Pronunciation of words

[punkypossum]

I was under the impression you were a German lass. You must have gone pretty native.

Yup, too much time spent over here I think! Funnily enough I got accused of dropping my aitches/haitches, H's or whatever they are earlier tonight - I'm still adamant I did NOT!!!

 

[Andy in Sig]

Sorry Andy - please take it as light hearted but there seem as many ways of spelling common words as there of pronuncing them.

e&oe

No need to apologise: I just read that with a weary sigh because the only place I make spelling mistakes is when on the internet. It's always homophonic pairs e.g. hear/here, to/two, and even through/threw.

I've found the explanation for this in the area of psycholinguistics (I'm working on a thesis at the moment) and it seems to be do with the processing mechanism for speech generation (although in this case the key difference is that one is generating typed words). What seems to happen is that you trigger the search for a word but the wrong homophone has a chance of winning out and it is usually the commoner one of the two as far as I can see i.e. of the two words, the one which occurs more often in everyday use. The really interesting thing is that I never make such mistakes when hand writing, so I think it is down to the mind having to pay attention to typing (however subconsciously: I'm a ten finger typist and don't have to think while doing it) while simultaneously seeking out lemmas (the posh term for pre-words as stored in the brain). What I suspect happens is that the mind, being distracted for milliseconds at a time, sometimes fails to filter the wrong homophone out.

I hope that makes sense. And if any of you have kids at school who need an explanation for failing spelling tests, feel free to print this out so that they can learn it and spout it to the teacher.

 

[asterix]

Not even 30! I grew up in an area 10 miles outside of Bath.

Local residents call it 'Barth'.

We all call it "Baff".

We're obviously not posh enough out in the c'untryside

IMO most residents call it 'Barth' just to make it sound posher than it really is, when in reality it's just a cramped traffic jam of a city.

That surprises me as I was at uni with a Bath native who got quite upset when I called it 'Barth', he said it was definitely 'Baff'.

I also upset someone from Crook for calling Barn'd Cassle, Barnard Carstle.

I am a true southerner tho' born nearer the south pole than the north one.

(and there's another thing: why do some people say Onvelope and others say envelope?)

 

[Andy in Sig]

Isn't Onvelope a Hyacinth Bucket thing whereby they think that by going for what they guess is the French pronunciation, they come over all sophisticated?

 

[Chutzpah]

That surprises me as I was at uni with a Bath native who got quite upset when I called it 'Barth', he said it was definitely 'Baff'.

I also upset someone from Crook for calling Barn'd Cassle, Barnard Carstle.

I am a true southerner tho' born nearer the south pole than the north one.

(and there's another thing: why do some people say Onvelope and others say envelope?)

To be fair, many 'proper' locals say Baff, the ones in the outer areas that have lived here all their lives. "Barth" is usually the preserve of the posh people that have moved into the centre.

Just IMO of course.

 

[byegad]

We have a chimney sweep who calls the chimney, Chymenee.

I used to work with a cockney who mentioned she was having a new baarfroom fitted.

 

[XmisterIS]

Yup, too much time spent over here I think! Funnily enough I got accused of dropping my aitches/haitches, H's or whatever they are earlier tonight - I'm still adamant I did NOT!!!

It would be interesting to know what German pronunciations are considered sloppy or incorrect! For example, my German friends use "un" instead of "und" in normal converstaion, but will always use "und" in polite conversation. Also, my friend Karen from Baden-Wuerttemberg says "bish" instead of "bist" when talking to her family, but always "bist" in polite converstation.

 

[Davidc]

The whole subject of evolution of language is interesting, and there are loads of books on it. Many of the changes we notice are short term and it isn't possible to predict which will survive and become tomorrows normality.

Most of the 'issues' noted above are just regional accentuations, and they're not going away in a hurry, others are just language evolving and only time will tell if they survive.

The only one which makes me cringe is pronunciation of the letter h as haitch rather than aitch. I don't know where it comes from, but I find the haitch version difficult to understand if something's being spelled out in a noisy environment.

 

[Andy in Sig]

Xmisteris,

There's a fundamentally different approach to this sort of thing in Germany in that regional accents and dialects are generally prized. For instance you won't find a politician suddenly poshing up his accent if he moves from regional to national level (although obviously dialect words will be dropped). The reason for this is probably the fact that one regional dialect emerged as the national standard (hochdeutsch or high German) and that is the dialect from around the Hannover area. In other words it is regionally bound.

The English equivalent is so called Oxford or BBC English. The "official" accent, known as Received Pronunciation (RP) is only spoken by 3-5% of the population. The odd thing about this dialect and particulary the accent is that they essentially have no regional base (you will find them spoken throughout the country), they are in fact much more class based. Oxford English is the language of the establishment. Standard English (which is Oxford English spoken with some regional accent and perhaps the odd dialect word) is routinely spoken by about 20% of the population and probably a bigger proportion is capable of switching to it when they deem it necessary.

So the upshot of all this is that if you use a bit of regional or dialectic English, some people will tend to tell you that you are making a mistake (they are wrong except in the case of perhaps a foreign learner who is genuinely getting his grammar wrong). Thus the native of, say, Somerset who says "Oi be a varmer" is simply showing that his dialect has preserved an older form of English as spoken in his region. It is just as correct as OE.

The same problem does not arise in Germany as dialects tend to be respected.

I don't know if that has addressed the point you made.

 

[guitarpete247]

I'm from South Yorkshire I am always amused at the way we can get away with probably the strongest expletive in the dictionary. Instead of saying "I couldn't" the pronunciation is "Ah C*nt".
And according to folklore we in Yorkshire are responsible for changing the sign at unmanned level crossings from "Wait her while lights are flashing" to Wait here when lights are flashing" We use the word while in a different way to the rest of the world I think .

 

[Davidc]

Or, as the late Ronnie Barker put it (link).

 

[Glow worm]

Mrs G says 'skedule' instead of the Anglicised flavour 'shedule' for Schedule. She is half Canadian so I can forgive her!

 

[upsidedown]

I don't mind people mispronouncing stuff. As long as they get the word "scon" right.

Yeah, so that it rhymes with phone.

 

[Andy in Sig]

I don't mind people mispronouncing stuff. As long as they get the word "scon" right.

We could go for complete meltdown and discuss whether or not while making the tea that goes with the scowns should have its milk in first or second and indeed whether or not one should be wearing a helmet while pouring.

 

[marinyork]

No need to apologise: I just read that with a weary sigh because the only place I make spelling mistakes is when on the internet. It's always homophonic pairs e.g. hear/here, to/two, and even through/threw.

It's common for school children or adults here to spell where and were the wrong way round because the correct pronunciation round here is where sounds like weir or we're and were sounds like w her. A similar but lesser effect is seen with there, their, thee but of course that's famously pronounced with a d rather than th.