Pronunciations you had to unlearn

[aliensdrinktea]

Moving to Spain a year ago, I had to unlearn /s/ for <z> and <c>, which is what I'd been taught in the US. In Spain, <z c> are pronounced /θ/. I've pretty much got the hang of it now... apart from occasionally slipping into ceceo (<z c s> all as /θ/) due to hypercorrection.

In English, I've been told I should unlearn [ˈæltɚnət], among other words where my use of /æ/ is apparently wrong. I couldn't care less if it's wrong.

I pronounce hyperbole like "hyper-bowl" in my head, though not out loud.

[Linguoboy]

In English, I've been told I should unlearn [ˈæltɚnət], among other words where my use of /æ/ is apparently wrong. I couldn't care less if it's wrong.

I had to reread that transcription three times before I could figure out what word you meant, so you might want to consider how this pronunciation is impacting intelligibility.

[Travis B.]

In English, I've been told I should unlearn [ˈæltɚnət], among other words where my use of /æ/ is apparently wrong. I couldn't care less if it's wrong.

I had to reread that transcription three times before I could figure out what word you meant, so you might want to consider how this pronunciation is impacting intelligibility.

I too had to think a bit about that pronunciation there...

[Jonlang]

I pronounce hyperbole like "hyper-bowl" in my head, though not out loud.

The first time I saw the word, that's how I pronounced it in my head, too. I was young and didn't know what it means and if I had heard it spoken before that point, it would have made no impact.

[Ryusenshi]

Archives as */'ɑːrtʃɪvz/ instead of /'ɑːrkaɪvz/. I think I learned the correct pronunciation in Batman Begins.

[jal]

Archives as */'ɑːrtʃɪvz/ instead of /'ɑːrkaɪvz/. I think I learned the correct pronunciation in Batman Begins.

Interesting, as "chives" is /tʃaɪvz/, and most words in -ives (lives, knives) have /aɪ/. Why did you assume an /ɪ/?


JAL

[Richard W]

Archives as */'ɑːrtʃɪvz/ instead of /'ɑːrkaɪvz/. I think I learned the correct pronunciation in Batman Begins.

Interesting, as "chives" is /tʃaɪvz/, and most words in -ives (lives, knives) have /aɪ/. Why did you assume an /ɪ/?

But phonetically disyllabic words mostly have /ɪv/. The subtlety, though, is that these are Latinate words, so 'ch' should be hard. I suppose the exception to the exception is that arch- is often (usually?) soft, as in archbishop but not in archangel. (There may be a rule to distinguish these two cases.)

[Ares Land]

In a somewhat similar way, I learned the proper pronunciation of 'hierarchy' from the Screwtape Letters' Lowerarchy.

[StrangerCoug]

Does anybody else besides me keep forgetting that Keynesian does not rhyme with Indonesian, Polynesian, etc.?

[Pabappa]

Does anybody else besides me keep forgetting that Keynesian does not rhyme with Indonesian, Polynesian, etc.?

Ive always had that one right, but Ive heard that pronunciation on a voice chat about politics, and it was not corrected by others (nor by me). I think the main reason I always had it right was because I heard it out loud in high school before I came across it in print.

[jal]

Does anybody else besides me keep forgetting that Keynesian does not rhyme with Indonesian, Polynesian, etc.?

Now it's a word I've rarely encountered before, but given dat "Keynes" rhymes with "lanes", I think I would've guessed (though without context, I might've mistaken it for "key-nesian" or something).


JAL

[Pabappa]

wait, its /e:/? Good thing I kept my mouth shut then .

It's possible my history teacher was also wrong, or just that I misrremmbrred.....it's been a while .

[jal]

wait, its /e:/?

Well, /eɪ/.


JAL

[zompist]

The subtlety, though, is that these are Latinate words, so 'ch' should be hard. I suppose the exception to the exception is that arch- is often (usually?) soft, as in archbishop but not in archangel. (There may be a rule to distinguish these two cases.)

It's pretty remarkable that the same morpheme, with the same meaning, in the same domain (religion), has two different pronunciations.

I think "arch" as "chief" is [tʃ] in everything except archangel— cf. archdeacon, archfiend, archenemy, arch-villain.

I think there is a loose rule: if it's pure Greco-Latin, it's [k]. Thus archeology, archaic, architect, archon, archetype, architrave. If it's OE or French, it gets [tʃ], including of course "arch".

There's an older word "archimage" which fits the Greco-Latin pattern and is thus [k]. People seem divided on "arch-mage", presumably because it's not clear what tier of the lexicon it's supposed to belong to.

[Pabappa]

the word cherub got its /tʃ/ by coming through French, so French intermediary borrowing might explain the arches. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/archange#French doesnt give a pronunciation, but Im assuming it's with /ʃ/, from earlier /tʃ/, and that other words beginning with arch- in French also have that.

[zompist]

Nah, the French are confused too, maybe more so.

ar[k]aïque, ar[k]ange, ar[k]éologie, ar[k]étype
ar[ʃ]e, ar[ʃ]evêque, ar[ʃ]iduc ar[ʃ]ipel, ar[ʃ]itecte, ar[ʃ]ives

[anteallach]

Looking at the OED, it appears that the explanation for /k/ in archangel but not archdeacon or archbishop is that the /k/ was before a front vowel in Latin archidiaconis and archiepiscopus but before a non-front one in archangelus. From that, you might expect Old French and probably English to have arce; the OED does say "Old French arce-, later arche-" so maybe there was some Italian influence.

(The English /tʃ/ may be from direct borrowing into Old English.)

[jal]

Just learned that "scathing" rhymes with "bathing". For some reason, I'd always assumed it had /æ/.


JAL

[Pabappa]

i internalized Ponzi as /'pɔn.zaɪ/ from reading it somewhere and not hearing it out loud. Just one of those things like bijou that I picked up when I was too young to know the rules of when and where to expect foreign values for written vowels. I dont know if I ever said it out loud or not, and of course I know better now, but I might never get rid of the mental pronunciation.

[Linguoboy]

I just now learned that the t in Moët is not silent. (Given how unpredictable pronunciation of proper names can be in French, I'm really surprised more French Wikipedia articles don't include pronunciation information.)