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 Vijay »

There is a road here whose name is spelled <Koenig>, and it's pronounced [ˈkʰinɨg̚].

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

Post by linguoboy »

Travis B. wrote:Traditionally German ö/oe in names is pronounced /eɪ/ or /ɛ/ here, depending on whether it corresponds to Standard German /øː/ or /œ/.
Again, same in Missouri. It's actually quite likely in many cases that the traditional pronunciation was with /eː/ bzw. /ɛ/ because unrounding is widespread in German vernaculars (heck, Goethe had it in his own speech) but much rarer in the conservative standard form. Thus spellings with ö and ü are more prestigious and would've been adopted by speakers in cases where they lacked the corresponding vowels in speech.

By contrast, I've never heard of French /ø/, /œ/, and/or /y/ being subject to unrounding in any variety of French. [The one lone example I know of is /ti/ for tu in certain varieties of Cajun French (e.g. Vermilion Parish).]

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

Post by Vijay »

linguoboy wrote:By contrast, I've never heard of French /ø/, /œ/, and/or /y/ being subject to unrounding in any variety of French. [The one lone example I know of is /ti/ for tu in certain varieties of Cajun French (e.g. Vermilion Parish).]
IINM all of those are unrounded in Réunion at least, in French as well as Creole.

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

Post by linguoboy »

Vijay wrote:
linguoboy wrote:By contrast, I've never heard of French /ø/, /œ/, and/or /y/ being subject to unrounding in any variety of French. [The one lone example I know of is /ti/ for tu in certain varieties of Cajun French (e.g. Vermilion Parish).]
IINM that happens in Réunion at least, in French as well as Creole.
Oh, good point. I think Haitian Creole also has unrounding across the board.

But most early French-speaking settlers to the USA were not Creole-speakers, whereas speakers of dialectal German greatly outnumbered speakers of Standard German.

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

Post by Vijay »

linguoboy wrote:But most early French-speaking settlers to the USA were not Creole-speakers
And apparently Louisiana Creole French doesn't have unrounding anyway.

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

Post by Alces »

Zaarin wrote:
Travis B. wrote:Final e in German names here are traditionally pronounced /i/.
That reminds me of something I've been wondering about. In the US, German names with <oe> are generally pronounced /oʊ/, because of orthography. But why are German names in <oe (ö)> /œ/ pronounced /ɚ/ in English (viz., Goethe /gɚtə/, Goebbels /gɚblz/, etc.)? Meanwhile, French <eu> /œ/ tends to become /u/ or /ʊ/...
Well, for non-rhotic speakers /əː/ is the natural nativization of /øː/, because rounding of front vowels has an acoustic effect similar to centralization (or something like that). Cf. the French schwa often being pronounced [ø]. For rhotic speakers it's a much less natural nativization, though. Do any rhotic speakers actually use the pronunciations with /ɚ/?

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

Post by Zaarin »

Alces wrote:
Zaarin wrote:
Travis B. wrote:Final e in German names here are traditionally pronounced /i/.
That reminds me of something I've been wondering about. In the US, German names with <oe> are generally pronounced /oʊ/, because of orthography. But why are German names in <oe (ö)> /œ/ pronounced /ɚ/ in English (viz., Goethe /gɚtə/, Goebbels /gɚblz/, etc.)? Meanwhile, French <eu> /œ/ tends to become /u/ or /ʊ/...
Well, for non-rhotic speakers /əː/ is the natural nativization of /øː/, because rounding of front vowels has an acoustic effect similar to centralization (or something like that). Cf. the French schwa often being pronounced [ø]. For rhotic speakers it's a much less natural nativization, though. Do any rhotic speakers actually use the pronunciations with /ɚ/?
I'm a speaker of a rhotic dialect, which is why I was wondering. I can see how it makes sense for non-rhotic dialects, but in American English Goethe /ˈgɚtə/ is very strange and has always confused me.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by linguoboy »

Alces wrote:Do any rhotic speakers actually use the pronunciations with /ɚ/?
Yes. I would say this is the prevailing norm among educated speakers I know who don't speak German.

[I know what you're thinking: How can we really call them "educated" then? But I prefer to err on the side of generosity.]

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

Post by Sumelic »

linguoboy wrote:
Alces wrote:Do any rhotic speakers actually use the pronunciations with /ɚ/?
Yes. I would say this is the prevailing norm among educated speakers I know who don't speak German.

[I know what you're thinking: How can we really call them "educated" then? But I prefer to err on the side of generosity.]
On the contrary, I think it serves as a sign that they're educated. I'd guess it's easier to learn about Goethe by reading than by listening, so people who are aware of the bizarre correspondence "oe" = /ɚ/ were probably explicitly taught this, such as by a professor of literature.

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

Post by Nortaneous »

in AmE, German /øː/ can be borrowed as either /ɚ/ (Goethe, Goebbels, Göring) or /e/ (Boehner), usually depending on how it was borrowed.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Vijay »

Or /i/ as in Koenig [ˈkʰinɨg̚]. ;)

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

Post by Zaarin »

Vijay wrote:Or /i/ as in Koenig [ˈkʰinɨg̚]. ;)
I wonder if that's Latin interference or some kind of local shibboleth, because I've heard German <oe> as /ɚ oʊ̯ e ɛ/ but never /i/.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by hwhatting »

Zaarin wrote:
Vijay wrote:Or /i/ as in Koenig [ˈkʰinɨg̚]. ;)
I wonder if that's Latin interference or some kind of local shibboleth, because I've heard German <oe> as /ɚ oʊ̯ e ɛ/ but never /i/.
I know at least one German dialect that has /i/ here (Bavarian kini "king" (= standard German König), so maybe it came through German immigrants using a standard spelling, but dialectal pronunciation?
Otherwise, it may be just on analogy with the pronuciation of "oe" in Greek names like Phoebe.

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

Post by Imralu »

There were people in the street I grew up in with the last name Hoenke, which they and everyone else pronounced as "honky".
Zaarin wrote:I'm a speaker of a rhotic dialect, which is why I was wondering. I can see how it makes sense for non-rhotic dialects, but in American English Goethe /ˈgɚtə/ is very strange and has always confused me.
You mean it's not /ˈgəʊ.iːθ/?? :wink:

When speaking English, I try to pronounce Goethe as /ˈgɜːtə/, which should surface as something like [gɵːtʰɐ], but I feel weird about not flapping the "t", it feels affected, so it ends up being pronounced the same as how I say "girder".
Alces wrote:Well, for non-rhotic speakers /əː/ is the natural nativization of /øː/, because rounding of front vowels has an acoustic effect similar to centralization (or something like that). Cf. the French schwa often being pronounced [ø].
In Australian and NZ English, /ɜː/ is actually a little bit rounded, although nowhere near as strongly as in German. The Swedish <ö> sounds sound much less rounded to me, almost like the Australian /ɜː/ ... unless it's the weird allophone before /r/, which I find hard to distinguish from <å> sometimes ... eg. göra sounds kind of like jåra to me.

When I first moved to Germany, I had an American friend who found distinguishing <ü> and <ö> really hard and I don't think he could get his head around them having short and long versions. He pronounced pretty much any <ö> or <ü> as [y:::]. I've also heard a lot of Americans pronouncing Bitte schön as "bidduh shurn", with a flapped /t/ and rhotacism.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by linguoboy »

Imralu wrote:You mean it's not /ˈgəʊ.iːθ/??
You joke, but apparently some people used to pronounce the name of Goethe Street in Chicago /goːˈiːθiː/. I've never heard that myself, by I have heard /ˈgoːθiː/ many times. (There's a bus stop there that I used to ride past regularly.)

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

Post by Vijay »

I think I used to pronounce that name something like that before I had any idea Goethe was German or how his name was supposed to be pronounced. Or maybe I pronounced it like "Goth-y." :D

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

Post by Zaarin »

linguoboy wrote:
Imralu wrote:You mean it's not /ˈgəʊ.iːθ/??
You joke, but apparently some people used to pronounce the name of Goethe Street in Chicago /goːˈiːθiː/. I've never heard that myself, by I have heard /ˈgoːθiː/ many times. (There's a bus stop there that I used to ride past regularly.)
Before I heard it pronounced I thought it was /ˈgoʊ̯θə/.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Pole, the »

What do you mean, it is not pronounced /fɪʃ/? :o

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

Post by syzithryx »

When I was a child I would say "melancholy" as "mel-AING-koh-lee" because I thought it sounded better that way. XD

(also, sorry for using English spelling instead of IPA symbols, I don't really know them well enough to be confident using them)

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

Post by Sglod »

I always thought pronunciation was pronounciation and said it as such... (/prənaʊsi.ˈeɪʃᵊn/)

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

Post by jmcd »

@syzithryx: It does sound better XD
Sglod wrote:I always thought pronunciation was pronounciation and said it as such... (/prənaʊsi.ˈeɪʃᵊn/)
I still say it thusly. Ain't nothing stopping this rebel~~

To add to the comments about French creoles, AFAICT almost all of them have the unrounding. The only French creole varieties I know without it are the acrolectal varieties of Réunion Creole, developped by the pauperised white population living in the South and the Highlands from the early 19th century. Some people say "The creole of the South isn't really Creole" but the answer's in the initial statement.

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

Post by vokzhen »

jmcd wrote:
Sglod wrote:I always thought pronunciation was pronounciation and said it as such... (/prənaʊsi.ˈeɪʃᵊn/)
I still say it thusly. Ain't nothing stopping this rebel~~
Same here, and I usually misspell it, notice the red squigglies, and fix it. It's rare than I spell it correctly.

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

Post by vokzhen »

I ran onto the page again and am once again taken aback at how ridiculous the supposed English pronunciation of Uyghur is: /wi.gr/. No, I refuse.

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

Post by StrangerCoug »

vokzhen wrote:I ran onto the page again and am once again taken aback at how ridiculous the supposed English pronunciation of Uyghur is: /wi.gr/. No, I refuse.
Well, turns out I wasn't wide of the mark with /uj.ɡɚ/...
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Vijay »

StrangerCoug wrote:
vokzhen wrote:I ran onto the page again and am once again taken aback at how ridiculous the supposed English pronunciation of Uyghur is: /wi.gr/. No, I refuse.
Well, turns out I wasn't wide of the mark with /uj.ɡɚ/...
I say /uj.ɡur/, and Victor Mair apparently says /uj.gʱur/. I joked in the comments that it made him sound Indian. :D

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