Watching Drive to Survive the last few weeks and the Alpine team members keep referring to themselves as “Alpeen”. Is this a common pronunciation? As an American I cannot resolve this pronunciation. WTH?
Alpeen is the British pronunciation, and as the team is mostly based in Enstone and the coverage is mostly British, that’s what we hear.
The French pronounce it differently I guess?
It’s funny how the difference pronunciations stick in that context. Like garage.
I must say I continue to be amazed and amused by the American tendency to believe that the way we pronounce words in the US is THE ONLY RIGHT WAY to say them. Especially since this completely overlooks the dozens of different ways different regions in the US pronounce words. pe-can vs. pe-cahn, etc. We’re still busy battling with our own countrymen about how things should be pronounced.
I do generally defer to the Brits when they declare how a word should be pronounced in actual English english, but even there, we find their pronunciations of particular words have drifted over the centuries.
Having rambled on about that long enough, I admit I do say al-pine in regular use, but have heard al-peen employed more often than rarely.
So people in other countries don’t do this?
I can only speak about American tendencies in this area as that’s the crowd I hang with. But I’m sure there’s lots of prescriptive grammar/pronunciation type folks worldwide
I’ll second QtM’s first post but with a caveat.
This is an international board. We have a non-trivial number of members from all over the world. Many of whom have English as their second or third languages.
Any USAian who posts here who behaves as if the entire audience lives in the same US state as they do is being impolitely obtuse. Any USAian who posts here as if the entire audience is USAian is being uncomfortably obtuse.
I try not to be obtuse. Sometimes I even succeed. But I try to keep close to top of mind that this is not NextDoor. We may all be friends here, but we are not all neighbors. The audience is not homogenous culturally, linguistically, nor legally.
Just curious - what do you think the percentage of non-US board members? I’d guess no more than 10% (which is certainly no-trivial) - but that’s just a WAG.
Active? 10-15% tops. Historically, I’d WAG a few percent more. The Trump years and the resulting over-the-top all-politics all the time theme around here kinda ran off a bunch of the non-USA crowd. And a lot of USAians to boot. Almost including me.
Of course who’s where depends partly on the topic. Lotta Canadians right now in the “I can’t believe it’s still snowing” thread, but rather few in the “DeSantis can’t win” thread.
IMO It’s fine for anyone to be provincial. I object to unknowingly provincial. Seems impolite. Not that hard to write something like " 'Round here where I live driver’s license numbers have 12 digits" rather than “All driver’s licenses numbers have 12 digits.”
Somewhat relatedly, on a trip to Italy I took a while back with a mostly American group, the guide was surprised that we used the word “alpine” to refer to any mountain activity, not just those that take place in the Alps.
We watched a BBC show hosted by Alexander Armstrong in which he mentioned Vilvadi. I had no idea that the Brits pronounce it differently. So it’s not even just the English words which are pronounced differently in the US and the UK.
My parents, who live in Seattle, recently mentioned that even between Seattle and Victoria, there are significant differences in pronunciation. I also think, as we get older, it is more difficult to understand those differences, if you’re not used to them.
I haven’t watched this programme, but have never heard the ‘alpeen’ pronunciation used in the UK. Not that the word ‘alpine’ comes up very often. Is it possible they’re pronouncing it differently because it’s a team name, as opposed to referring to the Alps?
Alpine is a French team, so the French pronunciation is Alpeen. It is a French manufacturer of racing and sports car, closely related to Renault
yes, people are talking about two completely different things here.
The word “alpine” as it relates to european mountain activities or scenery is pronounced, in the UK, as “al-pine” (as in the tree.) And that is pretty much without exception.
“Alpine” where it is referring to the racing team and car company, is pronounced “al-peen”, but some people may not know this and use the first pronunciation.
PS: Is there a different pronunciation of “Vivaldi” in the US - I’m having trouble imagining it (VIV-aldi? Viv-ALL-di? Or some variant starting VIE?)
AFAIK it’s pronounced much the same across all European languages.
Unlike, of course, Van Gogh
Wow. It was just yesterday that I read a reference to a California mountain described as Alpine. WTF? I had always thought it applied only to the Alps.
mmm
I’ve heard it used to refer to the biome above the tree line on any mountain. Pronounced al-pine. Pronounced by people who grew up in the US.
And…i guess that’s also the UK pronunciation?
Yes, it is.
What about Vivaldi?
I say it Vi·val·dee.
According to Google, Americans say Vi·vaal·dee.
Italians appear to say Viv·al·dee, which is subtly different to both.
Wait, is the F1 Team not associated with the Alpine car stereo company? That may be why I’m discombobulated because the logo looks like the stereo company which, at least in the states, has only ever been called Al-pine.
For what it’s worth I wasn’t posting this to imply that the US pronunciation is correct, just that I’m 46 years old and have never heard it pronounced Al-peen in my life and all of the folks on DTS pronounce it that way, even the American guys which surprised me.
Mundane. Check. Pointless. Check. Shared. Check.
ETA: Hey, did the name of this forum change? I swear it used to be called Mundane and Pointless Stuff I Must Share.
Die_Capacititrix posted Vilvadi. I thought it was ‘Vivaldi’ at first, but apparently Vilvadi is some sort of Hindu thing. I doubt many people in the U.S. have ever heard of it. (I haven’t.)
I used to watch Match Game 73 after school. (It was a U.S. game show of the '70s.) The host, Gene Rayburn, always pronounced it ‘van Gockhh’ – rather exaggeratedly, as if he was trying to be funny. ISTR that he was actually an intelligent person, and that he may have been trying to educate under the guise of comedy.
Correct, I’ve never heard anyone in the UK ever use the “al-peen” pronunciation when using it as an adjective. i.e. referring to the alpine biome, alpine conditions, alpine roads, alpine mountains etc.