The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

[linguoboy]

Taneytown

Whiffed this even though my dad grew up less than 30 miles away. I don't remember ever hearing him mention it.

You had me second-guessing myself on some of the others, since I've grown up with them so it never occurred to me that they might be shibboleths for anyone.

[Travis B.]

Ones from the Milwaukee area:
Cudahy
Teutonia Ave.
Becher St.
New Berlin

[----]

I don't know a whole lot of weird pronounced city names in Georgia except for Cairo [keirou]

[Viktor77]

I don't know a whole lot of weird pronounced city names in Georgia except for Cairo [keirou]

Illinois has one of those too.

Ones from the Milwaukee area:
Cudahy
Teutonia Ave.
Becher St.
New Berlin

I've seen Cudahy and every time it perplexes me. What's unique about New Berlin? Is that one a shibboleth? I swear I've heard someone from there but no longer living there simply call it New Berlin as one would expect. But I might be mixing it up with New London now I think of it.

[Travis B.]

I don't know a whole lot of weird pronounced city names in Georgia except for Cairo [keirou]

Illinois has one of those too.

Ones from the Milwaukee area:
Cudahy
Teutonia Ave.
Becher St.
New Berlin

I've seen Cudahy and every time it perplexes me. What's unique about New Berlin? Is that one a shibboleth? I swear I've heard someone from there but no longer living there simply call it New Berlin as one would expect. But I might be mixing it up with New London now I think of it.

Those are /ˈkɐdəˌheɪ təɪˈtoʊnjə ˈbitʃər nuˈbərlɨn/. Note the stress position in New Berlin.

[linguoboy]

Ones from the Milwaukee area:
Cudahy
Teutonia Ave.
Becher St.
New Berlin

There's a Cudahy Hall on Loyola[*]'s North Side campus. I asked a graduate of Loyola and a Milwaukean how to pronounce it and got two different answers.


[*] Another Chicago shibboleth.

[Viktor77]

Another one I just remembered that had me stumped for weeks (I drive through there a lot) was Kankakee, Illinois. I finally broke down and asked someone. None of my guesses were even remotely close. For the record it's ['keI~.kI.ki:].

BTW I remembered another one that goes along with the French 'oiC' as [oI] as in Charlevoix and St. Croix, Iroquois County, Illinois. A new news anchor friend of mine down here got a slap on the wrist for pronouncing it on live TV à la française.

Champaign is admittedly a difficult one for nearly everyone unfamiliar with it to spell, but no one mispronounces it oddly enough. I guess people instantly connect it with words like impugn and phlegm, they know the 'g' is silent. And I mispronounced Urbana when I moved here. I should've known it'd be [be@] and not [ba] but that's what studying foreign languages does to you. It's the same reason I always said Outgamie County, WI as [ut]. I should've known it'd be much simpler, it's just [aUt] à la 'out', but it looked French with the final 'ie' so heh.

On the topic of French names, if you know Des Moines, Iowa then you'll scream if you ever heard Des Plaines, Illinois.

Ok I know now I'm just going on too much and you're probably bored but I just remembered the most embarrassing mispronounciation for me, Helena, Montana. Which after my entire childhood spent naming state capitals I was kindly alerted while in Montana that it's ['hE5.l@.n@] not [hE.'leI.n@].

[CatDoom]

Funny, I would have said [hɛleɪnə] too. Not sure why, exactly; I've heard it pronounced both ways as a personal name.

I've lived on the central coast my whole life, but both my parents are from southern California, and they've corrected me from time to time on my pronunciation of place names down there. The pronunciation of "Port Hueneme" isn't easy to guess from the spelling, and I've gotten "Van Nuys" wrong in the past, too. By most popular definitions, "Tulare County" isn't really part of southern California proper, but they've corrected me on that one too. Even up here I've gotten a few pronunciations wrong, mostly in cases, like "Vacaville," where the vowels in a name of Spanish origin aren't pronounced as they would be in Spanish.

[KathTheDragon]

Helena, Montana. ... ['hE5.l@.n@] not [hE.'leI.n@].

I'd've guessed [hə'li:nə], but I'd put that down to the normal British stress pattern differing to the normal Amercan stress pattern.

[Sumelic]

How do you pronounce the following words? (my pronunciation listed in /phonemes/ (near as I can tell) and [phonetics] (I left out velarization/labialization on l because I can't tell if I ever have light l or not))

daily /ˈdeɪli/ [ˈd̥eˑə̯li]
gaily /ˈgeɪ.li/ [ˈg̊ɛɪ̯ːli]
grayly /ˈgreɪ.li/ [ˈg̊ɻ^ʋɛɪ̯ːli]
bailey /ˈbeɪli/ [ˈb̥eˑə̯li]
Israeli /ɪzˈreɪli/ [ɪzˈɻ^ʋeˑə̯li]
Himalaya /hɪməˈleɪɐ/ [hɪməˈlɛɪ̯ɐ]~[hɪməˈlɛɪ̯ə]~[hɪmɐˈlɛɪ̯ɐ]
arugula /ɐˈrugjʊlɐ/ [ɐˈɻ^ʋuˑgjʊlɐ]~[ɐˈɻ^ʋuˑgjəlɐ/
cumin /kjumɪn/ [kʰj̊uˑmɪn]~[kʰj̊uˑmn̩]
conserve /kənsɝv/ [kʰn̩sɝˑv̥]
Zion /zaɪən/ [zaɪn̩]
cyan /saɪən/ [saɪn̩]

[Travis B.]

daily /ˈdeɪli/ [ˈteːɯ̞i(ː)]
gaily /ˈɡeɪli/ [ˈkeːɯ̞i(ː)]
grayly /ˈɡreɪli/ [ˈkʁeːɯ̞i(ː)]
bailey /ˈbeɪli/ [ˈpeːɯ̞i(ː)]
Israeli /əˈzreɪli/ [ɘːˈzɹ͡ʁeːɯ̞i(ː)]
Himalaya /ˌhɛməˈleɪə/ [ˌhɜ̃ːməːˈʟ̞eːə(ː)]
arugula /əˈruɡjələ/ [əːˈʁuːɟjɯ̞ːɯ̞ə(ː)]~[ʁ̩ːˈʁuːɟjɯ̞ːɯ̞ə(ː)]
cumin /ˈkjumən/ [ˈcjʉ̃ũːmɘ̃(ː)(n)]
conserve /kənˈsərv/ [kʰn̩ˈtsʁ̩ːf]
Zion /ˈzaɪan/ [ˈzaːeã(ː)(n)]~/ˈzaɪən/ [ˈzaːeɘ̃(ː)(n)]
cyan /saɪˈæn/ [saːeˈɛ̃(ː)(n)]

[ol bofosh]

ˈdɛɪ̯.lɪɨ̯
gɛɪ̯.lɪɨ̯
gʷʋɹʷˠɛɪ̯.lɪɨ̯
bɛɪ̯.lɪɨ̯
ɪz.ˈʋɹʷˠɛɪ̯.lɪɨ̯
hɪ̈.mə.ˈlɛɪ̯̈ə̯
ə.ˈʋɹʷˠʏʉ̯.gə.lɜ
ˈkʰjʏʉ̯.mɪ̈n
kʰn̩.ˈsɞːv
ˈzɐɪ̯.ɒn
ˈsɐɪ̯.æːn

[jal]

For the record it's ['keI~.kI.ki:].

Damn those sans serif fonts, I actually thought that were lower case Ls...

Ok I know now I'm just going on too much and you're probably bored but I just remembered the most embarrassing mispronounciation for me, Helena, Montana. Which after my entire childhood spent naming state capitals I was kindly alerted while in Montana that it's ['hE5.l@.n@] not [hE.'leI.n@].

I'd have guessed ['hE5.l@.n@], but that's just because of Mount Saint Helena, which is pronounced identically.


JAL

[Viktor77]

Aha Jal, interesting. Good to know.

How do you say Gypsum? I grew up where gypsum is mined and I've only ever said /'dZIp.sIn/. Anything with a final /m/ would strike me as over pronounced but we might've just been lazy resulting in some sort of final reduction to /n/.

[Travis B.]

gypsum /ˈdʒɪpsəm/ [ˈtʃɘʔpsə̃(ː)m]

[KathTheDragon]

gypsum /dʒɪp.sm̩/

How about "hour" and "our"? Does anyone distinguish them?
hour, our /aʊ(w)ə~aʊ:/

[Travis B.]

our /ɑr/ [ˈɑ(ː)ʁ] or, when strongly stressed, /aʊr/ [ˈɑːɔʁ̩(ː)]*
hour /aʊr/ [ˈɑːɔʁ̩(ː)]*

* note, not *[ˈɑːɔwʁ̩(ː)], i.e. it sounds like flour and not flower

[linguoboy]

our /ɑr/ [ˈɑ(ː)ʁ] or, when strongly stressed, /aʊr/ [ˈɑːɔʁ̩(ː)]*
hour /aʊr/ [ˈɑːɔʁ̩(ː)]*

Mutatis mutandis, that's the distinction I have (although the strongly stressed form always feels affected to me, like saying whether with [ʍ]). I don't distinguish flour from flower, though (or vile from vial).

[Travis B.]

our /ɑr/ [ˈɑ(ː)ʁ] or, when strongly stressed, /aʊr/ [ˈɑːɔʁ̩(ː)]*
hour /aʊr/ [ˈɑːɔʁ̩(ː)]*

Mutatis mutandis, that's the distinction I have (although the strongly stressed form always feels affected to me, like saying whether with [ʍ]). I don't distinguish flour from flower, though (or vile from vial).

Flour versus flower is an interesting distinction I did not realize I had until recently, where apparently [w] is inserted after /aʊ oʊ u/ before another vowel before breaking of /aʊr/ where /r/ falls in a coda position into [ɑːɔʁ̩(ː)]. Hence historical /aʊr aʊər/ are distinguished even when not followed by a vowel, aside from sporadic monosyllabicization of /aʊr/ as [ɑ(ː)ʁ]. (My parents at least corroborate that there is a "stronger w" in words like flower than words like flour, even though I wonder how much effect spelling pronunciation has here.)

Vile versus vial are interesting, because they are not normally distinguished, since there is no [j] insertion between /aɪ/ and a following vowel to make a distinction, but on the hand in practice /aɪl/ but not /aɪəl/ frequently becomes monosyllabicized as [a(ː)ɤ] - but at the same time this might be partially phonemic, as it feels unnatural to pronounce vile as [va(ː)ɤ], while it feels natural to pronounce mile, file, and pile as [ma(ː)ɤ], [fa(ː)ɤ], and [pʰa(ː)ɤ].

[ivazaéun]

I distinguish vile and vial, as I have [f] in vial.

[Sumelic]

I distinguish vile and vial, as I have [f] in vial.

Yeah, that's normally spelled "phial." But go ahead and keep on using this perverse spelling of /f/; it's not like English has enough of that sort of thing already.

[Das Public Viewing]

It's [vaɛ̯l] and [vaɛ̯ɫ] for me. (ruler/ruler split FTW)

[Io]

So how do you pronounce Washington then? Steve Schmidt is going full WashingtEEEEHn in this video: https://youtu.be/psY4i-s-nxQ?t=4m46s

[ol bofosh]

vile/vial - /vaɪ̯ə̯l/ [vɐə̯ɜ̯ɫ]

And a rather boring [ˈwɒ.ʃɪ̈ŋ.tən]

[Travis B.]

My pronunciation of Washington is likewise non-descript:

Washington: /ˈwɔʃəŋtən/ [ˈwɒʃɘ̃ŋtɘ̃(ː)(n)]