The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I had also begun pondering the fairly obvious racism as the conversation continued. A lot of the forms considered incorrect in Southern American English (and consequently that I was corrected out of adopting) do overlap with AAVE, presumably because they're strongly historically linked to one-another.

It should be remembered that the South is also the origin of the concept of "white trash", where poor Whites were seen as little better than Blacks, i.e. classism was just as much a factor as racism in the South.

Yes, the two concepts are very much historically interlaced, though it seems (just from observation), Spanish-speaking Latine-Americans seem to be those most looked down upon (not that the other historically marginalised groups aren't still marginalised, though they seem, from my mostly non-marginalised position at least, less-so than in the past). These recent demographic shifts have also incidentally made Spanish an unprestigious language in the area (though I personally view the increase in bilingualism positively). A number of new words, mostly relating to newly-introduced foods — chayote ([tʃʰɑɪ'joʊ.diɪ], a kind of squash), jamaica ([hə'mɑɪ.kʰə], dried hibiscus flowers used to make herbal tea), and tuna ([tʰuʊ.nə], a kind of cactus fruit) come to mind — seems to be entering more general usage locally, however. I've also encountered culantro ([kʰuʊ'lɑ̞ːn.tɹoʊ~kʰuʊ'lɑ̞ːn.tʃɹoʊ]) for a specific kind of what would normally be called cilantro.

[Travis B.]

Yes, the two concepts are very much historically interlaced, though it seems (just from observation), Spanish-speaking Latine-Americans seem to be those most looked down upon (not that the other historically marginalised groups aren't still marginalised, though they seem, from my mostly non-marginalised position at least, less-so than in the past). These recent demographic shifts have also incidentally made Spanish an unprestigious language in the area (though I personally view the increase in bilingualism positively). A number of new words, mostly relating to newly-introduced foods — chayote ([tʃʰɑɪ'joʊ.diɪ], a kind of squash), jamaica ([hə'mɑɪ.kʰə], dried hibiscus flowers used to make herbal tea), and tuna ([tʰuʊ.nə], a kind of cactus fruit) come to mind — seems to be entering more general usage locally, however. I've also encountered culantro ([kʰuʊ'lɑ̞ːn.tɹoʊ~kʰuʊ'lɑ̞ːn.tʃɹoʊ]) for a specific kind of what would normally be called cilantro.

Here Blacks seem to be looked down upon significantly more than Latines. The predominantly Black inner city of Milwaukee in particular is commonly associated with crime here. As for Latines, they frequently have the stereotype of being hard-working and being willing to do work that other Americans are unwilling to do, ranging from things such as cleaning offices to working on farms, the reverse of the other old stereotype of back when of Latines being lazy.

[Space60]

Speaking of "boughten", I have read that it is more commonly used as a dialectal variant of "store-bought" than used as a past participle of "buy". Is this the case?


Dictionary.com includes an entry for "boughten", but only recognizes it as a dialectal variant of "store-bought" not a past participle.

[Travis B.]

Speaking of "boughten", I have read that it is more commonly used as a dialectal variant of "store-bought" than used as a past participle of "buy". Is this the case?


Dictionary.com includes an entry for "boughten", but only recognizes it as a dialectal variant of "store-bought" not a past participle.

I am familiar with -ought being replaced with -oughten in past participles in particular when combined with a particle such as up or out (and not just in the case of boughten). In particular I would use these forms a lot when I was young. Since then they have been more self-consciously dialectal to me, even though no one IRL has told me that they were "improper" or "incorrect". Interestingly enough though I have never used boughten so as to mean store-bought myself.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Here Blacks seem to be looked down upon significantly more than Latines. The predominantly Black inner city of Milwaukee in particular is commonly associated with crime here. As for Latines, they frequently have the stereotype of being hard-working and being willing to do work that other Americans are unwilling to do, ranging from things such as cleaning offices to working on farms, the reverse of the other old stereotype of back when of Latines being lazy.

I think here they're more viewed as "dirty" (presumably because many of the recent immigrants are poor and cannot afford very good housing), and probably "illegal" or "leeches", having lots of children to "eat off the system" (I haven't done a study or anything, but it's something I've heard repeated by people incidentally, especially when I go back to the smaller town where I grew up — it's generally better in places like Charlotte or Atlanta, at least in my experience). There's also some idea that their "foreign" language is contributing to some sort of cultural or linguistic... "decay", perhaps, with some objecting to certain signage and announcements (bathroom indications, "Caution: High Voltage", train arrival and departure times on light rail) being in both English and Spanish.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I am familiar with -ought being replaced with -oughten in past participles in particular when combined with a particle such as up or out (and not just in the case of boughten). In particular I would use these forms a lot when I was young. Since then they have been more self-consciously dialectal to me, even though no one IRL has told me that they were "improper" or "incorrect". Interestingly enough though I have never used boughten so as to mean store-bought myself.

This one might be an actual archaism rather than just sounding like one.

[Travis B.]

I am familiar with -ought being replaced with -oughten in past participles in particular when combined with a particle such as up or out (and not just in the case of boughten). In particular I would use these forms a lot when I was young. Since then they have been more self-consciously dialectal to me, even though no one IRL has told me that they were "improper" or "incorrect". Interestingly enough though I have never used boughten so as to mean store-bought myself.

This one might be an actual archaism rather than just sounding like one.

My favorite real live archaism is keeping separate present participles and gerunds in informal speech. My dialect does not freely interchange final /əŋ/ and /ən/ with probably the sole exception of compounds of -thing such as something and nothing — but present participles can end in /ən/ in addition to the more formal /əŋ/ while gerunds must always end in /əŋ/, no matter how informal the register. For instance one can say He's read/ən/ poetry and He's doing a poetry read/əŋ/ but never *He's doing a poetry read/ən/. Hence here final /ən/ can be considered a continuation of ME -ende, which has been lost in Standard English.

[Space60]

Speaking of "boughten", I have read that it is more commonly used as a dialectal variant of "store-bought" than used as a past participle of "buy". Is this the case?


Dictionary.com includes an entry for "boughten", but only recognizes it as a dialectal variant of "store-bought" not a past participle.

I am familiar with -ought being replaced with -oughten in past participles in particular when combined with a particle such as up or out (and not just in the case of boughten). In particular I would use these forms a lot when I was young. Since then they have been more self-consciously dialectal to me, even though no one IRL has told me that they were "improper" or "incorrect". Interestingly enough though I have never used boughten so as to mean store-bought myself.

I have just read that in many regions "boughten" is used as an adjective meaning "store-bought" even if they don't use it as a past participle. They can speak of "boughten lemonade" vs. "homemade lemonade".

[Rounin Ryuuji]

My favorite real live archaism is keeping separate present participles and gerunds in informal speech. My dialect does not freely interchange final /əŋ/ and /ən/ with probably the sole exception of compounds of -thing such as something and nothing — but present participles can end in /ən/ in addition to the more formal /əŋ/ while gerunds must always end in /əŋ/, no matter how informal the register. For instance one can say He's read/ən/ poetry and He's doing a poetry read/əŋ/ but never *He's doing a poetry read/ən/. Hence here final /ən/ can be considered a continuation of ME -ende, which has been lost in Standard English.

I have both forms in near free variation, and I often wish there were a standard orthographic -ind rather than the eye-dialect-looking -in' to represent the /ɪn/ form.

[Travis B.]

My favorite real live archaism is keeping separate present participles and gerunds in informal speech. My dialect does not freely interchange final /əŋ/ and /ən/ with probably the sole exception of compounds of -thing such as something and nothing — but present participles can end in /ən/ in addition to the more formal /əŋ/ while gerunds must always end in /əŋ/, no matter how informal the register. For instance one can say He's read/ən/ poetry and He's doing a poetry read/əŋ/ but never *He's doing a poetry read/ən/. Hence here final /ən/ can be considered a continuation of ME -ende, which has been lost in Standard English.

I have both forms in near free variation, and I often wish there were a standard orthographic -ind rather than the eye-dialect-looking -in' to represent the /ɪn/ form.

I personally also highly dislike -in' for this myself.

[Linguoboy]

Speaking of "boughten", I have read that it is more commonly used as a dialectal variant of "store-bought" than used as a past participle of "buy". Is this the case?

That's the usage IMD. You can have "boughten donuts", which are "donuts you've bought" rather than ones you've made.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Some Eighteenth-century poetry suggests in its rhyme scheme that /ɪn/ was once the fashionable London pronunciation.

[LingEarth]

tuna ([tʰuʊ.nə], a kind of cactus fruit)

How do you avoid getting this confused with the fish?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

tuna ([tʰuʊ.nə], a kind of cactus fruit)

How do you avoid getting this confused with the fish?

I personally hypercorrect a yod back in there. Otherwise, they're both homophones and homographs. I imagine the tuna-cactus will probably disappear after the new demographic assimilates more, but I could see tuna (cactus-fruit) v. tuna-fish (already common before the cactus tuna was introduced) also simply going on like that.

[Travis B.]

Some Eighteenth-century poetry suggests in its rhyme scheme that /ɪn/ was once the fashionable London pronunciation.

I'm trying to find info online on -/ən/ versus -/əŋ/ for verb forms but Google isn't making it easy...

[Travis B.]

tuna ([tʰuʊ.nə], a kind of cactus fruit)

How do you avoid getting this confused with the fish?

I personally hypercorrect a yod back in there. Otherwise, they're both homophones and homographs. I imagine the tuna-cactus will probably disappear after the new demographic assimilates more, but I could see tuna (cactus-fruit) v. tuna-fish (already common before the cactus tuna was introduced) also simply going on like that.

You don't have yod-dropping after coronals in stressed syllables?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

You don't have yod-dropping after coronals in stressed syllables?

At some point or other, I acquired the habit of inserting (or reinserting) it after /t j n/, but not /s z/, such that "tuna" (the fish) is [tʰjuʊ.nə~tʃʰuʊ.nə], "dew" is [djuʊ~dʒuʊ] (often without yod-coalescence, also true of duel, probably as an attempt at not merging them with Jew, jewel), and "new" is [njuʊ] (all not regionally normative). I don't think I always had this yod in most of these places. While I don't remember being corrected about it, I think I simply at some point started thinking it was "correct" (probably from hearing it in older speakers, or in some broadcast speech or somesuch), and having the idea that I was supposed to speak "correctly", began inserting it (probably also influenced by the retention of the yod after /k g/ in words with written long u, eu, ew, making it likely partially a reading pronunciation).

[Travis B.]

You don't have yod-dropping after coronals in stressed syllables?

At some point or other, I acquired the habit of inserting (or reinserting) it after /t j n/, but not /s z/, such that "tuna" (the fish) is [tʰjuʊ.nə~tʃʰuʊ.nə], "dew" is [djuʊ~dʒuʊ] (often without yod-coalescence, also true of duel, probably as an attempt at not merging them with Jew, jewel), and "new" is [njuʊ] (all not regionally normative). I don't think I always had this yod in most of these places. While I don't remember being corrected about it, I think I simply at some point started thinking it was "correct" (probably from hearing it in older speakers, or in some broadcast speech or somesuch), and having the idea that I was supposed to speak "correctly", began inserting it (probably also influenced by the retention of the yod after /k g/ in words with written long u, eu, ew, making it likely partially a reading pronunciation).

It is interesting that non-yod-dropping survived where you are in e.g. the speech of older people; here yod-dropping after coronals in stressed syllables is complete, with no memory of not having it in the first place.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

It is interesting that non-yod-dropping survived where you are in e.g. the speech of older people; here yod-dropping after coronals in stressed syllables is complete, with no memory of not having it in the first place.

I wonder if some of them weren't hypercorrecting, too. I think my (edit: paternal) great-grandmother (who would've been something like 110 this year) still had a weakly-articulated yod in many places (my grandmother, her daughter's, knew was /njuː/, too, but she would've been 92 this year; I can't remember how either of them pronounced new; I think my grandmother may have dropped the yod frequently after /t d/, but retained it after /n/). I believe my natural mother (she was from somewhere in Michigan) also still had /nj/ in some contexts, but not /tj dj/, though this is also rather difficult to remember.

[Travis B.]

The dialect here has what would superficially seem to be non-yod-dropping combined with yod-coalescence if it weren't for that it occurs where yods were never present in the first place. Specifically, there is general palatalization of alveolar and postalveolar consonants before /u/, and /t/ in this environment has a tendency to be (generally lightly, but I've heard extreme examples at times) affricated as a result. For instance, I have [ˈtsʲʰy(ː)] for two with light but non-zero affrication and I have heard people who have [ˈtɕʰy(ː)].

Note that this also affects /ʊ w ɜr/; I still remember a local lawyer commercial from about 17 or so years back where the person in the commercial kept on repeating [ˈtɕʰwʌ̃ɾ̃i(ː)] with really conspicuous affrication over and over.