As someone from SE England, I pronounce “pass” and “parse” exactly the same way. I wouldn’t expect many people from anywhere south of the Midlands to pronounce them differently, except maybe in some West Country (SW) accents.
From Merriam-Webster:
parse (verb) \ˈpärs, chiefly British ˈpärz\
I’m a New Zealander and was surprised with what you said, so checked it online. I would definitely pronounce parse the second way; pärz
Back to the OP. The predominant accent in NZ is non-rhotic, so arse is generally pronounced to rhyme with pass. There are parts of the South Island where there is some rhoticism but it is quite limited in area.
A lot of English people not understanding their own accents in this thread. Anyway, I swear I remember Cecil saying that arse was a euphemisation of ass, which was in turn a euphemisation of arse some years earlier. Short memories and fickleness about what’s offensive, I guess. But I might be crazy and making that up or heard it from another source.
Where did this “gerta” pronunciation come from? It drives me up the wall.
No, you don’t say the r. You just say the vowel differently. Say two sentences where you REALLY EMPHASIZE “pass” and “parse.” Like you’re angry about it. You don’t pronounce them identically, I promise.
I really do say them exactly the same, I promise. Even British dictionaries have them down as the same vowel sound; what makes you think they’re different?
See, this is the thing with pronunciation guides which attempt to spell foreign words using the reader’s orthography. There’s no point in telling somebody that the word “scone” is pronounced to rhyme with the word “shone” unless you already know how he pronounces the word “shone”. You can’t assume he pronounces it the way you do.
The division between rhotic and non-rhotic varieties of English is particularly troublesome here. For a non-rhotic speaker of English, reading out “gerta” or “gurta” results in not a bad approximation to a German pronunciation of Goethe; a German speaker would have a pretty good chance of knowing who was being referred to. But when a rhotic speaker reads it out, the German speaker will probably not work out that this is an attempt to pronounce “Goethe”, unless the context provides some clues.
Here http://inogolo.com/query.php?desc=571&key=1 is a website which attempts to hedge it’s bets by telling us that the word is pronounced “GU(R)-tuh”, and then helpfully adding that “the -R- is not pronounced”. To which my reaction, as a rhotic speaker, is “then why in the name of all that’s holy are you putting it in?”
Pass and parse are also the same for me (Aussie)
I’m sure they do pronounce them identically. It is common in the south and more particularly the south-east. It strikes me as “talking posh” but them I am from the north-east with family from all all over the north in general and the majority way of pronunciation up there is that “pass” and “parse” are very different.
In fact you can say from a geographical point of view most areas of the UK would pronounce them differently and it is only the south-east corner in which they are the same.
My two children have been born and raised in the south-east and so have a very different accent to myself and my wife. In particular they use a very long “a” in pass, grass, bath, path…i.e. the “posh” way
I’ve got a fairly RP accent and I pronounce the r. Long a, then rse,
That’s what I’m wondering. “Goathy” is not uncommon here in Chicago for the street name, either. Of course, the locals also pronounce “Mozart” with a plain “z” sound, not the “ts.” (But that’s kind of been changing over the last couple decades.)
My only guess is either someone has been using a pronunciation guide that had non-rhotic accents in mind, or something along UDS’s site, where there is a parenthetical R in that pronunciation guide somebody missed. I’m not entirely sure why all that is necessary, as you can also approximate it by saying the first vowel is similar to the vowel in “good.” (In reality, ö and oo are formed very differently, but phonetically they’re in the ballpark. It’s as close, in my opinion, as the vowel-minus-r in the “er” pronunciation.) Just don’t insert that “r.” That’s just weird.
I think that must be due to the not exactly RP features of your accent.
Not only that, but I never recall having heard anyone do so. Indeed, until reading this thread it never occurred to me that anyone would ever pronounce them to rhyme (or, rather, sound exactly the same, which I presume is what is meant).
Mind you, “parse” is not a word I often hear in everyday conversation at all, and it is a rare enough word, even in academic discourse, its normal habitat, that I doubt whether it can be meaningfully said to have regional pronunciations. I may not have known the word at all until I went to university (in the North of England, as if it matters), although I may well have learned it from my high school Latin teacher. He had a distinct Oxford accent, but, then, Oxford is in the south of England too.
Well, think of a word you will have heard more, like arse. In RP at least that’s the same vowel sound as in pass. That’s why dictionaries write them with the same vowel sound; I’m not making this up.
No the r isn’t silent. Ass (i.e. donkey and related species + the insult suggesting someone has donkey-like qualities) and arse are not pronounced the same in British (or Irish) English.
btw my own accent veers between Sarf Lahndan and RP, with sometimes a slight hint of West Country.
I don’t think anyone is saying that “pass” and “parse” don’t have the same vowel sound. It is not a matter of the r being pronounced either. It is the final consonant that is different, as Kiwi Fruit pointed out.
If anyone said “parse” to me, in conversation, but pronounced it the same as “pass”, I would almost certainly fail to understand them.
I agree, but that has nothing to do with the difference between “pass” and “parse”.
Zing!
But yeah, I pronounce *parse *and *pass *the same, and I didn’t realise that some people pronounce the former “parze”.
I have never heard the “parze” pronunciation either.
Ok, seeing as that clouds the issue, how about “farce”. That is pronounced exactly the same as “pass”, or “arse”, in an RP accent like mine, barring the initial consonant.