Asking for a return of the Spanish Empire? In Spanish you always know how to pronounce a word when you see it written, and almost always know how to write it when you hear it. Schoolchildren only have to memorize whether a word is written with a B or a V, a G or a J and whether there is a silent H somewhere. Oh, and LL and Y too. The rest is clear.
Spanish, uh? Ka-thi- (like think without the “nk”)-Keh. Means boss, chief. Underwear, right? Hmmm… And they themselves pronounce it wrongly? Curiouser and curiouser…
pa-nash, I’d say, because French. Funny how so many of the words here had me interested so many years ago.
What I have never heard spoken, but really intrigued me when I frist read it:
“Ia Ia Cthulhu Fhtagn!
Nyarlathotep!”
That’s largely, but not completely, true. There’s a rather involved discussion here with examples of where Czech spelling does not exactly track with how a word is said.
The last statement seems a bit of overstatement to me, but it’s not perfectly phonetic. People liked to say that of Hungarian, as well, and while much much more phonetic than English, a few ambiguities or slight variations from the expected were observable.
Yes, of course I have, but there is no English word “antipus” that could provide the corresponding formation of octopus. (There is in Greek: ἀντίπους.)
As described here, the English singular of antipodes, antipode (which can be pronounced either AN-tee-PODE or an-TIP-oh-DEE), is a 16th- or 17th-century back-formation.
I don’t recall having heard the singular “antipode,” but if I had, it most likely would have been pronounced to rhyme with my “wrong” pronunciation of octopodes, since that is apparently the one preferred by most dictionaries.
Furthermore, although it is sometimes the case that the adjectival form of proper nouns is quite different (e.g., Glaswegian, Monagasque, etc.), off the top of my head, I can’t think of another plural that is so distinct from its singular form as octopus/octopodes.
True. I had certainly never heard octopodes pronounced, but with no other parallel and an awareness that they both derive from the same Greek root, I assumed that both words ending -podes would be pronounced the same. Arguably that approach is too simplistic given the points you have made, but in the absence of any other word ending that way I think no other possibility really occurred to be.
From now on the plural of platypus will be platypodes for me.
Other distinct pluralesses:
Bee - hive
Bird - flock
Boat - fleet
Man - mob. OK, I’ll leave now
As an academic geographer, I’ve heard this plenty, as Antipode is a neo-Marxist/radical/progressive human geography journal that’s been around at least fifty years.
I’ve heard it pronounced both ways among geographers. I’d estimate 60% say “an-TIP-oh-dee,” 40% say “ANT-ih-pode.”
I have never seen that written as one word, so I have never had the opportunity to mispronounce it. Whenever someone has said “taxi meter”, I assumed that they were saying two words.
I just found out yesterday that I’ve been pronouncing “reprise” wrong all these years. I’d always been pronouncing it “re-prize” in my head. But when I was listening to NPR’s coverage of the Tony Awards last night, the reporter pronounced it “re-preeze” (rhymes with sneeze). I’m going to assume NPR would know the correct pronunciation.
In my dialect (UK), I think that’s the difference between the verb and noun. But I can’t say I’ve heard it often enough to know if there’s any clear consensus on that.
A word I’ve been consistently pronouncing wrongly is leucistic (an animal with reduced colouration, often very pale or whitish in colour, but not an albino).
I thought it was pronounced lu-kis-tic, by analogy with leukaemia, from leukos, Greek for white. But it is pronounced lu-sis-tic, and this term has cropped up in two different nature documentaries in the space of two days.
There are three that I remember from childhood reading:
I knew the spoken word annihilate as in, “I annihilated Scott at Tecmo Bowl last weekend!” but I didn’t connect it to the written word for some time.
Same with hors d’oeuvres. I knew the spoken word meant little finger-food snacks but how often do you see the word and immediately hear someone say it? Or dervs, right?
In 7th grade, the reading teacher had us do a unit of Greek and Roman mythology. Reading ahead a bit, I came across a goddess named Pursey-phone. Oh, that’s Persephone.
And a fourth, much, much later: I was talking to my friend about whether he was going to an event at a space called Char-dee-bis. He rightfully gave me some good natured ribbing: Charybdis. The way I said it didn’t even make sense based on the spelling, lol.
And, again, much, much later, I very narrowly avoided making a complete ass of myself at work in meeting a customer contact named Siobahn. I forget exactly what happened, maybe the receptionist discretely straightened me out or I got her voicemail greeting where she said her name or something but I was gonna call her see-oh-bahn.
Well, most people pronounce Cthulhu all wrong, for one thing. Not that human vocal apparatus actually can do it justice, but Lovecraft said it was Khlûl′-hloo with “the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly.”
Everyone I know also seems to get Nyarlathotep wrong, and tend to pronounce it something like “Gnarly Hotep”, missing that first T
It has the same origin in λευκός it doesn’t seem to come via a Latin intermediate in the (scant) etymologies I can find. I think it comes down to how leucism is pronounced.
And they themselves pronounce it wrongly? Curiouser and curiouser…