Pronunciation follies

[ms_interpret]

The CBC needs to get people who know how to pronounce words properly. I had a good laugh today at the anchor who called the capital of Uruguay Montevideo [man tə ˈvɪ di jo] instead of the proper [man tə və ˈde jo] and, my favourite, vehemently [vi ˈhɛ mənt li]. For those of you who cannot read IPA (learn it!), I'll try my hand at fake phonetics.

Comments

[ms_interpret]

I had to look up bivouac to be sure I had it right. :) I was close. I was saying 'bivowack', not dropping the o.

[sunnydale47]

You're not supposed to drop the o. It's a three-syllable word.

The OED, Cambridge, American Heritage, and most other dictionaries give "BIV-oo-ack" as the first pronunciation, and that's the way I've always heard it (and pronounced it). Only Merriam Webster even uses a schwa for the second syllable.

Most of them list "BIV-wack" as the second pronounciation, but that's because prescriptivism is out and dictionaries nowadays are all descriptive. BIV-wack is just slurring, like poin-SETT-a instead of poin-SETT-ee-a and VAR-a-'gate-ed instead of VAR-ee-a-'gate-ed. I was brought up to pronounce words clearly, and I still do.

I haven't heard anyone say BIV-wack yet, but admittedly, it doesn't come up often, so who knows. Poinsettia is heard annually, though, and sadly, I only know one other person who still pronounces it properly with four syllables. I guess either the vestigial next-to-last letter will eventually end up being dropped, or poinsettia will become one of those words like thought that has odd extra letters in it for no

[rampling]

Many, many years ago, as a young teen/pre-teen nerd, when reading about light and optics I came across the word "infrared". Of course I pronounced it as if it was the past tense of "infrare" (in-FRAIR). I never quite understood what it meant to infrare some light. Only many years later did I learn it was pronounced infra-red. Luckily I never pronounced it in public before I learned the proper way.

Many, many years later I was a programmer for SIRTF: the Space InfraRed Telescope (later named Spitzer)! And the extra-cute bit was that some of the people from our group had a softball team named the "Infrared Sox". ;) (BTW, my icon is a pic of the launch of SIRTF/Spitzer)

Would someone tell me how anyone who works for a space telescope of any sort can't learn when to say "spectrum" and when to say "spectra"? Aieeee! And don't get me started on "this criteria".... OK, that's not really pronunciation, but it drives me crazy too!

[ms_interpret]

Ooh, I can definitely see the 'infrared' one. I love the softball team name! That's awesome. :)

Plural misuse is another case entirely. Ever read Foxen in the Henhice? :)

[rampling]

Ever read Foxen in the Henhice?

No, but I imagine that if I did it might make me go through several Kleenices!

[ms_interpret]

hehehe. Yes, indeed. That example is in there. But my favourite is 'bathtubim'. :)

[babyalligator]

oh my god, i did the exact same thing with "awry." i had read it many times in books and such, but hadn't had much occasion to hear it. so i always thought it was "awree."

[ms_interpret]

Heh. Good to know I'm not the only one!

[sunnydale47]

I thought it was AW-ree too! I was a voratious reader, and I knew a lot of words in writing that I had never heard pronounced.

But the mistake I remember best was the name Penelope -- I thought it was PEN-a-lope! (Well, we don't put letters in an en-VEL-a-pee, so how is one to know that name is pronounced pen-ELL-a-pee!)

One of those that I didn't have but apparently is quite common is misled. Many people seem to have thought it was MIZ-z&ld, as in the past tense of to mizzle, instead of miss-LED!

There's a couple that I'm acquainted with who go to a church named Kittamaqundi Community. The church is named for the nearby lake, Lake Kittamaqundi. (It's an artificial lake in the middle of a development. It was supposedly named for the Indian town that supposedly originally occupied that site, and I guess someone was trying to make it look more authentic or exotic or something. I've sometimes wondered whether they deliberately omitted a vowel because they thought Kittmaquundi was worse, or whether they thought the u was a vowel

[ms_interpret]

On the Kittamaqundi, I might have help for you. The /q/ often represents a sound we don't have in English. It's like a /k/ but is further back in the mouth. It's a uvular stop. It is almost certainly not just part of the qu. That stupid qu drives me NUTS. Why we can't just use kw like everyone else... grr.

Oh, man. I did the Penelope one too. And I never dreamed that Selene rhymes with Melanie.

I've heard both TERR-ist and hunnert on NPR too. Annoying, but the first one is at least forgivable. Dropping /r/ is nothing new. Chris says [mir] for 'mirror', for example.

[sunnydale47]

Ack! It wasn't till I reread my own comment just now that I realized I had misspelled voracious! Darn LJ and its un-editable comments!

In this case, the q is not pronounced as a uvular stop, just as a simple k. I think the whole story about it being an Indian word is a myth perpetrated by developers to create mystique. The development was built on land that had been farmed for hundreds of years. I don't think anyone actually knows what tribe of Indians lived in the area or what language they spoke -- any archeological evidence has been long since plowed under. Whoever came up with the spelling Kittamaqundi was just trying to make it sound fancy. It's just stupid. But in any case, even if it's hard to figure out the pronunciation of the last syllable from the spelling, there's no excuse for transposing the consonants!

Oh yes, "mir" is another one that drives me crazy. The second vowel can be a schwa (maybe even should be a schwa -- I don't think I've ever heard anyone say MIRR-roar) ... but it's not that hard to say both syllables! I

[ms_interpret]

Oh, that uvular stop always gets made into a k in English, but you're probably right about it being made up to "sound Indian". And no, no excuses for transposing. :)

Ya know, I've heard a few people put the middle syllable in Wednesday, but it sounds more like 'weddinsday'. Still wrong.

Oh, and that reminds me. Iron. I-ron, not I-urn. Gah. Those 'r' sounds are tricky.

Another one Chris does, but like klwalton I've given up on for marital safety, is 'impetus', which he constantly says 'impetuous'. Never mind that it means something else entirely, he always gets that one wrong.

[hitchhiker]

ennui (the obvious mispronunciation)