Pronunciations you had to unlearn

[StrangerCoug]

That reminds me that the very term "Gaelic" is pronounced differently depending on whether you mean Irish Gaelic or Scottish Gaelic, though at least I have the defense of the fact that it's often /ˈɡeɪlɪk/ for both in American English according to Wikipedia. To refer to Scottish Gaelic, a Brit usually pronounces it /ˈɡælɪk/ or /ˈɡalɪk/—the latter pronunciation is what I'm trying to teach myself to say.

[Linguoboy]

I never use “Gaelic” to refer to Irish any more. But I still do use it in terms like “Gaelic football” and “the Gaelic League”.

[Jonlang]

That reminds me that the very term "Gaelic" is pronounced differently depending on whether you mean Irish Gaelic or Scottish Gaelic, though at least I have the defense of the fact that it's often /ˈɡeɪlɪk/ for both in American English according to Wikipedia. To refer to Scottish Gaelic, a Brit usually pronounces it /ˈɡælɪk/ or /ˈɡalɪk/—the latter pronunciation is what I'm trying to teach myself to say.

No, we Brits tend to use /ˈɡeɪlɪk/ for all forms, in general. Unless, I suppose you happen to be Scottish where you're more likely to pronounce it closer to the Scottish Gaelic pronunciation. And those few Brits who know they should be pronounced differently and care enough to make the effort will do so, I guess, but the standard pronunciation of "Gaelic" is approximately /ˈɡeɪlɪk/ - all over England and Wales, at least – /ˈɡælɪk/ or /ˈɡalɪk/are definitely not everyday "Brit" pronunciations for Scottish Gaelic (outside of Scotland anyway). Personally, I use Gaelic /ˈɡeɪlɪk/ to refer to Scottish Gaelic and anything else where the word Gaelic is used, but I refer to Irish Gaelic as simply Irish now, and to Manx Gaelic as Manx.

[anteallach]

Those who are most likely to refer to the language will generally pronounce it /ˈɡalɪk/ though.

(I guess the short vowel in the first syllable is due to it being filtered through Scottish English, as in the language itself Gàidhlig has a long vowel.)

[Richard W]

Those who are most likely to refer to the language will generally pronounce it /ˈɡalɪk/ though.

(I guess the short vowel in the first syllable is due to it being filtered through Scottish English, as in the language itself Gàidhlig has a long vowel.)

Though this Sassenach heard it as a long vowel when corrected!

[Estav]

I just learned that "sepulcher" is stressed on the initial rather than the second syllable. I'd been pronouncing it as /səˈpʌlkər/ rather than the correct /ˈsɛpəlkər/.

[Pabappa]

I just learned that "sepulcher" is stressed on the initial rather than the second syllable. I'd been pronouncing it as /səˈpʌlkər/ rather than the correct /ˈsɛpəlkər/.

Me too, though tbh it's not a word I'd ever use ... I didnt know what it meant either, and if asked I'd have said it was a proper noun similar to Holy Grail.

Yesterday I learned that en masse is usually pronounced with the vowel of TRAP, though my pronuncication with true /a/ is still valid.

[Linguoboy]

I just learned that "sepulcher" is stressed on the initial rather than the second syllable. I'd been pronouncing it as /səˈpʌlkər/ rather than the correct /ˈsɛpəlkər/.

Me too, though tbh it's not a word I'd ever use ... I didnt know what it meant either, and if asked I'd have said it was a proper noun similar to Holy Grail.

I can see that, since the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem tends to mentioned in the news occasionally, particularly around Christmastime. But sepulchers come up more often in Christian contexts, particularly in the phrase “whitened sepulchers” (a spiritual metaphor common in Easter sermons).

[Kuchigakatai]

I just learned that "sepulcher" is stressed on the initial rather than the second syllable. I'd been pronouncing it as /səˈpʌlkər/ rather than the correct /ˈsɛpəlkər/.

That is just... what, why? As you know (considering the discussion we had on this topic a year ago), the traditional English pronunciation of Latin sepulc(h)rum should've been /sɪˈpʌlkɹəm/... Much like indulgent, to divulge, consultant, insulting, occult, and words not borrowed from Latin like assaultant... The language even has some Latin words with se- and non-initial stress, to seduce, secure.

I am reminded of senator and predator though*, which should've been borrowed as /sɪˈneɪtəɹ prɪˈdeɪtəɹ/, like equator, orator, creator, dictator, vibrator, but weren't. Maybe they were influenced by -itor words, since those ignore the location of stress in Latin: auditor (< audītor), inquisitor (< inquīsītor), probably because of creditor (< crēdĭtor), monitor (< monĭtor), visitor (< vīsĭtor).

* Helluva near-rhyme, that one.

[Linguoboy]

I just learned that "sepulcher" is stressed on the initial rather than the second syllable. I'd been pronouncing it as /səˈpʌlkər/ rather than the correct /ˈsɛpəlkər/.

That is just... what, why? As you know (considering the discussion we had on this topic a year ago), the traditional English pronunciation of Latin sepulc(h)rum should've been /sɪˈpʌlkɹəm/... Much like indulgent, to divulge, consultant, insulting, occult, and words not borrowed from Latin like assaultant... The language even has some Latin words with se- and non-initial stress, to seduce, secure.

It wasn’t borrowed from Latin, though, rather from Old French, which had predominantly initial stress.

[Kuchigakatai]

It wasn’t borrowed from Latin, though, rather from Old French,

It's much the same thing. English generally borrows words from Latin by giving them a French shape first, aside from a few endings like -ate (fornicate) or -ite (expedite). It would've been [seˈpylkɾə] in Old French anyway.

which had predominantly initial stress.

Not really. It mostly had word-final stress, except for words ending with /ə/ in the last syllable, as that was never stressed. Achevér [atʃəˈveɾ], il achiéve [aˈtʃjevə] (now achève), il apèleṭ [aˈpɛlə(θ)] (now appelle), tu purparoles [poɾpaˈɾɔləs] 'you plot [a plan]'. There's a very few words with third-to-syllable stress, only existing for phonotactic reasons (ydele [ˈidələ] 'idol' due to prohibition of /dl/, ymagene [iˈmadʒənə] 'image' due to prohibition of /dʒn/).

It's Late Middle English and later that have generally moved the stress to the beginning of their words borrowed from French (or Latin via French, or Latin by making words French-like), by applying the Germanic stress pattern to them. Chaucer in the 14th c. had no problem rhyming licour [lɪˈkʰuːr] and flower/flour [fluːr].

And bathed every veyne in swich licour [and ˈbaːðəd ˌevrɪ ˈvein ɪn ˈswɪtʃ lɪˈkʰuːr]
Of which vertu engendred is the flour [ov ˈʍɪtʃ verˈtʰuː enˈdʒendrəd ɪz ðə ˈfluːr]
(The Prologue is in iambic pentametre, mostly in lines of four primary stresses.)

[Estav]

the traditional English pronunciation of Latin sepulc(h)rum should've been /sɪˈpʌlkɹəm/

Yes, and I'm pretty sure that is the traditional English pronunciation of "sepulc(h)rum". The English adjective "sepulchral" also has that stress pattern. It's just the pronunciation of the English noun "sepulchre/sepulcher" that has retracted stress.

... Much like indulgent, to divulge, consultant, insulting, occult, and words not borrowed from Latin like assaultant... The language even has some Latin words with se- and non-initial stress, to seduce, secure.

Word-initial stress is more strongly preferred in English in nouns than in verbs (especially prefixed ones) or adjectives.

I am reminded of senator and predator though*, which should've been borrowed as /sɪˈneɪtəɹ prɪˈdeɪtəɹ/, like equator, orator, creator, dictator, vibrator, but weren't. Maybe they were influenced by -itor words, since those ignore the location of stress in Latin: auditor (< audītor), inquisitor (< inquīsītor), probably because of creditor (< crēdĭtor), monitor (< monĭtor), visitor (< vīsĭtor).

English senator is not just borrowed straight from the Latin nominative form; it's partially from Old French senatour. As you mentioned, borrowings from Old French initially had stress in the same place as in French in Middle English (so something like /senaˈtuːr/). In words of more than two syllables with an open penult syllable (and even in some with a closed penult syllable), stress retraction seems to have usually resulted in antepenult stress, possibly via strengthening of a prexisting secondary stress on that syllable (so something like /ˌsenaˈtuːr/ > /ˈsenatuːr/ > /ˈsenətər/). There has possibly been influence from Latin stress patterns in some -ator words (the pronunciation dicˈtator exists in modern British English), but it depends on the specific word.

[Moose-tache]

This is more of a pronunciation that's plain wrong, but it's been bothering me for a long time.

Textbooks and other learning materials routinely describe Russian щ (that's sh-with-a-tail if your unicode isn't working) is pronounced [ʃtʃ]. This is a universal description of this phoneme/letter in every piece of print media I have ever seen on the topic, as if everyone in the English-speaking world got together and decided to make up a lie and stick with it. Two seconds of careful listening will show that the actual sound is a palatized version of ш, which unlike ʃtʃ has the benefit of not being an insane thing to have a designated letter for. How did this myth originate, and how has it perpetuated itself for so long among teachers who should know better?

[Pabappa]

I think its changed recently enough that we can call the old form a learned pronunciation. e.g. how Moscow, Kremlin, etc have separate names in English that arent derived from the modern Russian names but rather much older ones. It helps also that some variant of /šč/ is the spelling used by other languages too when loaning Russian words with that sound in them, and when it isnt that it's often /št/. e.g. borscht.

though if youre seeing this in textbooks that are intended for people who want to learn Russian, that's wrong, I agree.

[Chengjiang]

As I understand it the pronunciation as [ɕtɕ] was common about a century ago and it’s stuck around in English-language materials even though almost nobody pronounces it that way anymore. Hell, Ukrainian cognates of Russian words with this sound still typically have the cluster, IIRC.

As for why it has a dedicated letter, as I understand it [ʃt] (the oldest value of the letter) was a very common cluster in Old Chuch Slavonic due to being that language’s development of Proto-Slavic [c].

[Travis B.]

I think its changed recently enough that we can call the old form a learned pronunciation. e.g. how Moscow, Kremlin, etc have separate names in English that arent derived from the modern Russian names but rather much older ones. It helps also that some variant of /šč/ is the spelling used by other languages too when loaning Russian words with that sound in them, and when it isnt that it's often /št/. e.g. borscht.

though if youre seeing this in textbooks that are intended for people who want to learn Russian, that's wrong, I agree.

Apparently the English form of borscht has been filtered through Yiddish, at least from what I read.

[KathTheDragon]

Apparently it used to be the normal pronunciation in Russian, and apparently still is in Ukrainian and Rusyn. Naturally, when the sound represented by the letter changed, English-language Russian teachers didn't keep up.

[Moose-tache]

Horse malarky. Does it sound like this Ukrainian woman is saying [borʃtʃt] to you? I maintain that this pronunciation is not current anywhere. And since it is a reflex of a single consonant and not a cluster as best historical linguistics can determine (for example borscht has been reconstructed as bhr̥sti. I don't see two t's in that word, do you?), the most logical conclusion is that it has always been a single consonant, and some idiot popularized a flawed explanation that was never corrected.

EDIT: some more etymologies: общий from obьťь, вещать from věťati. Everywhere you look, щ is the product of palatization of a single consonant, usually t in South Slavic (thence often borrowed into Russian), or ч from native East Slavic words. Some examples come from palatizing ш, but that's less common than I originally thought.

So a) it is not now a cluster in anyone's speech, in any dialect of Russian or Ukrainian, and b) it is derived from a single consonant, not a cluster. The letter щ represents ɕ, and always has; there's really no wiggle room on that point. The question is, where did the incorrect English-language explanation come from, and why has no one fixed it?

[Pabappa]

how would you explain word families like https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstr ... vic/ščedrъ where Polish has szcz, Russian has щ, and many other Slavic languages have št?

[Yalensky]

It might be worth pointing out that /ɕ/ is the regular outcome of /stɕ/ in Russian: e.g. считать 'to count' with initial /ɕ/ from the prefix с- + the verb читать. (Spelling <сч> rather than <щ> is a matter of etymology/morphology.) Also счастье /ˈɕаsʲtʲje/ 'happiness' and /ɕas/ for сейчас 'now' in quick speech. So there is precedent for sibilant+/tɕ/ clusters to simplify into /ɕ/.