shay-man
shay-mahn
shah-min
shah-mon
sham-on
sham-ahn
…
My brain seems to think shay-min is right for some reason but I keep hearing varying versions and they can’t all be right, or even close. Masters, please help.
Depends on where you live. Cambridge dictionary says shay-man in the UK and shah-mon in the U.S. But I’m sure you’ll find both pronunciations in both places.
Yeah, for example, I’m US and I grew up learning it as shay-mən around here.
OK, since word sound and religious practice line up here: what’s the correct pronunciation of “Shamus?”
Shaman you for pronouncing it that way! It’s SHAH-mun.
SHAY-mən (I stole that “ə” from pulykamell, because it’s not quite an “a” sound and not quite an “i” sound.)
SHAY-mus
Trick question.
If you’re Bogie, “SHAY-mus.”
If you’re Mortie Goldberg, sexton of the local shul (the word/title which was the original), it’s “SHAH-mus.”
[Yiddish crossover from Hebrew root for “guard/guardian.” In NYC, for example, the Jewish policeman’s [del]other ball[/del] fraternal order, or whatever the hell they call it, is called the “Shomrim.”]
Like “thee” and “thuh”, I personally use two pronunciations, both “shay-mən” and “shah-mən”. I can’t think of any rule that I use to decide when to use one pronunciation over the other, though. With “the”, I think it’s like a/an. When the next word starts with a vowel, it’s “thee”, and “thə” otherwise.
With shaman, I think it has more to do with what mood I’m in. There are other words like that, too, where I guess part of my brain still hasn’t decided what accent or dialect I have, so I go both ways.
It’s also common for the “thee” pronunciation to show up for emphasis (as in, “that place has THEE best hot dogs”) and also in hesitated/interrupted speech, like when you’re searching for a word or to complete a though. (“What did you order?” “Lemme think, I got theeee … what was it? … thee … West Virginia dog and an order of fries.”)
I’ve always heard that it was a corrupted spelling of the Irish name Seamus, due to the plethora of Irishmen on the NYC police force. If so, Reb Goldberg should be pronouncing it just like Bogart. The OED seems to claim ignorance, and other lesser sources seem to split between the Irish/Yiddish source of the word.
Making the first ‘a’ an English “long A” is hyper-English-ifying the word. The British are very fond of doing this sort of thing, as are uneducated Americans (in my not-so-humble opinion). Making is an American “short A” is Americanifying the word, but that’s not all that bad, although not particularly common. It, in my opinion as well as Google’s, should be the same vowel as in “father” (which I think is the same in all dialects). Listen to the pronunciation given when searching Google for it: shaman - Google Search, although they apparently list the “long A” version as a possible pronunciation, probably because it’s fairly common.
That the second vowel is a schwa I don’t think is in any dispute, since generally unstressed vowels are realized as schwas in English unless they’re clearly something else. If you’re trying to hard to think of which vowel it should be there, you’re not letting the stress fall correctly.
I’m fairly certain the consonants have no ambiguity.
I’ve always prounced the first syllable like the sha in shank and the second syllable like the mon in money.
So, like Sean Connery ordering fish?
Wow.
I’ve only really heard it as SHAH-muhn.
I wouldn’t say “uneducated,” and I don’t know about this word in particular. But I would say that, in the U.S. at least, there is a lack of prestige in using anglicized pronunciations of words. It seems to me to be somewhat the opposite in the UK, but I don’t know for sure.
I mean, I’ve seen many people made fun of for saying Mary-o or Marry-o instead of MAH-ree-oh for Mario. Saying tortilla with -la is a sign of stupidity. And don’t get me started with mispronouncing French words that have entered English.
So it does not surprise me that someone might think that Anglicizing “shaman” would be seen as boorish or uncivilized.
Shrug That’s just the way I’ve learned the word from educated speakers in my dialect group. I’ve never thought of it as a non-“prestige” pronunciation.
White non-urban from the South or Middle America, obviously uneducated, ca. early 2003. "Yeah, we should invade “Eye-raq.” Obvious redneck. For years, even until now, the sign of a redneck or kindred dummy in any discussion about the mideast.
Urban Senator from New York, "Yeah [Yay] we should invade “Ih-raq.” Educated person.
I, for one, do not believe this is true, but many do.
Just aks them.
I would go with shah-mon. Everyone I know that purports to be one pronounces it that way.
SHAY-mn with a vocalic n is how I say it.
For me it’s [ˈʃɑːmən].
The American Heritage Dictionary, edited by language scholars I trust, gives the two pronunciations: [ˈʃɑːmən] first and [ˈʃeɪmən] second. So both sides may comfort themselves, respectively. That the one they put first happens to be the one I use is probably a reflection that I’m a native speaker of general, widespread American pronunciation.
Now, the source word from the Evenki language is šamán, pronounced /ʃamaːn/. This is a dialectal pronunciation of Evenki samán (/samaːn/). It seems here that the accent mark in the transcription is intended to mark vowel length instead of syllable stress; no indication of stress accent is given.
Behind Evenki, all attempts at etymology are question marks. The two most popular guesses are 1) from the Tungusic root sha- ‘to know’ or 2) from Pali samaṇa (a term familiar to readers of Siddhartha by Hesse), from Sanskrit श्रमण śramaṇa
[QUOTE=Monier-Williams]
- one who performs acts of mortification or austerity, an ascetic, monk, devotee, religious mendicant (ŚBr. etc.)
- a Buddhist monk or mendicant (also applied to Buddha himself.
[/quote]
But neither guess has won over most etymologists.
In any event, it most definitely is not from Arabic shayṭān—that is just ridiculous. A phonetic sound change could never happen just like that. Arabic “y” and “ṭ” are not even playing in the same ballpark as “m.”