The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread

[Space60]

I pronounce tsunami as [tʲʰsʲʉ̃ːˈnãːmi(ː)], corresponding to /tsuˈnami/, but most people in southern Wisconsin tend to have [sʲʉ̃ːˈnãːmi(ː)], corresponding to /suˈnami/.

Interesting about the palatal s. So it would sound like the speakers are pronouncing "tsunami" with a yod however there is no /j/ phonemically.

[Space60]

How do you pronounce Sbarro the pizza place? I have heard /s@bAroU/, /spAroU/ and maybe even /zbAroU/ used.

[Linguoboy]

How do you pronounce Sbarro the pizza place? I have heard /s@bAroU/, /spAroU/ and maybe even /zbAroU/ used.

Didn't we just do this?

ETA: My bad. We discussed the company but not the pronunciation: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8&p=8948&hilit=sbarro#p8948.

[mèþru]

/sba.ɹo̞/, in the same accent I use when speaking Hebrew.

[Travis B.]

I pronounce tsunami as [tʲʰsʲʉ̃ːˈnãːmi(ː)], corresponding to /tsuˈnami/, but most people in southern Wisconsin tend to have [sʲʉ̃ːˈnãːmi(ː)], corresponding to /suˈnami/.

Interesting about the palatal s. So it would sound like the speakers are pronouncing "tsunami" with a yod however there is no /j/ phonemically.

The dialect here has palatalization/affirmation of alveolar and postalveolar consonants before /w u ʊ ər/, especially of /t/. My own speech is actually kind of odd in that this is weaker for me than for many here.

Furthermore, /u/ has fronted/broken allophones considering what it is adjacent to, namely [ʉ̯u ʉ y̯u i̯u] in addition to the unbroken [u].

[Space60]

I pronounce tsunami as [tʲʰsʲʉ̃ːˈnãːmi(ː)], corresponding to /tsuˈnami/, but most people in southern Wisconsin tend to have [sʲʉ̃ːˈnãːmi(ː)], corresponding to /suˈnami/.

Interesting about the palatal s. So it would sound like the speakers are pronouncing "tsunami" with a yod however there is no /j/ phonemically.

The dialect here has palatalization/affirmation of alveolar and postalveolar consonants before /w u ʊ ər/, especially of /t/. My own speech is actually kind of odd in that this is weaker for me than for many here.

Furthermore, /u/ has fronted/broken allophones considering what it is adjacent to, namely [ʉ̯u ʉ y̯u i̯u] in addition to the unfrosted .

Oh. So a word like "Tuesday" may sound like it is being said without yod-dropping, however the palatalization also occurs in words where there is no historical /j/ like "two" and "tomb" therefore there is no underlying /j/.

[Travis B.]

Oh. So a word like "Tuesday" may sound like it is being said without yod-dropping, however the palatalization also occurs in words where there is no historical /j/ like "two" and "tomb" therefore there is no underlying /j/.

Yes, palatalization, affrication, breaking, and centralization may all occur in absence of historical /j/ or after historical /j/ had already been lost, as in the case of stupid.

[Space60]

I say "weapon" as /wEp@n/, Michael Dorn says /hwEp@n/.

[Vlürch]

Hahahaha, so apparently Americans pronounce laughter with /æ/...

...sorry for the most pointless post ever, but I only just found out and I find it absolutely hilarious. Wiktionary claims Americans pronounce laugh with an /æ/ too, but I just don't believe that, at least as a verb...? It can't be true, right? I've definitely heard Americans in films, TV series, Youtube videos and whatnot say laugh and I'm 99% certain it's always had an /ɑː/ or whatever the closest American vowel is.

So, do all the Americans here pronounce them like that? Or is it only some American dialects or whatever?

Literally every time I post here now, it's when I'm confused by American pronunciations... oops. But really, these things keep weirding me out so much that it could almost be called a Mandela effect. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed (and laughed for a solid minute) if I'd heard /æ/ in laugh, and I doubt that'd be something I'd forget since it's just such a weird pronunciation. And I know I'm one of the last people who should complain about weird pronunciations, but still...

[Travis B.]

Hahahaha, so apparently Americans pronounce laughter with /æ/...

...sorry for the most pointless post ever, but I only just found out and I find it absolutely hilarious. Wiktionary claims Americans pronounce laugh with an /æ/ too, but I just don't believe that, at least as a verb...? It can't be true, right? I've definitely heard Americans in films, TV series, Youtube videos and whatnot say laugh and I'm 99% certain it's always had an /ɑː/ or whatever the closest American vowel is.

So, do all the Americans here pronounce them like that? Or is it only some American dialects or whatever?

Literally every time I post here now, it's when I'm confused by American pronunciations... oops. But really, these things keep weirding me out so much that it could almost be called a Mandela effect. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed (and laughed for a solid minute) if I'd heard /æ/ in laugh, and I doubt that'd be something I'd forget since it's just such a weird pronunciation. And I know I'm one of the last people who should complain about weird pronunciations, but still...

Laughter in NAE has /æ/, sorry to say this.

[anteallach]

In spite of the spelling, laugh is a fairly typical BATH word, and I'd imagine there are very few English speakers who don't rhyme it with staff. I do remember some people from the Birmingham area (which mostly doesn't have the TRAP-BATH split, but is close to the boundary) having /lɑːf/, but generally in England it follows the BATH pattern.

[Estav]

Wiktionary is right: the verb laugh has /æ/ in a typical American English accent. As anteallach said, it is a bath word, like staff. There are American English accents where the vowel would be raised/"tensed" (to something like [eə]); I don't know of American English accents that would have /ɑ/.

[Salmoneus]

"Laugh" isn't actually a BATH word - it fronted a long time before BATH backed. It's closer to being a PALM word. This is why it's traditionally long even in dialects without the TRAP-BATH split, although in many dialects hypercorrection has fronted it.


[I assume what happened, as I explained earlier in this thread, is that once what we might call the 'second' /a:/ (formed mostly from /aw/ in loanwords, /aw/ from /a/ before /l/, /aw/ from /a/ before /x/, and /a~/ in loanwords, and later by /a:/ in loanwords) backed to /A:/, "laugh" and "laughter" (but not "slaughter") and probably "aunt" fronted to /a:/, joining the new 'third' /a:/ (formed from /a/ before /l/ when the /l/ was lost). This lets us then suppose a clean soundchange in American, whereby /a:/ shortens before /f/ and /v/.

There are other options, though. It could have undergone irregular shortening in some dialects leading to American as part of the same irregular shortening in 'Sanders', and 'falcon' in some dialects, BEFORE the backing of 'second /a:/'; but this would require irregular shortening only in proto-US dialects, and then an unrelated much later shortening in 'half' and 'calf'. Alternatively, more radically, we could say that it fronted, but then shortened everywhere, but then randomly and coincidentally immediately lengthened in some dialects as part of 'fourth /a:/' along with 'father' - or lengthened everywhere and was shortened in some dialects? I think my theory is more elegant, but I don't know for sure it's true.]


Anyway, long story short: 'laugh' isn't a lengthened/backed TRAP word like 'bath' or 'grass', it's a THOUGHT word like 'slaughter', 'aught' or 'caught' that's been anomolously fronted and in some places shortened...

[Estav]

"Laugh" isn't actually a BATH word - it fronted a long time before BATH backed.

What I meant is that it falls in the bath lexical set now, regardless of how it got there.

However, my understanding of the development in -ugh words is that the preceding vowel developed a [w] offglide, which in the words laugh, draught, cough and trough coalesced with the coda fricative, more or less like [awx] > [af] and [owx] > [of]. In that case, the use of a short vowel in some present-day accents wouldn't necessarily be innovative. Some -ugh words definitely show shortening of long vowels (e.g. tough, enough, rough) but I think the shortening in -ough /ʌf/ words might be related to the other shortenings of oo and ou seen before velars or labials: e.g. before /k/ in suck, duck, and -ook words, before /m/ in plum, room, broom; before /v/ in dove, shove, glove, before /f/ in hoof, roof. I'm not sure of the chronology of those changes (the ones spelled with "oo" and pronounced with /ʊ/ were shortened later than the rest, with variation continuing up to the present), and they seem to have been somewhat sporadic.

[Zaarin]

I say "weapon" as /wEp@n/, Michael Dorn says /hwEp@n/.

It could be the tooth prosthetics. I'm pretty certain I've heard him use [w] in weapon in non-Worf roles.

[anteallach]

"Laugh" isn't actually a BATH word - it fronted a long time before BATH backed.

What I meant is that it falls in the bath lexical set now, regardless of how it got there.

However, my understanding of the development in -ugh words is that the preceding vowel developed a [w] offglide, which in the words laugh, draught, cough and trough coalesced with the coda fricative, more or less like [awx] > [af] and [owx] > [of]. In that case, the use of a short vowel in some present-day accents wouldn't necessarily be innovative. Some -ugh words definitely show shortening of long vowels (e.g. tough, enough, rough) but I think the shortening in -ough /ʌf/ words might be related to the other shortenings of oo and ou seen before velars or labials: e.g. before /k/ in suck, duck, and -ook words, before /m/ in plum, room, broom; before /v/ in dove, shove, glove, before /f/ in hoof, roof. I'm not sure of the chronology of those changes (the ones spelled with "oo" and pronounced with /ʊ/ were shortened later than the rest, with variation continuing up to the present), and they seem to have been somewhat sporadic.

The parallel of cough and trough, which started with short vowels and in which the standard modern pronunciations have /f/ but no reflex of the [w] glide, does suggest to me that the most likely explanation for the standard modern pronunciations of laugh is that it developed to /laf/ and that the southern English (etc.) pronunciation with a long vowel is indeed due to the TRAP-BATH split.

On the other hand, I think the long vowels in half and calf probably are inherited from monophthongisations of /au/ from older /al/, as also in -alm words, which later shortened in some dialects. Some traditional British dialects actually have the FACE vowel, at least in half. Did the rounding of monophthongised /au/ not happen before /m/, /f/ and /v/?

[Kuchigakatai]

I don't really know what you mean by "V+PP" construction. If what you actually meant was "V+Prep" in the sense a phrasal verb with an adverb-like preposition ("go down", "put it on", "give up"), then you're correct, even though I'd say this really falls in a more general "V+Adverb" pattern ("move it upwards", "turn right", "turn it inside out", "I came up with it"). However, if you really meant "V+PP", then this needs to be qualified as the PP is wholly unstressed if the complement is a personal pronoun ("I believe in you", "this matters to me", "if it wasn't for you").

Just two small corrections...

- at least IMD, it's "turn it inside out" - the "in" would only be stressed if explaining this to a particularly slow person. This is despite the fact that "inside out" as an adjective is indeed stressed on the first syllable. [which is partly why the stressed form sounds odd to me with the verb, because it sounds like you're asking someone to turn it a particular way, and obviously no amount of turning it can get it inside out. Instead, "turn inside out" is indeed a phrasal verb. I think there's a general rule that the beginning of a multi-word non-verb componant of a phrasal verb is destressed? Eg in the idiom "give up the ghost", 'up' is not stressed. Or the infuriating old cliche, "I ran it up the flagpole" - 'up' is not stressed. But I don't know, I can't think of good comparisons right now.]

- at least ID, it's "if it wasn't for you", although you're quite right about your other two examples. It would sound really odd to me with 'you' destressed. [indeed, 'you' is more stressed than 'wasn't']

Today this happened to come up in a conversation with dhok and Xephyr (both of whom are American of course), and they both think I was right about my transcription of "if it wasn't for you". It might be a dialect difference in this second case.

[Nortaneous]

Today this happened to come up in a conversation with dhok and Xephyr (both of whom are American of course), and they both think I was right about my transcription of "if it wasn't for you". It might be a dialect difference in this second case.

I think the most prominent stress here would be on "you", with "wasn't" also taking stress.

Doesn't "inside out" have two equal stress peaks?

[Kuchigakatai]

I think the most prominent stress here would be on "you", with "wasn't" also taking stress.

I see.

Doesn't "inside out" have two equal stress peaks?

Xephyr at least says it's hard to say...

[Ryusenshi]

A friend is doing an informal survey about English pronunciation, and needs some additional data. You only have to answer a few questions, so it shouldn't be too long. Both native and non-native speakers are welcome.

Pronunciation of English vowels