The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread

[Travis B.]

stent

I was amused to hear my late husband use /stɪnt/ because I assumed it was a pronunciation he picked up from my pin-pen merged speech, but recently I saw a non-native speaker use the spelling "stint", which makes me wonder if the variant with /ɪ/ is more widespread than I thought.

The pin-pen merger is so alien to the dialect here that I have a hard time picturing stent being pronounced with /ɪ/ - I firmly pronounce it as /stɛnt/ [sʲtʲɜ̃ʔ(t)].

However, the shift of /ɪl/ [ɪ̈ɯ̯]~[ɪ̈ːɯ̯]~[ɘɯ̯]~[ɘːɯ̯] to /ɛl/ [ɜɤ̯]~[ɜːɤ̯] is another story... it was seriously until I was well into adulthood before I realized that most people didn't pronounce Illinois with /ɛl/, and I am very familiar with /ɛl/ in milk -- that is how my mother has always pronounced it and how I would probably pronounce it if I wasn't thinking-- even though if you asked me to pronounce the word I would probably pronounce it with /ɪl/ just under the influence of Standard English.

[jal]

I was amused to hear my late husband use /stɪnt/ because I assumed it was a pronunciation he picked up from my pin-pen merged speech, but recently I saw a non-native speaker use the spelling "stint", which makes me wonder if the variant with /ɪ/ is more widespread than I thought.

Could be contamination with the more common word "stint", assuming it's a homonym?


JAL

[Linguoboy]

I was amused to hear my late husband use /stɪnt/ because I assumed it was a pronunciation he picked up from my pin-pen merged speech, but recently I saw a non-native speaker use the spelling "stint", which makes me wonder if the variant with /ɪ/ is more widespread than I thought.

Could be contamination with the more common word "stint", assuming it's a homonym?

I was wondering that. But it could also just be a one-off for that particular speaker (perhaps he also learned the word from another pin-pen merged speaker), which is why I'm trying to gather more data.

[Travis B.]

I was amused to hear my late husband use /stɪnt/ because I assumed it was a pronunciation he picked up from my pin-pen merged speech, but recently I saw a non-native speaker use the spelling "stint", which makes me wonder if the variant with /ɪ/ is more widespread than I thought.

Could be contamination with the more common word "stint", assuming it's a homonym?

I was wondering that. But it could also just be a one-off for that particular speaker (perhaps he also learned the word from another pin-pen merged speaker), which is why I'm trying to gather more data.

My guess, if he wasn't natively pin-pen-merged overall, is indeed that he learned that particular word from someone who was.

[Space60]

I just looked up "stint" in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary and if the scroll down to the medical dictionary it says "variant of stent".

[Space60]

I once knew someone who lacked the pin-pen merger in their speech, but they pronounced "again" to rhyme with "win".

In the opposite direction, I once heard someone who lacked the pin-pen merger who pronounced "since" with the DRESS vowel sounding exactly like how they would pronounce the word "sense".

[jal]

I'm always baffled by this, as I typically copy the speech patterns of the people around me. How can an individual not hear other people pronounce things, and think "maybe I should change my pronunciation". It's especially prevelant with names. There's a guy called Robert at my office, whose name is pronounced "Roe-bert", which is the common Dutch pronunciation. But there's people who call him "Rob-bert", an alternative Dutch pronunciation, but that's not what everyone else or himself calls him. (And let's not start about by given name, "Kilian".) Really, really weird.


JAL

[Travis B.]

There is a Turkish guy I work with named Goksel, and a lot of people at my work pronounce his name with [a] or [ɑ], following the typical pronunciation of orthographic "short" <o> in NAE, while some people pronounce it with [o̞] or [ŏ̞ʊ̯̆], attempting to emulate the Turkish pronunciation within the limits of NAE phonology. I personally try to remember to pronounce it the latter way, but for some reason even I sometimes pronounce it the former way when I am not thinking. This in many ways seems similar to the situation with your Robert.

[Creyeditor]

Is their name Goksel or Göksel?

[Travis B.]

Is their name Goksel or Göksel?

Now that I google that, it could very well be the latter (I see both, but the former seems to come from English-language pages primarily), but I have only seen it written as the former at my work (but we all have US-English keyboards, so...). So maybe both pronunciation camps are wrong...

[Travis B.]

Mind you, I have always heard him pronounce his own name with a rounded mid back vowel, not with a front vowel -- but I don't know if that's how he actually pronounces his own name in Turkish rather than in English, as I have never heard him actually speak Turkish myself.

[Creyeditor]

I was just wondering because Goksel does not conform to the requirements of Turkish vowel harmony, right? Which might just happen with personal names for all I know.

[Linguoboy]

I was just wondering because Goksel does not conform to the requirements of Turkish vowel harmony, right? Which might just happen with personal names for all I know.

There are occasional exceptions to Turkish vowel harmony rules, including some very common nouns like anne "mother" and kardeş "sibling". However, I think it's much more likely in this case that the person's name is Göksel, a common given name from the word göksel "celestial" (from gök "sky, heaven" and a modern derivational suffix) and they've Americanised both the spelling and pronunciation. After all, who knows how the standard Turkish pronunciation (/ɟœcsæl/) would be interpreted by monoglot speakers of American English?

Speaking of Turkish names, I know someone named Sabri who recently confessed to me that he used to be unable to produce a normative aveolar flap and instead substituted an uvular fricative. Other Turkish speakers copied his pronunciation until finally he told a friend he wasn't trying to say it that way and he helped him learn how to say it with [ɾ] instead.

[doctor shark]

There's a guy called Robert at my office, whose name is pronounced "Roe-bert", which is the common Dutch pronunciation. But there's people who call him "Rob-bert", an alternative Dutch pronunciation, but that's not what everyone else or himself calls him.

I had a coworker in the Nether Regions Netherlands whose name actually was "Robbert", partly so that it would be closer to how "Robert" is pronounced in English. (Though everyone just called him "Rob".)

[jal]

I had a coworker in the Nether Regions Netherlands whose name actually was "Robbert", partly so that it would be closer to how "Robert" is pronounced in English. (Though everyone just called him "Rob".)

Yeah, that's the anglicised version of the name I was alluding to :D.


JAL

[Travis B.]

I had a coworker in the Nether Regions Netherlands whose name actually was "Robbert", partly so that it would be closer to how "Robert" is pronounced in English. (Though everyone just called him "Rob".)

Yeah, that's the anglicised version of the name I was alluding to .

To me the "Robbert" pronunciation would sound like a Canadian or rhotic British pronunciation because of the rounded and closer vowel in the first syllable than is typical of AmE Robert.

[Zju]

Atlatl
Atlatlathlon
Atlatlathlete

[Travis B.]

/ˈætəlˌætəl/ [ˈɛtɯːɰˌɛtɯ(ː)]
/ˈætəlˌætələˌθɑn/ [ˈɛtɯːɰˌɛtɯːɰəˌθã(ː)(n)]
/ˈætəlˌætələθˌlit/ [ˈɛtɯːɰˌɛtɯːɰəθˌʟ̞iʔ(t)]

[alice]

I don't know if this has appeared in the preceding 96 pages, but anyway.

What vowel do you have in the final syllable of difficult? I used to know someone who had a very distinct and distinctive /ʌ/, and my own is somewhere between /ɑ/ and a vocalic /l/. It is peculiarly difficult to determine the intention of the LORD here, since there are very few rhymes for this word which are at all common.

[Lērisama]

I don't know if this has appeared in the preceding 96 pages, but anyway.

What vowel do you have in the final syllable of difficult? I used to know someone who had a very distinct and distinctive /ʌ/, and my own is somewhere between /ɑ/ and a vocalic /l/. It is peculiarly difficult to determine the intention of the LORD here, since there are very few rhymes for this word which are at all common.

I have /ˈdɪfɪˌkʊlt/

Edit: that is [ˈd̥ɪ̆fɪ̆ˌkʰʊ̆wʔ]