convinced that fiery was pronounced feery I presume because up until that point I had only come across the word in print.

I had a friend who was subject to ridicule when he pronounced the 'w' in sword.

At school 'chaos' was always 'choss'. No argument.

>5 AlanRitchie: The word that you seek is 'epenthesis'.

Thank you, Theo!

Mischevious? And the very Irish umberella?

Oh, I like umber-ella! I may adopt that.

Robert

How else would it scan?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcHxS7cLEjc

My wonderful, educated, business executive, drama-major sister says Saturday as Saherday. Been driving me nuts for 55 years. I think it's a Midwest (US) thing.

It's not easy, but you can learn to do it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edxwQK1zBxw

I had a colleague who used the word "equivocate" when he meant "equate". Not exactly epenthesis, but poetic in a way.

by the way, I have a strong urge to pronounce epenthesis as epenthensis. More poetry.

#12 Mock the Irish if you will, but if you're stuck in Dublin without an umberella you'll get soakened when it rains.

;)

#4 Because many words are pronounced as spelt and it's a useful check when in doubt. Although the English language has many words of which the spelling is somewhat strange, I don't think it has many in which an extra silent syllable is standard.

#12 Yes! mischievious is a perfect example and another one that drives me crazy. But on your second point you have me bang to rights because I love Irish pronunciation and can forgive almost anything there. My all time favourite is fillum. I never said this dislike was logical, after all.

The trouble with English is that there usually was a time when it was either pronounced as it is now spelled, or spelled as it is now pronounced. But you never know which until you've looked it up, and even then you generally find conflicting evidence. "February" is a case in point. The OED seems to suggest that the "informal" British pronunciation "febri" or "febreri" is much nearer to the original form in which it came into English than the Latin spelling we now use.

#19 I love the Irish pronunciation too - I never said that I didn't.

(And as an aside, I love their road signs as well)

It is Feb-ury which drives me crazy. Another word which sports reporters use is 'day-bew'. Grrr!

At one time I always read with a dictionary beside me to check any words which I'd only read but never heard said out aloud. There were a few surprises.

>21 pinkozcat:
"day-bew" or "de-butt" - which is worse...?

Because I am a roleplayer the one that always irks me is melee. I often hear something that sounds to me like 'mealy' on US podcasts.

I'm often surprised to hear people pronouncing the l in almond.

#24 - I think that's a regional thing. I was surprised the first time I heard it without the l.

I'm particularly irritated by 'particuly'.

#24#25: "Almond" pronounced with an 'l' or without are surely both wrong. It should be spelt "allmond" (or perhaps "awlmond") to match the way I say it.

Then there is that thing we mail letters in, 'envelope', commonly pronounced here in the UK with a French accent (onvelope). Hate that.

Depending on where you live in the American South, 'pecan' is either PEE-can or pee-CAHN. I can never remember which is appropriate where.

Fowler already thought in 1926 that envelope was English enough for the French pronunciation to be discarded, as the French spelling with a double p had been, long ago.

For those who don't know it, his entry on "French words" is great fun: eleven pages instructing the reader "how to pronounce them in English if he would neither exhibit a conscious superiority of education nor be suspected of boorish ignorance". It might be fun sometime to put some of his phonetic renderings in front of a Frenchman and see how many can be mapped back into French. kādorsā' anyone? Or what about ōpyā'dlahle'tr and ēdā'fē'ks?

Sting sang a version of the traditional hymn Gabriel's Message. It always strikes me as unusual when he sings "Bethlehem" he says "Beth - lee - hem.'"

Sting is, or was, a Geordie. Some of you might know what that means. As an American, it doesn't mean much to me. But maybe that is the way they talk in Newcastle.

Hi all, I just discovered this thread and read through it. Fascinating!

>8 jjwilson61: Well, I have learned something today... In my defence I can say that I'm not a native English speaker and I have only come across the word in print. (Yes, until now I really thought it was pronounced 'feery'.)

21> I also thought that 'day-bew' is how 'debut' is pronounced. Apparently it is not?

30> My guess: Quai d'Orsay, au pied de la lettre, idée fixe? (I didn't know the 2nd expression, neither in French, nor in English.)

>32 Akubra: It's deh-bew.

>33 Morphidae: Ok, thanks!

One that annoys me is massektomy for mastectomy. The first is common pronunciation even among those who should know better.

So which is correct, prolly or probly?

Robert

Amy Walker's brief tour through American accents:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NriDTxseog

>32 Akubra:
Correct!
au pied de la lettre - apparently it means "literally", though I've never seen it in the wild in French, and only once in English, in one of the Jeeves stories. According to that infallible source, the internet, it's an allusion to 2 Corinthians. It seems rather unlikely that English should pick up a biblical allusion from French, but I suppose it's possible.

>38 thorold: I've done some searching myself and come to the same conclusion: 'literally' or 'to the letter'. The shorter form 'à la lettre' is much more common in my experience.

33> Is it? I've always pronounced it day-bew.

>25 suitable1: this is how I've always pronounced it:
http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/almond

Do you pronounce the l in salmon?

36> If you're in Ireland and getting soakened it's probly brolly.

40> The easiest way to remember is by the word “débutante”.

Some people also have difficulty with my name.

The OED gives derbju, derbu, and début, all with the emphasis on the first syllable.

I suspect that anyone using début could be misunderstood. :)

I seem to recall some study that showed that certain people were physically incapable of pronouncing 'nuclear' - they couldn't do the 'ucl' and so pronounced it 'nucular.' Of course, I can't find the study now, so I don't know if it's an urban legend or not.

#33 #40

More day-byoo for me. I have never heard the first syllable as Morphidae has written it.

The Oxford Dictionary of English gives both endings for debut. 'deibju:, -bu

How it leads to problems.. .. ..

Working with a US company in Dubai, the US boss asked me,“Are things on skedule?”. I replied that we were exactly on schedule. “Shedule, what's that word?”, he asked.

Sticking to my guns I said “The language is called English, and that is how it is pronounced”. “Wrong”, he replied. “They are two different words and a skedule you bloody well stick to!”

He was right too, loved that guy.

>15 by PhaedraB, I'm from the midwest and have been all over the US and have never heard anyone do that to Saturday!

According to Merriam-Webster, "al·mond noun \ˈä-mənd, ˈa-, ˈäl-, ˈal-\" I've never heard it pronounced without the L.

>47 Novak: The British pronunciation of schedule drives me up the wall, I want to throttle someone when I hear it. You don't say "shool" for "school," right? So why would you ignore the C in schedule? *winces*

>47 Novak:,48
I've sat through a whole string of presentations in the last weeks where one of my Spanish colleagues had to explain to the audience that "the Americans use the term esskedule where we use...."

Is this schadenfreude I feel?

I dived in some dictionaries too:

Debut
Compact Oxford English Dictionary: 'day-byoo'
The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary: /ˈdeɪbju:, də-, -bu:/
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English: /ˈdeɪbju, US: deɪˈbju/
The Oxford Reference Dictionary: /ˈdeɪbu:, -bju:/
Collins Cobuild English Dictionary: /deɪbju:, AM: deɪbju:/
Oxford American Dictionary: 'day-byoo'
Wiktionary: UK: /ˈdɛbjuː/, /ˈdeɪbjuː/, US: /deɪˈbjuː/

Only Wiktionary confirms the 'deh-bew' pronunciation (IPA /ˈdɛbjuː/), but only for the UK. The Aussies come close with their alternative /dəbju:/. All the rest insists on 'day' (IPA /deɪ/) for the first syllable. Three of the dictionaries also indicate a difference in emphasis: first syllable for UK, second for US.

I suspect most pronunciations are ok, as long as it isn't the French /deby/ :)

EDIT: add link to Wiktionary

School, from Latin schola (or scola), with hard 'c'.
Schedule, from French cedule, with a soft 'c'.

>52 jbbarret: Indeed, and in Middle English there was no 'ch' in it, it was written as 'sedule'.

*shudders* I'm sorry, natural bias and all that, but it just sounds stupid.

I met the American World Class Manufacturing guru Richard Schonberger at a conference in Dublin and he was very happy with the soft "ch" pronounciation as he did not want to be called Richard Scone-berger.

...and then we come to "colonel" and "demesne".

Well now who's the genius who replaced the I with an S? Middle English, from Anglo-French demesne, demeine and DOMAIN alteration of Middle English demayne, from Anglo-French demeine, from Latin dominium, from dominus

>57 .Monkey.: It may have been influenced by French 'mesne', a variant of Anglo-Norman 'meen' (middle).

And "colonel", pronounced "cor'nel", which is how it's written in portuguese - well, written "coronel", but definitely an r and not a l

>59 ScarletBea: That happens in Portuguese, even the other way around: 'Argélia' means 'Algeria'. Most of the time 'l' and 'r' are alveolar consonants in Portuguese (the tip of the tongue touches the area just behind the upper teeth).

Then there's quay which I only very recently learned was pronounced key (from watching and reading Thomas the Tank Engine no less).

61> Touché! When Don McLean sang “Drove my Chevy to the levee”, I had to look it up in the dictionary.

I believe the U.S. also have a rather novel way of pronouncing 'lieutenant'.

#63 Isn't it the Brits who add an 'f' to the mix? My OED thinks so, anyway,

My OED isn't absolutely sure, trying to put part of the responsibility on the Old French. It's just that left-enant sounds right.

segue.

Always read that as seakh or something similar. And thought that a segway was that thing on 2 wheels Adam Savage likes to push cones around with.

I friend of mine asked me for help spelling segue because it was so different from what she expected that she couldn't get the spelling close enough to look it up.

I hope I never get lost in Iowa and have to ask the way to Des Moines.

55 and 68> Bill Bryson can't say scones properly, he makes it rhyme with Dons. What my fellow Brits can do with Yosemite is unbelievabubble.

>68 darrow:. Ha, ha I recently heard someone BBC no less pronounce Des Moines as spelled with the 'S's' and 'E's'. Dez moyness.

Wandered a bit from the original topic, epenthesis, but that's the way long threads work ...

But we always said scons at home ??

Scones to rhyme with dons? Of course.

But vases? Vayses, vawses, or vahses?

Vayses if I own it, vawses if it cost more than $50, and never vahses.

Where I come from (Northern Ireland) scones are pronounced "scawns", which is what I believe you are saying is like "dons". In Dublin, where I live now, it is pronounced like s-cones, which would look intuitively correct.

This is a difference in pronunciation that I detested when I first came across it. I was so annoyed by it that I consulted the OED (in the early 1980s) to discover that the OED accepted both pronunciations as correct.

Of course, I soon lost faith in the OED when it started to accept "organization" spelled with an "s" instead of a "z".

> 73

In England, the pronunciation "sconns" or "scones" (rhymes with "stones") is an indicator of class distinction, of course. "Sconns" is posh.

Fastest cake in the world?.....................................................................'s gone! (Sorry!)

74> You just HAVE to come back here, housefulofpaper, and explain to our American friends about where you live....Reading Berks. No, no I don't mean you Americans, I mean.... Oh, housefulofpaper will explain.

Over to you......

You mean Reading pronounced "Redding" in the County of Berkshire (Berks) pronounced "Barkshire" ("Barks")?

There's nothing odd about that, surely?

76> Not at all. Reading PA is pronounced that way after all.

#76 Reading pronounced "Redding"

It's an old town, so it is past tense.

Oh.

Does anyone remember crimplene? Known to many as crimpulene.

#80 I remember it well.

#80 Oh god, yes! I really thought my mind had successfully blanked that out (both the fabric and the pronunciation) until you reminded me.

#74 Always knew I was common.

#82 Always knew I was common.

I will do my best not to look down my nose at you.

A loverly piece of epenthesis is Dick Van Dykes rendition of Chimeney in Mary Poppins.

#48 - The folks that grow them in California leave out the "l". At first I didn't know what was being discussed.

trilogy
tricycle
trinity
trident

My Spanish speaking friend can never figure out how to pronounce the 'i' in 'tri-'. I told him he just has to memorize.

On the other hand, his name is Gerardo (pronounced Herardo) and our Italian friend often stumbles and pronounces it with a hard 'G'.

I think I need to teach my Spanish speaking friend how to spell fish in English - ghoti: 'gh' (as in laugh), 'o' (as in women), and 'ti' (as in nation). But he might just correct my pronunciation: 'gh' as in though, o as in people,
t as in ballet, and i as in business.

Os.

O course, a lot of the pronunciation inconsistencies are the result of words entering English from different languages; sometimes keeping some semblance of the original language pronunciation, and some not.

In other cases, two words with identically spelled syllable may have evolved to that spelling from very different original words.

And then, there is the great vowel shift, which took place about the time the printing press was taking off. Some changes took place before widespread printed media was available, and, thus, the printed spelling often reflected the new pronunciations, while other took place after widespread printing, and the spelling was already being standardized while the pronunciations were changing.

Just three reasons English pronunciation is far less rules-based than other western languages.

Os.

tough
though

A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a lough, he coughed and hiccoughed.

#90 Having brought "lough" into this you are teasing the Anglo-Saxons who cannot pronounce Gaelic words. :-)

#90: Got to admit I'm not sure about 'lough'. I'd probably go for 'luff'. And (#90) my Scottish wife used to berate me for pronouncing 'loch' as if it was 'lock'.

>89 JerryMmm:,90,91. Right JerryMmm, it's tough though.

A guy at college was named BRIGHAM. A clever young English master showed, on the blackboard using about four rules of English spelling, why poor Brigham's name should be pronounced “B”.

>92 PossMan: Yes, perhaps. The phrase as usually given, "falling into a slough", might be understood by more, but it's the same sound (to me) as "plough". So I changed it, hoping that enough readers will be familiar with "loch", if only from the lines of a song. Even if pronounced to rhyme with "lock", it adds another sound to the sentence.

For anyone still confused, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch

>91 pgmcc:,92,94
Anglo-Saxons should be able to pronounce the Gaelic "-ch" sound, surely. It's only in relatively modern times that it dropped out of English.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s when the troubles in Northern Ireland were receiving plenty of press coverage there were a few lighter moments on the otherwise dreadful radio and TV news reports broadcast by the London based news channels. These were the times when the English news presenters would try to pronounce the Northern Ireland place names. Portglenone (Port-glen-own) was literally pronounced as Port-glen-one.

There was a particularly clever presenter who was obviously aware of how to pronounce lough (which is pronounced in the same way as the Scottish Loch) and decided to apply his knowledge to the pronunciation of Armagh. He pronounced Armagh as Arm-agggh when it is simply pronounced Arm-a. At least he tried.

Is this a good time to bring in the Youghiogheny River in southwest PA and adjacent West Virginia? Yock-a-gainey - seems simple when you are used to it but it really confounds visitors As does the Juniata River-and county frequently mis-pronounced as the Spanish feminine for John - including by the automated voice on the weather radio.

98> I've crossed it, seen the name and given up. I could never have made Yock-a-gainey out of it. Must be an old indian name? Too much peace-pipe?

#98 Helenoel: I would have guessed Yock-a-hainey.

For Juniata River: Hwanita?

100> Hwanita River is just what it aint. :o)

Or Slaithwaite in Yorkshire --> which must be pronounced as "Slah-wit"
Alnwick --> pronounced "a-neck"

Lovely!

>100 pgmcc: - nope, June-ee-ah-ta.

> 98 - I assume Youghiogheny is derived from native American roots-

#98 Good guess. It's Algonquin - something like "river that flows the wrong way". The students in the geography department at the University of Maryland used to make a annual whitewater rafting trip to the Yoch.

#102

There is a good one in Lincolnshire where a friend lives
Aslackby which is pronounced aze-ul-by

Norfolk is the place you want for strange pronunciations. Some of the best are

Happisburgh pronounced Hazebro
Wymondham pronounced Windum
Tacolneston pronounced Tacklestun
Ranworth pronounced Ranner
Letheringsett pronounced Larnsett
Hautbois pronounced Hobbies

Locals call Norton Belleau "Blo Nortun". Although I am not sure such a reversal counts.

What a lovely thread. Have read it straight through so can't refer to the specific posts mentioning these words, but 1) I was taught that 'shedule' for 'schedule', like 'eyether' for 'either' gained currency when it was used by courtiers brown-nosing whichever King George it was who spoke English with a very heavy German accent. 2) As for Des Moines, I somehow ended up spending a couple of days in Versailles, Missouri without ever learning to pronounce it properly: Versales. 3) That extra syllable in Irish-English 'film', 'Colm' etc. is probably because there's no 'lm' sequence in Irish. And pronunciation of 'scone' is not only a class thing here, but probably would to a native indicate whether the speaker is Protestant or Catholic. Certainly the way the letter 'h' is pronounced is supposed to (aspirated 'haitch' is considered Catholic, but I hope that nonsense is dying out).

What reason do you have to "hope that nonsense is dying out"?

Does one need reasons to hope?

#106

On 'film' - Geordies also put an extra syllable in the word.

A long time ago in Flagstaff USA, a little lady in front of me on the path passed out in the heat. I gave her some water from my rucksack and she took my arm, we proceeded.

“It's OK, we're nearly at the lodge”, I encouraged her. The big sign said LODGE.

“Lodge? .. You a weird or summet?” , she asked. “S'called a “Large”, cancha even read?” She stormed off at speed.

I liked learning a while back that the British troops during WWI pronounced/nicknamed Ypres, Belgium, "Wipers."

See their 'newspaper' at Wipers Times.

The front cover of that collection from The Wipers Times shows The Golden Virgin atop the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Brebières ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert,_Somme for more about it)

#111

Oh, the British forces have a penchant for giving things (and places) silly names.

HMS Bellerophon was known as the Billy Ruffian (as any reader of Patrick O'Brian knows.

There are some less other well-known WW1 ones though - Hébuterne was called About Turn.

#109: That's something I didn't know and find interesting. Given the nearness of the border, could it be down to influence of Gaelic?

Re Ypres/Wipers and the like: I can't discern when British pronunciations, especially of foreign words, are down to inability/unwillingness to use correct pronunciation & when they're jocular. (Perhaps the two overlap, though?) I mean, British pronunciation shows unlike American an honest attempt to get 'Renaissance' right but an almost contemptuous approach to 'Raphael', and whilst its 'van Gogh' seems right for Dutch version (though I suspect that--but am too lazy to look up whether--the artist himself came to use the French version) I learned that booking a ferry ticket from Vlissengen to Sheerness is far more fraught than getting a ticket out of Flushing.

Van Gogh was, for a time, a lay preacher in England and is listed in the Parish Register as 'van Gof' so I assume that is how he pronounced his name.

In Dutch, at least now, his name is pronounced with two ch sounds from loch. Van Choch as you will.

>115 bluepiano:
I'm sure the jocular and the practical overlap in soldiers' and sailors' versions of placenames. If you're stuck in a muddy trench in Flanders with death and destruction all around you, then it might be comforting to have familiar-sounding names for the places around you. But if you have a system of names everyone can pronounce, it probably also reduces the chance of misunderstandings about orders, which might be a more important advantage.

There's also the British peculiarity that we often get our idea of how to pronounce foreign placenames via the French, and since the French have no respect for any language other than their own and the British can't pronounce French (see above), the results can be rather odd. Ieper -> Ypres -> Wipers; Köln -> Cologne -> Co-loan; München -> Munich -> Myoo-nick, etc.

Re Geordie - I would have thought Danish was the more likely culprit.

#119 Any advise?

No, but possibly some advice (that's the penalty you pay for posting in this group.)

>119 wossname:
You might want to get in touch with these gentlemen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bog3Usn2DgA

#122 Sorry - it was me being typically pedantic with advice on spelling the word 'advice'. Just ignore me.

#123 it was me being typically pedantic

Surely this should be, "...was my being..."?

;)

PS I am getting worried about you: apologising for being pedantic. I think you need a nice cup of tea.

124> Agreed. Why should wossname get away with it? Coming here, making mistakes and then getting an apology. It is very disturbing. I feel safer when she has her fangs out. (Well, not “out” exactly but … showing)

I've been neglecting LT, which makes it all the more strange that nobody has yet execrated the truly horrible (mostly US) habit of pronouncing the magical French borrowed word 'lingerie' as 'lawngeray'.

I still haven't forgiven the US for leading other anglophones into the habit of saying 'RE-search', in the face of (at least) most European languages which put the stress on the 'search' part. See 'recherche', 'ricerca', etc.

#I second that. It always annoys me.

#126 Oh, thank you Cliff, for raising the subject of lingerie!!!!!

The one I hate most is "chaise longue" that has somehow become "chaise lounge".

I was about to say what is wrong with pronouncing 'lingerie' as 'lawngeray'. Then I realized I pronounced it lawn-zhur-ay.

I don't think I've ever heard lingerie pronounced as lawngeray. I must be in the wrong part of the U. S.

Knickers !

Underdunkers!

In 2001 I started working in the systems department of a chain of department stores. I initiated meetings with all the buyers to help me get to know the business. The first buyer to come to my office was called Tom. Tom's first words to me were, "I am Tom and I'm in Ladies' Underwear. Do not crack any jokes. My children have cracked them all."

#131 And the wrong part of the world in general - it's only really in France that they've noticed it ends with an 'ie' not an 'ay'.

#134 Apropos of nothing but an attempt to top your story - one of our friends was doing a DIY project that involved covering a surface with a large piece of felt. He walked up to the sales assistant in a local department store and ask "Excuse me, where can I get felt?" (It happened more than 40 years ago but still makes me smile.)

#135 Booksloth, that certainly tops my story. Now, what was the shop assistant's answer and what happened next?

;)

#136 I wasn't there - that's all the information I have. I can only say that, had it been me, I'd have found it impossible to keep a straight face.

133>

Is this cryptic for slightly undercooked dog-burgers at an Oz barbi ? :)

>135 Booksloth:-137
Hmm. Forty years ago: perhaps the next line ought to have been "Are you free, Mrs Slocum?"

139> Had it been B&Q the salesman would have asked "Do you want decking?"

132,133> "Anything you say will be taken down."

#139 "I'm free, Mr Peacock!"

>141 pgmcc:
Captain Peacock, please!

#142 I sit corrected.

;)

126> Since when do the English consider England part of Europe?

144. Since Napoleon got his wish and they built that bloody tunnel ;-)

#138

No - underdunkers is an Aussie name for underpants.

#144 Ever since Europe first existed, as far as I'm aware. Which continent did you think we're a part of?

Underdunkers, with a 'k', not underdungers, with a 'g'? You sure?

That is how I have always heard it but people can mispronounce things. This is Western Australia - we are a bit different sometimes.

#148

I have just tried saying 'underdungers' aloud. I assume that it originated as 'under dungarees' but I can see how it morphed into underdunkers - it is much easier to say and there is hardly any difference when said aloud.

Recently, two BBC TV presenters with an impeccable education made very odd mistakes. Stephen Fry thought gill (meaning a quarter of a pint) had a hard G as in the fish's breathing organ. And Griff Rhys-Jones believed that ague (a fever) rhymed with plague - a mistake I can understand, but why didn't he check first?

I always thought ague rhymed with plague - but I don't think I've ever heard anyone say it.

#152

Something like a-gyoo for me.

#151,#152: I've always thought ague and plague rhymed together. And although in a pub I would never use the word "gill" if I wanted a half-pint (I'd just say "a half") I think I'd have gone for a "jill" if I had to use the the word (but I had to think about it).

Now that the floodgates have been opened on Australian pronunciation, I can report that I once watched a BBC arts programme in which a lady from that place kept talking about 'seen film'. I eventually worked out she was individualising 'cine film'. (Sorry, can't do French accents.)

Less humorously, I get niggled by the Australian habit of making 'defuse' and 'diffuse' homophones. As far as I an concerned, diffusing a crisis essentially means spreading it, not rendering it harmless.

>128 Booksloth: et seq.

Down with knickers!

>156 CliffordDorset:

?

As far as I know ague is pronounced awg. One syllable. I'm probably wrong too though.

They look to me like 'plus fours' but the rest of the costume is wrong. Jodhpurs Indian style? With puttees.

ague = 'ergju according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary

>160 pinkozcat: You have got to be kidding me. I have no idea how to pronounce that and there's no "r!"

That would be an English non-initial 'r' which sort of shapes the things around it but isn't heard itself. So eigh gyoo it is, with eigh as in eight and gyoo as in ...

Robert

> 161

"'ergju"

Ah, but it's the phonetic alphabet - 'er= 'ay' as in day, g= 'g' as in get, j= 'y' as in you, u= 'u' as in put.

I've no idea how to type the actual characters of the phonetic alphabet, but a dictionary that uses them is very useful - until it refers to 'Parisian French' pronunciation. That's no help to me at all.

>159 pinkozcat:
US usage of "knickers."

It's one syllable, "ergju". There are no separations. So how is that pronounced in one syllable? If it is, in fact, two syllables, which has the stress?

It was originally a French word, I think and in French the 'a' would be pronounced 'are' as in a e i o u = are, ai, ee, or, ooo.

165: it's /ˈeɪgjuː/, not /'ergju/ -- the initial ' is the primary stress marker (i.e., on the first syllable -- of two; obviously you can't pronounce it in one)

(Edit: I just discovered Oxford Online says /ˈeɪgjuː/ for UK English but spells it /ˈāˌgyo͞o/ for US English -- apparently Americans can't handle IPA :) I want to pronounce the latter like "argue", though)

#160 to #163 Let us not argue over this.

#164 Short for "knickerbockers".

Now I've got the hang of spelling, I find my main use for a dictionary is to tell me the recommended pronunciation. I was amused, nay, angered when the person at Dictionary Corner on the TV word game Countdown would say "This is how to spell the word - I don't know how to pronounce it". But they had an open dictionary in front of them. Hmm (pronounced Hmm).

#165

The primary stress is on the initial syllable. The OED has ˈeɪgju - the ˈ indicates primary stress

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ague includes a sound file.

I'm not arguing. I'm not understanding.

So it's EIGH-gyoo?

I've always heard/understood it as ay-gyoo. Rhymes with...hay-gyoo.

But The Hague rhymes with Haig, right?

#174 After some Haig it sounds more like "Hargue".

In Oceania, English words get wonderfully exercised: in Hawaiʻi, this in Hawaiian-Creole (American colonial) English becomes dis; in Tahiti (French), dees; in Tonga (Standard British), tis. And thatʻs just the beginning.

Going from Oceania to the American Northeast, I felt confident I could handle the English, as I had a good reading vocabulary (at home, it was my familyʻs pride). Then in a new-found friendʻs kitchen, I asked to help, and asked "Where is the spa-toola?" "The whaaat?" "Spa-toola." Then I saw the dang thing and was told "spat-chula!"

After years in the Northeast where, to "fit in," I changed pronouncing tomatoes as toh-may-toes -- to toh-mah-toes.
Then when I returned home I got disgusted having to switch and unswitch, so one day, I thought Iʻd just entrench. Tohmahtoes is what comes out. When people laugh, I point out the local pronunciation, even among academics, of student is stoodent! As for spatula, few people even knew it was a legitimate word, leave alone what it was until the U.S. military took over. What a treat for regional choices. But the State Dept. of Education still insists on Standard English, unaware that it has no definitive meaning, regarding pronunciation, in the public schools, and none that can be enforced: teachers concentrate on reading and writing, silently,out of self-defense. Dictionaries are hopeless, if one has Never heard the words. And even if one has -- how do you spell them? Some are lucky: they learned the rules and decided on a personal guide. Nonetheless, even today, very few families have dictionaries. Dictionaries are what tourists need? Dictionaries, the conviction is, in this still very Oral Culture, are not a necessity like the Bible, King James or Standard Revised, Smith, Goodyear, etc., and recently in Hawaii (not Hawaiian this time) Creole, comp. for the International. Summer Institute, ed. Grimes. In much of this, the "correct" pronunciation is whatever happens. It is also a matter of the ideal person around to sound like. The radio used to be our hope, i.e. as a source of a practical ideal starting point of a native-English authority; then TV (yes and no) and Internet (definitely). The tolerance level is aloha, which is like the song "We shall overcome." :)

Thank you, everybody. This has been the most fun Topic on LT.

It used to say "Don't be vague, ask for Haig" on the sides of buses. Something that puzzled me greatly until I discovered that "vague" rhymes with "Haig"...

Although I've lived there a very long time, I've never bothered to look into the origins of the English name for Den Haag - possibly the modern pronunciation comes from the spelling, or possibly the spelling is a way to match the pronunciation. Since neither spelling nor pronunciation is the same as either the original Dutch or the French version, it's a bit of a puzzle. But the two English words for wooded enclosure cognate with Dutch haag are hag and hay, so perhaps the name is simply a cross between the two?

Then there is the personal name Haig*, but Iʻve never heard any controversy about how to pronounce it.
The ethnicity of it, as far as I know can be either Scottish or Armenian.
When Iʻve seen imported books that were published in
the Dutch "Seat of Government" they had a phrase which I took to mean
"At the Countsʻ (Graven) Hedge". I donʻt remember the exact Dutch words.
Iʻve also seen Dutch English-language publications which remind the reader that
"Amsterdam is the ONLY
capital." I suppose to affirm that being the "Seat of Government" doesnʻt make
you the capital, or in view of the possible erroneous belief that Amsterdam is only
the "official" capital, or is
an "honorary" capital, or the firrst of two capitals.
Curiosity: Do you, b t w, thorold, know the
Dutch phrase that is "Seat of Government" in English?

*As in the late Alexander Haig, once commandant of NATO and, for a short time,
Ronald Reaganʻs Secretary of State. I donʻt remember any mention of his ethnicity,, when he was a candidate for
the G O P nomination for president.

Just today, I learned how to pronounce ennui. I've read it fairly frequently but don't think I've heard it pronounced. Kind of embarrassing to admit.

Henri, le chat noir, suffers from ennui. You will find him on u-tube but there are subtitles. I understand that his French is bad but I think that he is Canadian.

's Gravenhage or Den Haag is the 'Regeringsstad' or city of government. I can't think offhand of an equivalent for seat.

Meowwww!

:-)

>178 leialoha:,181
The standard alternative term for Den Haag is "Residentie" - which refers to its role as the seat of the Counts of Holland and later the Stadhouders and Kings/Queens rather than to the presence of the States-General that followed from that.
You sometimes also see the word "hofstad" (court city) - as distinct from "hoofdstad" (capital city).

>178 leialoha: Haig

The British general Douglas Haig was a Scot (a member of the Haig whisky family). The US Secretary of State Alexander Haig presumably also had Scottish or Ulster ancestors on his father's side. According to Wikipedia his mother was of Roman Catholic Irish descent.

>184 thorold:: A bit OT but when I indexed a biography of Haig a few years ago I was amazed to find that up to the Great War (and perhaps a bit beyond) officers in the British army had to sport a moustache.

You say 'carmeena'; I say 'carmyna'
You say 'burahna'; I say 'buranna'
Let's call the whole thing Orff.

Karl, I presume.

>154 PossMan: A gill was officially defined as a quarter of a pint (as in #151) - you would generally have been disappointed by your gill of beer although I believe the term was applied informally to a half-pint in some areas. The standard pub measure of spirits in England used to be one sixth of a gill long after gills had otherwise disappeared. The measure is now metric - either 25 or 35ml. Beer continues to be sold in pints (along with milk) but wine measures are metric: small 125ml, medium 175ml and large 250ml (that's a third of a bottle! - no wonder the Chardonnay drinkers get wobbly after a glass or three)

>188 abbottthomas: Well "gill" may have meant "quarter pint" in Westminster but I'm sure in Publand it was double that although I take your point that it this could be a regional thing. And I've just checked my Yarwood & Castle "Physical and Mathematical Tables" which says a gill is 0.142065 cubic decimetres (!) which supports your post as regards the real meaning (outside pubs of course)

The legal standard English spirit measure is 25ml or 35ml. These are the metric conversions of the old measures of 1/6 gill or 1/4 gill (or 1/5 gill in Scotland).
The gill is sometimes spelled jill. There is an explanation of the nursery rhyme:
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.
When Charles I scaled down the 'jack' (a two-ounce measure) so as to collect higher sales taxes, the jill, by definition twice the size of the jack, was automatically reduced also and 'came tumbling after.'

http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/units/volume.htm

As the son of a publican I can vouch to the gill being 1/4 of a pint. The little spirit measures used when optics are not in use, used to always be fractions of a gill as stated in the first line above.

Know the rhyme well but interesting to see the explanation.

Fascinating thread, and I've learned a lot! The one that makes me growl at the radio is "vunnrable" in place of "vulnerable". Sadly, I think it may be a lost cause ...

With all the snow and winter weather, we have had many days with the radio listing all the school closings. I very much doubt that there is a catholic school called Mt. Cavalry, but it has been reported as closed a lot lately. "Onward Christian soldiers"?

192> ....also "onruble". People don't use their lips anymore!

193> printers lore: never print 'Calvary' and 'cavalry' on the same page if it can be avoided ... :-)

And then there are 'seckerterry', 'Feb-yew-arry', 'Pry Minister', 'A Go-Less Draw', 'some thin kelse'.

Such grating excrescences make Russel Hoban's Riddley Walker all the more plausible.

My husband was watching a show where a woman lost her job as a "liberry assistant." Personally, I think that particular job loss was deserved.

I figured them all out except 'A Go-Less Draw'. That one has me stumped.

0 - 0

They keep advertising Ginster's Pasties on the TV with a hard 'G' so I suppose that's what the firm want, but we still say Jinsters!

>189 PossMan: ...a gill is 0.142065 cubic decimetres...

Well, a US gill is 0.11829 cubic decimeters (not decimetres, of course), but then a US pint is ~1.2 British pints, so that makes sense - a gill is a quarter of a pint in the US or Britain; it's the pint that changes!

Oh, and if you ever need to know, there are 288 US gills in a firkin (but only 239.7 British gills in a firkin). You can blame that on the pint as well! %^)

Os.

>201 Osbaldistone: 239.7 British gills in a firkin

You must be talking US firkins.

The British firkin = 9 gallons = 72 pints = 288 gills (all British units).

So if you change the pint you also change the "half a pint, gill pot, half a gill, quarter gill, nipperkin and the brown bowl", to say nothing of the "quart pot, yard pot, half gallon, the gallon, the firkin, the half barrel, the barrel, ..."

>200 oldstick:
We never say Jinsters.
And I don't suppose we ever will say Jinsters, because we never 'ave said Jinsters.

#201 but then a US pint is ~1.2 British pints,

Wrong way around.

A US pint is approx 473ml a British (well Imperial) pint is 568ml
So 1 imperial pint is 1.2 US pints.

Jinsters? That's new one to me too, here in the land of the pasty.

>201 Osbaldistone:, 202
I am so glad to know that. I managed to misplace my firkin.

Which is something we always try not to do.

The US/UK disparity in volume measures helps us understand why our former colonials buy (and drink) hard liquor in quarts, and why they get fewer miles per gallon of fuel. Their fluid ounce may be bigger than ours, but they only have sixteen of them to the pint, instead of our twenty.

It's anomalies such as this that make it easier to comprehend how, although the US was one of the earliest adopters of the metric system - under George Washington - they haven't bothered to implement it! And then of course there's the use of the kiloyard by the US Navy!

xxx

The above (post 209) is part of an experiment. There seems to be no point in having a “Delete” button under "more" if it will not delete a post.

>210 Novak: Perhaps you should report it as a bug, because it used to delete posts just fine. However, when it's working, it only deletes the contents of the post, leaving the message as this post has been deleted by the author or something close to that.

>212 PhaedraB: & 210
it only deletes the contents of the post, leaving the message as this post has been deleted by the author...which always leaves an enigma to ponder.

How do you get "Rayf" from Ralph Fiennes?

"...if it will not delete a post..." 209>210

When I click on "Delete" (under "More") it DOES delete
the post. Do you mean that
your "xxx" (209) didnʻt get deleted? A conjecture (Iʻm no technical expert): a 3-character message might be too short for them to handle?
Iʻve noticed that "Search"
doesnʻt very often respond to a request for real short titles. (I havenʻt deduced just HOW short it is that puts a title off limits for "Search".)
(and also seems to have an
aversion to titles that are
entirely or largely made up of
a personal name.)

Very strange. It would allow me to edit but not delete. I was interested so I stuck at it. No way.

In the end I erased the text because it had nothing to do with the thread. When I pressed post message it simply rememberd the text and put it back in again.

I edited a few times to no effect and then settled for xxx. It seemed quite happy with that.

There you go. Post 218 is what I was trying. To find a member quickly just type in the @ ("at" symbol) followed by the name. Post. Then just click on the name, and it takes you to their profile. Works well. I wont try to delete it now and we'll see if he gets loads of attention. :)

Novak, I am running a test.

And youʻre right. Iʻm glad you added "Post" to the instructions. (I have a way of leaving out things that might seem too obvious to mention in routine instructions!) Omitting "Post" must have been why I previously wasnʻt able to get onto the screen
names that I had put the
@ in front of.

 

>221 Mr.Durick: Well said!

>222 pgmcc: & 221 The silence of the night-owls. :)

“Of mice and Men”. I tagged on to any old thread to try this out, intending to erase and disappear. Now we seem to have taken over the “Pronunciation” thread and turned it into something else. We could be in trouble.. .. .. ..

When the crocodiles are snapping at your .. .. .. You know the tune.. .. ..

> 29 'pecan' is either PEE-can or pee-CAHN.

The original Algonquian word sounded like \pə 'kan\, so puh-CAHN is a good default position.