Pronunciations you had to unlearn

[Kuchigakatai]

• [ˈtʰændɪm] : why ɪm rather than ɛm or əm? For some reason, those feel more natural to me, and those are the pronunciations that Wikipedia mentions for final unstressed -em.
• Catilīna, effrēnāta [kʰæɾəˈlaɪnə, ˌɛfɹəˈneɪɾə] : likewise, why ə instead of ı here? Wouldn't the weak vowel merger or its absence affect medial and final syllables similarly?
• kʰwɑm : why [ɑm] and not [æm] here?
• etiam [ɛʃəm] : This seems like an interesting exception to the usual lengthening of e before -tia-. Does it have [ɛ] because of influence from the pronunciation of "et"?
• iactābit [jækˈtʰeɪbɪɾ] : Did the replacement of <j~i> [dʒ] with <i> [j] occur before other reforms to the pronunciation of Latin in the English-speaking world?

I don't know, I never actually use the traditional English pronunciation of Latin for actual Latin. I hardly know anything about the topic. These were mostly careless mistakes.

- tandem: yeah, I should've used the conventional /ə/ (or at any rate the also reasonable /ɛ/).
- Catilina/effrenata: this is called the mistake of inconsistency. Yeah, I should've used [ˌkʰæɾɪˈlaɪnə] and [ˌɛfɹɪˈneɪɾə] (or [ˌɛfɹiˈneɪɾə]?).
- quam: I chose [ɑ] as an analogy of the LOT /ɑ/ vowel in "quantum", "quad", "quandary", "qualify", "wash", "watch", "want". It's hard to say. When I think about it, although the phoneme /w/ seems to do this often to naïvely-expected TRAP */æ/ as in these words, there also exist words with TRAP /wæ/ like "quack", "whack", "wag", "wanker", "wagon", "wax" and most importantly "wham". Apparently, "quagmire" can have /æ/ or /ɑ/. (Cf. naïvely-expected START */ɑɹ/ as NORTH /ɔɹ/ (UK /ɔ:/) before a consonant and CLOTH /ɑɹ/ (UK /ɒɹ/) before a vowel in "quartz", "war", "warn", "swarm", "swarthy", and "quarrel", "warrant", "warrior".)
- etiam: Oh, right, "completion" /kəmˈpliʃn/. I should've thought of that. Also, when Latin is written with <j>, the <j> is never used in the word etiam, which makes me think that most likely it wouldn't make sense to think of it as et+iam. Do you think /ˈiʃəm/ would be the normal way to say it?
- jactābit: another mistake of mine; I forgot this began with a <j>. I would've used /dʒ/ if I had noticed.

[Estav]

Thanks for the interesting reply!

- quam: I chose [ɑ] as an analogy of the LOT /ɑ/ vowel in "quantum", "quad", "quandary", "qualify", "wash", "watch", "want". It's hard to say. When I think about it, although the phoneme /w/ seems to do this often to naïvely-expected TRAP */æ/ as in these words, there also exist words with TRAP /wæ/ like "quack", "whack", "wag", "wanker", "wagon", "wax" and most importantly "wham". Apparently, "quagmire" can have /æ/ or /ɑ/. (Cf. naïvely-expected START */ɑɹ/ as NORTH /ɔɹ/ (UK /ɔ:/) before a consonant and CLOTH /ɑɹ/ (UK /ɒɹ/) before a vowel in "quartz", "war", "warn", "swarm", "swarthy", and "quarrel", "warrant", "warrior".)

Oh yeah, that makes sense! Even though I have LOT as [ɑ] and I could see that you do too, I wasn't thinking about [ɑ] as a representation of the LOT vowel, but only as the PALM vowel. I think you're right that LOT would have been used here instead of TRAP because of the preceding "qu".

- etiam: Oh, right, "completion" /kəmˈpliʃn/. I should've thought of that. Also, when Latin is written with <j>, the <j> is never used in the word etiam, which makes me think that most likely it wouldn't make sense to think of it as et+iam. Do you think /ˈiʃəm/ would be the normal way to say it?

Well, I think /ˈiʃəm/ (or /ˈiʃiəm/) would be the most regular way, but I don't know if it was the pronunciation that was commonly used. (I'm fairly certain that it would not have [dʒ]; although it is etymologically from et + jam, in Classical Latin it was normally a trisyllable with vocalic rather than consonantal i.) John Sargeaunt's guide to this pronunciation of Latin says that eram, erat, eras were commonly pronounced with /ɛ/ at a certain point despite that being irregular for their spelling.

[axolotl]

Pretty minor one, but: It took me embarrassingly long to realize that "deixis" is not [di'ɪksɪs].

[Xwtek]

For some reason, I pronounced Funimation as [fʊ.nɪ.meɪ.ʒən]. It turns out that it's pronounced [fʌ.nɪ.meɪ.ʃən]

[Linguoboy]

Hebrew at least seems to have no clear rule. I at least think I remember hearing Capernaum with final /nɔm/ in church as a kid, but Wikipedia lists the two pronuncs as (/kəˈpɜːrniəm, -neɪəm/).

I would consider that "Latin" since it's a fully Latinised form. (The actual Biblical Hebrew is Kəphar Nahūm.) Interestingly, it contradicts what I said earlier with regard to "Goethean" because I remember it being pronounced /kəˈpɚnə.əm/ in my churches and schools.

[Linguoboy]

TIL Islip has /ai/, not /ɪ/ like Ipswich.

[jal]

because I remember it being pronounced /kəˈpɚnə.əm/ in my churches and schools.

Could've been [kəˈpɚnə.ʌm]?


JAL

[Linguoboy]

because I remember it being pronounced /kəˈpɚnə.əm/ in my churches and schools.

Could've been [kəˈpɚnə.ʌm]?

I don’t understand what distinction you’re trying to indicate here.

[Moose-tache]

Not long ago I was traveling through the Cotswolds (before you get jealous, it rained the whole time and I was on a broken bicycle), and I went past the city of Cirencester. Planning the trip on a map, I assumed this place was pronounced "sirrenster," and I would also not have been shocked to find it called "ssster" or something. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it has completely avoided English pronunciation rules, and is pronounced pretty much exactly as it would be if it were a place in rural Nebraska or somewhere: /saIr@nsEst@r/.

[jal]

I don’t understand what distinction you’re trying to indicate here.

I thought we were talking about English never having two schwa's after each other?


JAL

[Pabappa]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirencester#Pronunciation shows that it did once have a quaint pronunciation just like you'd expected, but it seems to have been reformed. Perhaps internal migration withing Britain is smoothing out the placenames and making them more like those of America. I remember reading about Cirencester in, I think, Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue .... he mentioned that it had been modernized, but listed a whole bunch of others which had not, such as mentioned (/'pVm.frIt/), but i spoke to someone from there around the year 2000 and he told me that he had never heard anything besides /'pOn.tə.fr{kt/ (the vowels might be slightly off) ... so Bryson's data might have been out of date and even many of the ones he loved so much are now just pronounced as spelled.

[jal]

Oh, dat Wikipedia entry is bad. It's like three different people wrote it, and it's still maintained one after the other...


JAL

[Pabappa]

Well thats pretty much how Wikipedia runs, .... sometimes it works well, sometimes not so much. do you know if the pronunciations are accurate, though? i mean, historically?

[Xwtek]

I don’t understand what distinction you’re trying to indicate here.

Does your dialect merge /ʌ/ and /ə/? Because American English does that. But in Indonesian English, /ʌ/ merged with /ɑː/ instead. (It becomes [a])

[Nortaneous]

because I remember it being pronounced /kəˈpɚnə.əm/ in my churches and schools.

Could've been [kəˈpɚnə.ʌm]?

I don’t understand what distinction you’re trying to indicate here.

[kəˈpɚnə.əm] vs. [kəˈpɚnəˌʌm], probably - the ˌʌ variant avoids the schwa sequence, but introduces secondary stress

[Travis B.]

I don’t understand what distinction you’re trying to indicate ehere.

Does your dialect merge /ʌ/ and /ə/? Because American English does that. But in Indonesian English, /ʌ/ merged with /ɑː/ instead. (It becomes [a])

I speak NAE and merge /ɪ ə/ rather than /ʌ ə/ except morpheme-finally.

[Starbeam]

Lemme try my hand at this. For context, i live in the United States around Washington D.C. (but not in it). When people have some non-standard native speaker accent, it's usually Mid-Atlantic. As in "Baltimore", not "Vincent Price". Some people have Southern accents as well, but that's been receding further and further away. I doubt any pronunciation i have is the result of an accent, but hey might as well add a little info about me.

Let's see if you can guess these:

1. anvalanche /E@nv'@lE@ntS/ = pronounced like a person named Anne Vilanch
2. blatalant /bleI't@lInt/
3. ermy /@r'mi/; Like R. Lee Ermey
4. Oxchoo /Aks'tSu/
5. korder /kOrd@r/

More: show

1. avalanche
2. blatant
3. army
4. Xatu (Pokémon); I wonder if i read it as "Axtu". I could fill an entire thread with proper names i've screwed up, but that's the only example that i feel would be unpredictable.
5. quarter (as in the coin); I know this one's common, but i try to make words match their spelling if people would still understand me.

[jal]

OMG. I just learned that "chasm" has [k] not [tS] <facepalm>.


JAL

[Travis B.]

I know this one's common, but i try to make words match their spelling if people would still understand me.

I view trying to closely fit the standard language to be highly overrated. (Its primary uses are for speaking to non-native speakers who haven't acclimatized to the local dialect or deliberately trying to sound formal.)

[Vijay]

OMG. I just learned that "chasm" has [k] not [tS] <facepalm>.


JAL

Actually, it took me a long time to learn that, too. I'm sure lots of people pronounce it the other way as well.