Off Topic: English Pronunciation

[Ralph Grothe]

Hi Native English Speakers,

I hope you don't mind me abusing the forum's languages section (which I guess relates to computer languages alone).

As a non-English speaker who currently has no audio-oral contact to native English speakers I sometimes wonder how English words are pronounced correctly.

Unfortunately my PC at work has no sound card which would give me a chance to play an audio file of one of the various www dictionaries.

Thus I can only read words, and guess what I would consider how something is uttered.
The English language is very inconsistent in this respect as opposed to, say French.
Just think about words like

how, sow, bow vs. flow, low, glow, show, row

Actually the last one is a good example since "row" has both pronunciations with different meanings.

Or take those

head, bread, thread vs. real, steal, lead

Again the last one "lead" has two pronunciations with different meanings.

When I did a bit libwww scripting in Perl (viz. LWP) I came accross "realm", and I intuitively for a long time would pronounce it like

ree - elm

until I looked it up again in a dictionary which also showed the phonetic transcription that the middle "ea" actually should be pronounced like in "head".

I lived with a similar misconception of the word "tier" which I used to pronounce like "tyre" (since it seemed to be derrived from "tie" this was only natural to me).

At the moment I wonder how to pronounce "supersede" and "superseded".
I would go for

super-"seed"

but

super-"saded"


To give you a funny example how difficult this can get I can tell you that you may hardly find a German who can correctly pronounce "iron", like in the popular "Iron Man" in Hawaii (or is "on" the correct preposition?).
Even considered educated people in broadcasting media (e.g. news narrators, entertainers etc.) haevily roll the "r", which I heard is totally omitted in "iron" like the "b" in "subtle".

And this all goes for a ubiquitous language like English which everyone considers easy and is expected to be fluent in.

I thought you wouldn't mind if I gave you a laugh on a Friday.
Sorry, for the waste of bandwidth.

Ralph

[Mark Grant]

Ralph,

As a native English speaker, I can tell you that you are correct!

super-seed is the correct English :)

Please, no points for this.

[Ralph Grothe]

Mark,

but what about the past perfect form in "superseded"?

Is it also "seeded" or rather "sadded"?

[Graham Cameron_1]

>>I thought you wouldn't mind if I gave you a laugh on a Friday.

Ralph

Even us native English speakers have different pronunciations.

A southerner (or posh person) would pronounce "laugh", with a long "a", as in "park".

As a Northener, I use a short "a", as in "has".

Unless of course I was havin' a larf...

-- Graham

[H.Merijn Brand (procura · Accepted solution]

Type "plough+though+through+rough" in google to find links like

http://home.planet.nl/~blade068/languagefun/pronunciation.htm
http://www.hltmag.co.uk/nov01/joke.html
http://www.anagrammy.com/literary/various/poems-english.html

The combination ough can be pronounced in fourteen different ways:

1. awe: thought, bought, fought, brought, ought, sought, nought, wrought
2. uff: enough, rough, tough, slough, Clough, chough
3. ooh: through, slough
4. oh: though, although, dough, doughnut, broughm, Ough, furlough, Greenough, thorough
5. off: cough, trough
6. ow: bough, plough, sough
7. ou: drought, doughty, Stoughton
8. uh: Scarborough, borough, thorough (alt), thoroughbred, Macdonough, Poughkeepsie
9. up: hiccoughed
10. oth: trough (alt)
11. ock: lough, hough
12. oc[h] (aspirated): lough
13. ahf: Gough
14. og: Coughlin (also #5)

The following sentence contains them all:
Rough-coated(2), dough-faced(4), thoughtful(1) ploughman(6) John Gough(13) strode through(3) the streets of Loughborough(2+8);
after falling into a slough(2) on Coughlin(14) road near the lough(12) (dry due to drought)(7), he coughed(5) and
hiccoughed(9), then checked his horse's houghs(11)and washed up in a trough(10).

Enjoy, have FUN! H.Merijn

[BFA6]

Ralph,

As has been said by Graham, even we Native speakers have problems with the pronunciations.
I too come from the North of England and pronounce words grass and class with a short a sound, unlike my Southern colleague next to me who pronouces them with a long a sound.

Superceded is pronounced super-"seeded"

As to iron, I pronounce it with a silent R, but my mother (who comes from Scotland) will pronounce the r, always a cause of discussion when we were younger.

[Mark Grant]

Ralph,

Yes, superseded works out the same. That is, as if something was turned into a large seed in the past :) i.e.

super seeded

[Chris Wilshaw]

To complicate things just a bit more;

>>Just think about words like

>>how, sow, bow vs. flow, low, glow, show, row


sow, bow and row can be pronounced in BOTH ways

when pronounced like "how",
sow = female pig
bow = bend from the waist
row = argument

when pronounced like "flow"
sow = to plant (seeds).
bow = a weapon to fire arrows, or a knotted ribbon.
row = to propel using oars.

If you want a good discussion between Brits from different regions, ask them how to pronounce

book/look/hook/cook/roof

you'll either get a long oo sound as in typhoon, or a 'u' sound, so look almost becomes luck. Even then, there's no consistency - for example, "the boot is on the other foot" uses a long sound, then a short sound.

the word "scone" (innocent as it seems) also causes debate, and can be pronounced as either "scon" (sounding like one) or scone (like cone). Either use is perfectly correct.

All in all, we're complicated, awkward and annoying when it comes to language, and that's before you start to look at the regional dialects - some of which can be almost a language of their own!!!

[Ralph Grothe]

Back from coffee break,

Merijn.

yes, this was the real chaotic list of words which I forgot to mention.
Thank you for the links.
I bookmarked them.
Btw, Perl has some obscure uses by its aficionados as far as poetry is concerned.
Do you think you can make Perl speak?
Although I bet there are already some Acme modules for such oddities in CPAN.
I still have to undergo the DBD::Oracle build.
I still may require some help.
Maybe you could supply a Makefile with definitions set propperly for a 32 bit build and the HP ANSI C compiler for my build of Perl?




I'm relieved to hear that even you Brits or Americans have sometimes trouble in "strange" environments.

I do remember how difficult it was to pick up the gist from the Glaska Patter when asking a bus driver for some direction in Glasgow some time ago.
But I love the sound of it.

[Mark Greene_1]

>>The English language is very inconsistent in this respect as opposed to, say French.

Good observation. The irony (which, by the way, has a clearly pronounced "r", as opposed to "iron", as you previously mentioned. :-) is that a portion of the blame for this inconsistancy can be laid directly on the French language.

The Norman conquest of 1066 introduced French language into England, and for the next 200 years was the language of the Royal court. This added a layer of complexity to a language already composed of a mix of anglo-saxon and old norse & danish. The critical factor is that from shortly after 1066 until about the 1370's, "Anglish" was pretty much a spoken-only language. This is one of the reasons why Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, for example, exhibits the occasionaly wild spelling variation as it was translated from Old English (which was essentially teutonic anglo-saxon) to Middle English, which most English speakers can read today.

Then, you throw in the words adopted into English from Spanish during the conquest and expansion of North America, and you have the hybrid vocabularly without hard-and-fast spelling or pronunciation.

Thanks for a nice bit of diversion for a Friday morning!

mark