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At the moment I wonder how to pronounce "supersede" and "superseded".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but what about the past perfect form in "superseded"?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

[John Palmer]

This reminds me of a story from many years ago, many variations of which exist. Here's one...

An overseas student, French, as it happens, had just completed an extensive Distance Learning Course -"English as a Second Language." Feeling very satisfied with his achievement, he decided to treat himself to a weekend in London - after all, where better to make use of his new, painfully acquired skill? Our traveller eventually arrived in London and safely navigated his way by Tube to Piccadilly Circus. Emerging from the Underground station, he was confronted by lots of noise, masses of people rushing and pushing to get to their destinations, and traffic; numerous black taxis - each one seeming to have a jammed horn - and large, red, double-decked buses, interspersed with motor cars, motor-bikes and bicycles. As he paused at the top of the stairs, enjoying all the noise, activity and colour, he looked up and - on the side of a passing red bus - read the legend: "Cavalcade Pronounced Success!"

At this point he threw himself under the wheels of the next vehicle.

'Cavalcade' was a play by Oscar Wilde, first staged in the early 30's (I told you it was an old story!).

Regards,
John

[Ralph Grothe]

Mark,

thank you for nurturing my poorly developed knowledge of the English history.
This is very interesting to note.
Could this partly be the reason for the ancient rivalry between Brits and the French? ;-)


John,

really a funny anecdote.
At least another proof of the endless ambiguities of English words, and this despite I guess the double amount of English vocabulary compared to German.
I myself find it sometimes difficult to understand Headlines of English papers.
Btw, aren't spouses also pronounced during wedding?

[Antoniov.]

Hola Mark (spanish)

> The irony is that a portion of the blame for this inconsistancy can be laid directly on the French language.

... and then internet will change english/american language so becomes world english!
In this forum about 50% of member are not english tongue (as me) and they (and me) use english in "ungrammaticated" mode.

John, tt Birthday I'll go to London; I can't understand your story but I hope I will not throw my self under any wheel (because I'm Italian not French man)!!

Bye
Antoniov

[Steven E. Protter]

I've been living this pronounciation thing for the past 8 1/2 years. Since I met my wife, born in Moscow Russia.

Though her accent fades gradually, I'm doing daily pronounciation correction. She wants this, so I help her. For some reason words like wallet often come out as vallet.

That may be because Russian lacks a w sounding letter.

The key trick is knowing when she's in a bad mood and not ready to tolerate pronounciation correction.

For you I would suggest perhaps doing a little yahoo messenger or similar voice chat. There are plenty of topics that might interest you and help your skills on the net.

Good Luck.

Interesting topic, hope its not deleted.

SEP

[doug mielke]

Another thank you for the friday AM diversion.

As the language matures it's always interesting to note which words are added or dropped from new dictionary editions.

Here in the US there is a recent controversy re: the Websters addition of the word
mcjob
defined as low paying dead end employment.

So it seems that not only does English have it's heterogeneous ancestry, it is now adopting language based on the language of corporations.

[Chris Wilshaw]

With reference to McJob entering the dictionary;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3255883.stm

[Keely Jackson]

Hi Ralph

Just to add to the confusion for regarding native English, don't forget American English and British English are almost two different languages.

As far as we Brits are concerned, the American's can't spell and can't pronounce things properly, and they proably think the same about us!

Then, there's the Aussie's who have a different intonation pattern making every sentance sound like a question.

As for the geordies (from Newcastle) and the Glaswegians (from Glasgow) I can't understand a word they say!

Cheers from a long-a southener.

Keely

[Antoniov.]

WOW
If I (italian man) speak you (english tongue) and you can't understand me I may think I speak fine also if you are unable to understand me!

Bye
Antoniov

[Ralph Grothe]

Hola Antoniov,

apropos, I guess in Spanish the H isn't spoken, so it would be like "olla", right?

Btw, are you Italian or Spanish?

I ask because some time ago I read an article in the German periodical "Die Zeit" ( http://www.zeit.de/archiv/1999/21/199921.reden_neue_worte.xml ) on the branding of products and the naming of products by the advertising industry.
In this article they reported about the unanticipated difficulties these poor name creators of the ad-industry sometimes face.

This is the paragraph from the Zeit-article
(if you can read German follow the link above)

Schlieà lich müssen die Namen internationalen Sprachtests standhalten. Damit nicht wieder ein Autokonzern seinen Geländewagen *Pajero* tauft. Im Spanischen bedeutet das *Wichser*. In Finnland ist ein Uno ein Trottel. Selbst Kürzel haben Tücken. MR2 klingt im Fr

[John Strang]

Where I come from (Ayrshire in Scotland, just south of Glasgow) the word "scone" is pronounced like "skon".
There is a place in Perthshire called "Scone" where the kings of Scotland were crowned - it is pronounced like "skoon".
And "iron" is definitely pronounced with the "r" - without the "r" it becomes "ion", a charged particle which is a different thing altogether :-)
And Ralph, the ancient rivalry you mentioned between the Brits and the French is really between the English and the French - the Scots and French had the "Auld Alliance" where we joined forces against the English (sorry I don't have much more information available at the moment).

Hope this helps

John

[Ralph Grothe]

Keely,

I know that not only pronunciation-wise between American and British English flagrant differences exist.
I also heared that either nation's members denounce the other's to use totally different languages
(especially spelling would give a nice flame topic).
One of my English teachers at school said that the American English pronunciation derrived from the English that was spoken arround the south east cost of England at the time the Pilgrims made off to America.
But I didn't believe him this because during a student exchange stay near Plymouth (Torbay region) at this time I heared an English tongue in this area that pronouncedly distinguished from American pronunciation.

Another question as far as the Aussis' English is concerned.
Their pronunciation strongly reminds me of what I heared in the East End of London which I guess is called Cockney (the "whistle and flute" or "dog and bone" sort of accent).
My assumption was that the English convicts who forcedly were the first non-aboriginal inhabitants of Australia (one big English prison camp or playground for desperados at that time, I heard) must have come from East End proletariat.
Is this the case?

[Thayanidhi]

Hi,

See attched

TT

[Ralph Grothe]

John,

I also have heard about the long rivalry between the Scots and the English.
So it would not surprise me that they allied in history with other enemies of their joint enemy England.
I know little of English/Scottish history.
But we had a famous German playwright and poet Friedrich Schiller who cast the plotting against Queen Mary of Scots in his popular drama "Maria Stuart".
And I know that you Scots detest being called English.

[Zigor Buruaga]

Hallo Ralph,

BTW, about "H", it's like "olla", right.
Oopss, and about the spanish macho ... I have no objections ... :-))

Kind regards,
Zigor

[Antoniov.]

Hi Ralph,
I'm Italian man but I known a little of spanish.
On car name, in Italy, som year ago Wolkswagen selled a car called Jetta; German mans, perhaps, had searched in Italian dictionary and they didn't found nothing; but in classic italian letter J is read same as I so Jetta as same sound of Ietta and Ietta sounds like iettatura that means "evil eye" or "bad luck" or "hoodoo".
Only a italian man can discover this language trap!
Bye
Antoniov