Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlearn

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

Post by Zaarin »

jal wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:My /s/ and /z/ are dental, if not interdental.
You have a lisp like Jamie?


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To my knowledge, dental sibilants are extremely common in some varieties of American English. The tip of my tongue is pressed against my teeth when I form a sibilant; it is nevertheless entirely distinct from [θ], which aside from being interdental is not a sibilant.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Vijay »

Ryusenshi wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:- since I was saying to him that dental sibilants were not a big thing to worry about, clearly I don't think I have a noticeable lisp
- so saying that dental sibilants are a lisp is also saying, in a very mocking fashion, that I'm wrong about my language, which you are not a native speaker of
Or, you know, since jal isn't a native speaker, maybe he just didn't realize that the word "lisp" was considered offensive...
As a native speaker, I haven't even found any evidence yet that it is.

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

Post by jal »

Salmoneus wrote:...well that got personal quickly. Also, fuck you.
I appologize Sal for triggering you. I forgot a smiley apparently, but given your response I don't think that would've mattered? Anyway, I was of course referring to Jamie Oliver, of cooking fame, who is a notable lisper.
Ryusenshi wrote:Or, you know, since jal isn't a native speaker, maybe he just didn't realize that the word "lisp" was considered offensive...
Well, I don't think it is, is it? Wikipedia has a page on it, and e.g. here is a mention of the phenomenon on British tv (also mentioning Jamie Oliver as an example).


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

Post by Nortaneous »

Sumelic wrote:/ˈkæviɒt ˈɛmptɔr/ still looks kind of incorrect to me. Mostly, it's the /ɒ/ (I would expect /æ/ or /ɑ/). The next part is really just my own preference, not really a matter of "correctness", but I prefer /eɪ/ in the first syllable to /æ/, as it's more regular in English for "a" to be pronounced "long" when it comes before a single consonant letter followed by "e.a" in haitus (compare "Mediterranean", "Azalea", "crustacean", "habeas corpus").
I'd expect /ˈkævɨjˌɑt/ for "caveat" as an independent word, but /ˈkævɨjɨt/ in "caveat emptor".
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Travis B. »

I have both dental and alveolar stops, with [t̪ d̪] as allophones of /ð/ and, less frequently, [t̪] as an allophone of /θ/, but my /t d/ are never dental. Also, my /s z/ are in free variation between being alveolar and being dental except when palatalized (e.g. in [sʲʉ̯u(ː)] "sue"), where then it is always alveolar.
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 Vijay »

Travis B. wrote:I have both dental and alveolar stops, with [t̪ d̪] as allophones of /ð/ and, less frequently, [t̪] as an allophone of /θ/, but my /t d/ are never dental.
That sounds so Indian. :P Something a bit like that used to be true of me, too (I used [t̪] instead of [θ] and [d̪] instead of [ð]).

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

Post by Travis B. »

Vijay wrote:
Travis B. wrote:I have both dental and alveolar stops, with [t̪ d̪] as allophones of /ð/ and, less frequently, [t̪] as an allophone of /θ/, but my /t d/ are never dental.
That sounds so Indian. :P Something a bit like that used to be true of me, too (I used [t̪] instead of [θ] and [d̪] instead of [ð]).
I also have [n̪] as an allophone of /ð/ after a nasal. This is not consistent, though, since I will also have alveolar [t d] as allophones of /ð/ as well.
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 Vijay »

Travis B. wrote:
Vijay wrote:
Travis B. wrote:I have both dental and alveolar stops, with [t̪ d̪] as allophones of /ð/ and, less frequently, [t̪] as an allophone of /θ/, but my /t d/ are never dental.
That sounds so Indian. :P Something a bit like that used to be true of me, too (I used [t̪] instead of [θ] and [d̪] instead of [ð]).
I also have [n̪] as an allophone of /ð/ after a nasal.
My dad has /n̪d̪/ merged with /n̪n̪/ in Malayalam. (However, /n̪t̪/ is phonetically realized as [n̪d̪]).

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

Post by linguoboy »

The normative pronunciation of daimon is /ˈdaɪˌmoʊn/?

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

Post by Sumelic »

I only learned a while ago that "courier" doesn't rhyme with "warrior". And I thought "carapace" ended in /əs/--maybe I was comparing it to "populace--but it seems like the typical pronunciation is actually with /eɪs/.

Also, "chaparral" is from Spanish, not from French, so I think /tʃ/ really makes more sense, although it seems that many, perhaps most American English speakers do use /ʃ/ instead. I'm not sure; does anyone know if tʃ > ʃ was a known feature of Californian Spanish when the word entered English? I guess something similar happens with "machete".
linguoboy wrote:The normative pronunciation of daimon is /ˈdaɪˌmoʊn/?
I don't think daimon is in the vocabulary of most English speakers. If I was writing something of my own, I would always prefer to use the less direct transliteration daemon with the anglicized pronunciation /ˈdimən/. Most dictionaries do seem to show /ˈdaɪ(ˌ)moʊn/, but I would expect people to use somewhat different pronunciations of daimon depending on what kind of Ancient Greek class, if any, they took. It seems to be pretty common for English speakers to learn to pronounce omega as /oʊ/ and eta as /eɪ/.

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

Post by Salmoneus »

linguoboy wrote:The normative pronunciation of daimon is /ˈdaɪˌmoʊn/?
I think I'm only used to that in classical contexts, with /Q/ or /@/ in ordinary contexts - though maybe I just don't talk to enough classics professors.

It's /oU/ in "eudaimonia", obviously, but that's in line with normal vowel-lengthening rules in English. [confession: I actually have /aI/ in "eudaimonia"/"eudaemonia" (I think I probably encountered it in writing before I heard it said), but nobody's ever picked me up on it, I guess because it's unstressed and hard to spot. Or else everyone's just being polite].
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Vijay »

I confused daimon with daimyo. :roll:

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

Post by linguoboy »

Sumelic wrote:I only learned a while ago that "courier" doesn't rhyme with "warrior". And I thought "carapace" ended in /əs/--maybe I was comparing it to "populace--but it seems like the typical pronunciation is actually with /eɪs/.
My family has always used /ə/ and Dad has a masters in animal science. (He wrote his thesis on rootworms.)
Sumelic wrote:Also, "chaparral" is from Spanish, not from French, so I think /tʃ/ really makes more sense, although it seems that many, perhaps most American English speakers do use /ʃ/ instead. I'm not sure; does anyone know if tʃ > ʃ was a known feature of Californian Spanish when the word entered English? I guess something similar happens with "machete".
Huh. This had never occurred to me before. Normally I ascribe /ʃ/ for <ch> to Francophilic hypercorrection, but that wouldn't make much sense with a plebeian word like machete. However, deaffrication is characteristic of New Mexican Spanish and northern Mexican dialects, where the Nahuatl influence is weak or nonexistent (since this tends to lead to preservation of a /tʃ/ vs /ʃ/ contrast).

I really don't know what most NAE speakers would do with chaparral. It's an even more regional and uncommon word than arroyo or jojoba.
Sumelic wrote:
linguoboy wrote:The normative pronunciation of daimon is /ˈdaɪˌmoʊn/?
I don't think daimon is in the vocabulary of most English speakers. If I was writing something of my own, I would always prefer to use the less direct transliteration daemon with the anglicized pronunciation /ˈdimən/.
And I would never use that since that makes it identical to demon. Most people I know use /eː/ for exactly that reason.

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

Post by Vijay »

Chaparral is indeed from Spanish, but the majority of Americans don't know Spanish and pronounce anything from a foreign language as if it came from French. This is also why people down here pronounce Cesar Chavez [ˈsi.zɹ̩ ˈʃævɨz].

Canucks do this, too. There was a Canadian guy I went to grad school with who brought up Aktionsart one day but pronounced it something like [ʔakʃɔ̃ˈzaʁ], which of course (initially) baffled all the Germans in the room. One guy from near Hamburg (or, as he himself once put it, "the prescriptivist asshole part of Germany") even began writing out the proper German pronunciation in IPA at the end of the period, apparently without noticing the Canadian guy leaving as he started.

Pretty sure I learned both arroyo and chaparral in school but never jojoba.

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

Post by alynnidalar »

Interesting. I would say that Americans are significantly more likely to have familiarity with Spanish than French, actually--who doesn't know greetings/how to count to ten in Spanish? Spanish speakers so vastly outnumber French speakers in the US, too.

(then again, I'm biased. I have family living in Mexico, one of my uncles is Venezuelan, and I've been visiting Mexico every couple years for the past twenty years. I'm awful in Spanish, but I know more than your average monolingual American)

Now, Canadians would certainly have more familiarity with French...
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by Vijay »

alynnidalar wrote:who doesn't know greetings/how to count to ten in Spanish?
Probably most people I know

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

Post by Travis B. »

I always thought of being able to count from one to ten in Spanish as being general common knowledge even amongst those with no other knowledge of Spanish beyond hola and adios.
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 linguoboy »

alynnidalar wrote:Interesting. I would say that Americans are significantly more likely to have familiarity with Spanish than French, actually--who doesn't know greetings/how to count to ten in Spanish? Spanish speakers so vastly outnumber French speakers in the US, too.
Speakers don't even have to know that /ʃ/ for <ch> or /ʒ/ for <j> originates with French to apply this as a hypercorrection. Spanish may be more familiar, but it still has less prestige.

Still, there are signs of a shift afoot. I was at a fancy restaurant recently which had mujadarra (a Middle-Eastern dish) on the menu. The server kept pronouncing the <j> as /h/ and even corrected me for using /ʤ/. I just laughed and said, "It's not Spanish".

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

Post by Vijay »

Travis B. wrote:I always thought of being able to count from one to ten in Spanish as being general common knowledge even amongst those with no other knowledge of Spanish beyond hola and adios.
I used to have the damnedest time trying to count to ten in Spanish (I believe nueve was my nemesis. I seem to remember having trouble with seis, too).

I just had the following conversation with my dad:

Me (in Mountain Lion): Hey dad, can I ask you some questions about what you know in Spanish?
Him (in Malayalam): How much Spanish do I know? [Is that what you're asking?]
Me (in Malayalam): Can I ask you about what you know in Spanish?
(He says yes, but I forgot how and whether it was in English or Malayalam. The rest of my questions were in Malayalam, but with "hi" and "bye" in English since we don't really have direct equivalents for those in Malayalam).
Me: You know how to say 'hi', right?
Him (immediately, without hesitation): Hola.
Me: Do you know how to say 'bye'?
Him (again immediately and without hesitation): [ʔæɖiˈjoːs] [or something similar]
Me: Do you know how to count from one to ten?
Him: Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco...sei...ocho, nueve, diez.
Me: You forgot 'seven'!
Him: Oh, yeah...uhhh...sete...?

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

Post by KathTheDragon »

Vijay wrote:Me (in Mountain Lion)
:thinking:

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

Post by Znex »

KathTheDragon wrote:
Vijay wrote:Me (in Mountain Lion)
:thinking:
Because that's the conlang he and his dad share.

I never learnt the Spanish numbers, but I know the Italian numbers from childhood (and later, the German numbers): uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, se, sette, otto, nove, dieci.
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Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Post by KathTheDragon »

Ah, I didn't know it was one he uses with his dad.

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

Post by Vijay »

Yeah, he pretty much made me make it. :P
Znex wrote:I never learnt the Spanish numbers, but I know the Italian numbers from childhood (and later, the German numbers): uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, se, sette, otto, nove, dieci.
Isn't it sei?

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Post by linguoboy »

I don't know whether I say fallacious with stressed /ɪ/ by simple analogy with the noun or out of a historical desire to avoid homophony with fellatio.

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

Post by Vijay »

I'm confused. How do you pronounce it? Or at least, which syllable do you have the stressed /ɪ/ on? Do you mean it rhymes with delicious for you?

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