Perceived Pronunciation

[Aggie]

I have been getting surprises over the last little while when hearing the proper pronunciation of names that I have previously only seen in text.  I suspect that it could be a Canadian thing (or maybe just me) but I don't know if it's the British or French influence.  In most cases, it's that I am interpreting vowels as "short" rather than "long" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_length#Long_vowels_in_English . Examples are as follows, with my initial interpretation underlined:

Palin:    Pahlin vs. Paylin
Biden:   Bihden or Beeden vs. Buyden   _{(definitely lends itself to a French pronunciation, with a nasal 'n')}
Madoff: Mad|off vs. Maydoff


Does anyone else have these issues? 

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

I think it's a Canadian thing.
Bu then, I think I've heard all those names.
Paylin
By-den
Mad-off

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

That's the beauty of the phonetic languages, not having to figure out how the heck you pronounce that.

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

Does anyone else have these issues? 

Growing up, I lived on a street named "Mafeking", after the town in South Africa (now called Mafikeng, BTW) where there was a big siege during the Boer War.  I was in Boy Scouts and I knew the story of how Robert Baden-Powell led the defense of the town and in the process came up with the idea behind Scouting, so I knew how to pronounce it, but everyone I knew would pronounce it incorrectly:

The proper way: Mah-fuh-king.
Their way: Mayfe-king

It might've been a similar thing going on.

[Bluenose]

I have been getting surprises over the last little while when hearing the proper pronunciation of names that I have previously only seen in text.  I suspect that it could be a Canadian thing (or maybe just me) but I don't know if it's the British or French influence.  In most cases, it's that I am interpreting vowels as "short" rather than "long" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_length#Long_vowels_in_English . Examples are as follows, with my initial interpretation underlined:

Palin:    Pahlin vs. Paylin
Biden:   Bihden or Beeden vs. Buyden   _{(definitely lends itself to a French pronunciation, with a nasal 'n')}
Madoff: Mad|off vs. Maydoff


Does anyone else have these issues? 

If I had never heard these names, I would pronounce them all with the a long first vowel because there is only one consenant between it and the second vowel, and the rule I was taught was that the second vowel modifies the first unless there are two consonants, thus for example Madoff would be Maddoff is the first vowel was short.

[Aggie]

If I had never heard these names, I would pronounce them all with the a long first vowel because there is only one consenant between it and the second vowel, and the rule I was taught was that the second vowel modifies the first unless there are two consonants, thus for example Madoff would be Maddoff is the first vowel was short.

I suppose it behooves me to come up with some counter-examples. Eventually.

Biden should be a dead giveaway (as Bide is clearly byde - hmmm.... why is give not gyve?), THAT case I am sure is francophoniphilism.

Growing up, I lived on a street named "Mafeking", after the town in South Africa (now called Mafikeng, BTW) where there was a big siege during the Boer War.  I was in Boy Scouts and I knew the story of how Robert Baden-Powell led the defense of the town and in the process came up with the idea behind Scouting, so I knew how to pronounce it, but everyone I knew would pronounce it incorrectly:

The proper way: Mah-fuh-king.
Their way: Mayfe-king

It might've been a similar thing going on.

Heh, I grew up on Wolfe, adjacent to Montcalme.  Mafeking sounds delightfully invitational to bad puns, almost as good as the Fu Kin Rice we order every time we go for late-night/early am Chinese food.

[anthrobabe]

Ok here's one for you

Prescott-- name of a town in my current state of residence-how should it go? Press-cot (as in baby bed or military bed a cot)
how is is said around here
Preskit

Want another?
Casa- the town is named Casa- you know like house-in Spanish
pronounced?
Kasa -- long k, long a, s, long a

Biggest freaking one that yanks my chain!
El Dorado - another town
pronounced
El (this parts ok) Doh-ray-doh (doh is what Homer Simpson says!)

It's a southern thing.

Question-- if you write down the following and then say it outloud does it sound funny to you?
I'm
sofa
king
re
Todd
Ed

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Okay, here in Oklahoma?

We have a plethora of Native American names that have been Anglicized, even our state is a Native American word (I've no idea what it means.... probabily the first white men that came to the area asked the locals what the area was called with sign language.)

The natives likely looked around themselves, wondered why these pale-skins were so stupid and ignorant.....so they may well have replied with something like:

"it's land, stupid"

Or, if a bit of miss-interpretation of the gestures, it could have been:

"That's the sky stupid"

So:  Oklahoma might well mean "it's sky, stupid" in the local language..... 

What?  How to pronounce it?

Oklahoma: Oh- klah - home - uuh.

......

Oh as in Oh, Susanna!

klah as in the hot spicy drink from Pern (a fictional world created by Anne McCaffrey) .  Hard "K" as in kitten.  Short a as in... ah or naah.

home as in.....home.

uuh as in something a daft person might utter, when asked what the square root of 2,2104306 is.  (and no, I don't know either)  Rhymes with "duh"

First, soft emphasis on "Oh", second firmer emphasis on "home"

Oklahoma

.....

The city I live in, Tulsa is another Native American word, that may possibly mean:  "bend in the river, what are you blind?"  (actually I've no idea, but it sounds possible... )


It's pronounced pretty much as it's spelled:   Emphasis on first sylible, "Tul" and rhymes with "fall"

"sa" is pronounced with short "a" as in uh.

Thus Tulsa would rhyme with "fall-suh"

[anthrobabe]

Bob LOL
I know what you mean

I'd love to know what some of them really mean

a non-native american example of this is the
Aye-aye(Daubentonia madagascariensis) -- a primate from Madagascar- the story is (more citation needed because I heard it from an Egyptologist and they are liars  (well cited) especially if you give them their primary source of nourishment BEER) anyway the original language is lost/extince but it appears that while looking for this monster to study (the locals are notoriously afraid of them-well cited) the tracker excitedly pointed while yelling aye, aye and the anthropologist so named it ,- the aye-aye being a sort of cry of alarm in the native language or simply meaning there the damn thing is can we go home now.

[Aggie]

Okay, here in Oklahoma?

We have a plethora of Native American names that have been Anglicized, even our state is a Native American word (I've no idea what it means.... probabily the first white men that came to the area asked the locals what the area was called with sign language.)

The natives likely looked around themselves, wondered why these pale-skins were so stupid and ignorant.....so they may well have replied with something like:

"it's land, stupid"

The name Canada originated around 1535 from the Saint-Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata meaning "village",[1] "settlement",[2][3] or "land";[3] another contemporary translation was "cluster of dwellings".

The name Canada comes from a St. Lawrence Iroquoian word, kanata, meaning "village" or "settlement". In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier towards the village of Stadacona.[10] Cartier later used the word Canada to refer not only to that particular village, but also the entire area subject to Donnacona (the chief at Stadacona); by 1545, European books and maps had begun referring to this region as Canada.

There used to be a public service announcement on TV dramatizing the event; Lambi should remember it.  Couldn't find it on the 'net.



......aaaand that's where my bias comes from, especially for the letter a, eh?   Ca-na-da.

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

Yeah, I remember those commercials.  They made Champlain look like a bit of a numpty.   

Actually, they put my mind at ease a bit, because the other rumour I had heard before that was that the name "Canada" had come from what the early Portugese explorers had written over this area on their maps: "aca nada"... or "nothing here".  I was happy to find out that story was apocryphal.

Aggie - you might like this: my grandmother had a bunch of letters written by one of my ancestors who lived in New Brunswick pre-confederation where he talked about taking a trip "up to Canada"... i.e. Quebec and Ontario.

Okay, here in Oklahoma?

We have a plethora of Native American names that have been Anglicized, even our state is a Native American word (I've no idea what it means.... probabily the first white men that came to the area asked the locals what the area was called with sign language.)

According to Wikipedia, it means "red people" in Chocktaw.

The city I live in, Tulsa is another Native American word, that may possibly mean:  "bend in the river, what are you blind?"  (actually I've no idea, but it sounds possible... )


It's pronounced pretty much as it's spelled:   Emphasis on first sylible, "Tul" and rhymes with "fall"

"sa" is pronounced with short "a" as in uh.

Thus Tulsa would rhyme with "fall-suh"

Funny... I pronounce it "tull-suh" - the first syllable would rhyme with "seagull".

I guess this is how you tell the locals apart from the tourists, right?  We have a similar trick here: if you pronounce the second "t" in "Toronto", it's like announcing to everyone "hey!  We're not from here!" 

[The Meromorph]

I originally tried to post these in a long post near the beginning of the thread, but something went wrong so I gave up (it was a long post).

There are some irregular English surnames that always delight me.

Cholmondely - 'pronounced 'chumlee',
Featherstonehough - 'pronounced 'fanshaw',
Fortescue - 'pronounced 'fescue',
Taliaferro - 'pronounced 'tolliver'. and
Belvoir - 'pronounced 'beaver'.

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

There are some irregular English surnames that always delight me.

"It's spelled 'Raymond Luxury-Yacht, but it's pronounced 'Throatwobbler Mangrove'!"

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

Want another?
Casa- the town is named Casa- you know like house-in Spanish
pronounced?
Kasa -- long k, long a, s, long a

Oh... one that used to drive me bonkers: there's a town near Woodstock, Ontario, named "Delhi"... spelled just like the Indian city.

When I was dating a girl from Woodstock, she and her friends would laugh at me when I prounounced it like the city in India, i.e. "deli".  They'd say that it was actually pronounced "dell-high".   

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Are they at least receiving money from Dell?

[Bluenose]

Some Assie example towns:

Canowindra    pronounced  Kann-oun-dra    first syllablle short, second rhymes with noun & short run into first syllable, last syllable as in Sandra.    emphasis on second syllable

Wollongong    pronounced  woollen-gong     emphasis on first syllable

Merimbula    pronounced    Meh-rimb-you-lah   emphasis on the second syllable  third syllable very short and a glide


We also have our name of dubious or unexpected origin for example the annual festival in Melbourne is called "Moomba".  Allegedly the originators of this extravaganza asked the local aboriginals for a word that meant "let's get together and have fun".  This was back in the fifties.  Apparently these worthies did not appreciate the aboriginal sense of humour, which in my experience is well developed, and the word supplied meant let's get together and have an altogether different and more biological form of fun than the festival planner ever intended.  BTW, since this has come out in the last few years, the name has been kept - what ever that means.


And just for the fun of it some place names that may entertain you:

Nar Nar Goon

Koo Wee Rup

Woolloomoolloo

Nunawading

[Opsa]

Fun. I would have a blast there, just reading the highway signs.

Come to think of it, I have a blast reading highway signs, anywhere. I am one strange duck.

This is making me think of what a friend said to me recently. She is a great actress and a real theater and film buff and I made a reference to "A Thousand Clowns"- which is a classic movie. She had never heard of it, which mystified her, as she is around 50 years old. But she remarked (and this is the interesting part) that we should always beware of considering ourselves to be experts on any topic because there are always gaps in our knowledge, and sometimes they are weirdly consistant gaps, almost as if every time anyone ever mentioned "A Thousand Clowns" she had been out of the room, or had been thinking of something else and didn't hear it, or had somehow missed it every time it ever played on TV.

I know I've been surprised many times at things I didn't know. And pronounciation is particularly hard, because I can read a word for the longest time and not know it when I hear it, because I've imagined it said completely differently, over and over again.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

As for words that are spelled different than they are pronounced, I took to reading very well, and rapidly exceeded my age-related reading material, and moved on to higher age stuff.  Very quickly.  I outstripped my spoken experience, and thus encountered words that I'd read, but never heard...

...and thus for years, thought there were two distinct deserts:

The "Mo-ha-bee" desert

And the "Moh-jaave" desert

Not until well into adulthood did I come to realize these were one and the same:  the Mojave, just a (to me) weird pronouncation effect.

So, too, I was convinced that there were two distinct rivers in London:  the Thames (pronounced by me as "th" as in "the" and "ames" rhymes with James) and the Tims.   Again, when I finally tried to pronounce the "Thames" (long-A) out loud, and incorrectly, I was corrected of this misinformation.

*sigh*

I remember having an argument with one of my chums about the US auto maker's name:  Chevrolet.  I insisted it *ought* to be called "chev-rho-let"  (short "e", as in "Chet" pronounce the "T" at the end).  Then someone pointed out that it was a silly French name of an actual person, and was pronounced "Chev-rho-lay" (long -A, no "T" at the end, but "ay" instead).  My opinion of the French language took a severe dive (I was roughly 8 or 9 at the time) and has not significantly recovered since... 

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

Bob, the Mojave is south of me by about 125 miles and I've heard locals around HERE say it Mo-jāv-eh in utter seriousness. They can say Ba-hā (Baja), no problem, but Mo-hāv-he escapes them.
Weird, since most everything in the state has a Spanish name; our county, most of the little towns around here, the Sierra Nevadas, San Francisco, LA, etc. There's exceptions like Bakersfield, but not too many (everyone else in the state tries to avoid Bakersfield completely) and certainly not enough to excuse that.

[Pachyderm]

There are some irregular English surnames that always delight me.

"It's spelled 'Raymond Luxury-Yacht, but it's pronounced 'Throatwobbler Mangrove'!"

You are a very silly man, and I am not going to interview you anymore.

[Sibling Chatty]

Texas has more than enough weird pronunciations, THEN we have to deal with the bastardized Spanish.

Bastrop---BASS trop? No, Bass DROP.

Elgin---EL gin (as in the alcohol, with a j sound)?? No, El GIN with a G sound.

Manchaca--MAN shack, not the proper(ish) man SHA ka. (Spanish/Native American word)

Refugio--In Spanish, re FHYOO ee oh. In South Texas re FYURY oh

And my favorite Native American one Tehuacana (Tee WALK an ee, according to the language manglers) which is near Mexia (which, for some reason is mu HAY uh, the proper Spanish pronunciation).

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

Elgin---EL gin (as in the alcohol, with a j sound)?? No, El GIN with a G sound.

There's a road north of Toronto called Elgin Mills... most people pronounce that with a G sound, too.

[anthrobabe]

Sometimes things just get out of hand
like "moomba" in Australia

Naturally the Amish settlers/town namers are simply the best
with out intention and shame on we dirty minded bastards anyway

Blue Ball, PA
Intercourse, PA
both via
Paradise, PA

[Aggie]

Don't forget Dildo, Newfoundland.

[Bruder Cuzzen]

I live a street named Glebemount , I have to spell it out for everyone except those people that have lived on Glebemount or Glebeholme Avenues .

I have noticed that the majority of native Torontians pronounce Tor-on-to incorrectly.
The first nations' word that  translates in (to ?) English as " the place of two rivers " (something like that anyway ) is usually uttered as Ta-ron-no or Ta-ran-na .

Also , I usually hear our capital city of Ottawa (awt -taw- wah ) as aw-duh-wah .

The worst offenders are TV news people , I can't remember the last time I heard it correctly pronounced , but I'll wager it was from a tourist !

[beagle]

The worst offenders are TV news people , I can't remember the last time I heard it correctly pronounced , but I'll wager it was from a tourist !

I once had to tell the U.S. company I was working for that they'd got the spelling of the word "Massachusetts" wrong on the Help/About page of their flagship product. They weren't as grateful as I felt was appropriate .

[Griffin NoName]

By the way, you all do know I am Griffin pronounced Most-Wonderful ?

[beagle]

...the "Most modest" syllables being silent.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

By the way, you all do know I am Griffin pronounced Most-Wonderful ?

Hiya, you!

Good to see you posting again.

Some people were starting to get worried...     

[beagle]

Those who'd bought into her investment scheme, mainly.

[Bruder Cuzzen]

The worst offenders are TV news people , I can't remember the last time I heard it correctly pronounced , but I'll wager it was from a tourist !

I once had to tell the U.S. company I was working for that they'd got the spelling of the word "Massachusetts"wrong on the Help/About page of their flagship product. They weren't as grateful as I felt was appropriate .

har har har

Was it written as , " mass of two shits " .

[beagle]

Not quite that bad; had gained an s and lost a t I think.  I'd already wound them up by saying that if they looked out the window and couldn't see a bridge over the river Cam then they weren't in the real Cambridge .