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Sound and fury: how pronunciation provokes passionate reactions
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bitwize 9y agoI once saw a YouTube video in which the vlogger consistently mispronounced the title of the game Heretic as though it rhymed with "magnetic". And he did this with at least one other word ("requiem")! Hearing him mis-accent these words was like nails on chalkboard. It's like where have you been, that you're reading these words for the first time, just now?
- function_seven 9y agoI've caught myself doing this with more obscure (to me) words—ones that I only encountered in text and not in spoken conversation. Debian was one ("DEE-bee-an"). I was talking to a friend one day about it when I first started using Linux ("LIE-niks"!), and he was amused by my innocence :) > And he did this with at least one other word ("requiem")! Did he pronounce it "rek-WHY-em"? That would drive me insane.
- bitwize 9y agoI used to pronounce Debian and Linux exactly those ways, He pronounced it re-KWEE-em.
- Stratoscope 9y agoOne odd thing I've noticed about myself: when I read the word Linux silently, what I hear in my head is often "LIE-niks", but when I say it out loud it's always "LINN-iks". And it's not like I'm on the verge of mispronouncing it and have to correct myself; it naturally comes out the right way. Just not when I read it silently.
- stordoff 9y agoOne thing I've noticed is that if there is a word I only encounter in its written form, I only sight read it and don't pronounce it internally (I remember doing it with "Hermione" the first I read the Harry Potter series). It's almost like there's just a brief silence in my inner monologue. I can see how that might lead to odd pronunciations the first time I actually think about it.
- cjcenizal 9y agoTo be fair, when you gain most of your vocabulary by reading, you have to guess at pronunciation most of the time. I read voluminously as a kid but still mispronounce words which I feel very comfortable with!
- kgwgk 9y agoHe might have been reading those words like that for years... I know I mispronounce many words, I just don't know which ones :-)
- wazoox 9y agoI have absolutely no idea in which way "Heretic" wouldn't rhyme with "magnetic". I mean, mag-net-ik and he-ret-ik rhyme to my ears :)
- khedoros1 9y agoI think that they meant the syllable that the accent is on. HARE-ə-tic vs. hare-ET-ic.
- jobigoud 9y agoI would put the emphasis on the second syllable, like for magnetic. Is this incorrect? I'm a non native speaker.
- NeoBasilisk 9y agoAs a native US English speaker, it sounds far more natural to put the emphasis on the first syllable.
- khedoros1 9y agoA light emphasis on the first syllable would be correct. It shifts to the second syllable in a word like "heretical" (he-RET-i-cal). Webster's dictionary and Wiktionary seem to agree. Oxford would be authoritative for English itself, but I don't have access to that.
- gpvos 9y agoHe may have read the words hundreds of times, just not heard them (pronounced by someone who knows their common pronunciation).
- smcl 9y agoTry being a Scottish kid watching TV, hearing the American kids saying "principal" as "princible" or the English ones pronouncing "drawing" as "drawringg" (or "ate" as "ett" or even worse "think" and "fink") and being told that by the world that actually you are the one who speaks weird :-D
- bitwize 9y agoHere's one that drives me nuts (an American listening to American speech): Febyouary. Literally everybody says it and it never made sense to me.
- smcl 9y agoThat actually happens in the UK too. sometimes its just people using a shortcut, but sometimes it’s very pronounced
- khedoros1 9y agoIt's just a case where the common pronunciation doesn't precisely match the spelling. How about Wednesday? Wennsday. Receipt? Island? Colonel? Do those bother you too?
- JadeNB 9y ago> It's just a case where the common pronunciation doesn't precisely match the spelling. How about Wednesday? Wennsday. Receipt? Island? Colonel? Do those bother you too? The difference is that I think that most people agree that 'Febyooary' and 'Wennsday' are incorrect pronunciations, whereas 'reseat' and 'i-land' are correct pronunciations. I don't know the stories behind these, but 'colonel' is fascinating: the reason for the pronunciation–spelling mismatch is that English used the Italian spelling (colonelle) and the French pronunciation (coronelle).
- khedoros1 9y ago> The difference is that I think that most people agree that 'Febyooary' and 'Wennsday' are incorrect pronunciations Those are the most common pronunciations I hear, living in California. The U.S. and U.K. recordings on Wiktionary also omit the first "r" in February, and the "d" in Wednesday (although the UK recording seems like it has an elongated sound that implies the missing "d").
- tremendulo 9y agoIt's interesting how some clever people pronounce a few words differently because they've been reading way ahead of what they have the opportunity to converse about.
- j_s 9y agoThis was a key part of the mockumentary web series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Pwnage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Pwnage 's schtick.
- nicoburns 9y agoI did this with the word 'awry'. I read it as aww-ree. Interestingly I also knew the word 'awry' as eh-rye from hearing it spoken, I just didnt connect up that the two were the same word.
- FeteCommuniste 9y agoI distinctly remember saying "IN-tri-gyou-ing" (intriguing) for a bit as a kid.
- khedoros1 9y agoRather than "infra-red", I said "inf-rare-d" as a child.
- stordoff 9y agoI know someone who did this with "parse". Somehow it was read as "pa-ray-se", and it stuck. Easy enough to fix, but it did cause a moment of confusion when he asked me to have a look why his "pa-ray-ser" wasn't working.
- harlanji 9y agoOne of my only favorite movie lines is from Cape Fear, where a redneck says that if someone mispronounces a fancy word it just means they've not been able to discuss what they've learned yet. My Vice Principal in HS told me to flip him a good burger someday, if it weren't for reading and being shameless I'd be doing just that with much of my class. The Guntenberg press was revolutionary for reasons.
- TillE 9y agoThe intrusive r is particularly baffling, as it's not a natural position for your mouth in the places it occurs. It's like the omitted r's in non-rhotic accents got lost and needed a place to go.
- unit91 9y agoI always feel weird correctly mispronouncing (?) words I know are imported, for example "Einstein" instead of "Einshtein". While you could get away with "Einshtein", though most folks would think you're pedantic, you really can't for words with less well-known origins. For example most people pronounce "hagiography" with a "hay" sound instead of a "haw" sound, as in Greek ἁγία (hágia). But if you said "hawgiography" people would think you don't know English.
- jamesjyu 9y agoThis can be true even for well-known words, like Bruschetta (common Italian antipasto of bread topped with tomatoes). Most everyone in the US pronounces this with a soft 'ch', but it actually should be a hard 'k'. But whenever I pronounce it this way, people always think I'm wrong. Maybe that's the pedantic part.
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoStrangely, everybody gets Pinocchio right.
- JadeNB 9y ago> Strangely, everybody gets Pinocchio right. The two 'c's followed by an 'h', which is unusual in English, is probably a factor (as opposed to the single 'c' of 'bruschetta', which looks familiar).
- amyjess 9y agoAnd I've also seen the opposite with prosciutto.
- abrowne 9y agoI got some pickled vegetables recently at a semi-fancy restaurant and was amused when they introduced the "chee-oh-gee-uh" beets. It's chioggia, so it should be "kyo-ja" or at least "key-oh-juh".
- soVeryTired 9y ago
- obombration 9y agoAs a midwesterner, I would certainly appreciate it if people would focus on the other 95% of what I said, and not that I said "bag" ("bay-g").
- j_s 9y agoWhat is the best way to find out the accepted pronunciation of various tech project names? Is there any type of resource to make this easy (for podcasts hosts, etc.)? This winds up being a minefield for audio content creators!
- kbp 9y ago> the accepted pronunciation of various tech project names Resque (where the readme says in the first sentence that it is pronounced like 'rescue') always bugged me. Are there any English words where 'que' at the end of a word like that makes a 'kyoo' sound? Would 'resqueue' have been such a horrible spelling?
- telesilla 9y agoOn the question of Robots, we already have a robot accent: that digital accent that is familiar from TV and movies, which hilariously mispronounce so many wonderful words. https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/10/05/446051309/hey-siri-what-did-you-say-why-computers-still-mispronounce-names https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/10/05/44... I do expect that one day computerised speech will be far more eloquent and sound more like HAL and less like Paranoid Android. But what about great robot voices like Alpha 60, Hitchhiker's Marvin and Tron's Master Control Program? I hope we keep our sense of humour in the future.
- Digit-Al 9y agoIf Sat Navs are anything to go by you'll probably be able to get downloadable voice modules to get your robot sounding like Homer Simpson or Bill Cosby (okay, maybe not Bill Cosby... ahem).
- js2 9y agoPassionate reactions about pronunciation must be a British thing. I really don't think Americans care very much unless the pronunciation is outright wrong, and probably not even then. I really can't imagine an American radio host receiving such complaints. This is the country that gave the world "nucular" after all. (Sorry about that.) That said, if any word in America can provoke a passionate pronunciation reaction, it's pecan: https://www.ourstate.com/pecan-how-do-you-say-it/ https://www.ourstate.com/pecan-how-do-you-say-it/
- danjc 9y agoLinux