'Eye-urn'?

Uriel   Sat Jan 10, 2009 11:53 pm GMT
I say EYE-urn for iron and VE-ickle for vehicle. Of course, I bring back the H for vehicular and the -RON for ironic.

If you giggle at Eye-rak and Eye-ran, Damian, you'd be tickled to know that Eye-talian still rears its ugly head from time to time. ;) I remember my best friend using it when I lived in New York in the late 80's (where we were lousy with Italian-American dairy farmers, so it wasn't for lack of familiarity with the the breed.) Iran and Iraq were pronounced with the full long I by everyone when I was growing up, and it's only in the last 20 years or so that the fashion has been to try to approximate the local pronunciation, so most adult Americans have had to consciously retrain themselves over the years -- and I'll admit to the occasional lapse myself. And while we may all feel comfortably superior to the hayseeds that still use the long I, we should probably keep in mind that we're probably not dropping the S in Paris a la francais, right? And we still have Seville and Florence and Venice making the rounds instead of Sevilla and Firenze and Venezia (which is just a brand name as far as I'm concerned). And we don't smack foreigners for saying Londres and Nueva York!
Achab   Sun Jan 11, 2009 5:07 am GMT
Another Guest,

Care to expand?

To my understanding, the final G of a word ending in -ing remains silent, even though it somewhat perturbates the pronunciation of the N that comes before it. Namely, it makes that N more longish.

Feel free to disprove what I just said if you find it incorrect. If I need to be enlightened on the subject, go ahead.

With every god wish,

Achab
Achab   Sun Jan 11, 2009 5:13 am GMT
And just to make sure you don't think there's an outburst of affected or fanatical religiosity going on here, it was supposed to be "good wishes", not "god wishes"... LOL

Achab
choose   Sun Jan 11, 2009 5:44 am GMT
>>I found this by chance, while searching for another similar discussion I once read. This is interesting:

http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/174535/results <<

OMG, I never paid attn to how 'orange' is pronounced until now. I always pronounced it the way it was written. Thanks for the link, Johnny.
You're right, teachers are dumb when it comes to highlighting pronunciations.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/orange
choose   Sun Jan 11, 2009 5:46 am GMT
So both 'ant' and 'aunt' are pronounced the same way? I'd thought differently.
choose   Sun Jan 11, 2009 5:55 am GMT
How do you pronounce the word "caramel"?

31% (148) "cahr-mull"
39% (184) "care-a-mell"
18% (87) "cahr-a-mell"
7% (37) Any of these
1% (9) None of these
========================
I've always heard and pronounced it the first option. Wasn't aware that many people do the 2nd one.
Lazar   Sun Jan 11, 2009 6:58 am GMT
<<So both 'ant' and 'aunt' are pronounced the same way?>>

It depends on the dialect. In southern England, Australia, New Zealand, and New England (where I live), they pronounce "aunt" with /ɑ:/, so it's distinct from "ant". In most of the US, and (if I'm not mistaken) in Canada and northern England, they pronounce "aunt" with /æ/, so it's homophonous with "ant".

<<How do you pronounce the word "caramel"?

31% (148) "cahr-mull"
39% (184) "care-a-mell"
18% (87) "cahr-a-mell"
7% (37) Any of these
1% (9) None of these>>

My answer would be "none of the above". I pronounce it as [ˈkʰæɹəmɫ̩], or "carra-mull". That poll is deficient because it doesn't include people (like me) who lack the Mary-merry-marry merger, and it doesn't include all the combinations of initial vowel, medial vowel and final vowel.

<<OMG, I never paid attn to how 'orange' is pronounced until now. I always pronounced it the way it was written.>>

But it doesn't really make sense to say that you pronounce it as it is written, because English spelling is so diverse and unpredictable. If you have a New York accent, then pronouncing "foreign" and "orange" with an "ah"-like sound would be consistent with how you treat <o> in a large body of words. In this case, my response would again be "none of the above", because in my Massachusetts dialect, I pronounce it as [ˈɒ:ɹəndʒ], or "aw-ringe".
Travis   Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:44 am GMT
One thing that is a bit interesting about these sorts of words is how there are not only pronunciations which are normally used, but also that certain other pronunciations have a status of being the "alternate pretentious pronunciation". For instance, in the dialect here, "carmel" is normally [ˈkʰɑ̃ːʁmɯ(ː)], but at the same time has as an accepted alternate pronunciation [ˈkʰɛ̝ːʁə̃ːmɜ(ː)ɯ̯] with strongly pretentious connotations. Likewise, while "aunt" is normally [ˈɛ̞̃ʔ(t)]~[ˈɛ̞̃nt] here, there is the widely recognized alternate pronunciation [ˈɑ̃ʔ(t)]~[ˈɑ̃nt] here, which likewise has pretentious connotations. Note that, in particular, [ɑ̃] should not be possible in "aunt" in the dialects around here, and thus the use of such a pronunciation is likely a dialect borrowing in and of itself, likely carrying perceptions of the dialects borrowed from with it.
Travis   Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:47 am GMT
Ack, that should be "caramel" above - shows how the default pronunciation versus alternate pronunciation going on here has affected even my spelling of the word when not thinking about it - heh.
Another Guest   Sun Jan 11, 2009 9:01 am GMT
I heard one person pronounce "iron" as a one-syllable word. It took me a while to figure out what she meant.

Back during the previous Winter Olympics Games, they usually spelled the city as "Torino", but it seemed like every announcer had a different pronunciation.

Achab said:
<To my understanding, the final G of a word ending in -ing remains silent, even though it somewhat perturbates the pronunciation of the N that comes before it. Namely, it makes that N more longish.>
That I perceive it as a separate letter rather than simply a pertubation of the [n] may be due to the orthography influencing how I interpret the phonetics.

Here's a "correct" pronunciation of "running": http://forvo.com/word/running/

Lazar said:
<My answer would be "none of the above". I pronounce it as [ˈkʰæɹəmɫ̩], or "carra-mull". That poll is deficient because it doesn't include people (like me) who lack the Mary-merry-marry merger, and it doesn't include all the combinations of initial vowel, medial vowel and final vowel.>
Well, it did include the "both" and "neither" options. The idea was to find out which was the better approximation of your pronunciation, not to precisely record it.

Travis said:
<Ack, that should be "caramel" above - shows how the default pronunciation versus alternate pronunciation going on here has affected even my spelling of the word when not thinking about it - heh.>
Yeah, I think that in another hundred years that may very well be an accepted orthographic variant in addition to being a phonetic variant. Growing up, I just thought there were two words that sounded a lot alike that happened to refer to similar things. Interestingly, it's never [care-a-ma-lize], always [carmalize]. But according to the dictionary, the correct pronunciation of "carmel" is kär-mĕl'.
choose   Sun Jan 11, 2009 11:13 am GMT
>If you have a New York accent, then pronouncing "foreign" and "orange" with an "ah"-like sound would be consistent with how you treat <o> in a large body of words.<

No Lazar, I used to pronounce it as (let's see if I can put it to letters) "aw-rahng," "as it's written" where an 'a,' not 'i' comes after the 'or.'
Uriel   Sun Jan 11, 2009 10:35 pm GMT
I say "ornj" (one syllable) for orange and care-a-mell for caramel. ;) Those are the common pronunciations I've always heard, although car-mel is fairly common as well (although it grates on my ears).