The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ »

hard vs. heart
herd vs. hurt
piers vs. pierce
ford vs. fort
bid vs. bit
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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Travis B. »

hard: [hɑːʁt], before a vowel [hɑːʁɾ]
heart: [hʌʁʔ], before a vowel [hʌʁɾ]
herd: [hʁ̩ːt], before a vowel [hʁ̩ːɾ]
hurt: [hʁ̩ʔ], before a vowel [hʁ̩ɾ]
piers: [pʰɪːʁsʲ], before a vowel [pʰɪːʁzʲ]
pierce: [pʰɪʁsʲ]
ford: [fɔːʁt], before a vowel [fɔːʁɾ]
fort: [fɔʁʔ], before a vowel [fɔʁɾ]
bid: [pɘːt], before a vowel [pɘːɾ]
bit: [pɘʔ], before a vowel [pɘɾ]
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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Zaarin »

hard [hɑɹ̠ˁd]
heart [hɑɹ̠ˁʔ~hɑɹ̠ˁt̚]
piers [piɹ̠ˁz]
pierce[/i [piɹ̠ˁs]
ford [fɔɹ̠ˁd]
fort [fɔɹ̠ˁʔ~fɔɹ̠ˁt̚]
bid [bɪd]
bit [bɪt~bɪʔ~bɪt̚]
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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Qxentio »

I find it very difficult to figure ou the right pronunciation for <i> in many English words, especially loans from Romance languages. For example, I had [dəˈsɪ.zɪv] instead of [diˈsa͜ɪ.sɪv] for the longest time. Or at least that's how I read out <decisive> in my head. Same thing with <disciple> [ˈdɪ.sɪ.pl̩].
I believe there is a limited degree of allophony in some cases. For example, I have heared <dimension> being pronounced as [dɪˈmɛn.ʃən] and as [da͜ɪˈmɛn.ʃən] by native speakers.
Is this a dialectal difference? Is there any other way to predict this? Or is it all random?
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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Sumelic »

Qxentio wrote:I find it very difficult to figure ou the right pronunciation for <i> in many English words, especially loans from Romance languages. For example, I had [dəˈsɪ.zɪv] instead of [diˈsa͜ɪ.sɪv] for the longest time. Or at least that's how I read out <decisive> in my head. Same thing with <disciple> [ˈdɪ.sɪ.pl̩].
I believe there is a limited degree of allophony in some cases. For example, I have heared <dimension> being pronounced as [dɪˈmɛn.ʃən] and as [da͜ɪˈmɛn.ʃən] by native speakers.
Is this a dialectal difference? Is there any other way to predict this? Or is it all random?
Well, there's no general rule, just a lot of minor rules.

Variation like you've heard for "dimension" is common in (directly) pre-tonic syllables. But in some words it can only be short and it others it can only be long.

One very reliable pattern, although the fact that it exists is a bit random, is that "i" (or "y") is short before a single consonant when the consonant is followed by unstressed "i" or "e" letter (it might just represent palatalization, not a vowel sound) and another vowel letter. E.g. in "decision," "division," "precision." Aside from being small in number, almost all of the exceptions are optional. The largest group of possible exceptions consists of words where some speakers have /iː/ instead: Parisian, Tunisia, bulimia, Phoenicia(n), artemisia, aphrodisiac, prestigious, capricious. I'm not sure if this is mainly due to foreignistic French-style pronunciation, or some kind of semi-conditioned sound change; possibly a combination of both.

Otherwise, in stressed syllables, the rule of "long in a (graphically) open stressed penult, short in a (graphically) closed syllable or a stressed antepenult" is a good rough guide, although with many exceptions. This would at least give the standard length in "disciple" and "decisive." (Some native speakers may use the pronunciation "decissive," since apparently "divissive" exists as a less common variant pronunciation, mainly in Canada.) You just have to know where the stress is; it differs between "disciple" and "discipline."

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by alynnidalar »

Interesting, I have /i:/ in all of those. (not sure on aphrodisiac, I've never said that aloud so I don't know how I would "naturally" say it) /ɪ/ sounds kind of affected. (a skim of Wiktionary suggests that /ɪ/ is often the UK pronunciation, and /i/ is the US one?)
I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by linguoboy »

alynnidalar wrote:Interesting, I have /i:/ in all of those. (not sure on aphrodisiac, I've never said that aloud so I don't know how I would "naturally" say it) /ɪ/ sounds kind of affected. (a skim of Wiktionary suggests that /ɪ/ is often the UK pronunciation, and /i/ is the US one?)
I have /i:/ in all of them except capricious. I sometimes catch myself saying prestigious with [ɪ] but that sounds a bit affected to me, like I picked it up from Brits somehow. For most of the others, I didn't realise there was a short-vowelled variant.

ETA: According to the OED, libido can be pronounced with /ai/ instead of /i:/ in the penult. Has anyone actually heard this?

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Sumelic »

linguoboy wrote:
alynnidalar wrote:Interesting, I have /i:/ in all of those. (not sure on aphrodisiac, I've never said that aloud so I don't know how I would "naturally" say it) /ɪ/ sounds kind of affected. (a skim of Wiktionary suggests that /ɪ/ is often the UK pronunciation, and /i/ is the US one?)
I have /i:/ in all of them except capricious. I sometimes catch myself saying prestigious with [ɪ] but that sounds a bit affected to me, like I picked it up from Brits somehow. For most of the others, I didn't realise there was a short-vowelled variant.

ETA: According to the OED, libido can be pronounced with /ai/ instead of /i:/ in the penult. Has anyone actually heard this?
I don't think I've ever heard it pronounced at all. Until you mentioned this, I mentally pronounced it as /ˈlɪbᵻdoʊ/. I use /i:/ in "albedo," so I think I'll use /aɪ/ from now on in "libido." I would guess its pronunciation might have been influenced by German, since it was popularized by Freud, right? Oddly, it looks like German "Libido" is often stressed on the antepenult (although with a long vowel): does anyone know if that is regular for German loans from Latin?

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by linguoboy »

Sumelic wrote:I don't think I've ever heard it pronounced at all. Until you mentioned this, I mentally pronounced it as /ˈlɪbᵻdoʊ/. I use /i:/ in "albedo," so I think I'll use /aɪ/ from now on in "libido."
And I initially pronounced albedo with /eː/! Now I rhyme them and don't lose any sleep about it.
Sumelic wrote:I would guess its pronunciation might have been influenced by German, since it was popularized by Freud, right?
That's my assumption. Another possibility is analogy, since there aren't any other Latin borrowings in -ido that I know of, but tuxedo is a common word.
Sumelic wrote:Oddly, it looks like German "Libido" is often stressed on the antepenult (although with a long vowel): does anyone know if that is regular for German loans from Latin?
I was a bit taken aback to see that the Duden gives initial stress. Wiktionary (both English and German) includes a variant stressed on the penult, which is what I would have expected. Final or penultimate stress is the norm for Latinate borrowings in German IME.

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Zaarin »

linguoboy wrote:there aren't any other Latin borrowings in -ido that I know of
Not exactly an everyday term, but Dido, which is apparently pronounced with /ai/ (I personally use /iː/ and have no intention to change :p ). But I personally have never heard libido with /ai/.
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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Sol717 »

ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ wrote:hard vs. heart
herd vs. hurt
piers vs. pierce
ford vs. fort
bid vs. bit
[hɐːd̥ʲ]/[hɐːt̯ʲ]
[hø̞ːd̥ʲ]/[hø̞ːt̥ʲ]
[pi͓jɐ̈s]/[peə̯s]
[fɤ̝ːd̥ʲ]/[fɤ̝ːt̯ʲ]
[bɪ̽d̥ʲ]/[bɪ̽t̯ʲ]

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Qxentio »

Sumelic wrote:I would guess its pronunciation might have been influenced by German, since it was popularized by Freud, right? Oddly, it looks like German "Libido" is often stressed on the antepenult (although with a long vowel): does anyone know if that is regular for German loans from Latin?
linguoboy wrote:I was a bit taken aback to see that the Duden gives initial stress. Wiktionary (both English and German) includes a variant stressed on the penult, which is what I would have expected. Final or penultimate stress is the norm for Latinate borrowings in German IME.
I have heared both pronunciations. As to the general rule, there seems to be a conflict between penultimate and initial stress for (Latin) loan words in German. I personally prefer the penultimate stress in most cases. And even thought the initial stress is very common, it sounds very unnatural or even uneducated to me.
French loanwords consistently have ultimate stress, I think.
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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by linguoboy »

Qxentio wrote:French loanwords consistently have ultimate stress, I think.
"Chance"

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Pole, the »

linguoboy wrote:
Qxentio wrote:French loanwords consistently have ultimate stress, I think.
"Chance"
"Chance" is a monosyllable, so it technically counts as an example of ultimate stress.
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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by linguoboy »

Pole, the wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
Qxentio wrote:French loanwords consistently have ultimate stress, I think.
"Chance"
"Chance" is a monosyllable, so it technically counts as an example of ultimate stress.
Duden wrote:Lautschrift: [ˈʃãːs(ə)], auch: [ˈʃaŋsə]

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Sumelic »

linguoboy wrote:
Pole, the wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
Qxentio wrote:French loanwords consistently have ultimate stress, I think.
"Chance"
"Chance" is a monosyllable, so it technically counts as an example of ultimate stress.
Duden wrote:Lautschrift: [ˈʃãːs(ə)], auch: [ˈʃaŋsə]
No one would expect word-final schwa to be stressed in a loanword from French to German when it's not phonologically legal to have stressed schwa in either language. I think what Qxentio said was clear and obviously wasn't suggesting that words like "Chance" would be pronounced as iambs.

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by linguoboy »

Sumelic wrote:No one would expect word-final schwa to be stressed in a loanword from French to German when it's not phonologically legal to have stressed schwa in either language.
This is true of German; it's not true of French. French stress is phrasal, not lexical, and final shwas can be stressed.

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Sumelic »

linguoboy wrote:
Sumelic wrote:No one would expect word-final schwa to be stressed in a loanword from French to German when it's not phonologically legal to have stressed schwa in either language.
This is true of German; it's not true of French. French stress is phrasal, not lexical, and final shwas can be stressed.
Once it is stressed, it becomes /ø/, not schwa. Just like in some varieties of American English, "stressed" schwa in emphasized function words like "the," "of," "what" becomes /ʌ/. (There might be sub-phonemic differences between this /ø/ and underlying /ø/, but the identification is pretty clear.) I shouldn't have said "schwa" in the previous post though, I should have said "e muet" since that's a bit different in behavior, and schwa is only one (not too common in Parisian French) realization of word-final "e muet."

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Qxentio »

linguoboy wrote:"Chance"
linguoboy wrote:
Duden wrote:Lautschrift: [ˈʃãːs(ə)], auch: [ˈʃaŋsə]
Astonishing. I'm used to hearing and pronouncing it either as [ʃãːs] or as [ʃɔŋs].
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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by linguoboy »

Qxentio wrote:Astonishing. I'm used to hearing and pronouncing it either as [ʃãːs] or as [ʃɔŋs].
And nouns ending in -age like Blamage and Persiflage?

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Salmoneus »

alynnidalar wrote:Interesting, I have /i:/ in all of those. (not sure on aphrodisiac, I've never said that aloud so I don't know how I would "naturally" say it) /ɪ/ sounds kind of affected. (a skim of Wiktionary suggests that /ɪ/ is often the UK pronunciation, and /i/ is the US one?)
Absolutely "always" short vowel:
Tunisia - but can imagine a really pretentious person saying /i:Z@/. /Izij@/ for me.
Prestigious - have probably heard Americans say /i:Z@s/, but it sounds affected to me. /IdZ@s/ for me. Like "litigious".
Capricious - haven't ever heard /i:S@s/. /IS@s/ for me. Like "vicious" or "surreptitious" or "suspicious".

Almost always short:
Parisian - have heard /i:Z/, but it sounds pretentious and American
Aphrodisiac - you could probably get away with /i:Z/ here?

Probably long:
Artemisia - could be short, probably would be if it were a common name, but mostly long when talking about the people/places. However, it normally has /z/ rather than /Z/ - it only has /Z/ for me, I think, when used medicinally.

Always long:
Phoenicia
Bulimia

----

Regarding 'libido': the only other more-than-two-syllable words ending -ido that I could find were three nonsense chemistry words (amido, imido, azido), and three oriental martial traditions (bushido, aikido and hapkido). So I guess people had to guess 'libido' without much frame of reference. Possibly the fact it's long in both japanese and spanish lead people to guess it should be in 'libido' too?
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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by spanick »

Salmoneus wrote:
alynnidalar wrote:Interesting, I have /i:/ in all of those. (not sure on aphrodisiac, I've never said that aloud so I don't know how I would "naturally" say it) /ɪ/ sounds kind of affected. (a skim of Wiktionary suggests that /ɪ/ is often the UK pronunciation, and /i/ is the US one?)
Absolutely "always" short vowel:
Tunisia - but can imagine a really pretentious person saying /i:Z@/. /Izij@/ for me.
Prestigious - have probably heard Americans say /i:Z@s/, but it sounds affected to me. /IdZ@s/ for me. Like "litigious".
Capricious - haven't ever heard /i:S@s/. /IS@s/ for me. Like "vicious" or "surreptitious" or "suspicious".

Almost always short:
Parisian - have heard /i:Z/, but it sounds pretentious and American
Aphrodisiac - you could probably get away with /i:Z/ here?

Probably long:
Artemisia - could be short, probably would be if it were a common name, but mostly long when talking about the people/places. However, it normally has /z/ rather than /Z/ - it only has /Z/ for me, I think, when used medicinally.

Always long:
Phoenicia
Bulimia

----

Regarding 'libido': the only other more-than-two-syllable words ending -ido that I could find were three nonsense chemistry words (amido, imido, azido), and three oriental martial traditions (bushido, aikido and hapkido). So I guess people had to guess 'libido' without much frame of reference. Possibly the fact it's long in both japanese and spanish lead people to guess it should be in 'libido' too?
For me all of these are long except for prestigious. i would likely say capricious with a long vowel but the short sounds normal enough to me.

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ »

First:
fan vs van
thigh vs thy
few vs view
seine vs zain
place you
because we
Second:
I've seen Echobeat's location set to Edinburgh. It came to my mind to ask if the Wikipedia's article about Scottish English vowels is right, so I asked them and they said they hasn't grew there. If anyone from Scotland can tell me about the general phonology, could you?
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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Sumelic »

ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ wrote:First:
fan vs van
thigh vs thy
few vs view
seine vs zain
place you
because we
[fẽ̞ə̯̃n vẽ̞ə̯̃n]
[θai̯ ðai̯]
[fju̟ vju̟]
[sɛ̃n] I don't recognize "zain." I would guess [zãĩ̯n] or [zẽĩ̯n]
[ˈpl̥ei̯sʲju̟]
[bɪ̆ˈkʰɐzwi] (same lexical set as stressed "what," "was," "of")

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Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Post by Qxentio »

Sumelic wrote: [fẽ̞ə̯̃n vẽ̞ə̯̃n]
Are those supposed to be creaky voice markers? I can't imagine a True Scotsman nasalizing everything he says.
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