I have a jaw problem. My jaw doesn’t really open well. When I open my jaw, it moves rather well to the right side but not so well to the left side. Also, my tongue gets lazy sometimes if I don’t focus. So, sometimes, I pronounce wrong even when I know the correct sounds (or I am just misheard because the sounds really don’t clear out with my closed jaws). Sometimes, I know the wrong sounds (like I used to pronounce iron as i-ron rather than ir-on). They are all understandable though, especially when keeping in mind that I am ESL. However, it would help to be fixed right so that I get into the habit of sounding out correctly.
It’s almost certainly this.
I’d bet that not many native-English speakers pronounce the first r at all. From my computer dictionary: iron |ˈīərn|
So it rhymes with “I earn.”
Steel is made of i-ern; I have an antique flati-ern; The Flat I-ern Building is in New York City.
Dunno how “first” got in there.
Not reading through 4 pages to check if anyone already said it.
Forte, as in that’s not my forte.
Pronounced “fort” not “fortay”
Yup. I just finished reading The Sense of Style, linguist Steven Pinker’s version of a style manual. One of my favorite terms from it is the “etymological fallacy,” exactly the concept you’re talking about here. Knowing a word’s ancestry is interesting for word nerds, definitely, but it has no more authority over a word’s current pronunciation and meaning than my great-grandfather has over my career choices.
It’s a fascinating book, adroitly threading the Scylla-and-Charybdis passage between prescriptivism and descriptivism.
If you had only read to the 7th comment, you would have seen it :).
I’ve told this one before. As a youth I worked at Kmart. This guy comes in and asks where he can find the ‘all’. I asked, ‘All? You mean laundry detergent? It’s on aisle…’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘All. For the car!’ I figured out he was talking about oil and directed him to Automotive.
It’s strange to think that, what with English being the way it is, this story could have gone the opposite way.
Bimbo’s German? I had no idea.
Whenever we see it in SoCal, it’s been imported from Mexico and has Spanish labeling.
Is the 7th comment part of those 4 pages? :p;):smack:
Those words get the /f/ sound the same way. They were originally /x/ (Scottish loch), but, as English lost that sound, they changed.
What’s interesting is how different words wound up changing the gh differently.
Me, too. This one was always on the top of my 3rd grade spelling list. :roll eyes:
It’s enough to make me guzzle my expresso tomorrow morning. 
This was also addressed a couple pages ago. Bimbo is indeed a Mexican company.
And you are incorrect. That ship has sailed long ago. We are not speaking French. Most dictionaries list “fortay” as the preferred pronunciation. And it makes sense. The word looks like it should be pronounced “fortay.” There is already a completely unrelated word pronounced “fort.” If you say “That is my ‘fort’” people will think you are talking about that structure you built with the couch cushions in the living room. This is one of the few times where the (American) English language developed logically. Don’t fight it. And if you do pronounce it with the now alternate “correct” pronunciation people will either not know what you are talking about or think you are being pretentious.
[QUOTE=TBG]
Not reading through 4 pages to check if anyone already said it.
Forte, as in that’s not my forte.
Pronounced “fort” not “fortay”
[/QUOTE]
Isn’t that the point to this thread? Regardless of how the word was pronounced at the beginning, it has changed?
I mentioned Fort vs. Fortay early in this thread. I get it - Fortay is the way to go and that is what I use, again, per the OP.
I tend not to use it much anyway - claiming something as my Forte feels braggy in the best of situations. But when I do hear it being used, I still think “so, that is your Loud?” simply because I am an idiot. I never communicate that, however - for all of the reasons you state.
My point is that with forte the change happened so long ago it’s beyond the point of “giving up” it is the proper way to pronounce it (Although “fort” remains a valid dictionary pronunciation). It’s not like we say we have given up on pronouncing English like Chaucer.
I would like to note for my own sake that the word “pronunciation” is one that I misspell every single time. My brain just doesn’t seem to like the word.
Yep, I get it. But as you say it is valid in the dictionary, and, in some ways, Fort vs. Fortay seems to be a bit of shibboleth for some word-geeks. I know a bunch who grind their teeth and say “Fortay” almost sounding like Jerry Seinfeld saying “Newman!”
A-ha! Pro-nun trouble!
Re the Van Gogh question: a bit of verse which I’ve always liked –
I’ll never with certainty know –
Van Gogh: is it Goff, Gokh, or Go?
This grief o’er the name
(I admit it with shame)
Makes my highbrows feel awfully low.
French-origin loanwords are always traps for the unwary, but cache is particularly prone to this. Even those who have studied French might mistakenly think of the word as caché, past tense of the verb cacher, and therefore possibly the thing which is hidden. Hence the mispronunciation “cashay”.