True, but don’t assume that we’re are entirely without blame. After all, we pronounce Café as “Caff”. Like this:
OK, not all of us do. But plenty enough.j
How about Wednesday (WeNDSday) and February (silent R?) FebUary
There is no ‘d’ in there: it is “Wenzday”.
And Damn, I forgot. Any England football fan will tell you that the national stadium is Wemberly.
Sorry, that should be Engerland.
j
The variation between ask and aks* not only goes back to Old English, it goes back to Proto-Germanic, clear back to Proto-Indo-European. A little historical context helps to keep from getting steamed up over dialectal variants, to know that it isn’t a recent corruption. A similar metathesis has always occurred with wasp (originally waps).
*Everybody gets that the letter <x> stands for two sounds, not one, right?
Yep, that’s me and most other people. Esperanto is a puzzle to me, too.
Sure, but how did he pronounce it?
Again, not remotely comparable. Esperanto is a completely different language. IPA is a small set of supplemental symbols for concepts you mostly understand. It’s like learning a few more street signs. Or the new icons they release each year for text messages.
"I won’t ask my wife where the “too-meric” or the “tuR-meric” is, I’ll go root around the spice cabinet on my own.
**Or you could go all swankily back-to-the-Indian-roots, and call the stuff “haldi” – its name in the places most associated with it **"
Oh! I’m stealing that one! (Rushes off to brunch at the trendy cafe-wank-a-teria).
Chaucer spelled things the way he pronounced them.
When I say “Pin-ter-est” (as I still say the verb “in-ter-est”) I’m roundly mocked by younger people. Apparently we’ve lost the middle syllable over the years.
I text every day and only occasionally use emojis. I drive every day and never see new street signs I haven’t encountered before. I’d use IPA like, twice a year and there’s at least two more convienent alternatives (spelling things out as others have done, or listening to audio clips on dictionary websites).
I’m not saying nobody should learn IPA. I’m saying most people don’t really have any reason to ever think about it. I’d probably have more use out of learning how to tie a bowline properly but I haven’t bothered to do that either.
You’re responding to a statement about how difficult it is to learn IPA with statements that have nothing to do with the difficulty of learning IPA.
And what you did say is strawmanning.
I have not said that everyone in these threads MUST learn IPA.
I have said that (1) it takes very little effort and time to learn IPA sufficient to use it for discussing English pronunciation, (2) anyone who did learn IPA would find it useful in these kinds of discussions, (3) that the costs of an absolute layperson learning IPA are negligible compared to even the potential benefits (meaning that even in the eventuality that you benefit very little, you have lost very little) (4) and that FTG’s claims that IPA is “a mess” and useless to anyone who isn’t an expert in linguistics are nonsensical and ignorant.
Given that, I’m not going to argue with your own personal cost-benefit analysis for your own life on the matter—it doesn’t affect any part of my argument.
This is a common BrE-AmE distinction - words in which a two-syllable pronunciation predominates in BrE and a three-syllable pronunciation predominates in AmE. Examples include medicine, regiment (the noun) and interest (both the noun and the verb). The missing syllable reappears in the adjectival form - medical, regimental.
In BrE the two-syllable ponunciation is, or used to be, regarded as a class marker - the more socially privileged your background, the more likely you were to use the two-syllable pronunciation. However in more recent times the three-syllable pronunciation has become more common - possibly in reaction against speech perceived to be “posh” or affected, and in favour of demotic speech. Chicken Fingers’ post suggests that the opposite trend may be occurring in AmE.
(My bolding above). Of those three: to best of my memory, I have never heard anybody in Britain say “regiment” in two syllables (“redge-ment”) – the other two, yes. Can imagine the two-syllable “regiment”, I suppose, in the mouths of upper-crust military officers; as per your second paragraph.
(Much-loved slightly rude joke: She was only the colonel’s daughter, but she knew what Reggie meant.)
I don’t think so, we may shorten the word “Cafe” to “caf” (I know I do). Just like we shorten “university” to “uni” I don’t think it is an alternative pronunciation though. I can’t see any logic to that.
Being German as (apparently, seeing your username) you are as well, I am familiar with Tass’ Kaff’ since the Werner comics but I haven’t heard that outside a reference to the comics, like Life of Brian quotes.
Great! How did he pronounce “yronne”?
Hints on Pronouncing Middle English - This page has moved to http://faculty.smu.edu/bwheller/IJAS/
I’m not a Middle English or Chaucer expert, but reading guides like this, I would say three syllables, with a geminated [n], so my first guess would be
[ɪ rɔn nə]
Like “ih-RON-nuh” with [ɪ] as in “bit,” [ɔ] as in “caught” in dialects without the cot-caught merger
Great, thanks!
Although I think he pronounced it “why-ronnie” 