4 ms·

> because it's the first syllable of the word 'character'. Except the first syllable of 'character' is neither 'car' nor 'care', unless you have a really weird

> because it's the first syllable of the word 'character'. Except the first syllable of 'character' is neither 'car' nor 'care', unless you have a really weird accent or are intentionally making fun of the English upper class. PS: I always liked "squirrel" for SQL but sadly that one never got much traction.

bschwindHN 10y ago
Alright, I'll bite. How is 'care' not phonetically the first syllable of 'character'? And if it's not, then what is?
- barrkel 10y ago
  'Care' rhymes with 'bear', 'share', 'fair'; 'car' rhymes with 'bar', 'far', 'mar'. 'Character', to me, is pronounced 'car-ack-ter' with the emphasis on the first syllable. It doesn't sound anything like 'care'. Conversations like this are hard because accent doesn't transmit through text. I'm Irish.
  - bschwindHN 10y ago
    Ohhhh, that's where the discrepancy is coming from. I didn't know it was pronounced 'car-ack-ter' with an Irish accent. I was thinking in terms of an American accent which is where the confusion came from. The "listen" button here pronounces the words with an American accent: https://translate.google.com/#en/ja/character%0Acare https://translate.google.com/#en/ja/character%0Acare
    - cannam 10y ago
      > The "listen" button here pronounces the words with an American accent I think that feature must be localised -- here it gives me a (female) voice with an English accent, and the two words sound quite different.
      - bschwindHN 10y ago
        Oops, I was afraid of that. I was hoping the .com domain would have an influence on which voices were picked. I can hear the difference by going to https://translate.google.co.uk/ https://translate.google.co.uk/ though
    - satysin 10y ago
      Forvo is a great site for this kind of stuff http://forvo.com/search/char/en/ http://forvo.com/search/char/en/
  - cbd1984 10y ago
    > Conversations like this are hard because accent doesn't transmit through text. It does if you use IPA.
barrkel 10y ago
To my Irish ears, 'car' and 'char' in 'character' sound almost identical. (I pronounce it 'car'.) The only way I could pronounce it 'care' is if I were from the southern hemisphere.
telotortium 10y ago
What's going here is that most Americans have what's known as the marry-merry-Mary merger[1]. Virtually all English speakers outside of North America, as well as some Americans, mostly on the East Coast, pronounce the vowels in these three words differently -- marry is pronounced /mæri/ (/æ/ is the vowel in "cat"), merry is /mɛri/ (/ɛ/ is the vowel in "pet"), and Mary is /meri/ (/e/ is the vowel in "bait"). In those dialects, any vowel can proceed an /r/ that's intervocalic (i.e., both preceded and followed by another vowel), so /r/ acts like any other consonant in that sense. However, in most American dialects, marry-merry-Mary are all merged and pronounced identically (IPA: /mɛɹi/, though the exact vowel isn't important here, and all three vowels generally sound the same to merged speakers). Furthermore, the first syllable of all these words is usually pronounced the same as the vowel in mare (/mɛɹ/). So let's put this together. The word "care" is pronounced /kɛr/ in both merged and unmerged dialects (or /kɛː/ if you don't pronounce the /r/ there). In unmerged dialects, the word "character" is pronounced /kærəktər/, so it doesn't make sense that you'd truncate it to /kær/, because /ær/ (or /æː/) at the end of a syllable doesn't occur in any English dialect[2]. In merged dialects, however, "character" is pronounced /kɛrəktər/, so it makes sense to truncate it to /kɛr/, which is a homophone of "care". [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes_before_historic_/r/#Mary.E2.80.93marry.E2.80.93merry_merger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes... [2]: Except Irish English, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673067. [3]: I speak a merged dialect, and pronounce "char" as /kɛr/ when I'm reading C code.
- robert_tweed 10y ago
  That was a surprisingly detailed and well-informed reply. I wish there was some kind of super-upvote for comments like this.
- dave2000 10y ago
  Your post looks interesting and might well be 100% correct but I don't know - nor do I know anyone who knows - what the various little pronunciation guides or whatever they're called mean. It's why people tend to say "car as in carpet".
  - 10y ago

bschwindHN 10y ago

Alright, I'll bite. How is 'care' not phonetically the first syllable of 'character'? And if it's not, then what is?

barrkel 10y ago
'Care' rhymes with 'bear', 'share', 'fair'; 'car' rhymes with 'bar', 'far', 'mar'. 'Character', to me, is pronounced 'car-ack-ter' with the emphasis on the first syllable. It doesn't sound anything like 'care'. Conversations like this are hard because accent doesn't transmit through text. I'm Irish.
- bschwindHN 10y ago
  Ohhhh, that's where the discrepancy is coming from. I didn't know it was pronounced 'car-ack-ter' with an Irish accent. I was thinking in terms of an American accent which is where the confusion came from. The "listen" button here pronounces the words with an American accent: https://translate.google.com/#en/ja/character%0Acare https://translate.google.com/#en/ja/character%0Acare
  - cannam 10y ago
    > The "listen" button here pronounces the words with an American accent I think that feature must be localised -- here it gives me a (female) voice with an English accent, and the two words sound quite different.
    - bschwindHN 10y ago
      Oops, I was afraid of that. I was hoping the .com domain would have an influence on which voices were picked. I can hear the difference by going to https://translate.google.co.uk/ https://translate.google.co.uk/ though
  - satysin 10y ago
    Forvo is a great site for this kind of stuff http://forvo.com/search/char/en/ http://forvo.com/search/char/en/
- cbd1984 10y ago
  > Conversations like this are hard because accent doesn't transmit through text. It does if you use IPA.

barrkel 10y ago

To my Irish ears, 'car' and 'char' in 'character' sound almost identical. (I pronounce it 'car'.) The only way I could pronounce it 'care' is if I were from the southern hemisphere.

telotortium 10y ago

What's going here is that most Americans have what's known as the marry-merry-Mary merger[1]. Virtually all English speakers outside of North America, as well as some Americans, mostly on the East Coast, pronounce the vowels in these three words differently -- marry is pronounced /mæri/ (/æ/ is the vowel in "cat"), merry is /mɛri/ (/ɛ/ is the vowel in "pet"), and Mary is /meri/ (/e/ is the vowel in "bait"). In those dialects, any vowel can proceed an /r/ that's intervocalic (i.e., both preceded and followed by another vowel), so /r/ acts like any other consonant in that sense. However, in most American dialects, marry-merry-Mary are all merged and pronounced identically (IPA: /mɛɹi/, though the exact vowel isn't important here, and all three vowels generally sound the same to merged speakers). Furthermore, the first syllable of all these words is usually pronounced the same as the vowel in mare (/mɛɹ/). So let's put this together. The word "care" is pronounced /kɛr/ in both merged and unmerged dialects (or /kɛː/ if you don't pronounce the /r/ there). In unmerged dialects, the word "character" is pronounced /kærəktər/, so it doesn't make sense that you'd truncate it to /kær/, because /ær/ (or /æː/) at the end of a syllable doesn't occur in any English dialect[2]. In merged dialects, however, "character" is pronounced /kɛrəktər/, so it makes sense to truncate it to /kɛr/, which is a homophone of "care". [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes_before_historic_/r/#Mary.E2.80.93marry.E2.80.93merry_merger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes... [2]: Except Irish English, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673067. [3]: I speak a merged dialect, and pronounce "char" as /kɛr/ when I'm reading C code.

robert_tweed 10y ago
That was a surprisingly detailed and well-informed reply. I wish there was some kind of super-upvote for comments like this.
dave2000 10y ago
Your post looks interesting and might well be 100% correct but I don't know - nor do I know anyone who knows - what the various little pronunciation guides or whatever they're called mean. It's why people tend to say "car as in carpet".
- 10y ago