zompist bboard

I just noticed something funny. Pronouncing "acknowlegement" to myself, I realized that by default, I pretty much pronounce the first syllable with /g/. It might not be exactly identical with /g/, but the start of how I pronounce "acknowledgement" definitely feels a lot closer to the start of how I pronounce "ignore" than the start of how I pronounce "acne". Obviously, the consonant would be expected to be lenited a bit due to being in the coda of an unstressed syllable, but it doesn't feel like an unaspirated voiceless /k/, it feels like a /g/. I can't find any dictionaries that mention /g/ as a possibility--does this sound at all familiar to anyone here?

I spotted someone wearing a Titleist cap yesterday and it reminded me that when I first saw this I thought it was derived from a German-American surname pronounced /ˈtit.laist/.

linguoboy wrote:I spotted someone wearing a Titleist cap yesterday and it reminded me that when I first saw this I thought it was derived from a German-American surname pronounced /ˈtit.laist/.

I thought German had s > ʃ before a plosive. Have I been mispronouncing Ulisses Spiele?

Zaarin wrote:

linguoboy wrote:I spotted someone wearing a Titleist cap yesterday and it reminded me that when I first saw this I thought it was derived from a German-American surname pronounced /ˈtit.laist/.

I thought German had s > ʃ before a plosive. Have I been mispronouncing Ulisses Spiele?

In Standard German, only in morpheme-initial position. Using [ʃ] in other positions is a dialectal feature characteristic of Southwest Germany and Switzerland (i.e. the Alemannic-speaking area)[*].

So it is [ʃ]piel (and Glocken[ʃ]piel), but Leberwurst and Zeitgeist contain [s].

[*]Even within Alemannic, palatalisation fails to occur across morpheme boundaries. So isch "is" contrasts with isst "eats", whereas these are homophones in StG.

Zaarin wrote:

linguoboy wrote:I spotted someone wearing a Titleist cap yesterday and it reminded me that when I first saw this I thought it was derived from a German-American surname pronounced /ˈtit.laist/.

I thought German had s > ʃ before a plosive. Have I been mispronouncing Ulisses Spiele?

No. The <S> in Spiele is indeed [ʃ].

linguoboy wrote:Even within Alemannic, palatalisation fails to occur across morpheme boundaries. So isch "is" contrasts with isst "eats", whereas these are homophones in StG.

I don't know much about Alemannic, but AFAIK the reason is not the morpheme boundary, but the historical origin of what fell together in /VsC/ in Standard German - where /s/ goes back to Germanic /s/, it shows up as /S/ before stops in the South-Western German dialects, while where it goes back to Germanic /t/ like in the conjugation of essen (cf. Engl. eat), it shows up as /s/. For /s/ from old /t/, a position before stop would be possible only before a (historical) morpheme boundary, due to the phonology of Germanic, but the rule shouldn't hold for historical /s/. Easy to check - what would be the Alemannic forms of Standard German liest "reads" or reist "travels"?

Ah, that makes sense.

I was surprised that Gestapo doesn't have /ʃ/

It can, apparently.

hwhatting wrote:Easy to check - what would be the Alemannic forms of Standard German liest "reads" or reist "travels"?

Not so easy, as it turns out. After an hour of fruitless searching online to confirm the conjugation of these verbs (since I don't know trust my own spotty knowledge of Alemannic) I finally gave up and asked a native-speaker of Swabian. He had this to say:

I däd "läst" mit ma langa "ä" saga, abber s gibt sicher au Leit, wo no en Omlaut hen: "i lies, du liesch, där/die/des liest, mir/ihr/die läset".

Vijay wrote:

finlay wrote:I was surprised that Gestapo doesn't have /ʃ/

It can, apparently.

Laut Duden: [ɡeˈstaːpo], auch: [ɡəˈʃtaːpo].

linguoboy wrote:

hwhatting wrote:Easy to check - what would be the Alemannic forms of Standard German liest "reads" or reist "travels"?

Not so easy, as it turns out. After an hour of fruitless searching online to confirm the conjugation of these verbs (since I don't know trust my own spotty knowledge of Alemannic) I finally gave up and asked a native-speaker of Swabian. He had this to say:

I däd "läst" mit ma langa "ä" saga, abber s gibt sicher au Leit, wo no en Omlaut hen: "i lies, du liesch, där/die/des liest, mir/ihr/die läset".

Ok, looks like the morpheme boundary rule works, at least synchronically for transparent morpheme boundaries (after all, the /S/ in isch "ist" must go back to an older form *iSt, where there also is a morpheme boundary between historical /s/ and the stop.

hwhatting wrote:Ok, looks like the morpheme boundary rule works, at least synchronically for transparent morpheme boundaries (after all, the /S/ in isch "ist" must go back to an older form *iSt, where there also is a morpheme boundary between historical /s/ and the stop.

Similarly, Samschdig, historically sambaz + tac, where the Sams- is a cranberry morpheme. But Geburtstag has [s].

I just learned that "caveat" isn't pronounced [kəˈviːt].


JAL

It wasn't until about four years ago that I finally learned "category" is not pronounced */kəˈtɛgəɹi/ but /ˈkætəgɔɹi/.

jal wrote:I just learned that "caveat" isn't pronounced [kəˈviːt].


JAL

Reminds me that as a kid I pronounced albeit [ɑɫˈbaɪ̯t̚].

Zaarin wrote:

jal wrote:I just learned that "caveat" isn't pronounced [kəˈviːt].


JAL

Reminds me that as a kid I pronounced albeit [ɑɫˈbaɪ̯t̚].

Me too, since I had assumed it was a German loanword. I never used it out loud, though, only in academic writing. I dont think I ever heard it used aloud either until I was well into adulthood.

Im surprised caveat seemingly isnt used in other languages, since it's taken from a famous Latin phrase.

I used to think that "bow", as in "bow down", is pronounced something like "boh".

Raphael wrote:I used to think that "bow", as in "bow down", is pronounced something like "boh".

For ages, I thought that English people had /roːz/, not /rauz/. I still have to correct my mental pronunciation sometimes.

wait what

They don't have /ro:z/??

I... I need to lie down.

Soap wrote:

Zaarin wrote:

jal wrote:I just learned that "caveat" isn't pronounced [kəˈviːt].


JAL

Reminds me that as a kid I pronounced albeit [ɑɫˈbaɪ̯t̚].

Me too, since I had assumed it was a German loanword. I never used it out loud, though, only in academic writing. I dont think I ever heard it used aloud either until I was well into adulthood.

Im surprised caveat seemingly isnt used in other languages, since it's taken from a famous Latin phrase.

I do (and did) use albeit in speech, but I also use nota bene in speech, so... :p

linguoboy wrote:

Raphael wrote:I used to think that "bow", as in "bow down", is pronounced something like "boh".

For ages, I thought that English people had /roːz/, not /rauz/. I still have to correct my mental pronunciation sometimes.

For what word? "Row" as in "argument"?

KathTheDragon wrote:

linguoboy wrote:

Raphael wrote:I used to think that "bow", as in "bow down", is pronounced something like "boh".

For ages, I thought that English people had /roːz/, not /rauz/. I still have to correct my mental pronunciation sometimes.

For what word? "Row" as in "argument"?

Is there another kind of "row" you people can "have"?

I mean maybe you could "have a little row on the Thames". But I didn't think anyone wanted to sound that ridiculously posh any more.

A row of, non-specific, items?

It wasn't at all clear to me whether you were using the phrase "have a row" or talking about having a word /rau/ instead of /rəʊ/

chitin (just heard a friend get this wrong recently)