Zompist Bboard Again

EastOfEden wrote: ↑ Here's an interesting one from past me that I suddenly recently remembered. Around age 4-5, I used to think the word "jaguar" was /d͡ʒægwaɪɹ/, and I would misspell it as "jagwire."

Why? Because my mother has /aɪ/-monophthongization and I don't, so when I heard her say the word and heard the /a/-like vowel before the r there, I mapped it onto my /aɪ/. Jagwire, rhymes with fire.

that makes perfect sense, yeah.

my next one is no biggie, but .... i saw the word elixir in a Calvin comic strip and mentally read it as ell-ick-SER, ...sorry for not using IPA but you all know what I mean by this .... perhaps because the unusual VCVC(C)VC shape of the word made the first two syllables seem less likely to carry stress.

for maybe half an hour in a science class i thought derecho was pronounced IPA /'dɛ-rɛ-ko/, because i saw the term stacked right underneath "bow echo".

EastOfEden wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 10:15 am Here's an interesting one from past me that I suddenly recently remembered. Around age 4-5, I used to think the word "jaguar" was /d͡ʒægwaɪɹ/, and I would misspell it as "jagwire."

Why? Because my mother has /aɪ/-monophthongization and I don't, so when I heard her say the word and heard the /a/-like vowel before the r there, I mapped it onto my /aɪ/. Jagwire, rhymes with fire.

i think on Jeopardy last week the host actually said "jagwire", so maybe there's more to this ...

I think I pronounced it that way before I learnt the spelling, probably at least partly by contamination with facetious children's media pronunciations (cf. Tigger saying it jaggular, which sounds like it ought to correspond to a "proper" word jagwire, orthographically possibly also jaguire, at least to my child mind; on this note, I thought hunny was the correct spelling of honey for a while, and had to get used to the "correct" spelling, from the same source).

Hypercorrection seems plausible - cf. the merger of crayon into crown, which some of my schoolteachers had.

(A related regular process is ejə > æ, e.g. /græm/ crackers, /mænejz/.)

Don't the Brits have something like /dʒægjuːə/? Maybe the point is to avoid the sequence /war/, which was eliminated in native vocabulary?

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Sun Mar 07, 2021 8:33 pmDon't the Brits have something like /dʒægjuːə/? Maybe the point is to avoid the sequence /war/, which was eliminated in native vocabulary?

The type /ˈdʒaɡjʊə/ is normal in BrE (as a speaker of New Zealand English, it's also what I'd use). I don't think a phonotactic explanation is plausible; it's probably simply a spelling pronunciation (compare BrE /ˌɪɡjʊˈɑːnə/ besides /ɪˈɡwɑːnə/).

Sol717 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 08, 2021 12:20 amBrE /ˌɪɡjʊˈɑːnə/

People say that?

KathTheDragon wrote: ↑Mon Mar 08, 2021 3:23 am

Sol717 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 08, 2021 12:20 amBrE /ˌɪɡjʊˈɑːnə/

People say that?

I do.

Sol717 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 08, 2021 12:20 am

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Sun Mar 07, 2021 8:33 pmDon't the Brits have something like /dʒægjuːə/? Maybe the point is to avoid the sequence /war/, which was eliminated in native vocabulary?

The type /ˈdʒaɡjʊə/ is normal in BrE (as a speaker of New Zealand English, it's also what I'd use). I don't think a phonotactic explanation is plausible; it's probably simply a spelling pronunciation (compare BrE /ˌɪɡjʊˈɑːnə/ besides /ɪˈɡwɑːnə/).

I think the car manufacturer possibly has a fair bit to do with it, seeing as they have made the word 'jaguar' an everyday word in a location where the big cat is not native.

Jonlang wrote: ↑Fri Mar 12, 2021 3:37 amI think the car manufacturer possibly has a fair bit to do with it, seeing as they have made the word 'jaguar' an everyday word in a location where the big cat is not native.

And it might be that that specific pronunciation has been spread over the world by a bunch of car-loving middle-aged men with a tv show...


JAL

Sol717 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 08, 2021 12:20 am

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Sun Mar 07, 2021 8:33 pmDon't the Brits have something like /dʒægjuːə/? Maybe the point is to avoid the sequence /war/, which was eliminated in native vocabulary?

The type /ˈdʒaɡjʊə/ is normal in BrE (as a speaker of New Zealand English, it's also what I'd use). I don't think a phonotactic explanation is plausible; it's probably simply a spelling pronunciation (compare BrE /ˌɪɡjʊˈɑːnə/ besides /ɪˈɡwɑːnə/).

I figured the spelling pronunciation could've been driven by avoidance of /wA:/, but if the same thing happens in "iguana" that's obv untenable lol i'm dumb "iguana" has START in BrE

Interestingly enough, the first edition of the OED (the relevant fascicle was published in 1901) only mentions /ɪˈgwɑːnə/; the spelling pronunciation is presumably a later innovation (possibly when iguanas started being sold as pets and therefore established a presence in the public consciousness?).

For jaguar, both /ˈdʒægjuːɑː(ɹ)/ and /ˈdʒægwɑː(ɹ)/ are given; the pronunciation with /w/ is apparently obsolete in modern BrE.

Unsurprisingly, Walker lacks both iguana and jaguar.

Sol717 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 14, 2021 1:37 am Interestingly enough, the first edition of the OED (the relevant fascicle was published in 1901) only mentions /ɪˈgwɑːnə/; the spelling pronunciation is presumably a later innovation (possibly when iguanas started being sold as pets and therefore established a presence in the public consciousness?).

A more salient beastie in public consciousness is (or was?) the iguanodon. I dug out the pronunciation in one of my children's books (written in the 1960's), and lo and behold it gave 'ig-u-AHN-o-don'. Back-formation to the exotic iguana yields /ˌɪɡjʊˈɑːnə/.

Richard W wrote: ↑Sun Mar 14, 2021 4:39 am

Sol717 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 14, 2021 1:37 am Interestingly enough, the first edition of the OED (the relevant fascicle was published in 1901) only mentions /ɪˈgwɑːnə/; the spelling pronunciation is presumably a later innovation (possibly when iguanas started being sold as pets and therefore established a presence in the public consciousness?).

A more salient beastie in public consciousness is (or was?) the iguanodon. I dug out the pronunciation in one of my children's books (written in the 1960's), and lo and behold it gave 'ig-u-AHN-o-don'. Back-formation to the exotic iguana yields /ˌɪɡjʊˈɑːnə/.

The OED1 gives only /ɪˈgwænədɒn/, though that might be a erroneous editorial guess, a minority learnèd form, or only one of several competing forms (it's conceivable that the editors queried a paleontologist, failing to realise that others might've pronounced it differently). /ɪˈgwænədɒn/, /ɪˈgwɑːnədɒn/, and /ɪˈgjʊˈɑːnədɒn/ are all apparently acceptable in current BrE; all three forms may well be (relatively) old.

TIL I should be saying "Lëtzebuergesch" with [j] instead of [g]. Also, the <er> is apparently just [ə], not [ɐ] as in Standard German and most southwestern varieties.

TIL that lackadaisy and its derivatives are not pronounced with an [s], i.e. not pronounced laxa-. I've actually never heard it pronounced without the [s] though

For a long time, I didn't know or notice that Americans drop the yod after dental consonants. So, I didn't realize that Looney Tunes was a pun with Toons. Or that noob was just the beginning of newbie.

Not exactly something I had to unlearn (I use a British accent so I still don't do yod-dropping), so much as an alternative I had to learn.

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Words beginning with wr- were a puzzle for me. I remember a level in Super Metroid named "Wrecked Ship", that my brothers and I first misread as *"Weckred Ship" (look, our English was fairly basic) and pronounced *[wɛ kʁɛd] accordingly. Then we realized our error... but how the hell do you pronounce a /wr-/ cluster?? Like, it's impossible with a French /r/, so with an English /r/ instead... uh, something like [wuɹɛkt]? or [ɹʷwɛkt]? Of course, in modern English this cluster is impossible and it's just a regular /r-/.

People still struggle with this cluster: nobody knows how to pronounce wrap (a loanword only used for wrap sandwiches). I think most people have settled on [vʁap].

Ryusenshi wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 4:55 amLike, it's impossible with a French /r/

I think "roi" comes close though, as far as rounding the r goes :).


JAL

Ryusenshi wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 4:55 am For a long time, I didn't know or notice that Americans drop the yod after dental consonants. So, I didn't realize that Looney Tunes was a pun with Toons. Or that noob was just the beginning of newbie.

I had the opposite problem. As my native dialect is yod-dropping, I didn't know what its occurrence was in other dialects[*]. "Love's Great Adventure" by Ultravox has the line "They rang around my head / Like empty tuneless harmonies", but because of the yodation and resulting affrication (plus other peculiarities of Midge Ure's pronunciation) I always heard this as "...empty Jewish harmonies...".

[*] One of my linguistics teachers in college used this as an example of hypercorrection. He once heard a USAmerican announcer on a classical station trying so hard to sound plummy that he ended up pronouncing "noon" [ˈnjʉʊ̯n].

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I came across "Croesus" in Vonnegut yesterday and that reminded me how I used to transpose this to "Croseus", which I pronounced /'kroːsiːəs/.

Ryusenshi wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 4:55 am Words beginning with wr- were a puzzle for me. I remember a level in Super Metroid named "Wrecked Ship", that my brothers and I first misread as *"Weckred Ship" (look, our English was fairly basic) and pronounced *[wɛ kʁɛd] accordingly. Then we realized our error... but how the hell do you pronounce a /wr-/ cluster?? Like, it's impossible with a French /r/, so with an English /r/ instead... uh, something like [wuɹɛkt]? or [ɹʷwɛkt]? Of course, in modern English this cluster is impossible and it's just a regular /r-/.

People still struggle with this cluster: nobody knows how to pronounce wrap (a loanword only used for wrap sandwiches). I think most people have settled on [vʁap].

Actually, in English initial /r/ and /wr/ merged, not by loss of the /w/, but by both coming to be realized as [ɹʷ], so in Standard English initial /r/ is by default rounded.

jal wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 10:27 am I think "roi" comes close though, as far as rounding the r goes .

[ʁwɛ] is easy, but that's /rw-/, not /wr-/.