Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlearn

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by linguoboy »

[Splitting this to prevent the evergreen Funny Placename Challenge from overwhelming the original topic.]

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by linguoboy »

For some reason, within my immediate family, we pronounced taut identical to taunt. I don't think I was ever taunted for saying it this way, but I decided to change it before I was.

French words were a particular trial for me since I studiously avoided contact with the language during my adolescence. I naturally thought coup would be pronounced as coop and corps like corpse. Then I learned coup de grace with the common American hypercorrection (i.e. /ˌkudəʹɡrɑː/) and had to unlearn that.

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Vijay »

I'm sure there are so many incorrect pronunciations I've had to unlearn that it may not even be worth the trouble to try listing them out. Not just in English, either. :P
Zaarin wrote:To this day I've never figured out the proper general populace pronunciation of "New Orleans," so as far as I'm concerned it's [ˈnu ˈoʊ̯ɹ̱ˁln̩z].
I think that's close enough if not spot on.

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by linguoboy »

Vijay wrote:I'm sure there are so many incorrect pronunciations I've had to unlearn that it may not even be worth the trouble to try listing them out. Not just in English, either.
Yeah, I was wondering if it might be more worthwhile to take a stab at sorting them into categories. As a first approximation, you could split mine into:
  1. Spelling pronunciations due to being a precocious reader from a young age (e.g. hyperbole)
  2. Widespread barbarisms in American English (e.g. bruschetta and maraschino with /ʃ/)
  3. Regional pronunciations that I rejected as being too marked (e.g. initial stress on hotel, umbrella; intrusive /r/ in water)
Obviously, there's some overlap here, since the distinction between (2) and (3) is really just the scope of the region involved. But they are functionally distinguished by the fact that I've consciously reversed some of the changes in category (3) as I've gained more confidence in life and more pride in my native variety of English.

In foreign languages, you could divide most of my errors into (a) overgeneralisations/hypercorrections and (b) interference from English. For instance, I used to mispronounce German Englisch as if spelled Ingglisch under influence from /ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ/. And I've had an issue with overgeneralising ü quite apart from the fronting influence of American English /uw/.

One particular case of overgeneralisation: I used to pronounce German articles with /ə/ even when stressed. (In fact, I wouldn't be surprised that I used to pronounce dem with [ɪ] due to my native pen-pin merged speech. The only reason I can make the distinction in English is because I learned it while studying German.)

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Zaarin »

I actually have an inverse pin-pen merger where a lot (but not all) of my lax vowels become [ɛ] in single-syllable words: milk [mɛlk], and/end [ɛnd], since/sense [sɛn(t)s]...Though actually I still have [ɪ] in pin.
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Post by Pabappa »

linguoboy wrote:
Vijay wrote:I'm sure there are so many incorrect pronunciations I've had to unlearn that it may not even be worth the trouble to try listing them out. Not just in English, either.
Yeah, I was wondering if it might be more worthwhile to take a stab at sorting them into categories. As a first approximation, you could split mine into:
  1. Spelling pronunciations due to being a precocious reader from a young age (e.g. hyperbole)
  2. Widespread barbarisms in American English (e.g. bruschetta and maraschino with /ʃ/)
Im interested. Are UK'ers better at getting all those delicious Italian foods right? Wiktionary seems to say that the UK and US are more or less equivalent with respect to how to pronounce "sch" and differ only on the vowels. Also, that reminds me:

....... schizophrenia

I'm really curious about this. We pronounce the {sch} part perfectly correctly, but corrupt the {z} into a German-like /ts/. Is this a relic of the period when psychology was dominated by Germans?

And yes, i did the "hyperbowl" thing, when I saw it in a Calvin & Hobbes strip one day. I didnt really get the meaning at all, and somehow thought it was related to the Super Bowl despite the obvious spelling difference.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by StrangerCoug »

Thought of another one I was guilty of: pronouncing <olive> to rhyme with <alive>. My family teased me about that one.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by vokzhen »

My entire family has an intrusive <n> in mozzarella /mantsərɛlə/, and if I heard correctly my mom's sister does as well. I don't know if that's a widespread thing or a quirk of our family.

Velar nasal, instead of alveolar/palatal, in <onion>. People never seem to notice anyways. It seems to be a widespread but uncommon thing.

For the longest time I pronounced <authentic> as if it were <aufentic>. I think it's just that I'd always heard *or* seen the word, never the two at the same time, so it took a long time to click that it wasn't an /f/ people were pronouncing. Again, though, it's so close most people probably wouldn't even notice.

A bunch of linguistics terms more than likely, but especially <velar> /veɪ.lr/, and I maintain that the correct pronunciation of <syncope> just sounds stupid.

<pronunciation> often I say and misspell as <pronounciation>, reversing trisyllabic laxing.
Viktor77 wrote:Oregon. No one from the Midwest or East Coast knows how to pronounce it correctly which is apparently a large source of humor for Oregonians. We are taught /'O`.rI.gan/ but it's actually /'O`.rI.gIn/ or even /'O`.gIn/ in informal speech. So I had to relearn that one.

I had to correct my pronunciation of the Montana city Helena. I always said /h@.'leI.n@/ but it's actually /'hE5.lI.n@/.
I must have had exceptional teachers then, cuz I was taught /or.gɨn/ and /'hɛ.lɨ.nə/.

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Zaarin »

vokzhen wrote:My entire family has an intrusive <n> in mozzarella /mantsərɛlə/, and if I heard correctly my mom's sister does as well. I don't know if that's a widespread thing or a quirk of our family.
My family does too, though I've fought it as an adult. I also used to have an intrusive [n] in magnet [mægnn̩t].
"But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me,
What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?”

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Vijay »

linguoboy wrote:For instance, I used to mispronounce German Englisch as if spelled Ingglisch under influence from /ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ/.
I used to have an Indian accent and mispronounced English (in English) as something like [ˈiːŋgɭɪʃ]. I was also very, very slow to realize that [θ] and [ð] really did exist in English, even though I had no trouble believing that they did in Castillian Spanish. I used to say [t̪] and [d̪] (respectively) instead and thought my brother was making things up when he told me how they were really pronounced in English because no one else ever told me my pronunciation of those particular sounds was weird, or perhaps they never picked up on it because I otherwise had developed an American accent by then.

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Matrix »

Vijay wrote:I was also very, very slow to realize that [θ] and [ð] really did exist in English, even though I had no trouble believing that they did in Castillian Spanish. I used to say [t̪] and [d̪] (respectively) instead and thought my brother was making things up when he told me how they were really pronounced in English because no one else ever told me my pronunciation of those particular sounds was weird, or perhaps they never picked up on it because I otherwise had developed an American accent by then.
To be fair, many of us North Americans, in colloquial/lax speech, will pronounce [θ] and [ð] as /t/ and /d/ - even going so far as to realise a final /θ/ as [ʔ].
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Adúljôžal ônal kol ví éža únah kex yaxlr gmlĥ hôga jô ônal kru ansu frú.
Ansu frú ônal savel zaš gmlĥ a vek Adúljôžal vé jaga čaþ kex.
Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh.

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Vijay »

Matrix wrote:To be fair, many of us North Americans, in colloquial/lax speech, will pronounce [θ] and [ð] as /t/ and /d/ - even going so far as to realise a final /θ/ as [ʔ].
But the thing is, I had a dental vs. alveolar stop contrast, so I had /t/ vs. /d/ and /t̪/ vs. /d̪/. All four of those stops exist in Malayalam, but the alveolar stops aren't phonemic (whereas, of course, all four of these were in my idiolect of English).

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Matrix »

You think a monolingual English speaker with no linguistic training/interest is gonna be able to distinguish between alveolar and dental stops?
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Adúljôžal ônal kol ví éža únah kex yaxlr gmlĥ hôga jô ônal kru ansu frú.
Ansu frú ônal savel zaš gmlĥ a vek Adúljôžal vé jaga čaþ kex.
Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh.

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Vijay »

I don't know. Maybe they couldn't distinguish between (my) dental stops and (their) dental/interdental/whatever fricatives, either. If they heard me using /t/ or /d/ when pronouncing words that are supposed to have /θ/ or /ð/ in them, they certainly never pointed it out (with the exception of my brother, of course). So either they didn't notice this oddity in my pronunciation (since otherwise I had a pretty...like, normal American accent anyway, plus I suppose context clues helped in ambiguous cases), or they just never bothered telling me.

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

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Matrix wrote:To be fair, many of us North Americans, in colloquial/lax speech, will pronounce [θ] and [ð] as /t/ and /d/ - even going so far as to realise a final /θ/ as [ʔ].
Wait, what? What part of North America is this? Because this sure isn't something that happens where I'm from. Like you say, "My least favourite subject is ma'." ??

Also, I tend to leave my /θ/ alone, though /ð/ gets turned to /d̪/ or some weaker approximant type thing.

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Salmoneus »

Matrix wrote:You think a monolingual English speaker with no linguistic training/interest is gonna be able to distinguish between alveolar and dental stops?
Yes, many monolingual English speakers are able to understand monolingual English speakers from Ireland without any difficulty!
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Vijay »

Oh right, I'd forgotten all about Hiberno-English!

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Matrix »

clawgrip wrote:
Matrix wrote:To be fair, many of us North Americans, in colloquial/lax speech, will pronounce [θ] and [ð] as /t/ and /d/ - even going so far as to realise a final /θ/ as [ʔ].
Wait, what? What part of North America is this? Because this sure isn't something that happens where I'm from. Like you say, "My least favourite subject is ma'." ??

Also, I tend to leave my /θ/ alone, though /ð/ gets turned to /d̪/ or some weaker approximant type thing.
Thinking about this, what I said there was really stupid. Like, what the hell was I even thinking? I think I was thinking about the word "that", where I usually realize the "th" as [d], and for some reason, I thought the final /t/ was actually a /θ/?? One of the weirdest brain farts I've ever had, I think.
Salmoneus wrote:Yes, many monolingual English speakers are able to understand monolingual English speakers from Ireland without any difficulty!
Sure, I can understand Irish people, but to my ears, they have merged the dental fricatives into the alveolar stops.
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Adúljôžal ônal kol ví éža únah kex yaxlr gmlĥ hôga jô ônal kru ansu frú.
Ansu frú ônal savel zaš gmlĥ a vek Adúljôžal vé jaga čaþ kex.
Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh.

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Nortaneous »

Matrix wrote:You think a monolingual English speaker with no linguistic training/interest is gonna be able to distinguish between alveolar and dental stops?
Monolingual AmE speakers with no linguistic training/interest can probably distinguish [n̪n̪ nn] and [t̪t̪ tt], although those sequences only ever occur across morpheme boundaries.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Vijay »

Nortaneous wrote:Monolingual AmE speakers with no linguistic training/interest can probably distinguish [n̪n̪ nn] and [t̪t̪ tt], although those sequences only ever occur across morpheme boundaries.
IME even (possibly multilingual) AmE speakers with linguistic training can't distinguish between those. :o But idk, maybe some can.

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Nortaneous »

what, how do they realize /-n ð-/ /-t ð-/ sequences
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Vijay »

[n̪ð] and [t̪ð], I think. Although of course I haven't recorded them and made spectrograms or anything :P

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Matrix »

Vijay wrote:[n̪ð] and [t̪ð], I think. Although of course I haven't recorded them and made spectrograms or anything :P
I can corroborate this from my own dialect, mostly standard West Coast fare with a sprinkling of Canadian Raising.
Image

Adúljôžal ônal kol ví éža únah kex yaxlr gmlĥ hôga jô ônal kru ansu frú.
Ansu frú ônal savel zaš gmlĥ a vek Adúljôžal vé jaga čaþ kex.
Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh.

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by vokzhen »

Well, in reality, most instances of them are going to be [n̪(n̪)] and [ʔð] I'm pretty sure. The /ð/ of grammatical words is usually swallowed by the preceding nasal, and off the top of my head I'm not coming up with other instances where a cluster of /nð/ would come up. And I think I only have contact for coda /t/ before alveolars, i.e. not /θ ð ɻ/ despite being coronals (I know /ɻ/ is that way, I'm not 100% on the dentals).

Also I really don't think most English speakers will be able to tell dentals from alveolars anyways, the functional load is so low that it doesn't matter if /nð/ is distinguished from /n/ by dental versus alveolar, there's no chance of confusing them in meaning.

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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Vijay »

I just sat here whispering to myself, "[bɹ̩n̪ n̪ə wɪt͡ʃ]!...[bɹ̩n̪ n̪ə wɪt͡ʃ]!!" :D

I don't think most English-speakers will distinguish dental vs. alveolar stops - but I'm not sure they necessarily distinguish dental stops vs. /θ ð/, either. Dental stops just aren't phonemic in English. (Well, at least I don't think they are in most varieties of English...).

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