Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[akam chinjir]

Was watching a tv show (full disclosure: Blacklist) and one of the characters misattributed to Confucius the saying, "If you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." The Mandarin subtitles substituted a line from the Confucian Analects:

或曰：「以德報怨，何如？」子曰：「何以報德？以直報怨，以德報德。」
Someone said, Repay anger with virtue, how's that? The Master said, How do you repay virtue? Repay anger with uprightness, repay virtue with virtue.

Not bad: vaguely about revenge, reasonably appropriate in context, and if misattributed to Confucius, at least misattributed a really long time ago.

[Zaarin]

So I was transcribing an Indian American (actually I suspect Indian Canadian), and I was struck by the variety of ways he produced /v w/ (which he conflated mostly). Most of the time it was [ʋ], which isn't too striking assuming he was a native speaker of Hindi or something similar, but specifically in the word voting it came out as something like [xᵝ] (i.e., a rounded velar fricative with compression) or possibly even [hᵝ]--I honestly wouldn't have known what he was saying without context. Anyone know what's up with that sound?

[Salmoneus]

While lining up for pączki today, a coworker and I shared our love for the ones with apricot filing and I was struck by the difference in our pronunciation. It seems to me that food words in English have a disproportionate number of unpredictable alternations and that--even more interesting--several seem to vary arbitrarily without coinciding with other prominent isoglosses. Some examples:

apricot: /eː/ vs /æ/
salmon: /æ/ vs /æl/ vs /ɑ/
potato, tomato: /eː/ vs /ɑ/
basil: /eː/ vs /æ/

For the helluvit, I've underlined my values. I don't know that I even share them all with other members of my family, let alone with the regiolect of any particular place.

Worth pointing out, this is entirely an American dialectical question, so far as I'm aware. Each of these only has one pronunciation in the UK.

Is it to do with America's poverty and cultural backwardness (historically speaking, that is)? These are all non-native words for foodstuffs that would not have been available to many people, particularly poor people in rural areas, early in America's history (although I'd have thought potato cultivation wouldn't have been that late... then again, some areas may not have been suitable for potato growing, so the word and the foodstuff may have been a later reborrowing in those areas once the economy became more interconnected).

[anteallach]

While lining up for pączki today, a coworker and I shared our love for the ones with apricot filing and I was struck by the difference in our pronunciation. It seems to me that food words in English have a disproportionate number of unpredictable alternations and that--even more interesting--several seem to vary arbitrarily without coinciding with other prominent isoglosses. Some examples:

apricot: /eː/ vs /æ/
salmon: /æ/ vs /æl/ vs /ɑ/
potato, tomato: /eː/ vs /ɑ/
basil: /eː/ vs /æ/

For the helluvit, I've underlined my values. I don't know that I even share them all with other members of my family, let alone with the regiolect of any particular place.

I thought potato with /ɑ/ was a myth based on a mistaken analogy with tomato; are there people who actually have it?

Like Salmoneus says, I think these all have only one pronunciation in the UK (FACE for apricot and potato; TRAP for salmon (no /l/) and basil; PALM for tomato). But you could add almond to the list, and that does have variation here.

[zompist]

I have the same vowels as linguoboy. (And Travis only disagreed on one. I'm pretty sure I've never heard pot/ɑ/to or s/ɑ/mon, but I don't get out much.)

[Travis B.]

Worth pointing out, this is entirely an American dialectical question, so far as I'm aware. Each of these only has one pronunciation in the UK.

Is it to do with America's poverty and cultural backwardness (historically speaking, that is)? These are all non-native words for foodstuffs that would not have been available to many people, particularly poor people in rural areas, early in America's history (although I'd have thought potato cultivation wouldn't have been that late... then again, some areas may not have been suitable for potato growing, so the word and the foodstuff may have been a later reborrowing in those areas once the economy became more interconnected).

At least for potato, I have never heard any English-speakers with anything other than /eɪ/ in it. I always thought the pronunciation with /ɑː/ was the subject of a misconceived notion by Americans as to how Brits pronounced it by analogy with their pronunciation of tomato with /ɑː/.

[Travis B.]

When I hear /ˈbæzəl/ I think of the character from Fawlty Towers...

[Linguoboy]

When I hear /ˈbæzəl/ I think of the character from Fawlty Towers...

The name I always hear with /æ/ (which is rarely, since it's not popular at all in the USA). But when I use the /æ/ pronunciation at Blaze (a local build-your-own-pizza chain), I almost always get corrected (albeit sometimes unconsciously).

Thanks, anteallach, I never knew that about potato. Almond was also an example I was trying to think of. I feel like there are several others as well that I'm too thick to remember at the moment.

[zompist]

Fun fact, in case anyone didn't know it: the herb and the name are the same word, meaning 'royal', ultimately from βασιλεύς 'king'.

[Nortaneous]

While lining up for pączki today, a coworker and I shared our love for the ones with apricot filing and I was struck by the difference in our pronunciation. It seems to me that food words in English have a disproportionate number of unpredictable alternations and that--even more interesting--several seem to vary arbitrarily without coinciding with other prominent isoglosses. Some examples:

apricot: /eː/ vs /æ/
salmon: /æ/ vs /æl/ vs /ɑ/
potato, tomato: /eː/ vs /ɑ/
basil: /eː/ vs /æ/

For the helluvit, I've underlined my values. I don't know that I even share them all with other members of my family, let alone with the regiolect of any particular place.

I've never heard of any pronunciation but /æ/ in 'salmon' and /ej/ in 'potato' and 'tomato'.

Do people really have /ɑ/ in 'salmon'? Words with -alm pretty much all have /olm/ now (and the l is vocalized, so you get [ɔˤm] or so), but I've never heard of l-restoration there.

I don't know how to pronounce 'almond'.

/ej/ in 'basil' is typically American, isn't it? And 'apricot' can go either way - apparently /ej/ is the earlier pronunciation, so /æ/ is probably a spelling pronunciation. (Trisyllabic laxing is still active!)

I can go either way on 'apricot', but only because I used to work in a grocery store in a place where everyone has /æ/, and figured I must've been pronouncing it wrong. Then again, a lot of them had /vənelə/ for 'vanilla'.

[Vijay]

So I was transcribing an Indian American (actually I suspect Indian Canadian), and I was struck by the variety of ways he produced /v w/ (which he conflated mostly). Most of the time it was [ʋ], which isn't too striking assuming he was a native speaker of Hindi or something similar, but specifically in the word voting it came out as something like [xᵝ] (i.e., a rounded velar fricative with compression) or possibly even [hᵝ]--I honestly wouldn't have known what he was saying without context. Anyone know what's up with that sound?

Nope. The fact that they still use [ʋ] is already pretty remarkable (it's actually kind of hard for me to do that when I try to use an Indian accent (and I sometimes have to because I have met a number of Indians who say they can't make head or tail of American accents) to the point where I actually have to force myself to remember Indians do it in certain contexts you might not even expect it in). I don't think I've ever heard anyone born in North America use that sound (but maybe I just didn't notice); it seems like possibly the most obvious sign of an Indian accent after retroflexes and probably one of the first I got rid of when learning to produce an American accent myself. Of course, conflating /v/ and /w/ is pretty typical of Indian accents, though.

[Travis B.]

Speaking of Pączki Day, how in hell did many Americans end up with the pronunciation /ˈpʊntʃki/? This seems to be the most common pronunciation I have heard Americans have of pączki. I would expect something more like /ˈpɔːntʃki/, if they were trying to be faithful to the Polish pronunciation, or /ˈpætʃki/ or /ˈpɑːtʃki/, if they were simply anglicizing the pronunciation from spelling alone and ignoring the ogonek altogether.

[Vijay]

/pʊntʃki/ doesn't seem that different from /pɔːntʃki/, so maybe they were just trying to imitate the Polish pronunciation. Most people aren't very good at doing that, though.

[Nortaneous]

Internet mostly turns up /pontʃki/. As for /pun-/, there are some dialects of Polish where ę is lowered to [ã] - maybe there are some where that's part of a chain shift and ą > [ũ]?

edit: Masovian?
> Standard Polish /ɔ̃/ and /ɛ̃/ merged with /u/ and /a/ respectively, in most situations

[Linguoboy]

Internet mostly turns up /pontʃki/. As for /pun-/, there are some dialects of Polish where ę is lowered to [ã] - maybe there are some where that's part of a chain shift and ą > [ũ]?

edit: Masovian?
> Standard Polish /ɔ̃/ and /ɛ̃/ merged with /u/ and /a/ respectively, in most situations

I don't know about other areas, but IME there are relatively few Masovian speakers in Chicago. Almost all the Poles I've met personally are southerners, who lack this feature.

Since the pronunciation /ˈpʌntʃki/ is also common in Chicago, I've always assumed /ˈpʊntʃ.ki/ was a hyperforeignism. Compare /ˈpʊn.ʤɑb/.

[Travis B.]

I am always surprised that Americans preserve the nasal in pączki, since most Americans, including ones of Polish descent, that I have heard pronounce Polish names significantly anglicize them. For instance, on the radio this morning I heard Archbishop Listecki pronounce his own last name as /lɪˈstɛki/ (Americans almost invariably pronounce -cki as /ki/).

[Linguoboy]

I am always surprised that Americans preserve the nasal in pączki, since most Americans, including ones of Polish descent, that I have heard pronounce Polish names significantly anglicize them.

I went to grammar school with someone named "Konieczny". Her family pronounced it /kəˈniːzəˌniː/.

[Travis B.]

In a way that is surprising, since it does seem to be common knowledge here that <cz> is pronounced as /tʃ/. Of course, I knew someone growing up who pronounced <cz> in her last name as /ts/.

[Linguoboy]

In a way that is surprising, since it does seem to be common knowledge here that <cz> is pronounced as /tʃ/. Of course, I knew someone growing up who pronounced <cz> in her last name as /ts/.

She could just be Masovian.

[Zaarin]

So I was transcribing an Indian American (actually I suspect Indian Canadian), and I was struck by the variety of ways he produced /v w/ (which he conflated mostly). Most of the time it was [ʋ], which isn't too striking assuming he was a native speaker of Hindi or something similar, but specifically in the word voting it came out as something like [xᵝ] (i.e., a rounded velar fricative with compression) or possibly even [hᵝ]--I honestly wouldn't have known what he was saying without context. Anyone know what's up with that sound?

Nope. The fact that they still use [ʋ] is already pretty remarkable (it's actually kind of hard for me to do that when I try to use an Indian accent (and I sometimes have to because I have met a number of Indians who say they can't make head or tail of American accents) to the point where I actually have to force myself to remember Indians do it in certain contexts you might not even expect it in). I don't think I've ever heard anyone born in North America use that sound (but maybe I just didn't notice); it seems like possibly the most obvious sign of an Indian accent after retroflexes and probably one of the first I got rid of when learning to produce an American accent myself. Of course, conflating /v/ and /w/ is pretty typical of Indian accents, though.

Well, I will give a disclaimer that I don't know anything about the individual in question; my assumption that he's in North America was based on other features of his accent. But he did indeed mostly pronounce /v w/ as [ʋ], again except for that weird [xᵝ] in voting; most of the other more striking features of his accent had to do with stress and syllabification more than phonology (he very frequently used the filler word basically [ˈbɛ.sɪ.kʰɐˌ.li]).