Pronunciations you had to unlearn

[Linguoboy]

I thought Sioux was pronounced /sjuːks/, instead of /suː/. So I used to pronounce Siouxsie (and the Banshees) as /sjuːksi/, instead of /suːzi/ (which is actually pronounced like her real name, Suzie).

Reminds me of how when I was in Germany I had to explain to someone that the name of the band Alien Sex Fiend was pronounced with /ˈfiːnd/, not /ˈfaind/.

[jal]

Reminds me of how when I was in Germany I had to explain to someone that the name of the band Alien Sex Fiend was pronounced with /ˈfiːnd/, not /ˈfaind/.

Heh, wouldn't have guessed...


JAL

[Linguoboy]

Reminds me of how when I was in Germany I had to explain to someone that the name of the band Alien Sex Fiend was pronounced with /ˈfiːnd/, not /ˈfaind/.

Heh, wouldn't have guessed...

It is a bit odd for English to have /iː/ somewhere where both Standard German and Standard Dutch have diphthongised.

Band names are funny. I still don't know whether "MGMT" is pronounced /ˈɛmˈʤiːˈɛmˈtiː/ or /ˈmænəʤmənt/. And I've heard a number of times of people pronouncing "INXS" as /ˈɪŋks/. A particular bugaboo of mine is pronouncing the German article die as /ˈdai/. (For instance, in the name of Milwaukee punk band Die Kreuzen, which kids in my town called /ˈdaiˈkruːzən/.)

[Starbeam]

Reminds me of how when I was in Germany I had to explain to someone that the name of the band Alien Sex Fiend was pronounced with /ˈfiːnd/, not /ˈfaind/.

Heh, wouldn't have guessed...

It is a bit odd for English to have /iː/ somewhere where both Standard German and Standard Dutch have diphthongised

The old English word was un-contoured and then lengthened iirc?

[Travis B.]

I somehow ended up with pronunciations for sister and mister of [ˈsɘɕtɕʁ̩(ː)] and [ˈmɘɕtɕʁ̩(ː)] even though [ˈsɘsʲtʲʁ̩(ː)] and [ˈmɘsʲtʲʁ̩(ː)] or [ˈsɘsʲʁ̩(ː)] and [ˈmɘsʲʁ̩(ː)] are far more typical for here. (Of course, I think my mother has [ˈsɘɕtɕʁ̩(ː)] for sister...) I now have the more typical pronunciations most of the time, even though some times I revert to [ˈsɘɕtɕʁ̩(ː)] for sister (even though I practically never do so for mister).

[Kuchigakatai]

Reminds me of how when I was in Germany I had to explain to someone that the name of the band Alien Sex Fiend was pronounced with /ˈfiːnd/, not /ˈfaind/.

Oh yeah, I used to say that one as "fend" because I learned it by reading it in videogames and I assumed it rhymed with "friend"...

[sasasha]

I found the word awry in the manual for the first Mega Man NES game and also pronounced it /'ɔ:ɹi/. I liked that word so much that I made up a baseball team called the Awries which had the same pronunciation. Nobody corrected me, but the few people who heard me probably had no idea where I was getting the name from, so that makes sense. I didnt find out my mistake until many years later. I think I posted this one here before, but it must have been on the old ZBB site because it doesnt come up in a search.

I wonder if we discussed this in the dim and distant past.

I remembered one a friend of mine said he had misread until he got to university, misled > /ˈmaɪ.zɫ̩d/. It does sound like a great word for being confused.

[Starbeam]

I used to pronounce actor/ comedian Jon Lovitz's name as "love-its", due to influx from the irregularly spelled word "love". It's actually "lo-vits" (not the best source but still).

There's other cases of this, where a name or word's spelling is technically irregular because it's a less common than a similarly spelled word or name that is irregular. Compare hover vs. voice actor/ writer Matt Hoverman, who does pronounce his name like the word.

[Kuchigakatai]

I found the word awry in the manual for the first Mega Man NES game and also pronounced it /'ɔ:ɹi/.

I'm pretty sure I've heard /'ɔ:ɹi/ now and then, particularly in the phrase "went awry". FWIW Wiktionary includes it as a notable enough non-standard pronunciation.

[Linguoboy]

I used to pronounce actor/ comedian Jon Lovitz's name as "love-its", due to influx from the irregularly spelled word "love". It's actually "lo-vits" (not the best source but still).

The source linked to from Wikipedia doesn't include any pronunciation information. I've always heard it pronounced with /ʌ/. (A quick YouTube search finds Larry King, Conan O'Brien, and other talkshow hosts pronouncing it that way.) Maybe his family said it with /oː/ but apparently it's not something he insists on.

Names are weird though. My own surname is pronounced with /ə/ according to my father and his family, but most people--including my mother--pronounce that same syllable with /ɑ/. I introduce myself with the /ə/ pronunciation but I don't insist on it (there are enough other deformations of it that annoy me much more).

[Moose-tache]

Linguoboy, I never knew Leviosa was a real family name.

I still think it's a small miracle that John Boehner convinced the world to pronounce his name with /e/ instead of /o/.

[Nortaneous]

I still think it's a small miracle that John Boehner convinced the world to pronounce his name with /e/ instead of /o/.

isn't that just the regular borrowing pattern for German front rounded vowels in the Midwest? what percentage of German immigrants to the US preserved front rounded vowels in the first place? Pennsylvania German unrounded them, at least

[Kuchigakatai]

I still think it's a small miracle that John Boehner convinced the world to pronounce his name with /e/ instead of /o/.

isn't that just the regular borrowing pattern for German front rounded vowels in the Midwest? what percentage of German immigrants to the US preserved front rounded vowels in the first place? Pennsylvania German unrounded them, at least

What? That's amusing. I've never heard of that, but I can definitely get behind "gay-bulls" as a pronunciation of Goebbels...

Moose-tache: I think it's motivated from the existence of "boner", which is slang for an erect penis.

[Estav]

I still think it's a small miracle that John Boehner convinced the world to pronounce his name with /e/ instead of /o/.

isn't that just the regular borrowing pattern for German front rounded vowels in the Midwest? what percentage of German immigrants to the US preserved front rounded vowels in the first place? Pennsylvania German unrounded them, at least

What? That's amusing. I've never heard of that, but I can definitely get behind "gay-bulls" as a pronunciation of Goebbels...

To pedantically spoil the joke, Goebbels would be expected to have /ɛ/ according to that pattern by virtue of having /œ/ as the original rounded vowel. Likewise, according to the unrounding system <ue> should be /i/ in Fruehling but /ɪ/ in Mueller, although I don't know how many people have actually adopted that pronunciation of the latter surame without also respelling/anglicizing it as Miller.

[Nortaneous]

I still think it's a small miracle that John Boehner convinced the world to pronounce his name with /e/ instead of /o/.

isn't that just the regular borrowing pattern for German front rounded vowels in the Midwest? what percentage of German immigrants to the US preserved front rounded vowels in the first place? Pennsylvania German unrounded them, at least

What? That's amusing. I've never heard of that, but I can definitely get behind "gay-bulls" as a pronunciation of Goebbels...

sure, that's the East Coast pattern, like in Goethe

[Linguoboy]

I still think it's a small miracle that John Boehner convinced the world to pronounce his name with /e/ instead of /o/.

And yet Robert Mueller could never get them to say his name with /ʌ/ instead of /uː/.

I still think it's a small miracle that John Boehner convinced the world to pronounce his name with /e/ instead of /o/.

isn't that just the regular borrowing pattern for German front rounded vowels in the Midwest? what percentage of German immigrants to the US preserved front rounded vowels in the first place? Pennsylvania German unrounded them, at least

What? That's amusing. I've never heard of that, but I can definitely get behind "gay-bulls" as a pronunciation of Goebbels...

As Estav says, it would be "Gebbles".

Unrounding was extremely common in the spoken German of the era. Goethe himself had it in his own speech (you can tell from his rhymes). As I've said here before, I grew up accustomed to <oe> mapping to /ɛ/ or /eː/ and <ue> mapping to /ɪ/ or /iː/ and couldn't understand all the guffawing about Boehner with /eː/. (Then again, at 50 I've long since outgrown the style of humour predicated on the guaranteed hilarity of words like "gay" and "boner".)

[Kuchigakatai]

As Estav says, it would be "Gebbles".

Unrounding was extremely common in the spoken German of the era. Goethe himself had it in his own speech (you can tell from his rhymes). As I've said here before, I grew up accustomed to <oe> mapping to /ɛ/ or /eː/ and <ue> mapping to /ɪ/ or /iː/ and couldn't understand all the guffawing about Boehner with /eː/. (Then again, at 50 I've long since outgrown the style of humour predicated on the guaranteed hilarity of words like "gay" and "boner".)

I find it surprising that Estav says height would be respected aside from happy cases where spelling patterns are similar, like a "short" vowel before doubled <bb>. Also, the humour of "gay" here was not any sort of inherent hilarity, but rather the mockery directed at that one infamous holder of the surname who was as anti-gay as a human can be, as if haunting him in the afterlife with something he hated. And I was completely serious about Boehner: surely bad homophones can at least encourage a different pronunciation.

Consider the use of "Putin" in proper Spanish for the president of Russia (certainly among news readers), which a large fraction of native speakers continues to pronounce "Putín", not out of an intention to insult him most of the time, but because it feels more natural (Spanish doesn't abound in commonly-known words ending in unstressed -in, apart from, incidentally, el Kremlin, which is genuinely nearly-never pronounced *Kremlín; cf. Disney's Aladdín, the language Latín, el comodín 'wildcard', el malandrín 'delinquent boy'...). The pronunciation of "Lenin" has the same issue, with the more learned "Lenin" vs. the more popular Lenín, as in Lenín Moreno (the current president of Ecuador), but since there is no unfortunate homophone this is less of a problem.

Many similar issues exist between learned and popular pronunciations of Greek words in Spanish, such as learned Niké vs. the often better known Nike. In general, words from Greek ending in -on are stressed on the last syllable, regardless of what Greek actually had: Πλάτων > Platón, Ζήνων > Zenón, ᾠδεῖον > Odeón (cf. the thing with Russian -in). Of course, on the rare occasion you encounter a Spanish speaker who studies Greek (as you do with some frequency if you study Latin...), they insist on using Zenon, Odeon and even Periclés (< Περικλῆς, against the more common/standard Pericles).

(Σωκράτης > Sócrates and Ὅμηρος > Homero are more understandable because of the old common European habit of stressing Greek words using Latin rules, still practised until very recently (think 1970s). Socrates has a short α /a/, so it gets stressed on So-, and as Ὅμηρος has a long η /ɛː/, it gets stressed on -me-. But note Περικλῆς should be Péricles if using Latin rules, so the common/standard Pericles is wrong either way.)

[Travis B.]

isn't that just the regular borrowing pattern for German front rounded vowels in the Midwest? what percentage of German immigrants to the US preserved front rounded vowels in the first place? Pennsylvania German unrounded them, at least

What? That's amusing. I've never heard of that, but I can definitely get behind "gay-bulls" as a pronunciation of Goebbels...

To pedantically spoil the joke, Goebbels would be expected to have /ɛ/ according to that pattern by virtue of having /œ/ as the original rounded vowel. Likewise, according to the unrounding system <ue> should be /i/ in Fruehling but /ɪ/ in Mueller, although I don't know how many people have actually adopted that pronunciation of the latter surame without also respelling/anglicizing it as Miller.

The traditional pattern is as described here for StG /œ øː/, namely /œ øː/ > /ɛ eɪ/, except before /r/, where they frequently become /ɜr/, and this pattern is productive at the present. However, occasionally people pronounce them as /oʊ/ and, before /r/, /ɔr/ instead, which always sounds wrong. The traditional pattern for StG /ʏ yː/ is /ʏ yː/ > /ɪ i/, but unlike the pattern for StG /œ øː/ this is primary preserved in a frozen state in people's names for themselves, and even then has in many cases been lost, with the productive pattern at least amongst younger people people being for both to become /ju/. (E.g. the traditional pronunciation of Mueller was with /ɪ/ but most younger people would pronounce it with /ju/.)

[Estav]

I find it surprising that Estav says height would be respected aside from happy cases where spelling patterns are similar, like a "short" vowel before doubled <bb>.

The length of vowels in German names can often be inferred from the spelling, which mostly follows similar rules to English. In the cases where it can't be predicted from the spelling, German speakers themselves aren't immune to spelling pronunciations. (I made a post earlier mentioning how the element -beck found at the end of some German place names, such as Lübeck, apparently originates from a morpheme with a long vowel, and was once pronounced by some speakers with a long vowel, but is typically pronounced now in German with a short vowel.)

Consider the use of "Putin" in proper Spanish for the president of Russia (certainly among news readers), which a large fraction of native speakers continues to pronounce "Putín", not out of an intention to insult him most of the time, but because it feels more natural (Spanish doesn't abound in commonly-known words ending in unstressed -in, apart from, incidentally, el Kremlin, which is genuinely nearly-never pronounced *Kremlín; cf. Disney's Aladdín, the language Latín, el comodín 'wildcard', el malandrín 'delinquent boy'...). The pronunciation of "Lenin" has the same issue, with the more learned "Lenin" vs. the more popular Lenín, as in Lenín Moreno (the current president of Ecuador), but since there is no unfortunate homophone this is less of a problem.

What is the homophone "putín"? Puta/puto + diminutive -ín? Where is this used (or is it just a recognizable combination of morphemes even without prior exposure to this particular word)?

Many similar issues exist between learned and popular pronunciations of Greek words in Spanish, such as learned Niké vs. the often better known Nike. In general, words from Greek ending in -on are stressed on the last syllable, regardless of what Greek actually had: Πλάτων > Platón, Ζήνων > Zenón, ᾠδεῖον > Odeón (cf. the thing with Russian -in). Of course, on the rare occasion you encounter a Spanish speaker who studies Greek (as you do with some frequency if you study Latin...), they insist on using Zenon, Odeon and even Periclés (< Περικλῆς, against the more common/standard Pericles).

(Σωκράτης > Sócrates and Ὅμηρος > Homero are more understandable because of the old common European habit of stressing Greek words using Latin rules, still practised until very recently (think 1970s). Socrates has a short α /a/, so it gets stressed on So-, and as Ὅμηρος has a long η /ɛː/, it gets stressed on -me-. But note Περικλῆς should be Péricles if using Latin rules, so the common/standard Pericles is wrong either way.)

I wonder whether the use of -ón is actually based in part on the position of stress in the Latin oblique forms of such names, such as Platōnem, Zēnōnem, and so on (as with -ción nouns, which I think take their stress pattern from Latin -tionem).

Pericles could be stressed on either the first or the second syllable according to the Latin rules, because Greek allowed obstruent-resonant clusters like /kl/ to be syllabified either as onsets or as heterosyllabic clusters, and Latin followed Greek in allowing the same variation here. The Latin stress rule places the stress on the antepenult when /k/ is syllabified as an onset consonant, but on the penult when /k/ is syllabified as a coda consonant. The Lewis and Short Latin dictionary indicates this kind of situation rather misleadingly by using a macron-breve on the vowel preceding the consonant cluster, which is rendered as ī^ in the online version: Pĕrī^cles. In inherited words, Romance languages generally use the stress pattern based on the heterosyllabic cluster division, so Latin tenebras > Spanish tinieblas.

In the English pronunciation of Latin words and names, I think stress is most commonly based on the complex onset syllabification, but there appears to be a certain amount of variability in the treatment of these clusters for the purposes of stress and the "length" of the preceding vowel. E.g. "macron" can have "long a" or "short a" in the first syllable.

[Kuchigakatai]

What is the homophone "putín"? Puta/puto + diminutive -ín? Where is this used (or is it just a recognizable combination of morphemes even without prior exposure to this particular word)?

I have never heard the word putín used sincerely (as an insult), but only in the meta context of insulting Vladimir Vladimirovitch, so it is basically the latter, yes. It is transparently interpretable as a diminutive of puto, a word used both as an insult towards gay men (for not being straight) and hetero men who sleep around. In Salvadoran Spanish I've mostly heard puto in the latter meaning, but I'm well aware it's mostly used against gay men in Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay.

Compare malandro 'delinquent man (stereotypically a robber or thief)' and malandrín 'delinquent boy (stereotypically a thief or bully)', and la cebolla 'onion' and el cebollín 'green onion, chive' (a Latinamericanism used in Mexico/Central America/Colombia/Peru, plural los cebollines; in Spain: la cebolleta; in Argentina: cebolla de verdeo).

I wonder whether the use of -ón is actually based in part on the position of stress in the Latin oblique forms of such names, such as Platōnem, Zēnōnem, and so on (as with -ción nouns, which I think take their stress pattern from Latin -tionem).

Pericles could be stressed on either the first or the second syllable according to the Latin rules, because Greek allowed obstruent-resonant clusters like /kl/ to be syllabified either as onsets or as heterosyllabic clusters, and Latin followed Greek in allowing the same variation here. The Latin stress rule places the stress on the antepenult when /k/ is syllabified as an onset consonant, but on the penult when /k/ is syllabified as a coda consonant. The Lewis and Short Latin dictionary indicates this kind of situation rather misleadingly by using a macron-breve on the vowel preceding the consonant cluster, which is rendered as ī^ in the online version: Pĕrī^cles. In inherited words, Romance languages generally use the stress pattern based on the heterosyllabic cluster division, so Latin tenebras > Spanish tinieblas.

I think you're right about Platón/Zenón; I forgot that similarly Cicero and Cato are borrowed as Cicerón and Catón, from Cicerōnem/Catōnem.

That idea of why Pericles sounds the way it does seems fine, but I notice that most borrowed words use the version with the stress on the third-to-last syllable: ferĕtrum > féretro, arbitrum (acc.) > árbitro, ludicrus/a/um > lúdicro/a, idolătra > idólatra, integrum/am (acc.) > íntegro (cf. inherited entero/a). Exception: onăgrum (acc.) > onagro.

I wonder if Pericles has been influenced by such words as chicle 'gum, chewing gum', debacle 'collapse, debacle /dɪˈbɑkl/', bucle 'loop'. I don't think there are any common words in -cle other than these three (and escuincle 'kid' in Mexico). I also wonder whether onagro has that stress because although the word is rare in Classical Latin, it does appear once in Vergil's Georgics at the end of a line with the glide syllabification thing: saepe etiam cursū timidōs agitābis onagrōs (III.409, -tā-bi-so-nag-rōs: H u u | H H). It has never been clear to me how medieval people knew vowel length, considering they clearly did judging by their poetry, but Vergil in particular was read by anyone who could write, so I wouldn't discount the influence of that line. We otherwise know the -a- was short because it comes from Greek ἄγριος with short /a/.