Reminds me of Eustace Clarence Scrubb who did not call his parents Father and Mother but 'Harold' and 'Alberta'. (CSL clearly thought this a bad thing).
He also disapproved of them being non smoking, teetotal vegetarians! How times have changed....
And they wore a special kind of underwear. Mormons?
When we argue about what babies say when they begin to identify their maternal parent, I am reminded of the different sounds animals make when to the Spanish. A list, here:
Same animals, same sounds, but for some reason, we hear it differently. Could that been happening with the first sounds a baby makes? The English expect the sound to be mum and it is; but the American expect the sound to be mom, and it is.
There is the old song
You say tomayto, I say tomahto,
Tomayto, Tomahto
Tomahto, Tomayto
Let's call the whole thing off.
I've never heard longitude with a soft g, but equally it's not a word I hear often. The OED has both pronunciations.
I didn't see the attempt of the BBC to pronounce Jorge in the Spanish way as pretentious. More respectful, as it was Spain who named that storm. I googled the name at the time, and discovered the sounds in Spanish are not phonemes in English, at least not RP English, so the /h/ sound is the nearest approximation.
It's interesting, though - I do find that in the UK, it has often been seen as pretentious to attempt to pronounce something from another language in its original pronunciation, and we have a bit of a history of wanting people from other countries to change their names to something familiar to us. Dismissing a 'foreign' name as impossible to pronounce has been quite common in the UK. (I put foreign in quotation marks because of course plenty of our English names are from other countries too, so I mean a new and unfamiliar foreign name.)
I became particularly aware of this when I was in Canada, and it was very much the norm to attempt to pronounce someone's name with its original pronunciation, rather than default to English phonemes. So, for instance, if someone was called Maria, and from a Spanish speaking country, people would attempt to pronounce the 'r' in her name in the Spanish way, which doesn't seem to happen in the UK in my experience. I asked people in Canada about this, why they do it, and they all said it was respectful to try to pronounce a person's name the way they pronounce it.
Of course storms are less personal, though I suspect the Spanish might attempt to pronounce our storms with our pronunciations, rather than completely change them. I think in general an attempt to be aware of other languages is respectful. I always thought the idea about pretentiousness was more about words for food that more privileged people are likely to have eaten in the food's country of origin, and so learnt the name of the food in its original pronunciation. So a bit of a class divide can happen, where people who come across the word for the first time in the UK are of course more likely to default to an anglicised pronunciation, and maybe feel resentful of the the people who airily use a foreign sound they're unfamiliar with - it can maybe seem a bit snobby and cliquey.
During the 2018 World Cup there was some controversy here about a commentator pronouncing foreign player's names in a foreign fashion, accusing her of being pretentious.
There was certainly a considerable amount of misogyny involved. This was the first time that a woman had taken the lead hosting role. Her predecessor was both male and had an 'accent' anyway as he was a refugee from Hungary.
But as far as she and her colleagues were concerned, pronouncing a name the way the person themselves would pronounce it was a basic matter of respect.
The IPA symbol for what is being pronounced by English speakers as /h/ in Jorge is /x/. Voiceless velar fricative, further forward in the mouth than /h/, which is a voiceless glottal fricative. It's the sound at the end of the Scottish word 'loch.'
When some English people say 'huge' in an exaggerated way to emphasise hugeness, saying the h and the y simultaneously, and slightly prolonged, with the middle of their tongue up at the top of their mouth - it's like that. In reality, it's easy for English speakers to say in contexts they're familiar with, like 'huge', but hard for many to realise what they're doing in their mouth and consciously apply to a different sort of word.
The Spanish 'r' is probably harder for us to get right.
A lot of embarassment by English people over foreign sounds. I remember learning French and those shameful u sounds, much nicer to say a lax English u.
Footballers' names are a mine of comedy, Mesut Özil sometimes pronounced to rhyme with nozzle. But the player Gabriel Jesus is the reverse, everyone careful to pronounce it a la Portuguese: [ʒeˈzus]. We don't want those old jokes, Jesus saves and de Bruyne scores on the rebound. (De Bruyne is easy peasy to pronounce).
Our local university has a huge number of students from all over the world. A friend of mine has the job each year of announcing the names at graduation. He takes very seriously the responsibility of learning the correct pronunciation of each name, as it would be pronounced in their country of origin.
Our local university has a huge number of students from all over the world. A friend of mine has the job each year of announcing the names at graduation. He takes very seriously the responsibility of learning the correct pronunciation of each name, as it would be pronounced in their country of origin.
Does your friend interrogate each student to find out how they pronounce their name, or does he research the "standard" pronunciation of each name?
(I know a few sets of people with names that are spelled the same way, but who pronounce them differently - usually different vowel sounds or different emphasis.)
Our local university has a huge number of students from all over the world. A friend of mine has the job each year of announcing the names at graduation. He takes very seriously the responsibility of learning the correct pronunciation of each name, as it would be pronounced in their country of origin.
Does your friend interrogate each student to find out how they pronounce their name, or does he research the "standard" pronunciation of each name?
The former is what was done for high school graduation at the school my kids attended. Practice was held a few days before the ceremony, and practice included calling out the names of all 400+ graduates, among whom were a large number of Hispanic, African and other international students, as they walked up on the stage. That was the opportunity for any student to correct the way their name was pronounced; the assistant principal responsible for calling the names would make appropriate notes to help them pronounce it correctly.
There's the old story of the American being told by a Parisian 'Vous parlez Francais comme un Belge' (You speak French like a Belgian) and taking it for a compliment. To even the score, remember Chaucer's Nun's Prioress,, who spoke French 'after the fashion of Stratford-atte-Bow'.
Longitude sounds quite like lawn-di-tude here. The d isn't quite a d but it is close to d than to g.
Jorge - as haw-hay. I think haw must be said differently in some places it has the same sound as awe here. We'd say Jorge as hor rhyming with "or". The hay is not quite accurate as the y of hay is clipped short in the name.
Recently I visited the van Gogh display in London. There I was interested to hear that Dutch members of his family pronounced the name in a way that was half way between the English (Goff) and American (Go) ways. So we're both wrong!
To all: Do "often" and "soften" rhyme in your dialect/idiolect?
Yes. The 't' is silent in both for me. But plenty of the people in the UK pronounce the 't' in 'often'. I did myself as a young child, but at ten years old, I had a teacher who told us it was a silent 't,' like in the word 'listen,' and she made quite a big deal about it, acting like it was terribly important, and so I believed her and stopped pronouncing it!
Recently I visited the van Gogh display in London. There I was interested to hear that Dutch members of his family pronounced the name in a way that was half way between the English (Goff) and American (Go) ways. So we're both wrong!
I could see describing the Dutch vowel in van Gogh as half-way between the one that Brits use and Americans use, but I don't think there's any sense that the guttural consonant sound in Dutch is half-way between the UK and US attempts.
Gogh apparently ends with the same sound that English speakers were pronouncing as 'h' in Jorge. The /x/ sound in loch. And it begins with the voiced version of that. Wikipedia has the phonetic transcription and an audio recording.
When Josephine and I were in Amsterdam this past summer, we were lost in the museum district looking for the Van Gogh museum, and a friendly but English-challenged gentleman asked if we were looking for the fahn khokh museum ("hibbeda hebbeda Van Gogh moo-zay-oom?"). Where the "kh" was a barely gutteralized, or perhaps better described as roughly-breathed, version of "h".
I wouldn't consider /x/ a guttural sound. It's produced at the soft palate part of the mouth, same as g, k and ng. My understanding of guttural is it's produced further back, in the throat, though I'm never sure exactly what sounds people mean by it, as it's not a term I've come across in linguistics/phonetics books - I just see it used in chats like these, to say a language or word sounds guttural.
I can't remember if this thread has covered the pronunciation of the word 'nuclear'. In the US, is it normally 'nookle-ar' (as used by a well-known former President), or 'newc-lee-ar', as in British English?
we spoke about IKEA a while back, and I've found another "foreign word" curiosity
how would you pronounce the Chinese telecoms company, Huawei?
here in the UK, it seems to be like hwhah-way, but the German radio station I'm listening to say it more like "hoo-ah why"
I'm more-or-less with Wet Kipper on "often/soften": in "often" the t is a barely-there glottal stop, which sounds almost like a soft k; in "soften" it's even barelier there.
we spoke about IKEA a while back, and I've found another "foreign word" curiosity
how would you pronounce the Chinese telecoms company, Huawei?
here in the UK, it seems to be like hwhah-way, but the German radio station I'm listening to say it more like "hoo-ah why"
I used to pronounce it "Who are we", until I heard it said on TV.
The new trains were pronouncing Kingussie as Kin-gussy. I haven’t been on one recently to see if they have corrected it. It drew laughter from the carriage!
The new trains were pronouncing Kingussie as Kin-gussy. I haven’t been on one recently to see if they have corrected it. It drew laughter from the carriage!
You realize that most will know what country it is in and how the locals might say it? Looks like king-gussy to me.
I heard Craigellachie pronounced Craig-e-latchie on the radio once.
Originally posted by Eirenist: There's the old story of the American being told by a Parisian 'Vous parlez Francais comme un Belge' (You speak French like a Belgian) and taking it for a compliment. To even the score, remember Chaucer's Nun's Prioress,, who spoke French 'after the fashion of Stratford-atte-Bow'.
When standardised school subject testing was introduced to Scotland in the 1870s, it transpired that different parts of Scotland had their own Latin. My bit of Scotland mounted a spirited campaign in favour of "Aberdeenshire Latin" but lost. I think "Edinburgh Latin" was adopted as the standard Scottish Latin.
I heard Craigellachie pronounced Craig-e-latchie on the radio once.
Originally posted by Eirenist: There's the old story of the American being told by a Parisian 'Vous parlez Francais comme un Belge' (You speak French like a Belgian) and taking it for a compliment. To even the score, remember Chaucer's Nun's Prioress,, who spoke French 'after the fashion of Stratford-atte-Bow'.
When standardised school subject testing was introduced to Scotland in the 1870s, it transpired that different parts of Scotland had their own Latin. My bit of Scotland mounted a spirited campaign in favour of "Aberdeenshire Latin" but lost. I think "Edinburgh Latin" was adopted as the standard Scottish Latin.
I heard Craigellachie pronounced Craig-e-latchie on the radio once..
That's the common Canadian pronunciation of a town in British Columbia.
Anent Kingussie, does anyone remember the comic strip called King Gussie? I wonder if it was DC Thomson in Dundee taking a shot at the highlanders.
Has 'mischievious' (with an extra 'i') appeared in the UK yet? It sounds weird to me, but people get upset if you comment on it. 'Homogen(e)ous' without the final 'e' is commonplace here too.
Comments
Soft.
And they wore a special kind of underwear. Mormons?
Here is a differential history of mom and mum, Fascinating reading.
When we argue about what babies say when they begin to identify their maternal parent, I am reminded of the different sounds animals make when to the Spanish. A list, here:
Same animals, same sounds, but for some reason, we hear it differently. Could that been happening with the first sounds a baby makes? The English expect the sound to be mum and it is; but the American expect the sound to be mom, and it is.
There is the old song
You say tomayto, I say tomahto,
Tomayto, Tomahto
Tomahto, Tomayto
Let's call the whole thing off.
I didn't see the attempt of the BBC to pronounce Jorge in the Spanish way as pretentious. More respectful, as it was Spain who named that storm. I googled the name at the time, and discovered the sounds in Spanish are not phonemes in English, at least not RP English, so the /h/ sound is the nearest approximation.
It's interesting, though - I do find that in the UK, it has often been seen as pretentious to attempt to pronounce something from another language in its original pronunciation, and we have a bit of a history of wanting people from other countries to change their names to something familiar to us. Dismissing a 'foreign' name as impossible to pronounce has been quite common in the UK. (I put foreign in quotation marks because of course plenty of our English names are from other countries too, so I mean a new and unfamiliar foreign name.)
I became particularly aware of this when I was in Canada, and it was very much the norm to attempt to pronounce someone's name with its original pronunciation, rather than default to English phonemes. So, for instance, if someone was called Maria, and from a Spanish speaking country, people would attempt to pronounce the 'r' in her name in the Spanish way, which doesn't seem to happen in the UK in my experience. I asked people in Canada about this, why they do it, and they all said it was respectful to try to pronounce a person's name the way they pronounce it.
Of course storms are less personal, though I suspect the Spanish might attempt to pronounce our storms with our pronunciations, rather than completely change them. I think in general an attempt to be aware of other languages is respectful. I always thought the idea about pretentiousness was more about words for food that more privileged people are likely to have eaten in the food's country of origin, and so learnt the name of the food in its original pronunciation. So a bit of a class divide can happen, where people who come across the word for the first time in the UK are of course more likely to default to an anglicised pronunciation, and maybe feel resentful of the the people who airily use a foreign sound they're unfamiliar with - it can maybe seem a bit snobby and cliquey.
There was certainly a considerable amount of misogyny involved. This was the first time that a woman had taken the lead hosting role. Her predecessor was both male and had an 'accent' anyway as he was a refugee from Hungary.
But as far as she and her colleagues were concerned, pronouncing a name the way the person themselves would pronounce it was a basic matter of respect.
The on-air response to what happened can be viewed here
The IPA symbol for what is being pronounced by English speakers as /h/ in Jorge is /x/. Voiceless velar fricative, further forward in the mouth than /h/, which is a voiceless glottal fricative. It's the sound at the end of the Scottish word 'loch.'
When some English people say 'huge' in an exaggerated way to emphasise hugeness, saying the h and the y simultaneously, and slightly prolonged, with the middle of their tongue up at the top of their mouth - it's like that. In reality, it's easy for English speakers to say in contexts they're familiar with, like 'huge', but hard for many to realise what they're doing in their mouth and consciously apply to a different sort of word.
The Spanish 'r' is probably harder for us to get right.
Footballers' names are a mine of comedy, Mesut Özil sometimes pronounced to rhyme with nozzle. But the player Gabriel Jesus is the reverse, everyone careful to pronounce it a la Portuguese: [ʒeˈzus]. We don't want those old jokes, Jesus saves and de Bruyne scores on the rebound. (De Bruyne is easy peasy to pronounce).
Does your friend interrogate each student to find out how they pronounce their name, or does he research the "standard" pronunciation of each name?
(I know a few sets of people with names that are spelled the same way, but who pronounce them differently - usually different vowel sounds or different emphasis.)
Jorge - as haw-hay. I think haw must be said differently in some places it has the same sound as awe here. We'd say Jorge as hor rhyming with "or". The hay is not quite accurate as the y of hay is clipped short in the name.
Yes. The 't' is silent in both for me. But plenty of the people in the UK pronounce the 't' in 'often'. I did myself as a young child, but at ten years old, I had a teacher who told us it was a silent 't,' like in the word 'listen,' and she made quite a big deal about it, acting like it was terribly important, and so I believed her and stopped pronouncing it!
@mousethief do they for you?
Yes.
I could see describing the Dutch vowel in van Gogh as half-way between the one that Brits use and Americans use, but I don't think there's any sense that the guttural consonant sound in Dutch is half-way between the UK and US attempts.
(Here's the BBC on the subject.)
but soften is "soffin"
how would you pronounce the Chinese telecoms company, Huawei?
here in the UK, it seems to be like hwhah-way, but the German radio station I'm listening to say it more like "hoo-ah why"
I used to pronounce it "Who are we", until I heard it said on TV.
General ignorance.
I realized some years ago that I add an extra n in front of the t in “united.” Don’t know where that came from.
Which doesn't lead to poo versus poop. More often it is poop here.
Originally posted by Eirenist:
There's the old story of the American being told by a Parisian 'Vous parlez Francais comme un Belge' (You speak French like a Belgian) and taking it for a compliment. To even the score, remember Chaucer's Nun's Prioress,, who spoke French 'after the fashion of Stratford-atte-Bow'.
When standardised school subject testing was introduced to Scotland in the 1870s, it transpired that different parts of Scotland had their own Latin. My bit of Scotland mounted a spirited campaign in favour of "Aberdeenshire Latin" but lost. I think "Edinburgh Latin" was adopted as the standard Scottish Latin.
Never heard it said anyway else.
Anent Kingussie, does anyone remember the comic strip called King Gussie? I wonder if it was DC Thomson in Dundee taking a shot at the highlanders.
Has 'mischievious' (with an extra 'i') appeared in the UK yet? It sounds weird to me, but people get upset if you comment on it. 'Homogen(e)ous' without the final 'e' is commonplace here too.