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American pronunciation


chokeout

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On 3/11/2021 at 11:19 AM, chokeout said:

On American names I still don't understand how they got to pronouncing Craig as Creg and Graham as Gram

I get why they'd struggle with Graham; the British pronunciation isn't obvious. Those two vowels are pronounced differently to each other, and the 'h' isn't pronounced in either of the ways we typically encounter it. If you've never encountered the name in anything other than writing, then you're going to choose an equivalent to Abraham or Abram. We can see which way they went.

I'm not at all sure of Craig, although what you're calling American pronunciation isn't consistent throughout the USA. (I think Geordies probably pronounce the name differently to what you'd consider the English version too!) I suppose it's not too different from our deriving crag from it; the US just largely opted for a different vowel. 

On 3/11/2021 at 11:39 AM, Carbomb said:

The one that I find interesting, and not sure which I prefer, is how we pronounce "Bernard" as "BURR-nud", and they pronounce it more like the French, "bur-NAARD".

Although the US pronunication does catch me out, there is sense in their choice: they might be an English-speaking country but they're a melting pot. When French Bernards and Maurices moved over there, they and the others in their community knew how to pronounce their names. From day one, the stresses in those names would've been established, with a d-sound added at the end because of the influence of the spelling of 'Bernard', and the incoming Bernhards, Bernardos, etc americanising their names. In our case, we made a French name sound more British. Among other things, I suspect a cause is people encountering the name in writing ('St. Bernard') and having to work out the pronunciation before it became a name given to English people: sort of the reverse of people encountering Niamh audibly and then naming a daughter Nieve/Neve, etc.

On 3/11/2021 at 1:36 PM, Carbomb said:

The way they say "erb" is the one that mystifies: a lot of American spelling and pronunciation seems to follow a trend of being based more directly on Latin and Classical Greek, rather than on the French like British English. But they decide to go with French pronunciation for that one word?

They didn't. They kept the pronunciation that the settlers had when they arrived, just as they did with hono(u)r, hour, etc. We're the ones who changed our own pronunciation, adding an aspirated 'h' where there wasn't one before, as we've also done with words like hotel, historic. (That's why you may occasionally come across 'an hotel' or 'an historic', particularly in older academic texts. Don't be one of those occasional plonkers who try to sound smart on the radio by retaining both 'an' and the aspirated 'h'; they seem to think there's some rule that 'historic takes "an" not "a", you know' rather than the standard pronunication norms that we use without thinking hundreds of times a day applying: the people who wrote 'an historic' didn't pronounce an 'h' on the word is all that was happening.)

On 3/11/2021 at 1:47 PM, Carbomb said:

Edinburgh as "Edinburo", but Glasgow as "GlasGAU".

I know your point here was the stress placement rather than jumping on the fact that the entire pronunciation is markedly different from the British norms but it brings to my mind how hypocritical Brits can unintentionally be when they complain that the US has its own established pronunciation for these cities rather than following the local one: do you know any Brit who uses the American pronunciation of Los Angeles? I don't. I can let people off for not replicating the American vowel quality in the Los part, but ending Angeles with an equivalent to 'is' rather than 'ease' would be easy. And yet none of us do it, whilst complaining that the Americans base their pronunciation of Birmingham and Glasgow on the spelling rather than how we pronounce it. At least they can say they never encounter the native pronunciation; we can't realistically claim never to have heard Americans say Los Angeles!

On 3/11/2021 at 7:52 PM, neil said:

It is spelt different tho - which itself is a story that just speaks to the English deciding to modify a word and then say everyone else is wrong.

Cadmium, beryllium, sodium, helium, potassium, lythium ... the ending -ium is well established, particularly when naming metals within the past couple of centuries. The British did modify the word to fit this pattern, it's true ... but it was a very rapid change, coming a year after Sir Humphrey Davy, who named it alumium in 1808, changed it to the form which Americans know in 1811. The French and Germans (two of the three languages, alongside English, in which around 90% of scientific papers were written by the end of the 19th century) also use aluminium, so it's not really the case that the British decided that everybody else is wrong. They just very promptly harmonised the new name proposed by a (British) scientist, whereas the Americans imported it unchanged.

On 3/11/2021 at 9:46 PM, Steve Justice said:

And "twot". 

As much as I dislike the pronunciation (it's so less satisfying an utterance in US English), this is another case of them maintaining the original pronunciation whilst ours has diverged, with the combination of spelling and comparative rarity over there convincing us that they've taken a British-English favourite and mangled it. The spelling argument doesn't help, I'm afraid: we have no difficulty with was, want, watch, swan, swap, etc. On top of that, twot used to co-exist with twat. We just changed the pronunciation ourselves ... and we were absolutely correct to do so: would Danny Dyer referring to David Cameron as a twat have elicited anything like the venom otherwise? Of course not!

 

Edited by Ronnie
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38 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

They didn't. They kept the pronunciation that the settlers had when they arrived, just as they did with hono(u)r, hour, etc. We're the ones who changed our own pronunciation, adding an aspirated 'h' where there wasn't one before, as we've also done with words like hotel, historic. (That's why you may occasionally come across 'an hotel' or 'an historic', particularly in older academic texts. Don't be one of those occasional plonkers who try to sound smart on the radio by retaining both 'an' and the aspirated 'h'; they seem to think there's some rule that 'historic takes "an" not "a", you know' rather than the standard pronunication norms that we use without thinking hundreds of times a day applying: the people who wrote 'an historic' didn't pronounce an 'h' on the word is all that was happening.)

That's actually one of my pet peeves. I always say "a historic" or "a hotel". It's just more practical.

As to the point about them not changing their pronunciation, I didn't know that, although I have read plenty of articles refuting the oft-made claim that American English is closer to original British English than modern British is.

Quote

I know your point here was the stress placement rather than jumping on the fact that the entire pronunciation is markedly different from the British norms but it brings to my mind how hypocritical Brits can unintentionally be when they complain that the US has its own established pronunciation for these cities rather than following the local one: do you know any Brit who uses the American pronunciation of Los Angeles? I don't. I can let people off for not replicating the American vowel quality in the Los part, but ending Angeles with an equivalent to 'is' rather than 'ease' would be easy. And yet none of us do it, whilst complaining that the Americans base their pronunciation of Birmingham and Glasgow on the spelling rather than how we pronounce it. At least they can say they never encounter the native pronunciation; we can't realistically claim never to have heard Americans say Los Angeles!

Genuinely, I say "Los Anjelis" (well, more "Los Anjelus", I guess), because that's how I hear it on TV, and it sounds nicer to my ear. 

Oddly, I was playing LA Noire recently, and there are a number of recreated radio stations when you drive in certain cars where the DJ pronounces it like the original Spanish, with the hard G in "Angeles". I did some Googling, and it does seem that as late as the 1940s, there was indeed a divergence of pronunciation amongst the population, with some of them pronouncing it that way.

It's instances like that where it becomes a personal choice as regards balancing perceived authenticity with awareness of being perceived as pretentious - like how we pronounce "Ikea", despite the regular adverts pronouncing it the Swedish way.

EDIT: Another one that comes to mind is "New Orleans". Again, the shorter pronunciation is more pleasant to me, so I say "New Orlens" instead of "New Orleens" (even though I know there are Americans who pronounce it both ways). I was tempted to pronounce it "New OrleON" as the French would, but again - personal choice, I guess.

I did have a friend from Louisiana (or "Lou'siana", as he pronounced it) explain to me that, amongst New Orleans people, there are three types of pronunciation:

1. N'orlens

2. Nu Orlens

3. Nu OrleONS

He said the running joke is that people who say "N'orlens" didn't go to university, people who say "Nu Orlens" did, and if you say "Nu OrleONS", it means your parents endowed the university.

Edited by Carbomb
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Not really a pronunciation thing but in the same kinda area - I've noticed and always bugged me how Americans refer to bands as a single unit ([band] is in town next week), where as we seem to refer to them as a collective ([band] are in town next week). I don't know which is the correct term but one must be.

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30 minutes ago, wordsfromlee said:

Not really a pronunciation thing but in the same kinda area - I've noticed and always bugged me how Americans refer to bands as a single unit ([band] is in town next week), where as we seem to refer to them as a collective ([band] are in town next week). I don't know which is the correct term but one must be.

From what I remember about collective nouns from English classes, either is fine, both in UK and US English. There's usually an element of nuance when choosing to pluralise or singularise them, but neither are incorrect.

E.g.

The Tory Party are cunts

The Tory Party is a bunch of cunts

 

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22 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

From what I remember about collective nouns from English classes, either is fine, both in UK and US English. There's usually an element of nuance when choosing to pluralise or singularise them, but neither are incorrect.

E.g.

The Tory Party are cunts

The Tory Party is a bunch of cunts

 

I've always thought that both are probably correct but it sounds so wrong to say "Fozzy is an awful band" as opposed to "Fozzy are and awful band"

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2 hours ago, Carbomb said:

From what I remember about collective nouns from English classes, either is fine, both in UK and US English. There's usually an element of nuance when choosing to pluralise or singularise them, but neither are incorrect.

E.g.

The Tory Party are cunts

The Tory Party is a bunch of cunts

"Tory" sounds wrong in modern US English anyway, but curiously enough, makes sense in that same context in Canadian English. 

I thought @Ronnie might've picked up on the point about "aluminum" being very much an outlier. Globally, that element is generally known either by a variant on 'aluminium' or by a completely different name. The few exceptions that use 'aluminum' or a similar name have all been heavily influenced by the USA. 

I'm still not sure how North Americans get the outrageous pronunciation "jenny cis" from the letters 'Mega Drive'. 

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My name is Ciaran (Kieran in UK speak) and my ex fiance was American living in Boston. So I spent a fair whack of our 4 years travelling over there on the cheapest flights I could scavenge, usually ending up in Atlanta via Amsterdam and connecting on to Boston or Hartford on various shite US airlines, or into Providence thanks to Norwegian air, which was like flying on Ryanair across the Atlantic. It was hilarious when the US airline staff would butcher my name as they'd inevitably pronounce it as 'Syrian', which got me awful dirty looks from my more elderly or Southern co- passengers. Was less hilarious when the scary, USA flag patch wearing armed border lads would pronounce it and do a double take.

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16 hours ago, wordsfromlee said:

I've always thought that both are probably correct but it sounds so wrong to say "Fozzy is an awful band" as opposed to "Fozzy are and awful band"

I was taught way back in Year 7 or so that "is" would be correct as the band name is a singular noun, but I don't think I've ever actually said it that way.

"Mumford & Sons is shit" doesn't sound right, but "Mumford & Sons are shit" does.

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