When I was a kid (in the 60s/ 70s) my family pronounced parmesan as “par-MEE-zyun.” My spouse grew up two states away and her family did the same. Why did we do that?
You were both using the real thing. The stuff in the green can is pronounced “Par-MEH-zyun”
The real word is parmigiano [par mi ˈdʒ(j)ano] “par-mee-JAH-no.” (Note the J sound instead of the ZH sound that we tend to randomly insert into foreign words). Foreign words often go through several forms before a “standard” pronunciation is settled upon.
In British or Amercian English, I’ve never heard parmesan pronounced with emphasis on anything other than the first syllable. Is there a regional dialect that emphasizes the second syllable?
I’ve heard the variation with the emphasis on the first syllable, but Acsenray has it correct with the emphasis on the third syllable. If you don’t want to sound like you are trying to be pretentious by using the actual name you can pronounce it with the same emphasis but dropping the final O. I don’t think I’ve heard the second syllable ever be emphasized.
UK here, all syllables are equally stressed for me, the third one perhaps slightly more so. Definitely not the second one though.
No, Ascenray is describing the original Italian word.
We have an adopted word in English with a different spelling and three syllables - that much I think is settled, I’m not aware of any spelling variants. The pronunciation as an adopted word in English may not (as Ascenray suggests) have settled down to a complete consensus, but it’s not controlled by the original Italian.
I’m open minded to the fact that some English speakers may emphasize the third syllable, but that’s not “correct” just because it’s consistent with the original Italian.
I’m not sure how accurate or reliable a source it is, but this YouTube video has the German pronunciation emphasizing the second syllable: par-MEE-zan
Ah! Spouse and I (OP) both are of German stock!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
That might explain the “MEE” then, but what about the “zyun”?
In the video, both the American-English speaker’s pronunciation, and the French pronunciation, have a “zon”-sounding ending, which is different than “zan”, but not much closer to “zyun”.
1950s on… Mom is first generation Italian, spaghetti every Saturday. From the green jar we sprinkled parm-uh-zan.
Possibly the OP or some earlier user of the term confused its last syllable with the more common “-ian/ion” ending in superficially similar words like “artesian”, “adhesion”, “cohesion”, “Parisian”, “Friesian”, etc.
Our pronunciation very much rhymed with “Parisian.”
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
And both “Parisian” and “Par-mee-zyun” are highfalutin sophisticated Europe-type words :), so it’s easy to see how the association might reinforce the mispronunciation.
It’s not a mispronunciation, any more than “Pair-is” is a mispronunciation of “Paris”. Foreign words have to get rounded down a bit to fit into English speech patterns.
That said, I remember it being called “Par-MEE-san” or “par-MEE-shun” when it first became available. Natural instinct that a foreign word will not necessarily be pronounced the same by anglophones as it is by native speakers, though it might get closer to the original as anglos get more familiar with the foreign word.
But the version that anglophones eventually settle on will be the correct pronunciation of the foreign word in English, just like “Pair-is”.
You say 'to-may-to, I say 'to-mah-to.
And that’s why I prefer Asiago.
When I was a kid (in the 60s), my brother and I went into fits of giggles when we heard a friend of our parents call it par-MEE-jee-an.
Ah, this might be a clue… that green can full of cheese dust might be the first “exotic” word little kids see in print, day in and day out. So they guess at the pronunciation.
And that’s how you get things like my SIL saying “Par-MEE-see-ann” (but only as a kid - she got better).
You me ass-EEJ-ee-o?