Talk:List of words of disputed pronunciation

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[edit] Pronunciation of Mature

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The pronunciation I use and most often hear is ma-chure; however I have also occasionally heard ma-tuor. Is one or the other correct, or are they both acceptable? Does anyone know the etymology?

[edit] Abbreviations of Dictionaries/Sourece

This: Notes: 'AHD' is the American Heritage Dictionary. 'M-W' is the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (American). 'K&K' is A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English by John S. Kenyon and Thomas A. Knott. 'OED' is the Oxford English Dictionary. 'EEPD' is Everyman's English Pronouncing Dictionary by Daniel Jones (revised by A. C. Gimson, 14th edn., 1977), which focuses on RP. 'LPD' is the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (1st edn., 1990) by John C. Wells, which provides both RP and General American (GenAm) pronunciations. 'MQD' is the Macquarie Dictionary (Australian). Some data come from the 1998 LPD pronunciation preference poll of British speakers; this is indicated by PPP below. is very unprofessional looking; someone just got really lazy. I think the names should written out in full, or at least not abreviated to acronyms with a key on the page.

[edit] Cache

Is it cache or cache?

It's cache. Angr/talk 20:06, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
No it's not, it's cache. - Richardcavell 00:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Is the question whether it is 'kash', 'kaysh', or perhaps 'ka-shay'? Or even along the lines of ghoti spelling fish, it's c as in cent, ache as in the pain, so overall 'sake'? WLD 16:31, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese

This sentence has been up there for a while: "Some recommend stressing both syllables, a rare exception." Do we have a source for this? This seems unlikely to me, unless "stressing both syllables" means stressing either one or the other depending on the word's position in the sentence. In that case, the idea is already conveyed by the next sentence. Lesgles (talk) 23:35, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Audio Version

Hi. I discovered the Wikipedia Spoken project tonight and found this article through the list of articles with requests to be spoken. I think this would be a good article for my first audio contribution, however I am unclear about what would need to be said for this article. Would I speak each of the words on the list in the way I would normally say them in my American English voice, or is the goal to have them said the various ways they are written as being pronounced with the explanations of them also said? I could easily read the list of words and pronounce them how I say them, but doing all the different pronunciations would be hard.

Mixx941 06:04, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

This article's definitely a good candidate to be spoken. If it were to be spoken, it'd need to have all the disputed pronunciations because only one wouldn't be that helpful. I also think it'd be best to have a separate sound file for each word, as I think most people are only interested in hearing certain words and would not want to hunt through a long sound file for one word. --Donbert 22:08, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
The audio's great but there are some Americanisms in the British English words, particularly Tomato which sounds like [təˈmɑːd.oʊ]. Anon user 23:12, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I could re-record them with Received Pronunciation if you'd like. If an actual Brit could do it, that'd be even better. --Donbert 04:57, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Abdomen

Could someone please add AbDOmen/ABdomen, and also cervical? - Richardcavell 13:50, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I’ve added a discussion of abdomen (and I’ve quoted EEPD [Jones-Gimson] in its XIII edition [1967; reprint with corrections, 1974], because I’ve got only this: I don’t know whether the note is still there in the 1977 edition. It isn’t in the XV edition of Jones's dictionary [Roach-Hartman, 1997]. But I see that you’re a doctor: so, could you confirm that the members of your profession [in Australia] prefer the regular, or etymological, pronunciation?)
To add a note about cervical is certainly a good idea, too. Tom Hope
What other pronunciation of cervical is there besides /ˈsɝvɪkl/? Angr (t • c) 14:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
[sə'vaɪk.l] (or [sɜː-]) (with British-English transcriptions): in LPD, [sə'vaɪk.l, sɜː-] is given as more common in British usage. I hope I’ll be able to add a short note before long.

[edit] Hiroshima

In the same vein as "kyoto". I've heard hiroSHIma and HIROshima. Any input?

I think that "-RO-" is, or is nearer to, the Japanese stress.

Yeah, Sparks say "hiroSHIma" on 'This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us'. Should be listed, as the City, is (for the wrong reasons) famous, and I have heard several Americans, and some English use this pronounciation. I think this is nearer the Japanese pronounciation.

The Japanese language does not use stress accents, so any attempt to determine which syllables to stress is inherently flawed. Stress them all the same and you will be closer to a Japanese speaker. To be technically correct, Japanese uses pitch accent, but since English doesn't have this system, this accent is dropped when saying Japanese words in English. Further, since the pitch accent of words varies from region to region, there is no "correct" accent.
Now add in the fact that the Japanese "R" is an alveolar lateral flap (and is close to a western "L"), and the frequent devoicing of the "I" vowel, and westerners should just give up. Its just too hard for a round-eyed cheese eater to get it right... - O^O
The Japanese pronunciation should be left out of it. The point is, there are two competing stress patterns in English for this name: Hìroshíma and Hiróshima. If we can find a reliable source for it, we could even add that the Hiróshima pronunciation is perceived as being closer to the Japanese pronunciation, even if this perception is faulty. User:Angr 16:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ph's

What about "Stephen" and "nephew"? I do prefer them with [-v-] (NOT with [-f-]). Down with spelling pronunciations! Long live the respect for history! Change the spelling rather than the pronunciation, please. Tom Hope

Amen Brother/Sister!Cameron Nedland 03:50, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, according to [1], the [v]/[f] distinction in nephew is an American/British one. Americans say [f], whereas Brits say [v]. Stephen, I think, is always the same as Steven (with [v]), but Stephan and the related Stefan are with [f]. Nohat 07:47, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, according to British people I know, having [v] in nephew sounds extremely "posh" and/or old-fashioned; the ordinary Brit on the street says it with [f]. Angr (talk • contribs) 09:15, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
All right, Nohat. But in the source that you quote yourself, [2], we can also read the etymology of nephew, ultimately from Latin nepos (genitive nepotis), via French, neveu; the middle English form is nevew.
Angr, ['nef-] is admittedly commoner, but I’m not sure that ['nev-] can be considered either rare or old-fashioned or "posh" (in British English): for example, this is professor Well’s pronunciation (see [3]).
Cameron, sorry: I didn’t mean to be dogmatic. My reason is chiefly the opportunity of respecting history: as I said, if the spelling doesn’t reflect the original and regular pronunciation satisfactorily, it should be changed: we shouldn’t alter the pronunciation. In this case, I think that we should write nevew. By the way, I’m a brother.
Is there an English-speaking linguist (I’m Italian) who could explain to me why the -ph- digraph came to be used in this word? Tom Hope
The spellings of English words are what they are. It is not the case that spellings are changed nowadays due to careful reanalysis of etymology. Stephen is pronounced as /v/, nephew is usually pronounced as /f/, and that's that. No one is going to start spelling the word "nephew" with a 'v'—that would simply be an incorrect spelling—and certainly no one is going to start pronouncing the words differently from the way they do now out of some misguided notions concerning "respecting history". Nohat 02:18, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I see. But: 1) Why “misguided” notions? 2) "Certainly no one is going to...": are you sure? Maybe some people (I, for example) would like to correct their speech habits if they think they’ve got a good reason for doing that. 3) “Respecting history” is one of the main characteristics of civilization. At least, this is my opinion.
As for Stephen, or Steven, it’s now clear to me that the pronunciation is commonly with [-v-].
Just a last footnote: I suggest that we should pronounce Ant(h)ony with [-t-], not with [-θ-] (as in thick [θik]): ['ænθəni] is clearly a spelling pronunciation, and the spelling with -th- originated, I think, from a false etymology: the Greek noun ánthos, meaning flower (but Ant(h)ony is a Roman name, Antonius). Compare Mark Antony, Tony, Antonia.
I’ve now added a short discussion of the two pronunciations of nephew and of Ant(h)ony. Tom Hope
Well, if you want to advocate for language change, you are welcome to do so, but linguists generally consider that kind of activity to be tilting at windmills, and you'll have to do it somewhere besides Wikipedia. We are here only to document the status quo, not to advocate changes to it. Nohat 14:25, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Nohat, let me tell you that you have a slight tendency to generalize: "linguists consider...": it depends, we should distinguish (I’m a linguist myself, and I know the opinions of some other linguists about this problem). And for example I’m certainly not the first who advocates (at least within certain limits) a reform of English spelling. Furthermore, the fact that many people have an opinion does not mean that opinion is right, of course: it might be a prejudice, a false commonplace, and this is often the case. This is a complicated matter, and I try to think with my own head.
Anyway, this is a talk page. In the voice itself, I only noticed some facts, as you want me to do.
Take for example the word abdomen. The facts are here the following: 1) Two pronunciations of this word exist (disregarding some possible variations of the last syllable), "ábd-" and "-dóm-"; 2) Of these, the first seems on the whole to be more common; 3) This word is a latinism, and the Latin word "abdomen" is pronounced on the 2nd syllable; therefore, those who want to use a regular, i. e. etymological, pronunciation say "-dóm-"; 4) The pronunciation "-dóm-" is more common than the other, in fact, among the members of the medical profession, i. e. among those people who have most often the occasion of using the word.
Some of these facts (2 and 4) need to be better ascertained. But, if it’s so, why shouldn’t we write, together with the facts 1 and 2, the facts 3 and 4 too? They're facts too, aren't they? Tom Hope
I don't think you'll find that a reactionary outlook on English pronunciation has much currency with people who study language scientifically. Neither do I think you will find that very many people would consider English spelling reform is in any way a feasible endeavor. Discussing such things seems to me about as useful as discussing whether or not we should build a bridge from Los Angeles to Hawaii or try to achieve a 1:1 teacher to student ratio in public schools.
The second part of (3) is not a "fact"; it is just simple advocacy of the misguided type I alluded to above. "Regular, i.e. etymological" is not a neutral description. "Older" or "historical", perhaps. "Rare" or "old-fashioned", probably. As for (4) I don't think there is any evidence of that. I personally have never heard anyone say /æbˈdomən/, medical professional or otherwise. Nohat 04:29, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
If words still have a sense, your opinion might be called reactionary, not mine. But to insult instead of discussing isn’t a good method, so I suggest that we should avoid such terms.
Neither is it acceptable to say "Your opinion is held by few people only": does that mean that my opinion is false, for that reason? Of course it doesn’t. This argument is typical of a certain intimidatory conformism that is very reactionary, indeed.
But it’s evident that you haven’t got the faintest idea of what the history a language (not of English in particular, but of language in general) is.
And your totally uncritical use of the term scientifical is a very old-fashioned and outdated, very reactionary form of XIX century positivism.
Please don’t be offended. I would be delighted if I could discuss with you personally. But this is a complex question, and to discuss it would take some time. Tom Hope

I'm afraid much of this commentary is too scatteredly unidiomatic and poorly representative of my arguments to reply meaningfully. I don't see how a proposal to return to a previous pronunciation could be described as anything but reactionary, and I never used the nonword scientifical. The word regular is not appropriate to distinguish the pronunciation /æbˈdomən/ from the standard one, because the standard pronunciation is on its face "regular" because it is the standard.

You are welcome to advocate for whatever changes to the English language you like, but you will not find someone who is interested in hearing your proposals in me, and this is not the place to wage such campaigns. This is not a forum to engage in debate about language policy and planning; this page is a forum to discuss improvements to the Wikipedia article entitled "List of words of disputed pronunciation". If you are satisfied with the current contents of that article, then there is nothing further to discuss. Otherwise, if there is some particular problem with the page or potential addition you'd like to discuss, let's return to those points. Nohat 04:09, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

To return to a comment a few paragraphs above, I think John C. Wells's own pronunciation definitely qualifies as "posh". Angr (t • c) 14:48, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Questionnaire

I'd like to nominate 'questionnaire', which is pronounced by some as "kest-yon-air" and by others as "kwest-yon-air". I'm not familiar with the IPA renditions, I'm afraid. WLD 12:06, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I've never heard either of those. I've always heared "kwes-chun-air". Angr (t • c) 12:31, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Excuse my poor transcription. The point I was trying to get across is that some people start the word with kwe- and others with ke- (without the 'w'-sound). The latter pronunciation is rarer...I've just looked in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, which gives the pronunciations as "/kwεstʃə'nε:,kεstjə-/, so is it not right to include in the article? WLD 12:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Only if there is evidence that one group regards the other's pronunciation as incorrect rather than merely different. jnestorius(talk) 12:54, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
O.K., I'll pipe down then. WLD 14:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comparable

I pronounce this as [kəm'paɹəb(ə)ɫ] (not sure whether I actually have [ə] there or not), which is also, more or less, the second pronunciation in Chambers dictionary. I'd add it, but I'm not quite sure how this page is meant to deal with marry/Mary merger issues. My guess is that my pronunciation is equivalent to the current pronunciation (2), but that that was written by somebody with the marry/Mary merger. In this case maybe the current version should be a "GenAm" (2)(a) and there should also be an "RP" (2)(b).--JHJ 21:30, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

No, the current 2 ([kəm.'peə.rə.bəl]) is a different non-marry/Mary-merging pronunciation from yours. There are really two issues with this word: (1) Which syllable is stressed, the first or the second? (2) If the second syllable is stressed, does it have the vowel of comparison or the vowel of comparing? (The second issue is irrelevant in accents with the marry/Mary merger as comparison and comparing have the same vowel anyway.) The Longman Pronunciation Dictionary gives all three possibilities for both RP and GenAm: (1) stress on first syllable, (2) stress on second syllable with vowel of comparison/marry, (3) stress on second syllable with vowel of comparing/Mary. We should probably add a pronunciation 3 to the entry to reflect this. Angr (t • c) 22:05, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
OK, but pronunciation (2) has now been changed to a version with [æ], so it's now the comparing version which isn't represented.--JHJ 16:40, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hans (and maybe other loanwords)

The pronunciation (1) given here seems to be GenAm; there is no short [ɑ] in RP.

There is another issue. I believe that I (as, like most English speakers, a speaker of neither RP nor GenAm) am supposed to interpret the phonetic transcriptions fairly loosely, so that say [æ] on this page corresponds to [a] in my speech. Given this, it strikes me as POV to claim that (1) is the closest English pronunciation to the German. (And what is going on with [s] and [z] if that is the case, anyway?) I suspect similar issues arise for other loanwords.

--JHJ 16:40, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Given the lack of response, I have edited the entry to remove the claim that the [ɑ] variant is closest to the German. I do think there should be some more explanation of the use of the way that the IPA is used on this page (in particular the way that this page should be interpreted by those of us who speak neither RP nor GenAm).--JHJ 21:03, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Derby

I'm not really any good at IPA, but I'll try to write this in it afterwards. In words, though, North Americans (broadly) pronounce derby (and Derby) differently from Brits. We make it sound more like darby, but without the 'r', obviously; North Americans pronounce the er as in bird. While I'm thinking about the topic, North Americans and Brits tend to pronounce words ending in -shire differently, too. The North Americans tend to pronounce it as it's spelt, while we swallow everything after the sh into a schwa..

For Derby, in IPA, that's probably (if I get this right) ['dɝ.bi] for Americans and ['dɑː.bi] for Brits. For -shire, Americans seem to say [-ˌʃaɪr], while for Brits, it's more like [-ʃə]. Hope I got all of that IPA stuff right. Wooster (talk) 11:38, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

For Derby, you're right, but I think it's more suitable for American and British English pronunciation differences (where it is already mentioned) than this page. For -shire, it's quite complicated. I say "sher", [-ʃə(ɹ)], but some people in Britain say "sheer", [ʃɪə(ɹ)].--JHJ 20:43, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Okay. I'd forgotten about the "-sheer" counties; but surely all that does is increase the dispute? *evil grin* Wooster (talk) 14:33, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Aunt"

I don't think the OED entry should be taken as a reliable indicator that the PALM vowel pronunciation dominates in areas of Britain without the trap-bath split. I have [a] (the TRAP vowel) and my experience suggests that this is common (although not universal) in northern England. I think Wells (in Accents of English) says something about the isogloss being further north than for other BATH words, but I don't have the details to hand. I'd suggest basing the information on what he says.

Also, please note that what Americans call "flat A" and "broad A" are generally called the "short A" and "long A" respectively in Britain, so I think it's better to talk about presence or absence of the "trap-bath split", which is the name used at the Wikipedia article.

--JHJ 17:52, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Appalachian

Could someone possibly cover this discussion? Most of the country say "aych" whilst N. Carolinians say "ach". NC has ASU, though, and the university pronounces the name with the "ach", so I feel this needs to be covered.

[edit] What about oregano?

O-reg-an-o or ore-ga-no. --Colourblind 05:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese

It's a general feature of English phonology that words with final stress shift to penultimate stress when used attributively before a noun that has initial stress, so there's no reason to single out 'Chinese'. kwami 09:59, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Windy

This word, used in the introduction to explain syllable separation notation, had the markedly bizarre syllabification "wind.y". No dictionary I could find sanctions this pronunciation, and the coment noted that some work used the syllabification "win.dy" (which to me seems the only possible syllabification). Now, while we can argue about syllabification of words like fire, power, and Carl, or even bitten, I can't find any sources which syllabify "windy" at the morpheme boundary. I have found dictionaries that note that the word should be hyphenated between the d and the y, but hyphenation rules and syllabification rules are totally different. Are there any serious works that would syllabify it "wind.y"? And what rule do they use to justify such a syllabification? The maximum coda rule? Nohat 07:00, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't have it to hand, but I suspect Michael Hammond's book on English phonology would predict the syllabification "wind.y". I know he syllabifies "bulky" as "bulk.y", and that he does believe in a constraint "MaxCoda". However, I would take that as just one of the many problems with that book rather than an accurate reflection of English syllabification. —The preceding signed comment was added by Angr (talk • contribs). 07:06, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Gah! Sounds like an "interesting" book. I think the question of where to syllabify after a checked vowel is valid, so I changed the disagreeing example to cousin. M-W seems to prefer maximum onset regardless of vowel, whereas AHD seems to prefer a coda consonant after checked vowels. This seems like a more legitimate example of the disagreement among phonologists on how to syllabify English. Nohat 07:12, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Er, and while I could abide some rule that gave morphology credence in syllabification (i.e. preferring to syllabify at morpheme boundaries if possible [wind.y and bulk.y]), MaxCoda as a constraint seems a bit, well, what's the word for when something is clearly contrary to evidence before you? Nohat 07:16, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
I think the phrase you're looking for is "typical Hammond". (Or am I being catty?) —The preceding signed comment was added by Angr (talk • contribs). 08:22, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
You could look at Wells's article arguing for maximised codas in stressed syllables. It concentrates on RP, of course, but he has evidence from other dialects too. Personally, I think the syllabification dots clutter up the transcriptions in this article and should be removed (compare IPA transcriptions in British dictionaries, which don't use them), and the fact that linguists clearly differ on the subject tends to support that view.--JHJ 08:28, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes. I’m the one who wrote the whole stuff about windy and the very different opinions of phoneticians about English syllabification.
English isn’t my mother tongue, but, being a phonetician myself, I’m interested in this question. If you ask me, J. C. Wells’s article is worth reading with great attention: it’s very stimulating (as always with this author), and his arguments can’t be dismissed so quickly. As for me, I often think that I’m not far from being convinced by what Wells himself calls “a heretical but to me convincing theory of syllabification”.
Wells’s theory is particularly founded on the observation of the distribution of allophones. Let’s take our example of windy. Wells compares the verb brandish “wield, wave” with the compound noun bran-dish “dish for bran”: he notices that the /n/ sounds different in these two words, and the reason is that “/n/ is shorter in syllable-final clusters [...] than when a following consonant is in a separate syllable [...]”: so, brandish is /ˈbrænd.ɪʃ/ (with the same rhythm as standing /ˈstænd.ɪŋ/), and bran-dish is, rather naturally, /ˈbræn.dɪʃ/.
Nohat and Angr, so the syllabification ['wɪnd.i] is shocking for you, and you consider it to be counter-intuitive. That’s interesting for me, but also interesting is what Wells says: “[I]n the course of working on a new pronouncing dictionary ['LPD'] I have transcribed over 50,000 entries with explicit syllable boundaries throughout: indeed, that was the task which led me to formulate the principle. Once I had discovered the principle, it constituted a convenient decision procedure for uncertain cases without, so far as I am aware, any serious untoward results”.
Anyway, this remains a controversial question. And I agree with JHJ that the dots should be removed.
(P. S. Nohat, I can’t understand how Carl could possibly be pronounced as more than one syllable. And in what variety of English?)--Tom Hope
I would have thought the difference between brandish and bran-dish is not syllabification, but in the stress (or value) of the second vowel: for me, the former is /bɹændɨʃ/ and the latter is /bɹændɪʃ/. Carl in 2 syllables: [kɑɹl̩̩]. Rhymes with bottle [bɑɾl̩] and panel [pænl̩]. Nohat 22:33, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Forehead

Is there something besides "spelling pronunciation" we can use to describe the non-horrid pronunciation of forehead? -Acjelen 17:42, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Spelling pronunciation is the technical term for such things. Nohat 21:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sentient

I hate this one so much I can't even imagine approaching it NPOV. Thank you, generations of sci-fi TV and movies, for fostering the belief that sen-tee-ent is a word. Asat 19:40, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

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