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 Frislander »

When I was really young I used to say things like [ˌlɪ.mə.ˈwi:z]for "limousine", which I don't remember, and [əʊ.ˈʃi:.ni.ˌjə] for "Oceania" and [ˈflɪŋ.(g)ə.ˌmɪŋ.(g)əʊ] for "flamingo", which I do remember. My mum tells me that I was never good at the phonetics and would just remember the "shape" of a word from reading it.

EDIT: I've added the stress marking to give a bit more of the phonetic detail, though for "flingamingo" I don't think there was any real difference between the primary and secondary stress.
Last edited by Frislander on Wed Mar 30, 2016 9:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by linguoboy »

One of my coworkers just pronounced the name Javier with [ʤ]. I mocked him and he pleaded lack of sleep.

I used to have the common American variant "Exzavier" for Xavier when I was younger. My excuse is that I was taught by Marianists, not Jesuits.

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

Post by Yiuel Raumbesrairc »

各国:I learned that as かくくに /kakukuni/. Then, I had to use that for an ad in Japan we were filming. Oh gods. It is supposed to be かっこく/kakkoku/. It took a while, but I got it right in the end.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Salmoneus »

linguoboy wrote:One of my coworkers just pronounced the name Javier with [ʤ]. I mocked him and he pleaded lack of sleep.

I used to have the common American variant "Exzavier" for Xavier when I was younger. My excuse is that I was taught by Marianists, not Jesuits.
I know someone who knows someone who named their child Xavier, and pronounces it with an 'X'.

Naturally, people I know now laugh about this person whom a person I knows knows behind their back.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by linguoboy »

My brother wanted to give his son the middle name "Xik" (pronounced /ˈziːk/).

It's probably best for everyone involved that he never reproduced.

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

Post by Vijay »

When I was younger, I kept thinking it was *indicent instead of incident. I used to read a certain popular Indian children's magazine in English; it had one section where people told true stories, and beneath each one, it said something like "based on a real-life incident narrated by:" But I don't remember coming across that word in any other context at the time.

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

Post by Pole, the »

Karero wrote:When I was really young I used to say things like [ˌlɪ.mə.ˈwi:z]for "limousine", which I don't remember, and [əʊ.ˈʃi:.ni.ˌjə] for "Oceania" and [ˈflɪŋ.(g)ə.ˌmɪŋ.(g)əʊ] for "flamingo", which I do remember. My mum tells me that I was never good at the phonetics and would just remember the "shape" of a word from reading it.
Maybe your pronunciation was different and your mother misremembered it? It has happened to me.
Salmoneus wrote:I know someone who knows someone who named their child Xavier, and pronounces it with an 'X'.

Naturally, people I know now laugh about this person whom a person I knows knows behind their back.
But.. why?

The Polish variant is Ksawery /ksaˈvɛrɨ/. A decade ago there was a celebrity who was keen on foreign names and named his child Xavier /ˈksavjɛr/.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Sumelic »

Pole, the wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:I know someone who knows someone who named their child Xavier, and pronounces it with an 'X'.

Naturally, people I know now laugh about this person whom a person I knows knows behind their back.
But.. why?

The Polish variant is Ksawery /ksaˈvɛrɨ/. A decade ago there was a celebrity who was keen on foreign names and named his child Xavier /ˈksavjɛr/.
Polish phonotactics are different from English phonotactics. And the pronunciation linguoboy and Salmoneus are talking about isn't /ˈkseɪviɚ/ but /̩ɛksˈeɪviɚ/, like in "X-ray" or abbreviations like "xtreme." It's not a normal pronunciation of English "x" in a word, and it suggests ignorance of the traditional pronunciation with /z/, so it sounds silly to many people, like the urban legend about the name "Le—a" pronounced "Ledasha."

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

Post by jmcd »

From the Ledasha link: "They live among us, they vote and they breed"

Holy fuck. Spell how we want or the eggs get it?

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

Post by Frislander »

Pole, the wrote:
Karero wrote:When I was really young I used to say things like [ˌlɪ.mə.ˈwi:z]for "limousine", which I don't remember, and [əʊ.ˈʃi:.ni.ˌjə] for "Oceania" and [ˈflɪŋ.(g)ə.ˌmɪŋ.(g)əʊ] for "flamingo", which I do remember. My mum tells me that I was never good at the phonetics and would just remember the "shape" of a word from reading it.
Maybe your pronunciation was different and your mother misremembered it?
No, that is definitely how it was.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by ęzo »

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.)?
It’s an acoustic reason, not articulatory: r-coloring and rounding have similar effects on the third formant (F3 is lowered in either case).

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

Post by ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ »

I think it would be better to create English orthography. If it were, all English-speaking countries could develop way of writing down and pronouncing foreign names? Why don't you (American, Canadian, British and Australian) create language councils and reform spelling?
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Travis B. »

ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ wrote:I think it would be better to create English orthography. If it were, all English-speaking countries could develop way of writing down and pronouncing foreign names? Why don't you (American, Canadian, British and Australian) create language councils and reform spelling?
Do not want.

Current English orthography provides written names for words which are somewhat loosely tied to the words' actual pronunciation. This allows it to be more crossdialectal than a rigidly phonemic orthography, which would mandate a particular variety as being the standard variety. Hence creating a new phonemic orthography for English would elevate a single English variety above all others.

Hell, it is painful to try to create an orthography that just represents both RP and GA simultaneously, and I highly doubt Americans would accept a new English orthography based on just RP or the English would accept a new English orthography based on just GA. And that is ignoring all other English varieties to boot. Even a new English orthography based off of both RP and GA would elevate RP and GA over other standard varieties such as Standard Scottish English, and I doubt that, say, the Scottish would be happy with that.

Anyways, this would require an Academy, and having an Academy would go against all the established traditions associated with English.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by jmcd »

ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ wrote:I think it would be better to create English orthography. If it were, all English-speaking countries could develop way of writing down and pronouncing foreign names? Why don't you (American, Canadian, British and Australian) create language councils and reform spelling?
English already has an (idiosyncratic) orthography. Its way of writing down foreign names is either 1) copy the original or 2) make it look like an English word or 3) somewhere in between. Why don't you (Polish, French, Spanish etc) abolish language councils?

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Post by ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ »

jmcd wrote:English already has an (idiosyncratic) orthography. Its way of writing down foreign names is either 1) copy the original or 2) make it look like an English word or 3) somewhere in between. Why don't you (Polish, French, Spanish etc) abolish language councils?
Travis B. wrote: Do not want.

Current English orthography provides written names for words which are somewhat loosely tied to the words' actual pronunciation. This allows it to be more crossdialectal than a rigidly phonemic orthography, which would mandate a particular variety as being the standard variety. Hence creating a new phonemic orthography for English would elevate a single English variety above all others.

Hell, it is painful to try to create an orthography that just represents both RP and GA simultaneously, and I highly doubt Americans would accept a new English orthography based on just RP or the English would accept a new English orthography based on just GA. And that is ignoring all other English varieties to boot. Even a new English orthography based off of both RP and GA would elevate RP and GA over other standard varieties such as Standard Scottish English, and I doubt that, say, the Scottish would be happy with that.

Anyways, this would require an Academy, and having an Academy would go against all the established traditions associated with English.
But you will go further and further into spliting, merging, influencing all dialects by themselves. I sometimes think about your and my, Polish, language situation and cannot decide whether it is better to unify language and pronounciation or to save all dialects. I know that languages change, but as I can see you sometimes cannot decide how to pronounce particular word. When we have such situation we simply ask our language council by the Internet and have an answer, so I don't think abolishing councils is very good. Maybe there should be one standarized orthography and pronounciation for one country, i.e. United States or Great Britain and you could have saved your local language simultaneously, as do Spanish, French, German and many other nations.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Zaarin »

ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ wrote:
jmcd wrote:English already has an (idiosyncratic) orthography. Its way of writing down foreign names is either 1) copy the original or 2) make it look like an English word or 3) somewhere in between. Why don't you (Polish, French, Spanish etc) abolish language councils?
Travis B. wrote: Do not want.

Current English orthography provides written names for words which are somewhat loosely tied to the words' actual pronunciation. This allows it to be more crossdialectal than a rigidly phonemic orthography, which would mandate a particular variety as being the standard variety. Hence creating a new phonemic orthography for English would elevate a single English variety above all others.

Hell, it is painful to try to create an orthography that just represents both RP and GA simultaneously, and I highly doubt Americans would accept a new English orthography based on just RP or the English would accept a new English orthography based on just GA. And that is ignoring all other English varieties to boot. Even a new English orthography based off of both RP and GA would elevate RP and GA over other standard varieties such as Standard Scottish English, and I doubt that, say, the Scottish would be happy with that.

Anyways, this would require an Academy, and having an Academy would go against all the established traditions associated with English.
But you will go further and further into spliting, merging, influencing all dialects by themselves. I sometimes think about your and my, Polish, language situation and cannot decide whether it is better to unify language and pronounciation or to save all dialects. I know that languages change, but as I can see you sometimes cannot decide how to pronounce particular word. When we have such situation we simply ask our language council by the Internet and have an answer, so I don't think abolishing councils is very good. Maybe there should be one standarized orthography and pronounciation for one country, i.e. United States or Great Britain and you could have saved your local language simultaneously, as do Spanish, French, German and many other nations.
Ask Occitan about the effectiveness of Standard French at preserving dialects, or Catalan about Standard Spanish. ;) True, aside from Scots, English has no close relatives like Occitan/French, Catalan/Spanish, or Galician/Portuguese, but the point remains that standard English orthography is already readily understood by speakers of all dialects.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Travis B. »

The thing is that having different orthographies for different countries would not work either, because it works so much better for English-speakers to be able to read what is written by any English-speaker and likewise to be able to write so as to be read by any English-speaker. (While there are orthographic differences in English between different countries, they really are trivial, being mere graphical details, and do not actually indicate different underlying phonemes.) If anything, we want to keep written English as one unitary entity, trivial differences aside, with the understanding that English varieties will drift apart over time and we want English-speakers to be able to read and write a single written language regardless of whatever differences there may be in how they speak.
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Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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

Post by Travis B. »

Anyways, many millions of people are already literate in the current written English, are we going to make them all learn something different just because some language planner thinks it's a good idea? And doing so would harm English's status as a lingua franca far more than it would help it.

(If anything, a better goal for long-term language planning would be to position the current written English as akin to what classical Latin, classical Chinese, or classical Arabic were, with the understanding that spoken English would be more akin to Romance or spoken Chinese or Arabic "dialects".)
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by jmcd »

ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ wrote:I sometimes think about your and my, Polish, language situation and cannot decide whether it is better to unify language and pronounciation or to save all dialects.
For me, there is an obvious choice: save all dialects. Heck, this isn't done near enough AFAIAC.
ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ wrote:I know that languages change, but as I can see you sometimes cannot decide how to pronounce particular word. When we have such situation we simply ask our language council by the Internet and have an answer, so I don't think abolishing councils is very good.
Are you that passive that you can't decide for yourself how to express yourself?

EDIT:
TravisB wrote:And doing so would harm English's status as a lingua franca far more than it would help it.
In the end, maybe it's a good idea...

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

Post by ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ »

jmcd wrote:
ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ wrote:I know that languages change, but as I can see you sometimes cannot decide how to pronounce particular word. When we have such situation we simply ask our language council by the Internet and have an answer, so I don't think abolishing councils is very good.
Are you that passive that you can't decide for yourself how to express yourself?
No, but sometimes we have endings which vary in their pronounciation, have clusters impossible to articulate or simply mispronounce some words. Also there are foreign names, like surname Curie, originnaly in French [kyʁi], but in Polish [̍kʲiri].

OK, I know I won't persuade to create language councils, you win.
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Post by Travis B. »

jmcd wrote:
ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ wrote:I sometimes think about your and my, Polish, language situation and cannot decide whether it is better to unify language and pronounciation or to save all dialects.
For me, there is an obvious choice: save all dialects. Heck, this isn't done near enough AFAIAC.
Preserving the current English orthography will be much better for actual English dialects than a phonemic one because it does not mandate a particular actual pronunciation nearly as strongly as a purely or nearly phonemic orthography would. People do not expect that individuals will pronounce every word the way they it is spelled with the current English orthography, but they will for any phonemic orthography that may replace it.
jmcd wrote:EDIT:
TravisB wrote:And doing so would harm English's status as a lingua franca far more than it would help it.
In the end, maybe it's a good idea...
I myself am not of the opinion that English will likely replace other major languages in areas where it is presently used as a lingua franca, And as for the languages it has or will replace, it has already largely replaced those in the past, with them being already rendered extinct, moribund, or limited to very small minorities.

There will always be a need for a lingua franca, and in this role English has replaced French and, before it, Latin. To successfully extricate English from this role will require elevating another language to this position, which will require drastic changes to the global sociopolitical order (e.g. the Chinese conquest and colonization of the Americas). And then we will be back where we were before, except, say, everyone will have to learn hanzi now, and the global sociopolitical order will revolve around China.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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

Post by jmcd »

Preserving the current English orthography will be much better for actual English dialects than a phonemic one because it does not mandate a particular actual pronunciation nearly as strongly as a purely or nearly phonemic orthography would. People do not expect that individuals will pronounce every word the way they it is spelled with the current English orthography, but they will for any phonemic orthography that may replace it.
Yes sure but other things unrelated to orthography can be done e.g. official recognition and funding.
There will always be a need for a lingua franca, and in this role English has replaced French and, before it, Latin. To successfully extricate English from this role will require elevating another language to this position, which will require drastic changes to the global sociopolitical order (e.g. the Chinese conquest and colonization of the Americas). And then we will be back where we were before, except, say, everyone will have to learn hanzi now, and the global sociopolitical order will revolve around China.
There have long been lingua francas, sure. World lingua francas not so much. But I think English might well be the first such language (due to the US's unique status as world hyperpower), which AFAIAC, encourages even more the damage against all other language varieties. And at least some of the damage it has done can be reversed.
Last edited by jmcd on Tue May 24, 2016 10:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

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

Post by Travis B. »

jmcd wrote:
Preserving the current English orthography will be much better for actual English dialects than a phonemic one because it does not mandate a particular actual pronunciation nearly as strongly as a purely or nearly phonemic orthography would. People do not expect that individuals will pronounce every word the way they it is spelled with the current English orthography, but they will for any phonemic orthography that may replace it.
Yes sure but other things unrelated to orthography can be done e.g. official recognition and funding.
Official recognition and funding for particular English dialects? This will only happen when English has visibly broken up into different languages, and where the standard written English has taken on the role of Late Latin or Literary Chinese. And this will have the effect of promoting the big dialects as new standard spoken languages at the expense of the little dialects. The only exception is Scots, but it can easily be considered a separate language from English rather than a set of English dialects.
jmcd wrote:
There will always be a need for a lingua franca, and in this role English has replaced French and, before it, Latin. To successfully extricate English from this role will require elevating another language to this position, which will require drastic changes to the global sociopolitical order (e.g. the Chinese conquest and colonization of the Americas). And then we will be back where we were before, except, say, everyone will have to learn hanzi now, and the global sociopolitical order will revolve around China.
There have long been lingua francas, sure. World lingua francas not so much. But I think English might well be the first such language (due to the US's unique status as world hyperpower), which AFAIAC, encourages even more the damage against all other language varieties. And at least some of the damage it has done can be reversed.
I do not see what is special about English being a world lingua franca here; other lingua francas have had similar effects within the areas which they were spoken (look at Latin historically). But the matter with English is that, as I said, the languages it will have made extinct have already been rendered extinct or moribund or limited to small minorities, specifically those of North America and Australia, and jettisoning English from its role as world lingua franca will not help them, while I doubt it will negatively effect the languages of Europe or India that much. (I highly doubt people will stop speaking even Dutch or Swedish because of English.)
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Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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

Post by Vijay »

There are other ways to communicate in a multilingual society besides using a lingua franca. Js.

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

Post by jmcd »

Norway, for example, has better acceptance of dialects with them being considered separate languages.

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