The Pronunciation Thread

Gi-llanders not Gillon-does!

yeah ... but that's the RIGHT way to say it.

spanakopita

figure that out.

σπανακοριτα

with the stress on span and kop - how else?

sand-widges or sand-witches orsand-ha-witches ?
Eeeeeasy: "sang-witches"

bury: rhymes with "worry" or sounds like "berry"?
roof: rewf or ruf?

my favorite: footballers play DEE-fense. Do brits ever say DEE-fense?

Why do some midwesterners say EYE-talian? I doubt they say EYE-tal-y. They likely do say EYE-ran and EYE-raq.

Congratulate me I'm the Andy f'ing Rooney of ILX.

"rhymes with 'worry'" is only plausible if you pronounce "worry" so it rhymes with "furry" rather than "lorry".

But when I say "bury" it sounds like "berry". I grew up in the American Midwest and I don't think my accent was affected much by eleven years, college through grad school, spent in New York, or by seven years, through the present, living in Northern California.

I want to point out that I'm amused that you chose "ph" rather than "f" to represent that sound.

This sentence is wrong in more ways that I can count.

Though down the country, furry rhymes with worry rhymes with lorry.

So what do you rhyme furry with, Sam?

Similarly: glass, grass, bath?

I should have pointed out that down the country furry and worry stay mostly the same, but lorry becomes lurry.

However, I don't extend this to places overseas - I don't call Paris "Pa-ree".

When I lived in Manchester, I asked for clarification of the pronunciation of Bury. People from Bury say Buh-ry rather than Berry, but the consensus was that this was considered ridiculous to everyone else and not to be followed.

Shrewsbury = Shrewsbury to the working class and Shrovesbury to poshos, whether or not one is local.

Pronunciation of 'scone' is for me determined by the 'what's the fastest cake in the world?' joke... geddit?

I was originally brought up to say "scoan" but then at school everyone said this was really posh and people who didn't go foxhunting should say "scon". However, since my mother comes from a lower class background than any of the people who told me that, maybe it IS the other way round. I never much liked scones anyway so I haven't needed to say it for years.

I thought I agreed on the rule about pronouncing placenames as the locals would but on reflection this only extends as far as halfarsed attempts not to lengthen the vowel in Glasgow or Newcastle (or I guess Castleford or wherever).

My dictionary's pronunciation guide tells me not to schwa-ify the last syllable of "inchoate", but that sounds so precise and laboured. Is it right?

(Half of the "I pronounce [X] like [Y] posts" just leave me wondering, "But how do you pronounce [Y]?")

"I pronounce [X] like [Y]" posts

Hey, Wiktionary led me to what seems to be a pretty nice French dictionary I never came across before. https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/cognac

Dutch version uses the same vowel sound but the "gn' is pronounced a little differently and there is a strong accent on the second sylllable.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

i say Cone-Yak and Khan-Yak depending on the moment but more often hear it colloquially referred to as "yak" or by brand.
i also do not drink so it's less of an issue but i did tend bar for a year or two.

I recently heard someone use the word "epoch", pronouncing it somewhat close to "epic". It struck me that I'd never heard this word spoken out loud as I'd always imagined it would be "ee-pok".

That's how I'd say it.

I said “epock” in my head until taking a course where a teacher said “epic” thousands of times

"eepock" is "standard" Brit pron

Think in US it is eh-puck

But yes I see U.K. pronunciation is as you say

TS Khans vs. Yaks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGO-SldLrNA

just call it brandy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTqTE7aNjZQ

In Japanese cognac and konjac are not only homophones but share identical katakana which makes menu misreading interesting sometimes.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/86/Conrack1974.jpg

Ha!

just call it brandy

― mahb, Tuesday, March 16, 2021 5:51 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i once asked for a pint of guinness and a cognac in a glasgow pub and the bartender said "you can have a pint of guinness and a brandy

If it's not an appellation d'origine contrôlée, sure.

Just heard a shitty, soppy old '50s song where the singer pronounced 'fingers' as if the break between the syllables came after the 'g'. 'FING-ers'. I pretty much barfed all over myself when that happened.

Is .wav wave or wav?

I have never thought of it as wav.

I think i know it's wave, but the pronunciation of a schoolmate from 20 odd years ago (southwest UK) has left me unable to move forward. I don't think this is like gif/jif where there was debate - and settlement? it's gif, right? - but curious if this is regional or just me and that one dude

i've never heard anything other than a "wave" file. gif vs jif is a fight where if you care you lose

Didn't the inventor of the GIF format publicly announce it's jif?

jif is the correct pronunciation of GIF, which is the acronym for Giraffe Information File.

Giraffe Interchange Format, surely.

Who interchanges giraffes?!

Didn't the inventor of the GIF format publicly announce it's jif?

yes. then many years passed, and a lot of people who were born after the format were invented pronounced it in a different way. at this point, many people began losing by fighting about which way was best

I would say 'wav', fwiw.

i always used to say wav. I think I knew it was probably "wave" but I read things phonetically

Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave"[8])

waff, or gtfo

like "suave"? Have never heard anyone ever say that.

i say it, but only as i use their products every morning.

*looks in peepcam*

"suave"

In the UK at least, Wav, like suave, never heard it called a 'Wave' file by anyone that has to actually deal with them in almost 30 years in audio.

What is it called? A wavv? New to me but seems good

Yeah, like 'have' with a w

my problem is i'm thinking of sin waves and triangle and square waves

just basic building block components of sound. i know that's different than the filetype and all of that. i just associate them that way, may be alone in that