Non-obvious placename pronunciations

[Nortaneous]

travis why not use vowel symbols that match up with the standard but with diacritics to make them match your pronunciation. so replace ɛ and ɜ with æ̝ and ɛ̠ or whatever they'd be

[kodé]

Arundel /ˈæ.rən.ˌdʊl/)

Is the Anne Arundel County /ˈænəˌrʌndəl/ here another one of those place names (like Bowie) that seemed normal to me but aren't?

Huh, when I lived in Annapolis, I never considered the pronunciation of Anne Arundel (or Bowie, for that matter) weird.

[linguoboy]

I noticed you skipped the most obvious one for Maryland: Baltimore. "Baw(l)mer" is the usual humourous respelling, but my father's family always pronounced it in three syllables, i.e. /'bɔl.ə.mər/. But I've had other natives of the city insist that there should be no /l/ at all.

I used to think this pronunciation was as widely known as, say, /ˈnɔrlənz/ for New Orleans, but I generally find that if I give "Baltimore" the native pronunciation, I have to follow up immediately with what (to my ears) is a strained overpronunciation. (I used to get snotty about this and say, "It's the one in Maryland, not the one in Ireland, so there's not 't' in it.") I guess "Bawlmer" is actually in the same category as "Fluffya" for "Philadelphia"--a pronunciation only really familiar to locals.

Also, there's the name of the state itself. My dad said he was hella amused the first time he flew back home from Canada and overheard all the Canucks on board talking about how they would soon be in "Mary Land". It sounded to him like some sort of Catholic theme park.

[Travis B.]

I noticed you skipped the most obvious one for Maryland: Baltimore. "Baw(l)mer" is the usual humourous respelling, but my father's family always pronounced it in three syllables, i.e. /'bɔl.ə.mər/. But I've had other natives of the city insist that there should be no /l/ at all.

I used to think this pronunciation was as widely known as, say, /ˈnɔrlənz/ for New Orleans, but I generally find that if I give "Baltimore" the native pronunciation, I have to follow up immediately with what (to my ears) is a strained overpronunciation. (I used to get snotty about this and say, "It's the one in Maryland, not the one in Ireland, so there's not 't' in it.") I guess "Bawlmer" is actually in the same category as "Fluffya" for "Philadelphia"--a pronunciation only really familiar to locals.

That reminds me of the commonplace pronunciation of Milwaukee by Milwaukeeans of:

Milwaukee: /məˈwɔːkiː/, /məˈwɒki/ > [məːˈwɒki(ː)]

You never hear this pronunciation in anything "official" or otherwise attempting to be in Standard English, but it is very commonplace amongst people actually from here.

Also, there's the name of the state itself. My dad said he was hella amused the first time he flew back home from Canada and overheard all the Canucks on board talking about how they would soon be in "Mary Land". It sounded to him like some sort of Catholic theme park.

LOL.

[Travis B.]

travis why not use vowel symbols that match up with the standard but with diacritics to make them match your pronunciation. so replace ɛ and ɜ with æ̝ and ɛ̠ or whatever they'd be

Because you are really not supposed to use diacritics in phonemic representations unless they are absolutely necessary (hence why I have been using /ɜ/ even though it only occasionally matches [ɜ] and is usually more like [ɜ̟] or [ɛ̠]). And that does not account for things like, for instance, my dialect phonemically lacks phonemic vowel length (except just possibly in some grammar words and contractions), while the standard phonemic symbols do include phonemic vowel length.

[Viktor77]

It might be closer to /E@/ when I really think about it. Whatever it is, my dialect doesn't permit me having /{/.

Viktor. //. [].

I don't get it! What is the freaking difference!? I never understood it, ever! Please, tell me in the most simplest of terms what the difference is.

[linguoboy]

It might be closer to /E@/ when I really think about it. Whatever it is, my dialect doesn't permit me having /{/.

Viktor. //. [].

I don't get it! What is the freaking difference!? I never understood it, ever! Please, tell me in the most simplest of terms what the difference is.

Probably should be posted to the Questions Thread, since if you haven't understood the difference in all this time, it's not something that can be explained to you without seriously derailing this thread.

[Travis B.]

It might be closer to /E@/ when I really think about it. Whatever it is, my dialect doesn't permit me having /{/.

Viktor. //. [].

I don't get it! What is the freaking difference!? I never understood it, ever! Please, tell me in the most simplest of terms what the difference is.

// marks phonemes, [] marks phones. Phones are actual realized sounds. Phonemes are an abstract representation of the underlying forms. I would have assumed you would have already known this, but then, you are Viktor, so that is not necessarily a given. Of course a more detailed explanation of what these mean and how to use them would be a bit more lengthy, and would derail this thread any more than it has already been derailed.

The point being made here is that there is no reason why one cannot call the phoneme in question "/æ/" even if one's realization is [eə]. Of course, I myself probably would still call it "/eə/", but that is more me being a special snowflake that likes to represent the likely actual underlying forms as closely as possible, and there is no reason at all I could not decide to take a more standardized approach and call it "/æ/".

[Viktor77]

It might be closer to /E@/ when I really think about it. Whatever it is, my dialect doesn't permit me having /{/.

Viktor. //. [].

I don't get it! What is the freaking difference!? I never understood it, ever! Please, tell me in the most simplest of terms what the difference is.

// marks phonemes, [] marks phones. Phones are actual realized sounds. Phonemes are an abstract representation of the underlying forms. I would have assumed you would have already known this, but then, you are Viktor, so that is not necessarily a given. Of course a more detailed explanation of what these mean and how to use them would be a bit more lengthy, and would derail this thread any more than it has already been derailed.

The point being made here is that there is no reason why one cannot call the phoneme in question "/æ/" even if one's realization is [eə]. Of course, I myself probably would still call it "/eə/", but that is more me being a special snowflake that likes to represent the likely actual underlying forms as closely as possible, and there is no reason at all I could not decide to take a more standardized approach and call it "/æ/".

So, if I were to transcribe English short I, I could write /I/ or I could write my actual sound in brackets (the IPA of which I do not know)?

So, I could write /E/ or I could write [3] (my actual realisation)?

I always thought the difference had to do with allophones. I always thought if you made reference to an allophone it was written in brackets.

[Travis B.]

It might be closer to /E@/ when I really think about it. Whatever it is, my dialect doesn't permit me having /{/.

Viktor. //. [].

I don't get it! What is the freaking difference!? I never understood it, ever! Please, tell me in the most simplest of terms what the difference is.

// marks phonemes, [] marks phones. Phones are actual realized sounds. Phonemes are an abstract representation of the underlying forms. I would have assumed you would have already known this, but then, you are Viktor, so that is not necessarily a given. Of course a more detailed explanation of what these mean and how to use them would be a bit more lengthy, and would derail this thread any more than it has already been derailed.

The point being made here is that there is no reason why one cannot call the phoneme in question "/æ/" even if one's realization is [eə]. Of course, I myself probably would still call it "/eə/", but that is more me being a special snowflake that likes to represent the likely actual underlying forms as closely as possible, and there is no reason at all I could not decide to take a more standardized approach and call it "/æ/".

So, if I were to transcribe English short I, I could write /I/ or I could write my actual sound in brackets (the IPA of which I do not know)?

So, I could write /E/ or I could write [3] (my actual realisation)?

You could choose to phonemically represent those two as /ɪ/ and /ɛ/, yes, even if those were actually realized as, say, [ɨ] and [ɜ] respectively.

(In the case of standard /ɛ/, I only choose to transcribe /ɜ/ because my [ɛ] exactly corresponds to standard /æ/, and I want to emphasize that the underlying contrast between the two is one of frontness rather than one of height, even though I generally do not realize standard /ɛ/ as true [ɜ] either. Again, this is me trying to exactly represent my underlying forms as close as possible, but this is still very different from me actually representing my realized phones.)

I always thought the difference had to do with allophones. I always thought if you made reference to an allophone it was written in brackets.

Well of course if you refer to allophones it has to be in brackets, but brackets are for any realized sounds.

Much of the time, though, what you choose to use depends more upon the context in which you are using it; if you are trying to compare between different dialects to represent something in a way that is more widely accessible, you represent it as the underlying phonemes, and especially if you are trying to compare between dialects you use standardized phonemes. On the other hand, if you are trying to provide how you exactly pronounce something, especially if you want to illustrate how your variety's phonology actually works, then you use phones, or you do what I do, and provide both phonemes and phones.

(I am actually switching to providing both standardized phonemes and dialectal phonemes, both to provide something that can be readily understood by others and readily compared to other varieties, and to provide as close a representation of my own underlying forms as possible.)

[Viktor77]

I always thought the difference had to do with allophones. I always thought if you made reference to an allophone it was written in brackets.

Well of course if you refer to allophones it has to be in brackets, but brackets are for any realized sounds.

Much of the time, though, what you choose to use depends more upon the context in which you are using it; if you are trying to compare between different dialects to represent something in a way that is more widely accessible, you represent it as the underlying phonemes, and especially if you are trying to compare between dialects you use standardized phonemes. On the other hand, if you are trying to provide how you exactly pronounce something, especially if you want to illustrate how your variety's phonology actually works, then you use phones, or you do what I do, and provide both phonemes and phones.

(I am actually switching to providing both standardized phonemes and dialectal phonemes, both to provide something that can be readily understood by others and readily compared to other varieties, and to provide as close a representation of my own underlying forms as possible.)

But here's what I don't get. I don't have, as an example, /{/, not as a phoneme, not as a phone, I always have [E@] (or [e@]), which I would argue then always is /E@/ because why would I want to write /b{d/ if that is a total lie? I have /bE@d/, always, yes also [bE@d], but it's solid in my dialect, it's a unique sound, it's nothing like /{/. To say I have /{/ even to aid in comparisons for others is a flat out lie. Who am I benefiting if I ignore the Northern Cities Vowel Shift?

[Zhen Lin]

不忍 looks like it should be Funin but it is Shinobazu.

That's a standard gikun reading. 不忍 = 忍ばず, 不知火 = 知らぬ火 etc.

神戸 is the city of Kōbe, which is famous enough that no one mispronounces it, but it looks like it should be pronounced Jinko or Kamito. 神戸 also appears in one or two other place names as Kanbe.

This one is etymologically easy to explain – /kamube/ → /kaube/ → /kɔːbe/ → /koːbe/. (The combining form of 神 is かむ, which is also how you remember that 神 is /kamï/ in Old Japanese.)

[finlay]

@viktor
The rest of us who are trying to work out which sounds you mean by that. Phonemes serve two functions: they indicate which vowels are theoretically the same within a particular variety, but they also use standardized symbols in order to facilitate comparison between varieties, which might have very different phonetic realizations but have roughly the same distribution of vowels. You have a short-a sound, which we should write as /æ/ because all varieties of English have a short-a sound which we write as /æ/. But you might actually pronounce it [eə] and never [æ] – this is not actually a contradiction. The phoneme symbol is essentially arbitrary. (if you write /beəd/ it is technically correct, as it is arbitrary, but this is not helpful in this context because then we wonder what you mean by /eə/. but it's kinda like two schools of thought on the matter)

Anyway, I can't get how you've been on here for FIVE YEARS and you haven't worked out this distinction. This is the FIRST THING you get taught when you come on here. This is LESSON NUMBER GODDAMN ONE. How can you have missed this?

[Viktor77]

@viktor
The rest of us who are trying to work out which sounds you mean by that. Phonemes serve two functions: they indicate which vowels are theoretically the same within a particular variety, but they also use standardized symbols in order to facilitate comparison between varieties, which might have very different phonetic realizations but have roughly the same distribution of vowels. You have a short-a sound, which we should write as /æ/ because all varieties of English have a short-a sound which we write as /æ/. But you might actually pronounce it [eə] and never [æ] – this is not actually a contradiction. The phoneme symbol is essentially arbitrary.

Anyway, I can't get how you've been on here for FIVE YEARS and you haven't worked out this distinction. This is the FIRST THING you get taught when you come on here. This is LESSON NUMBER GODDAMN ONE. How can you have missed this?

I asked about it initially but I must have not well understood the responses so it got muddled over time and I've been embarrassed to ask ever since. Besides, I usually always use brackets anyway (except some small confusion), so I never really had a problem.

The problem here though for me is that I had /{/, well historically, but now it's [a], meaning I have [a], and my [a] may in fact be closer to /{/ than what you'd call my /{/ which is [E@] (or I'd argue /E@/). Anyway, so I don't see any value in trying to simplify my dialect because then it becomes entirely misconstrued.

Anyway, I don't see the value in phonemic transcription so I'm going to avoid it and use brackets for all of my transcriptions.

[Travis B.]

I always thought the difference had to do with allophones. I always thought if you made reference to an allophone it was written in brackets.

Well of course if you refer to allophones it has to be in brackets, but brackets are for any realized sounds.

Much of the time, though, what you choose to use depends more upon the context in which you are using it; if you are trying to compare between different dialects to represent something in a way that is more widely accessible, you represent it as the underlying phonemes, and especially if you are trying to compare between dialects you use standardized phonemes. On the other hand, if you are trying to provide how you exactly pronounce something, especially if you want to illustrate how your variety's phonology actually works, then you use phones, or you do what I do, and provide both phonemes and phones.

(I am actually switching to providing both standardized phonemes and dialectal phonemes, both to provide something that can be readily understood by others and readily compared to other varieties, and to provide as close a representation of my own underlying forms as possible.)

But here's what I don't get. I don't have, as an example, /{/, not as a phoneme, not as a phone, I always have [E@] (or [e@]), which I would argue then always is /E@/ because why would I want to write /b{d/ if that is a total lie? I have /bE@d/, always, yes also [bE@d], but it's solid in my dialect, it's a unique sound, it's nothing like /{/. To say I have /{/ even to aid in comparisons for others is a flat out lie. Who am I benefiting if I ignore the Northern Cities Vowel Shift?

What matters here is what correspondances other see with other varieties when they see that; if someone sees just "/eə/", they do not necessarily know that it corresponds to /æ/ in other varieties, and not, say, /eːr/, at least without some context, i.e. that this is the reflex of standard /æ/ in an NCVS variety and not a non-rhotic variety. Of course, to me at least, this should be obvious, but it does not seem that others pick this up as readily. And this is not a lie, but just using different symbols to represent the same underlying forms, i.e. standardized ones rather than dialect-specific ones. And note that there are far more potentially confusing cases, where dialect-specific phoneme representations overlap with standardized ones that they do not form regular correspondences with, which is probably why my use of "/ɛ/" so infuriates people, because is superficially seeming to correspond to standard /ɛ/ when it fact it corresponds to standard /æ/.

[Viktor77]

What matters here is what correspondances other see with other varieties when they see that; if someone sees just "/eə/", they do not necessarily know that it corresponds to /æ/ in other varieties, and not, say, /eːr/, at least without some context, i.e. that this is the reflex of standard /æ/ in an NCVS variety and not a non-rhotic variety. Of course, to me at least, this should be obvious, but it does not seem that others pick this up as readily. And this is not a lie, but just using different symbols to represent the same underlying forms, i.e. standardized ones rather than dialect-specific ones. And note that there are far more potentially confusing cases, where dialect-specific phoneme representations overlap with standardized ones that they do not form regular correspondences with, which is probably why my use of "/ɛ/" so infuriates people, because is superficially seeming to correspond to standard /ɛ/ when it fact it corresponds to standard /æ/.

I don't see the value in it because what others call their /{/, they might interpret as my [a] or my [e@], and probably more likely the former since it is closer to the pronunciation of /{/. And what you might call my /E/ is so far backed it's practically a mid-vowel, [3], and I could even see a solid argument for [6]. I just do not see the value in telling people I say /mEt/, when I say, truly, /m3t/ or even /m6t/. What's going to differentiate my pronunciation from every other variety of American English if I don't at least incorporate some of my dialect's true realizations?

[Travis B.]

What matters here is what correspondances other see with other varieties when they see that; if someone sees just "/eə/", they do not necessarily know that it corresponds to /æ/ in other varieties, and not, say, /eːr/, at least without some context, i.e. that this is the reflex of standard /æ/ in an NCVS variety and not a non-rhotic variety. Of course, to me at least, this should be obvious, but it does not seem that others pick this up as readily. And this is not a lie, but just using different symbols to represent the same underlying forms, i.e. standardized ones rather than dialect-specific ones. And note that there are far more potentially confusing cases, where dialect-specific phoneme representations overlap with standardized ones that they do not form regular correspondences with, which is probably why my use of "/ɛ/" so infuriates people, because is superficially seeming to correspond to standard /ɛ/ when it fact it corresponds to standard /æ/.

I don't see the value in it because what others call their /{/, they might interpret as my [a] or my [e@], and probably more likely the former since it is closer to the pronunciation of /{/. And what you might call my /E/ is so far backed it's practically a mid-vowel, [3], and I could even see a solid argument for [6]. I just do not see the value in telling people I say /mEt/, when I say, truly, /m3t/ or even /m6t/. What's going to differentiate my pronunciation from every other variety of American English if I don't at least incorporate some of my dialect's true realizations?

You are missing that it is important to people that they are able to see correspondences between varieties, whereas using dialect-specific phoneme representations obscures this. And if you really want to show how something is particularly pronounced in your variety, you use phones - but then it is probably a good idea to also provide standardized phonemes, as otherwise readers are not going to have much of any reference point to see what this actually corresponds to. But in a thread like this, seeing what things correspond to between varieties is more important than actually seeing the specific realizations in any given variety.

[linguoboy]

Probably should be posted to the Questions Thread, since if you haven't understood the difference in all this time, it's not something that can be explained to you without seriously derailing this thread.

Glad to see everyone listens to me when I state the fucking obvious.

[Travis B.]

Okay, so let's provide some more more on-topic posts here, to reverse this becoming a Viktor thread...

All I could think of to add, locally, is my specific hometown:

Wauwatosa: /ˌwaʊ̯wəˈtoʊ̯sə/, /ˌwɑɔ̯wəˈtosə/ > [ˌwɑɔ̯wə̝ˈtʰosə(ː)]

[Drydic]

This is where you say /mEt/ [m3t].

// can be tricky, admittedly. Especially when dealing with vowels as divergent as the Englishes have. Vlad solves this by always writing the "Standard English" (I think usually some form of RP, which since some baseline is necessary [without dragging out the putative Middle English antecedents of them all] is better than nothing) vowel symbol in //, which while it drives me crazy, he has sound reasons for doing (for examples, see Imralu's posts, as they're both Ozites).

___________________________________

And since I just remembered it, on the actual topic: Kuna, a town out here, is [kjun@] (and I am positive I've heard [kyn@] from some locals), and we actively correct out-of-towners who say [ku:n@]. There's also Buhl [bju.5=], gogo approximating german pronunciation (I don't live as near Buhl as Kuna, so I couldn't say whether [y] ever shows up in it, sample size is too low, it being a one-horse town in Bumfuck, Snake River Plain, Idaho).

___________________________________

Probably should be posted to the Questions Thread, since if you haven't understood the difference in all this time, it's not something that can be explained to you without seriously derailing this thread.

Glad to see everyone listens to me when I state the fucking obvious.

Threads get derailed. Better to work on moving it back to the original topic, if you so wish, than to just bitch about something being in the wrong thread.

[Travis B.]

// can be tricky, admittedly. Especially when dealing with vowels as divergent as the Englishes have. Vlad solves this by always writing the "Standard English" (I think usually some form of RP, which since some baseline is necessary [without dragging out the putative Middle English antecedents of them all] is better than nothing) vowel symbol in //, which while it drives me crazy, he has sound reasons for doing (for examples, see Imralu's posts, as they're both Ozites).

I personally do not have as strong of a tendency to require everything to be in standard phonemes, and I agree with you here about Vlad; I personally like seeing how people analyze their own specific varieties, even though I know many do not. I for one consider myself capable of seeing correspondences between varieties without needing standardized phonemes. (Maybe I make the mistake of assuming that others are so capable.) And the use of standard phonemes is a good way to make everything look like either GA or RP, especially if phones are not also provided, which I wish people would do, as similarly I like seeing how people actually pronounce things.

[Viktor77]

Alright, I'll do it, but I can't gurantee the accuracy of any phonemic transcription because my dialect is way fucked up and I have to rely on knowledge that standard American English is basically the reverse of the NCVS.

Here, I'll give it my first try.

Michigan placenames:

Iosco- /aI.As.koU/ [ai.as.koU].

Ypsilanti- /Ip.sI.l{n.ti/ [I\p.sI\.lE@~.ti].

Mackinac /m{.kI.nO/ [mE@.kI\.nA].

Tawas /taU.wAs/ [taU.was].

[Salmoneus]

I noticed you skipped the most obvious one for Maryland: Baltimore. "Baw(l)mer" is the usual humourous respelling, but my father's family always pronounced it in three syllables, i.e. /'bɔl.ə.mər/. But I've had other natives of the city insist that there should be no /l/ at all.

I used to think this pronunciation was as widely known as, say, /ˈnɔrlənz/ for New Orleans, but I generally find that if I give "Baltimore" the native pronunciation, I have to follow up immediately with what (to my ears) is a strained overpronunciation. (I used to get snotty about this and say, "It's the one in Maryland, not the one in Ireland, so there's not 't' in it.") I guess "Bawlmer" is actually in the same category as "Fluffya" for "Philadelphia"--a pronunciation only really familiar to locals.

Also, there's the name of the state itself. My dad said he was hella amused the first time he flew back home from Canada and overheard all the Canucks on board talking about how they would soon be in "Mary Land". It sounded to him like some sort of Catholic theme park.

How about the graffiti in The Wire that identifies the town as Bodymore, Murderland?
[I remember hearing from someone that the white baltimore accent went with the 'bawlmer' version, but the black baltimore accent instead dropped the /l/. Don't know if that's true, though]

[Drydic]

// can be tricky, admittedly. Especially when dealing with vowels as divergent as the Englishes have. Vlad solves this by always writing the "Standard English" (I think usually some form of RP, which since some baseline is necessary [without dragging out the putative Middle English antecedents of them all] is better than nothing) vowel symbol in //, which while it drives me crazy, he has sound reasons for doing (for examples, see Imralu's posts, as they're both Ozites).

I personally do not have as strong of a tendency to require everything to be in standard phonemes, and I agree with you here about Vlad; I personally like seeing how people analyze their own specific varieties, even though I know many do not. I for one consider myself capable of seeing correspondences between varieties without needing standardized phonemes. (Maybe I make the mistake of assuming that others are so capable.) And the use of standard phonemes is a good way to make everything look like either GA or RP, especially if phones are not also provided, which I wish people would do, as similarly I like seeing how people actually pronounce things.

I'm happiest when they do both, tbh. Can be a pain tho.

[Travis B.]

Speaking of Waukesha and Ouachita, and of Wichita, I wonder what the diachronics of placenames having /ɔː/ for final a is...