Pronunciations you had to unlearn

[Travis B.]

The traditional pronunciation of <ei> in German names here is /ai/~/əi/ but as Linguoboy says there are many exceptions, especially in Ashkenazi names (note that Albert Einstein himself was an Ashkenazi Jew).

Keep in mind that Einstein only migrated to the US in his fifties, unlike people with similar names who had been born and raised there.

Probably the key thing is the environment in which one grew up here in the US. E.g. here in southeastern Wisconsin there are a very large number of people of gentile German-American background (even though there are a good number of people of Ashkenazi background), and to me here anything other than /ai/~/əi/ for <ei> in German names just sounds very off (even though if someone pronounces their name a certain way I try to use that), and out of habit I pronounce Ashkenazi names the same way unless I know otherwise. However this very likely is not true of, say, Ashkenazi people who have grown up in New York, for instance.

[Linguoboy]

The traditional pronunciation of <ei> in German names here is /ai/~/əi/ but as Linguoboy says there are many exceptions, especially in Ashkenazi names (note that Albert Einstein himself was an Ashkenazi Jew).

Keep in mind that Einstein only migrated to the US in his fifties, unlike people with similar names who had been born and raised there.

More to the point, Albert Einstein was a German-speaking Jew from southwest Germany born fifty years after the emancipation of local Jewry. I'm not sure of the exact origins of Fierstein's paternal line, but I assume they were Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe.

(The split in US Ashkenazim between assimilated German Jews and Eastern European "shtetl Jews" is comparable to that between, e.g. "lace-curtain Irish" and "shantytown Irish". That is, it was one of class and education, with the former being much closer to the Anglo-American norm than the latter.)

[Travis B.]

The traditional pronunciation of <ei> in German names here is /ai/~/əi/ but as Linguoboy says there are many exceptions, especially in Ashkenazi names (note that Albert Einstein himself was an Ashkenazi Jew).

Keep in mind that Einstein only migrated to the US in his fifties, unlike people with similar names who had been born and raised there.

More to the point, Albert Einstein was a German-speaking Jew from southwest Germany born fifty years after the emancipation of local Jewry. I'm not sure of the exact origins of Fierstein's paternal line, but I assume they were Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe.

(The split in US Ashkenazim between assimilated German Jews and Eastern European "shtetl Jews" is comparable to that between, e.g. "lace-curtain Irish" and "shantytown Irish". That is, it was one of class and education, with the former being much closer to the Anglo-American norm than the latter.)

For me it is hard not to think of Albert Einstein as a German who was Jewish for this very reason. Were it not for his having to settle in the US because of the Nazis and his support for Zionism, his Jewishness seems almost incidental to him as a person.

[WarpedWartWars]

/ˈkro.ti.ə/ [ˈkɹo.ti.ʌ] and /kroˈe.ʃə/ [kʰɹoˈ(w)e̞(j).ʃʌ].

Ugh. It's actually the /r/ that's aspirated in both. I do not know why, though.

I have three schwas: [ɪ], [ə] or [ʊ] (I can't really tell the difference easily), and [ʌ]. All are phonemically /ə/, though.

What I meant here is that /ə/ for me is realized in three different ways. I do have phonemic /ɪ/, /ʊ/ and /ʌ/.

[StrangerCoug]

Apparently I've been giving villa its Spanish pronunciation for the longest time, thinking it's a loanword from there instead of Italian. Then again, I did grow up where Spanish was common as a first or second language...

[Moose-tache]

Now I'm starting to doubt my pronunciation of the phrase beni bidi bithi.

[jal]

Ugh. It's actually the /r/ that's aspirated in both. I do not know why, though.

I somehow doubt that. The /r/ should become (partially) voiceless because of the aspiration, is that what you're alluding to?


JAL

[WarpedWartWars]

I somehow doubt that. The /r/ should become (partially) voiceless because of the aspiration, is that what you're alluding to?

For me at least, it is aspirated, and--as you say--also unvoiced.

[jal]

For me at least, it is aspirated, and--as you say--also unvoiced.

So you have late VOT on the vowel following the /r/? Curious...


JAL

[Moose-tache]

I don't understand the confusion. When you have Ch + r in English, the result is very often Crh.

Here's a video of an American woman trying to say "Christmas" and doing it slightly differently every time, even though she's a pronunciation coach. Sometimes the glottal fricative stops between R and I, other times it carries over into the I. In every case, the aspiration lingers long after the plosive.

[Travis B.]

I don't understand the confusion. When you have Ch + r in English, the result is very often Crh.

Here's a video of an American woman trying to say "Christmas" and doing it slightly differently every time, even though she's a pronunciation coach. Sometimes the glottal fricative stops between R and I, other times it carries over into the I. In every case, the aspiration lingers long after the plosive.

The confusion is that normally one speaks of plosives as being aspirated, and on rare occasions fricatives - while sonorants may be devoiced, e.g. by preceding aspirated plosives, that is an effect of the aspirated plosive's aspiration, rather than the sonorant being aspirated itself.

[Moose-tache]

Boy, I can't wait for you to meet a platypus.

[jal]

The confusion is that normally one speaks of plosives as being aspirated, and on rare occasions fricatives - while sonorants may be devoiced, e.g. by preceding aspirated plosives, that is an effect of the aspirated plosive's aspiration, rather than the sonorant being aspirated itself.

Exactly that.


JAL

[Estav]

Apparently "flense" is supposed to rhyme with "tense", not with "cleanse". I think I have only encountered it in writing and I always though it was [flɛnz].

[jal]

Apparently "flense" is supposed to rhyme with "tense", not with "cleanse". I think I have only encountered it in writing and I always though it was [flɛnz].

Mmm, I thought "tense" and "cleanse" rhyme? Damn, those pesky English final s-es...


JAL

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Apparently "flense" is supposed to rhyme with "tense", not with "cleanse". I think I have only encountered it in writing and I always though it was [flɛnz].

Mmm, I thought "tense" and "cleanse" rhyme? Damn, those pesky English final s-es...

If I were to give them "eye-dialect" spellings — tence and clenze.

[Ryusenshi]

Wait, it's actually unrequiTed love?? For years I have been reading it as unrequiRed love!

[jal]

Wait, it's actually unrequiTed love?? For years I have been reading it as unrequiRed love!

I knew the word, but pronounced it like "quit", not "quite", for some reason (probably because I expected a stem "requit").


JAL

EDIT: added a lost k

[Raphael]

Wait, it's actually unrequiTed love?? For years I have been reading it as unrequiRed love!

Well, if the love is unrequited, then I guess from the perspective of the person it's directed at, it's also unrequired.

I new the word, but pronounced it like "quit", not "quite", for some reason (probably because I expected a stem "requit").

Same here.

[Raphael]

"Pronunciations you had to unlearn"? I'm still not entirely over pronouncing the "p" in the English word "psychology". I don't get to actually speak English all that often, but when I read English texts containing the word and kind of "hear them in my head", I still "hear" a trace of a "p" there.