Straightforward: How do you pronounce “Buddha”?
I always go with “Food-uh,” as that’s how it was taught to me. However, I’ve heard English speakers (particularly non-US English speakers) say “Wood-uh.”
If it’s “the Buddha,” wood-uh. If it’s just “Buddha,” food-uh.
I pronounce it something like Bood-tha (well, much more like this, actually). The “u” is the “oo” of “would” not “food”, but the consonants (yes, there are two) are completely different.
[bʊd̪d̪ʱo]
[ʊ] as in “book”
[d̪d̪ʱ] dental, aspirated, and geminated
I definitely use the more tense vowel, matching the “oo” in “wood”. The medial consonant I use is alveolar and unaspirated, because that’s much easier.
I’d say it’s somewhere between food and wood.
I say it with the “book” vowel. “Boooodha” sounds horrible to me.
The only time I’ve heard it pronounced “wood-uh” is in the song “One Night In Bangkok”
And since they also rhyme
“in a” with “Brynner” I thought it was poetic license
Same here. I was amazed to see the results, I expected virtually everyone to go for the “book” vowel. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone pronounce it with the “food” vowel.
ETA: wait, does that mean people talk about “Booodhists” too? Never heard that in my life.
The first time I heard someone use the “food” vowel and an ordinary unaspirated, alveolar “d” – boo-da – I had no idea what he was talking about.
I’m surprised, but them I’m in the UK and pretty much everyone here pronounces that way (and Murray Head is English)
And you have now forced me to go and listen to that song again…Great stuff!
What’s not to love about the lyrics “I get my kicks above the waistline sunshine!”
Neither, it ends with “ah”, not “uh”.
Pronunciation threads on the Dope always leave me like this ----> 
I’m trying to think of a plausible way to pronounce “Brynner” that doesn’t rhyme with “in a”, and I can’t.
Breener? Brooner? Brine-uh? I know the name is Russian, so none of these works.
Buddha Buddha Buddha Buddha rockin’ everywhere…
I found you, Mr. New Buddha!
For those of us who have rhotic accents, “Brynner” has an [ɚ] on the end, which makes it sound very different from “in a.”
I always pronounced it in my head like comic book machinegun sounds are written.
“It’s Batman!” budda budda budda budda
I can’t get your link to work, but I’m assuming you pronounce the “dh” as a single sound – the final consonant of breathe or the initial one of though. Yes?
The IPA for that is ð, I think.
I literally have no idea what any of that means. I often come across people on the dope using this terminology and I know it is something to do with phonetics perhaps but it isn’t something I’m familiar with.
Is this a body of knowledge that has completely passed me by? I know I never covered it in school.
Anyhow, can you give an example of what that ending sounds like for those of us who don’t understand the funny little symbols?
If you are interested in discussing pronunciation in a written medium, I would recommend you become familiar with this kind of terminology, because it is almost impossible to talk about pronunciation without this common ground.
Rhotic - describes an accent that “pronounces the Rs.” This, of course, is an inaccurate description, which is why people use a term like rhotic.
Can you imagine Elizabeth II saying the word “butter” and then imagine Barack Obama saying “butter”? There’s the difference between non-rhotic and rhotic [bʌtɜ] versus [bʌt̬ɚ]. The R is audible in the latter.
For a non-rhotic person, “Brynner” would be like [bɹɪnɜ] or [bɹɪnə] – kind of like “brinn-ah”
(the reason it doesn’t make sense to write pronunciation this way is that “ah” is ambiguous – it means different sounds to different people)
So it might sound close to “in a” [ɪn ə]
But to a rhotic person, the R makes all the difference. The two things don’t rhyme at all.
And if you rhyme “Brynner” with “in a,” it would mean absolutely nothing to you for me to try to explain it by saying something like “Brynner” rhymes with “inner” but not with “in a.” That’s why we use phonetic symbols.