
Sound and fury: how pronunciation provokes passionate reactions - kawera
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/13/pronunciation-complaints-phonetics-sounds-appealing-david-crystal
======
unit91
I always feel weird correctly mispronouncing (?) words I know are imported,
for example "Einstein" instead of "Einshtein".

While you could get away with "Einshtein", though most folks would think
you're pedantic, you really can't for words with less well-known origins. For
example most people pronounce "hagiography" with a "hay" sound instead of a
"haw" sound, as in Greek ἁγία (hágia). But if you said "hawgiography" people
would think you don't know English.

~~~
whack
It gets worse. A decade ago, Obama actually got political heat for pronouncing
the names of countries, the same way their inhabitants do.

Language has evolved far far beyond its original roots as a medium for
communication, and has now become a symbol of political identity. _" If you
pronounce words differently, well, you must clearly not share our values."_

[https://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/09/barack_obama](https://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/09/barack_obama)

~~~
stordoff
Which is correct is a difficult line to draw though to some extent. Whilst
altering the pronunciation of Pakistan makes some sense (because it's the same
word), pronouncing a country the same way as the inhabitants is not necessary
correct in English -- you'd probably get some sideways glances if you starting
insisting on Nippon for Japan or Deutschland for Germany (or even México for
Mexico to some extent).

I'd also say that language as a political/shared identity is not a new
phenomenon.

~~~
mc32
Or, conversely imagine Chinese saying "The United States of America" rather
than "mei guo" (美国 - mĕiguó), or Mexicans saying "The United States of
America" instead of "Los rstados unidos", etc., etc.

It's ridiculous to think you should pronounce the name of any geographic
entity by the way the people native to the area do.

------
tremendulo
It's interesting how some clever people pronounce a few words differently
because they've been reading way ahead of what they have the opportunity to
converse about.

~~~
nicoburns
I did this with the word 'awry'. I read it as aww-ree. Interestingly I _also_
knew the word 'awry' as eh-rye from hearing it spoken, I just didnt connect up
that the two were the same word.

~~~
FeteCommuniste
I distinctly remember saying "IN-tri-gyou-ing" (intriguing) for a bit as a
kid.

~~~
khedoros1
Rather than "infra-red", I said "inf-rare-d" as a child.

------
bitwize
I once saw a YouTube video in which the vlogger consistently mispronounced the
title of the game _Heretic_ as though it rhymed with "magnetic". And he did
this with at least one other word ("requiem")! Hearing him mis-accent these
words was like nails on chalkboard. It's like where have you been, that you're
reading these words for the first time, _just now_?

~~~
function_seven
I've caught myself doing this with more obscure (to me) words—ones that I only
encountered in text and not in spoken conversation. Debian was one ("DEE-bee-
an"). I was talking to a friend one day about it when I first started using
Linux ("LIE-niks"!), and he was amused by my innocence :)

> _And he did this with at least one other word ( "requiem")!_

Did he pronounce it "rek-WHY-em"? That would drive me insane.

~~~
stordoff
One thing I've noticed is that if there is a word I only encounter in its
written form, I only sight read it and don't pronounce it internally (I
remember doing it with "Hermione" the first I read the Harry Potter series).
It's almost like there's just a brief silence in my inner monologue. I can see
how that might lead to odd pronunciations the first time I actually think
about it.

------
smcl
Try being a Scottish kid watching TV, hearing the American kids saying
"principal" as "princible" or the English ones pronouncing "drawing" as
"drawringg" (or "ate" as "ett" or even worse "think" and "fink") and being
told that by the world that actually _you_ are the one who speaks weird :-D

~~~
bitwize
Here's one that drives me nuts (an American listening to American speech):
Febyouary. Literally everybody says it and it never made sense to me.

~~~
khedoros1
It's just a case where the common pronunciation doesn't precisely match the
spelling. How about Wednesday? Wennsday. Receipt? Island? Colonel? Do those
bother you too?

~~~
JadeNB
> It's just a case where the common pronunciation doesn't precisely match the
> spelling. How about Wednesday? Wennsday. Receipt? Island? Colonel? Do those
> bother you too?

The difference is that I think that most people agree that 'Febyooary' and
'Wennsday' are incorrect pronunciations, whereas 'reseat' and 'i-land' are
correct pronunciations. I don't know the stories behind these, but 'colonel'
is fascinating: the reason for the pronunciation–spelling mismatch is that
English used the Italian spelling (colonelle) and the French pronunciation
(coronelle).

~~~
khedoros1
> The difference is that I think that most people agree that 'Febyooary' and
> 'Wennsday' are incorrect pronunciations

Those are the most common pronunciations I hear, living in California. The
U.S. and U.K. recordings on Wiktionary also omit the first "r" in February,
and the "d" in Wednesday (although the UK recording seems like it has an
elongated sound that implies the missing "d").

~~~
JadeNB
> Those are the most common pronunciations I hear, living in California.

They are also the most common in my experience, but I thought, and thought
others thought, that they were nonetheless commonly judged wrong. (It is fair
to argue what 'wrong' could possibly mean of pronunciation other than "what
most people say", though.)

~~~
khedoros1
If a native speaker makes an utterance that they don't consider to have a
mistake, and that other speakers of the dialect would accept as correct, then
I think it's hard to say that it's wrong, even if it deviates from another
dialect (and even if the dialect it deviates from is the one considered the
"standard" form of the language).

Even taking it in a more linguistic prescriptivist direction though, those
words _did_ often have more than one accepted pronunciation listed in various
dictionaries.

------
TillE
The intrusive r is particularly baffling, as it's not a natural position for
your mouth in the places it occurs. It's like the omitted r's in non-rhotic
accents got lost and needed a place to go.

------
obombration
As a midwesterner, I would certainly appreciate it if people would focus on
the other 95% of what I said, and not that I said "bag" ("bay-g").

------
telesilla
On the question of Robots, we already have a robot accent: that digital accent
that is familiar from TV and movies, which hilariously mispronounce so many
wonderful words.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/10/05/44...](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/10/05/446051309/hey-
siri-what-did-you-say-why-computers-still-mispronounce-names)

I do expect that one day computerised speech will be far more eloquent and
sound more like HAL and less like Paranoid Android.

But what about great robot voices like Alpha 60, Hitchhiker's Marvin and
Tron's Master Control Program? I hope we keep our sense of humour in the
future.

~~~
Digit-Al
If Sat Navs are anything to go by you'll probably be able to get downloadable
voice modules to get your robot sounding like Homer Simpson or Bill Cosby
(okay, maybe not Bill Cosby... ahem).

------
js2
Passionate reactions about pronunciation must be a British thing. I really
don't think Americans care very much unless the pronunciation is outright
wrong, and probably not even then. I really can't imagine an American radio
host receiving such complaints.

This is the country that gave the world "nucular" after all. (Sorry about
that.)

That said, if any word in America can provoke a passionate pronunciation
reaction, it's pecan:

[https://www.ourstate.com/pecan-how-do-you-say-
it/](https://www.ourstate.com/pecan-how-do-you-say-it/)

------
j_s
What is the best way to find out the accepted pronunciation of various tech
project names? Is there any type of resource to make this easy (for podcasts
hosts, etc.)?

This winds up being a minefield for audio content creators!

~~~
kbp
> the accepted pronunciation of various tech project names

Resque (where the readme says in the first sentence that it is pronounced like
'rescue') always bugged me. Are there any English words where 'que' at the end
of a word like that makes a 'kyoo' sound? Would 'resqueue' have been such a
horrible spelling?

------
danjc
Linux

