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

Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2018 10:08 am
by jal
Two in a row from a YouTube vid: "disingenious" (pronounced the second part as "genius") and "verbatim" (stressed on the first syllable, like Dutch (or, like I think the Dutch is pronounced, I'm not sure anymore)).


JAL

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

Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2018 10:34 am
by Jonlang
Ryusenshi wrote:For a long time, I thought fuzz had the FOOT vowel.
It probably does somewhere in the north of England, like Manchester and maybe Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

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

Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2018 10:38 am
by Soap
If "disingenious" is an acceptable word, I agree it should rhyme with genius. But I want to see the context .... we don't really need a word for the opposite of "ingenious" , so unless it's clear the speaker did mean exactly that I suspect they meant to use the similar but etymologically distinct "disingenuous".

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

Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2018 11:25 am
by jal
Soap wrote:If "disingenious" is an acceptable word
Or, I made a typo.


JAL

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

Posted: Tue May 08, 2018 4:40 pm
by linguoboy
I didn't have these incorrect pronunciations very long, but I still had to unlearn them: In preparation for visiting New Mexico last month, I read up a bit on Pueblo history. Most of the pueblos have Spanish names, so I pronounced them as I would in Spanish. That worked fine for places like "Laguna", "Sandia", and "San Ildefonso", but led me astray on "Acoma", "Cochiti", and "Isleta".

Acoma comes from the self-designation ʔáák’u and is pronounced with initial stress. (In Spanish, it is spelled Ácoma.) Similarly, Cochiti is from Eastern Keresan Kotyit and also bears initial stress in English, although in this case the Spanish demonym is cochití.

Isleta is transparently derived from Spanish but the /e/ is mapped to English /eh/ rather than English /ey/. The same is true of Jemez (initial stress). Additionally, my local informant pronounced this /ˈhehməz/. I didn't notice that his dialect lacked shwi generally, so I initially parsed this as Hemas. (It doesn't help that the name of a local restaurant, Hema's Kitchen, is pronounced similarly.)

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

Posted: Tue May 08, 2018 5:19 pm
by Soap
I was surprised visiting Albuquerque that people use true Spanish pronunciations for many names. I heard Jemez with monophtongs, not normal eng vowels. Perhaps it's a function of how familiar the speaker is, though .... The person speaking was familiar with both Spanish & Navajo.

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

Posted: Wed May 09, 2018 1:03 pm
by linguoboy
Soap wrote:I was surprised visiting Albuquerque that people use true Spanish pronunciations for many names. I heard Jemez with monophtongs, not normal eng vowels. Perhaps it's a function of how familiar the speaker is, though .... The person speaking was familiar with both Spanish & Navajo.
My local informant had very limited familiarity with Spanish. (At one point I drilled him on the paradigm for ser and found he knew less than half the present-tense forms.) Interestingly, almost exactly the same proportion of residents (28%) speak Spanish at home in both New Mexico and California, but I found Californian pronunciations much more likely to diverge from Spanish. I suspect that has something to do with history: the majority of Spanish-speakers in California are recent arrivals whereas New Mexico has such a longstanding Spanish-speaking community that it's preserved its own dialect of colonial Spanish.

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

Posted: Wed May 09, 2018 9:56 pm
by Soap
Undine is apparently pronounced to rhyme with "mean", not "mine". I don't think I will change my pronunciation, but I haven't said the word out loud in 20 years and probably won't within the next 20. (It was in a popular video game and an unrelated book I found once.)

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

Posted: Fri May 11, 2018 4:12 pm
by Salmoneus
linguoboy wrote:
Soap wrote:I was surprised visiting Albuquerque that people use true Spanish pronunciations for many names. I heard Jemez with monophtongs, not normal eng vowels. Perhaps it's a function of how familiar the speaker is, though .... The person speaking was familiar with both Spanish & Navajo.
My local informant had very limited familiarity with Spanish. (At one point I drilled him on the paradigm for ser and found he knew less than half the present-tense forms.) Interestingly, almost exactly the same proportion of residents (28%) speak Spanish at home in both New Mexico and California, but I found Californian pronunciations much more likely to diverge from Spanish. I suspect that has something to do with history: the majority of Spanish-speakers in California are recent arrivals whereas New Mexico has such a longstanding Spanish-speaking community that it's preserved its own dialect of colonial Spanish.
Talking of Spanish: I just heard, on a video, somebody pronouncing "Jerez" as /h@rEf/. (not real trill there, just English /r/). In hindsight this is an obvious pronunciation to find, but at the time it kind of threw me for some reason.

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

Posted: Fri May 11, 2018 9:01 pm
by Zaarin
Soap wrote:Undine is apparently pronounced to rhyme with "mean", not "mine". I don't think I will change my pronunciation, but I haven't said the word out loud in 20 years and probably won't within the next 20. (It was in a popular video game and an unrelated book I found once.)
Huh, so it is. Somehow that makes Undine Spragg seem even more unlikable. :p

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

Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 1:10 am
by Sumelic
Soap wrote:Undine is apparently pronounced to rhyme with "mean", not "mine". I don't think I will change my pronunciation, but I haven't said the word out loud in 20 years and probably won't within the next 20.
Ah, that's news to me as well. Words ending in "-ine" have fairly unpredictable pronunciations (e.g. "divine" vs. "marine" vs. "doctrine"). There seems to be variability in the stressed syllable: MW says " \ ˌən-ˈdēn , ˈən-ˌdēn \". The stress in German, which seems to have been an important source for this word, is apparently on the second syllable. Collins does mention a pronunciation with the "price" vowel in its entry for American English: "ʌnˈdin ; undēnˈ; ˈʌndin ; unˈdēn; ˈʌndaɪn ; unˈdīn".
Soap wrote:It was in a popular video game
Is this talking about Undertale? There seem to be a number of other games (mainly from Japan) that use "undine" as the name of a fantasy "race", but that was the first thing I thought of when reading your comment. The Undertale character's name seems to be spelled "Undyne" and to be (officially) pronounced with the "price" vowel, interestingly enough. I don't know if this is an intentionally altered pronunciation to make a pun with the words "die" and "undying", or if it is a sign that Toby Fox pronounces the noun "undine" with the "price" vowel.

The "Behind the Name" comments for the name "Undine" mention another unusual pronunciation, "oon-DEE-nee".

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

Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 6:21 am
by Salmoneus
I say it as un-deen - both syllables stressed, not sure which is primarily. I've heard the un-dyne pronounciation as well, though.

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

Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 8:21 am
by yangfiretiger121
Sumelic wrote:
Soap wrote:Undine is apparently pronounced to rhyme with "mean", not "mine". I don't think I will change my pronunciation, but I haven't said the word out loud in 20 years and probably won't within the next 20.
Ah, that's news to me as well. Words ending in "-ine" have fairly unpredictable pronunciations (e.g. "divine" vs. "marine" vs. "doctrine"). There seems to be variability in the stressed syllable: MW says " \ ˌən-ˈdēn , ˈən-ˌdēn \". The stress in German, which seems to have been an important source for this word, is apparently on the second syllable. Collins does mention a pronunciation with the "price" vowel in its entry for American English: "ʌnˈdin ; undēnˈ; ˈʌndin ; unˈdēn; ˈʌndaɪn ; unˈdīn".
Soap wrote:It was in a popular video game
Is this talking about Undertale? There seem to be a number of other games (mainly from Japan) that use "undine" as the name of a fantasy "race", but that was the first thing I thought of when reading your comment. The Undertale character's name seems to be spelled "Undyne" and to be (officially) pronounced with the "price" vowel, interestingly enough. I don't know if this is an intentionally altered pronunciation to make a pun with the words "die" and "undying", or if it is a sign that Toby Fox pronounces the noun "undine" with the "price" vowel.

The "Behind the Name" comments for the name "Undine" mention another unusual pronunciation, "oon-DEE-nee".
Don't forget tabletop roleplays, such as Pathfinder.

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

Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 1:38 pm
by Soap
Ah, thanks. So my pronunciation is okay after all. Gotta look beyond wiktionary & wikipedia sometimes.
Sumelic wrote:Is this talking about Undertale?
Nope, much older .... Secret of Mana by Squaresoft in 1992. Very iconic RPG for me, and influenced my conworld a lot, in some ways that Im only just now realizing, such as the red hair of the angel Hintaya, whose personality somewhat resembles the Sprite character from the game ... the Undine is the first of the eight elemental spirits you meet, and for a good part of the game you keep on going back to her temple, so she's the most familiar of the eight as well. Even in the low resolution original game it's clear that the Undine is a female spirit, so that got me hooked on the idea of female elemental spirits. I've even had two recent dreams about Secret of Mana, so even today it's still in my mind.

the Undine and her six magic spells
÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷
Oh, and the book was https://www.amazon.com/Undine-Michael-O ... 0061007188 , which i never got around to reading. it looks like an erotic story but Im told it isnt.

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

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 6:59 am
by hwhatting
Sumelic wrote:The "Behind the Name" comments for the name "Undine" mention another unusual pronunciation, "oon-DEE-nee".
That seems to be an approximation of the German pronunciation, which is [ʊn'di:nə].

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

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 2:41 pm
by linguoboy
My brothers and I ended up with a lot of spelling pronunciations from D&D: lycanthrope and wyvern with /ih/, lamia with /ah/ or /a/, caecilia with /k/, etc. I think undine might have come with a pronunciation guide, since my natural instinct was to use /iy/ though /ay/ sounds acceptable as well.

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

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 5:04 pm
by Zaarin
I have /ɪ/ in wyvern, probably due to Dragon Age, and Wiktionary lists it as an acceptable pronunciation, though it gives /ai/ first.

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

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2018 4:31 pm
by Mornche Geddick
For years I used to pronounce a certain sports brand to rhyme with "bike".

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

Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 4:37 pm
by kanejam
Mornche Geddick wrote:For years I used to pronounce a certain sports brand to rhyme with "bike".
Reminds me of this. :P

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

Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2018 3:02 am
by Ryusenshi
Yeah, me too. Actually, I think in French it's always /najk/, even in adverts.