Pronunciations You'd Never Heard Before You Were An Adult

[DCI Harry Batt]

Is it maybe a shorter sound at the end?

[Sporting]

I'm not trying to be niche, but on the banking and DIY threads and others there are terms and expressions and acronyms I don't understand and while I may indulge in what I hope is light-hearted banter I try not to go further. But none of the previous attempts at representing schedule really goes beyond the clunky.

[Balderdasha]

It would have been really helpful for me to understand the phonetic alphabet before I went to teach English in China. All the kids there were taught it and used it and found it really annoying that I couldn't transcribe English words like that for them. The best I could do was say words as slowly and clearly as I could and they would transcribe their own understanding of it phonetically. I did try to learn the phonetic alphabet by myself but without a teacher it didn't stick. It remains a blind spot.

[Sporting]

I'm no expert, believe me. But it is useful.

[Sporting]

Foreign language teachers in Spain who do state exams for getting permanent posts have phonetics as one of the obligatory subjects and have to pass a test/exam in it.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I'm not trying to be niche, but on the banking and DIY threads and others there are terms and expressions and acronyms I don't understand and while I may indulge in what I hope is light-hearted banter I try not to go further. But none of the previous attempts at representing schedule really goes beyond the clunky.

I didn't think you were trying to do anything other than point something out and explain it. It's just that I don't understand the explanation and was trying to think of what differences could be and explain that in a way I do understand.

[Sporting]

Try googling pronunciations of the word. There are many excellent websites.

[Fussbudget]

It's /ˈskɛdjuːl/ or /ˈskɛdʒʊl/ or even /ˈskɛdʒəl/.

Even without knowing the phonetic alphabet (which I also don't) a basic knowledge of how letters are pronounced in major European languages and knowing that the word we're talking about is 'schedule' gets you most of the way to working out what sounds those characters represent, surely.

something like
dju: = dyoo
dʒʊ = dju
dʒə = djer

Though the crux of the discussion was the sk/sh first consonant sound wasn't it? Which all Sporting's examples have as 'sk'. The shed-yool pronunciation sounds comically posh/putting on a telephone voice to me though I did pronounce it like that for ages having indeed been taught that it was the standard British pronunciation. I go for /ˈskɛdʒəl/ now I think

[DCI Harry Batt]

I can't hear a difference between the "yoo" of "dyoo" and the "yu" of "yule", myself. If I've understood correctly. All interesting stuff anyway.

[Sporting]

ə

This is such an important sound.

[ad hoc]

dj is like dew
d͡ʒ is like jew
j is like yew

[Sporting]

dj is like dew

Already problematic due (ha!) to different renderings of the word.

[Satchmo Distel]

The American pronunciations I have found most annoying since I moved to the US in 2006 are Iran and Iraq (Eye-Ran, Eye-Raq); partially I suspect because there's an element of ethnocentrism there (refusing to learn local pronunciations or even how it's pronounced by English speakers in the region).

[Jah Womble]

Similarly, I get annoyed by ‘Ay-dolf Hitler’ (their pronunciation, as well as the historical figure) - as I’ve doubtless already stated on this very thread.

There’s no umlaut in there at all, ffs.

[ursus arctos]

These are all Bushisms rooted in regional weirdness and very good tells as to whether the speaker has the faintest familiarity with the subject

[WOM]

partially I suspect because there's an element of ethnocentrism there (refusing to learn local pronunciations or even how it's pronounced by English speakers in the region).

Possible, but more likely due to most North Americans learning the pronunciation of Iran and Iraq from the NBC Nightly News in the mid '70s and that's how it was pronounced there.

[Balderdasha]

How would you pronounce doge as in the Doge of Venice? My husband and I were both merrily pronouncing it like dough-gay, but we've likely come up with that pronunciation independently through reading it. Recently, we caught the end of a programme with Stanley Tucci being paid to pootle round Venice eating seafood and drinking wine at 8:30am in the name of cultural understanding (nice gig if you can get it) and both he and other presenters were pronouncing doge as a sort of dozhe sound, like doze, but with the middle consonant being like the French j in jardin.

[Giggler]

I was definitely an adult when I learned it was a-rye and not or-ree.

[Various Artist]

How would you pronounce doge as in the Doge of Venice? My husband and I were both merrily pronouncing it like dough-gay, but we've likely come up with that pronunciation independently through reading it. Recently, we caught the end of a programme with Stanley Tucci being paid to pootle round Venice eating seafood and drinking wine at 8:30am in the name of cultural understanding (nice gig if you can get it) and both he and other presenters were pronouncing doge as a sort of dozhe sound, like doze, but with the middle consonant being like the French j in jardin.

I thought it was between the two – "dough-zhay", i.e. with that sound like the 'j' of jardin in the middle yet in the two-syllable version you've otherwise gone with.

I think though Italians might actually pronounce it approximately midway between "dodge" and "dodge-eh", i.e. it's more like one-and-a-half syllables...!

[Various Artist]

Firstly, apologies if any of the below seems either an overly superficial reading to Stateside OTFers, or if indeed it seems baffling because it doesn't actually represent your own region or experience in any way.

Picking up on the above discussion, though, I've always wondered about that USian tendency to elongate certain vowels in words originating from other languages, seemingly regardless of where that origin lies – i.e. "Eye-ran" for Iran, "Ay-dolf" for Adolf, "addy-ohce" – or even "ahdy-ohce" – for adios.* I've even heard a very basic French term like le being pronounced "lay", as if it were les or perhaps lé.

Does it come from the primary (or sole) everyday-ish exposure to a foreign language being Mexican (or perhaps Puerto Rican) Spanish, say?


Re: the 'adios' example above. I'm not familiar enough with those accents' idiosyncrasies to know whether this is how the word actually comes across in them, for example. But before I was ever exposed to much US media I was given to understand it was basically "addy-oss", so to my ears the typical American pronunciation always sounds like a sort of hypercorrection – i.e. knowing the word is foreign makes them unconsciously overdo it, or something. Or is it just that as a European I'm exposed to Castilian Spanish, which doesn't seem to pronounce it like that, yet some or all Latin American versions of Spanish do emphasise the vowel sound(s) differently?

Or is it just the way that any native Spanish speaker would say the "o"-sound somewhere relatively down in the throat, and there's simply two divergent interpretations of that either side of the Atlantic – the British automatically clipping the vowel, the Americans speaking it more forward and nasally?

Or, is it more a marker of the recent evolution of US English and [mangling?] the Hispanic elements thereof? To put that another way, why whenever I hear English-speaking Americans reference a Spanish term beginning with "Los" they pronounce it "lohce", except for Los Angeles where it's pronounced "loss" exactly like I'd instinctively read the word in any context? In other words, if they say "Loss" Angeles, because it's always been said that way, why did they start pronouncing other instances of the word differently... and meanwhile why – in that context – has this one name not morphed into "Lohce" Angeles?

(Also, why does Las Vegas get pronounced as if it's spelled Los Vegas? Is this a spillover from people being used to saying the superficially similar Los Angeles that way?)


(* A point of comparison might be in the first Harry Potter film where Hermione forcefully explains a spell should be pronounced "levi-OH-sa".)

[ursus arctos]

I honestly don't recognise these pronunciations.

Are you all taking after treibeis and his films?

I would also suggest hat you vastly underestimate the percentage of the US population that has no meaningful exposure to any foreign languages.

[WOM]

I think it's easy to imagine everyone in the US speaking like folks in the 'drawl' states, where eye-ran and ah-dee-ohs are drawn out to sound like much longer words than they are.

[San Bernardhinault]

I've always pronounced Doge "dozhe", which I think I've since heard others say. I think in the context of shiba inu dogecoin I still pronounce it dozhe-coin but the correct pronunciation may be "doggy-coin"

[treibeis]

I think it's easy to imagine everyone in the US speaking like folks in the 'drawl' states, where eye-ran and ah-dee-ohs are drawn out to sound like much longer words than they are.

In all the North American films I've seen - which is every North American film ever made - you all sound like you come from 'drawl' states. I'm not imagining it.

By the way, you can't say "pasta" properly. It always sounds like "pawsta".

[Sporting]

(Also, why does Las Vegas get pronounced as if it's spelled Los Vegas?

I hear it this way too.