The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread

[Kuchigakatai]

Interesting convo today about a special subclass of "spelling pronunciations", specifically the ones you never speak aloud but only subvocalise in order to remember the proper spelling of a word. For instance, saying "Wednesday" in three syllables or pronouncing "parliament" as /ˈparlɪəmənt/. What ones do you have?

I remember that when I was a kid I used to use the Spanish-y [be.a.ˈu.ti.ful] to remember how to spell "beautiful"... Even as a learner I found the depth of [bju-] vs. <beau-> very jarring.

[zyxw59]

Interesting convo today about a special subclass of "spelling pronunciations", specifically the ones you never speak aloud but only subvocalise in order to remember the proper spelling of a word. For instance, saying "Wednesday" in three syllables or pronouncing "parliament" as /ˈparlɪəmənt/. What ones do you have?

maybe not quite an instance of this, but for some time I remembered where the 'c' was in "necessary" by thinking of Castillian Spanish /neθeˈsaɾjo/

[Pabappa]

only one i have is "Philip pines" (like the tree) for Philippines .... which is very often misspelled as Phillipines or as Phillippines.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I have a tendency to mentally pronounce colonel as something like [kʰɒ.ləˌnɛɫ], though I don't think I've ever said it out loud like that till now.

[Ryan of Tinellb]

Interesting convo today about a special subclass of "spelling pronunciations", specifically the ones you never speak aloud but only subvocalise in order to remember the proper spelling of a word. For instance, saying "Wednesday" in three syllables or pronouncing "parliament" as /ˈparlɪəmənt/. What ones do you have?

When I started Japanese, I made up a language game for English. Any* consonant spelled without a following vowel got an a, and the resulting string was pronounced phonetically (for a given definition of “phonetically”).

Wahena I satarateda Japanese, I made upa a lanaguage game fora Enagalisha…

*<sh> is a single consonant, <ng> is two consonants,

More: show

<th> and <ch> are single consonants, <q> → kiw-, <x> → kas-, <y> is always consonantal.

I use this to distinguish between homophones, and occasionally for remembering how to spell “tomorarowa / tomorrow” and “adadaresasa / address”.

[jal]

What ones do you have?

"Immediately" I memorized (in Dutch, in school) as "im-may-dee-ah-te-lee". There's probably others.


JAL

[hwhatting]

I mostly encounter English words in writing long before I hear or have to pronounce them, so my problem is normally not that I have to use an aid to memorise the written form, but that I sometimes find out that a word isn't pronounced as I expected (cue that other thread).
Not the same thing, but I sometimes pronounce English words according to German rules just for the jocular effect (e.g. Facebook ['fat_s@bo:k]).

[jal]

Not the same thing, but I sometimes pronounce English words according to German rules just for the jocular effect (e.g. Facebook ['fat_s@bo:k]).

<c> can be /ts/ in German? Like it was spelled <z>?


JAL

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I think German does "hard c" as /k/, but "soft c" as /ts/, but this doesn't really occur outside loanwords?

[jal]

Today I heard someone who I assumed is a native speaker pronounce "bipedal" with /pɛdəl/ instead of /piːdəl/. Is that common?


JAL

[Pabappa]

well, the pedal on a bicycle is pronounced that way, so I'd have assumed that words like bipedal would be too. Even if it happens to not be listed in the dictionary that way, I wouldnt call it wrong, since, again, it's literally the same word as the pedal of a bicycle and just has an extra prefix on. If the word was quadrupedal, I guess i could see how it could change because the stress is also different, but it still would sound weird to me to have an /i:/ vowel there.

[hwhatting]

I think German does "hard c" as /k/, but "soft c" as /ts/, but this doesn't really occur outside loanwords?

That's correct. It's also the traditional way Latin and loans from Latin when written in the original orthography are pronounced. Often there exist two spellings, the Latinate spelling and a nativised spelling, like circa vs. zirka. "c" alone doesn't occur outside of loan words; in native words it only occurs in the digraphs "ch" and "ck" and the trigraph "sch".

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I incidentally find it odd that "c" is often replaced with "z", but the "t" in words like Aktionsart (not *Akzionsart) is left alone.

[Pabappa]

-tion is parsed as a unit ... it's a pan-European thing, I think, or at least occurs in a nucleus of languages that includes Swedish and French alongside German and arguably English.

I definitely remember learning the c = /ts/ rule when I was reading about German when I was very young, and maybe overemphasized its importance a bit since I still mentally do the playful pronunciations too even with German placenames like Cottbus where it actually spells /k/. But I never really got into learning German and so I dont have any opportunities to speak it out loud.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Maybe I just tend to imagine German will tend to prefer to have predictable pronunciation from Spelling, and that reforms to German spelling would change this -t- to -z- (a few words in -tie seem to also be pronounced with /ts/), as Spanish has -ción, and Italian has -zione alongside some inherited forms.

[Travis B.]

Today I heard someone who I assumed is a native speaker pronounce "bipedal" with /pɛdəl/ instead of /piːdəl/. Is that common?

This is the normal pronunciation in English, yes.

[hwhatting]

Maybe I just tend to imagine German will tend to prefer to have predictable pronunciation from Spelling, and that reforms to German spelling would change this -t- to -z-

Well, German is better than English in that regard (not a high bar), but there is still a big part of etymological priciple in the orthography, and a tendency to minimise changes to the native orthography of loan words, even well-established ones.

(a few words in -tie seem to also be pronounced with /ts/),

Correct. An examples is Aktie "share (in a Company)" ['akt_si@]. This illustrates another issue with German orthography - digraphs are often ambiguous ("ie" can be [i:] or [i@].

[jal]

This is the normal pronunciation in English, yes.

It apparently is a normal pronunciation, though it's not the only one.

it's literally the same word as the pedal of a bicycle

That depends of course what you mean by "the same word". Obviously, they have different meanings, "bipedal" doesn't mean "having two bicycle pedals".


JAL

[Rounin Ryuuji]

(a few words in -tie seem to also be pronounced with /ts/),

Correct. An examples is Aktie "share (in a Company)" ['akt_si@]. This illustrates another issue with German orthography - digraphs are often ambiguous ("ie" can be [i:] or [i@].

I'd noticed this, too. In such a predictable orthography, it does, I admit, bother me a little.

[Raholeun]

What about "solder"?