Victuals.
Wouldn’t wanna be there today. brrrrrrrr
I’ve heard non-Merrylanders say “TOE-son” for Towson, but I suppose there’s a certain logic to that pronunciation.
I would have thought it was two syllables. I probably assume the nigh- was pronounced the way it’s pronounced in night (or rhyming with high or sigh) and the -y is pronounced -ee. So I’d have guessed nI-hee.
When an American pronounces “water,” the middle -t- doesn’t make the same sound as when he or she pronounces “time.” That’s because between a consonant’s sound can change depending on position (this is what the link to “lenition” above is talking about).
So M-e-d-b was once m-e-d-b, but over the course of time, sounds changed.
It then became m-e-dh-bh, still spelled Medb in the medieval period, and Meḋḃ in the early modern period.
Initially, dh = ð (like the TH in “then”), and bh = v. But in a slender environment, dh changed again, to something more like English y as in “yes.”
So:
- M-e-d-b
- M-e-ð-v
- M-e-y-v rhymes with wave.
Incidentally, the cognate in Welsh (meddw) and Breton (mezv) means “drunk”; the name is sometimes translated “she who intoxicates.”
segue
Queue
I would have pronounced it “Nigh-ee”.
Balmer, Merlin.
I don’t know about you, but in my accent it’s very difficult to get Nye with one syllable and Nigh-y with two syllables to sound different from each other. Like Marr and Maher. I have to try hard to make them sound different.
The names are unrelated etymologically, so far as I can tell (if that’s what you mean by the name “being from” Yvonne.)
There is in spaghetti alla puttanesca.
The US edition of Microsoft Word disagrees with you. Firefox thinks it doesn’t though. It is also naïve, not naive. The non-accented is a fine variation, but it’s not the correct or only way to spell it.
Also, boatswain = bosun, but it wasn’t immediately clear that the latter wasn’t slang. And chitterlings = chittlins.
I have heard “nigh-hee,” but no, it’s just “Nye.”
And coxswain = coxsun
There’s, of course, plenty of British place names and surnames that fit this, one of my favorites being “Fanshaw” spelled as “Fetherstonhaugh.”
Other nautical terms: gunwale (pronounced GUN’l) and forecastle (FOK’s’l) with a long O.
Thanks – ignorance fought, sorta-kinda ! I get the feeling that I’d do best to keep the Celtic languages at a respectful distance, and not try to understand them…
Or fo’c’s’le.
There’s nothing particularly mysterious or difficult about Celtic languages. Learning any language that is significantly different from your own requires being willing to discards assumptions about how languages work.
And IMHO, it’s disrespectful to suggest one is more comfortable avoiding the innocuous features of another culture, even if you throw in the word “respectful.”
And I say that as someone who has been told so many times “I’m not even going to try to say your name because I know I’ll mispronounce it.”
Mispronouncing s name because you don’t know how it’s pronounced it because or used sounds you are not used to is not disrespectful.
Suggesting that someone else’s culture is so strange and foreign that you would rather shun it is.
One of my favorite place names is in Pennsylvania; it’s a great river for canoeing and kayaking spelled Youghiogheny, and pronounced Yock-e-gheny. Whoever came up with that one was imaginative!
Acsenray – well, if we were in Japan, ritual self-disembowelment on my part, in order to atone, would perhaps be in order – though you will probably jump on that allusion as disrespectful and mocking vis-a-vis Japanese culture.
I’m over-reacting as above, to what I feel as over-reacting by you, to what I said – not meant nastily by me, just indicating “for me, life’s too short – for you, do what you will”.
Japanese is super easy to pronounce. I don’t expect everyone to pronounce their “R” perfect, or aspirate properly with “fu” and “sh”. But pronouncing that as “heri keri” grates my teeth.