Pronunciation watch

[gurnemanz]

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... for lat-lit and gurnemanz : if you look Very Carefully and Very Quickly At The Very Beginning of this clip you will see that the 'bus is moving off from Cearn Way -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBzobop3bVI

Nostalgia rocks!


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Thanks for that clip. My memory goes back to a green double decker, Route 409.

[french frank]

Precisely. Some folks round here just don't take these things seriously enough - or maybe it just doesn't matter to them.

Coming back to this, it was a point I mentioned to RW and he just shrugged it off.

The point is not that X mispronounced the word, it was that he did it three times without noticing. Indicating that he had never heard of the work. And pronounced it wrongly to boot.

[gurnemanz]

Talking of hard and soft Cs, it's less clear-cut with hard and soft Gs.

Gill: a quarter of a pint (soft G)
Gill: fish breathing aid (hard G)

Gillingham, Kent (soft G)
Gillingham, Dorset (hard G)

Italian spelling rules make things clear: "c" and "g" are soft before the front vowels "i" and "e" unless an "h" is added to reflect the hardening of the consonant, as in "funghi", "spaghetti", "chitarra" "bruschetta" (the latter systematically mispronounced hereabouts as "brushetta").

[french frank]

Italian spelling rules make things clear: "c" and "g" are soft before the front vowels "i" and "e" unless an "h" is added to reflect the hardening of the consonant, as in "funghi", "spaghetti", "chitarra" "bruschetta" (the latter systematically mispronounced hereabouts as "brushetta").

As far as English and all its 'anomalies' are concerned, the explanation is only in the origin of words, many of which are Germanic, others of Romance origin.

So gill a measurement is from Latin via French and obeys that pronunciation rule (soft before e and i) gentle, giant; other meanings are from Germanic: get, gill. Not our language being awkward.

[Serial_Apologist]

"bruschetta" (the latter systematically mispronounced hereabouts as "brushetta").

Thanks! One learns something "new" every day!

[vinteuil]

Not our language being awkward.

... except, perhaps, for gaol. *



( .. yes of course I kno the aetymologie - it's the spellin that's bafflin )


And schism - which I was brought up to pronounce as sizm ...

EDIT

* help is at hand, from the Speccie -

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/04/why-did-we-ever-spell-jail-gaol/

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[Serial_Apologist]

... except, perhaps, for gaol.



( .. yes of course I kno the aetymologie - it's the spellin that's bafflin )


And schism - which I was brought up to pronounce as sizm ...


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I've always written "jail".

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

As far as English and all its 'anomalies' are concerned, the explanation is only in the origin of words, many of which are Germanic, others of Romance origin.

So gill a measurement is from Latin via French and obeys that pronunciation rule (soft before e and i) gentle, giant; other meanings are from Germanic: get, gill. Not our language being awkward.

Does that mean Gillingham in Kent was founded by Romans or Normans, and the Dorset one was Saxon?

I suppose not, as ...ham is of Saxon origin.

[french frank]

Does that mean Gillingham in Kent was founded by Romans or Normans, and the Dorset one was Saxon?

Hang on a tick. I'll investigate. Place names don't really have to follow any rules.

I suppose not, as ...ham is of Saxon origin.

True, but it doesn't mean that the first half of the two words have identical origins. There are 'identical' place names which have completely different meanings.

[french frank]

Does that mean Gillingham in Kent was founded by Romans or Normans, and the Dorset one was Saxon?

Inconclusive, so I can only speculate.

Both have virtually identical forms in the Domesday book: Kent - Gelingeham; Dorset - Gelingham.

In Saxon times they would both have had the hard g; it might be that the Norman influence was stronger in Kent/SE and that the Saxon pronunciation persisted for longer further west. I'm not sure how Gillingham in Norfolk is pronounced.

Anyway, that's just an amateur suggestion. I really don't know

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Inconclusive, so I can only speculate.

Both have virtually identical forms in the Domesday book: Kent - Gelingeham; Dorset - Gelingham.

In Saxon times they would both have had the hard g; it might be that the Norman influence was stronger in Kent/SE and that the Saxon pronunciation persisted for longer further west. I'm not sure how Gillingham in Norfolk is pronounced.

Anyway, that's just an amateur suggestion. I really don't know

Thank you. I've only just caught up with your post.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Yesterday, I was given a DVD of trains on the Dawlish line. It's filmed with professional skill, but the commentary has issues, the main one being the constant reference to the River Exe, which he pronounces "Exie". It is pronounced like that in "Exeter", but not in "Exebridge" or "Exemouth", so I wonder . . .

[vinteuil]

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... I think "Exie" can only be a wilful 'witty' mispronunciation.

Wiki has : "The river's name derives from *Iska, a Common Brittonic root meaning "water". The same root separately developed into the English Axe and Esk, the Welsh Usk, and the Scottish whisky. [The word whisky (or whiskey) is an anglicisation of the Classical Gaelic word uisce (or uisge) meaning "water". Distilled alcohol was known in Latin as aqua vitae ("water of life"). This was translated to Classical Gaelic as uisce beatha ("water of life"), [ˈɯʃkʲə ˈbɛhə] in Scottish Gaelic... ]"


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[LMcD]

I suppose one can sit on the Banksy of the Exie....

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I suppose one can sit on the Banksy of the Exie....