Talk:List of words of disputed pronunciation

Are the pronunciations in italics and brackets to the right of each word the correct pronunciations, or the mis-pronunciations? This isn't clear from the text. Ideally, the article would state first the `correct' pronunciation, followed by a list of mis-pronunciations with indications as to their likely regions (because a lot of the words in the list seem, to me, to be mispronounced only in certain parts of the world, rather than by all Anglophones. In fact, at the risk of raising some ire, most of the non-placename words seem to be ones mispronounced by American English speakers).
Are 'local' pronunciations defined, a priori, to be the correct ones? Taking Arkansas as an example, the note immediately after the word (which, in general, seem to be explanations of mispronunciations) is actually a definition of the correct pronunciation...a bit confusing.
Chinese ... "is the pronunciation recognised by some" (my italics)...since when is an ill-defined and vague 'some' the authority on pronunciation? This needs more rigour, imo.

charlieF 09:51 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)

I think this article should be merged to mispronounciation. Any thought? I will, if there seems no objection. -- Taku 02:21 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

I STRONGLY object! "Mispronunciation" is POV. -- Zoe

Not so, in general. While no doubt that applies in some cases, in others there genuinely is an increase in difficulty in communicating - particularly if two words come to sound similar as a result. Of course the reverse can be the case, when people deliberately choose "wrong" pronunciations in order to improve communication (as in radio operators' deliberate sounding of the final "e" on "five" and "nine" to give "five-er" and "nine-er"). Anyhow, there really are some objectively meaningful, non-subjective mispronunciations. PML.

Then what about mispronounciation article? "Disputed pronounciation" iteself is already POV. Besides, the section called List of words of disputed pronounciation is placed in mispronounciation doesn't mean they are mispronounciation at all. It simply means they are discussed in the context of mispronounciation. -- Taku 02:30 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

I'd have to object too. Much as "mispronounciations" often bug the hell out of me (especially nu-kyu-ler), it's really a POV issue, especially in cases where a proper name is mispronounced unanimously by the locals (for example, a street "Eldorado" in my hometown was always "El-do-rah-do"; the city of Lima, OH is called "Lime-uh" rather than "Lee-ma" by every sensible person in NW Ohio, as well as the Toronto/Tronna pronounciation given in this article). I think disputed or differentiated pronounciation is a much better classification. -- 24.210.220.34 oops, wasn't logged in. -- Wapcaplet

Though, on second thought, as some of the prior discussion on this article indicates, this list could quickly become ridiculous and useless. There are simply way too many ways to pronounce words in all the different languages and localities in the world. Maybe it shouldn't even be here... -- Wapcaplet

Wasn't this page split off of a "mispronunciation" list? -- goatasaur

I mean the problem is we basically don't want to have a list of something article in the first place. Every article in wikipedia should be about something and this is not something. We want to discuss why the same spellings are pronounced differently and why it is claimed a mispronounciation. Yes, pronounciation is a really POV issue. But we need to cover POV issues in NPOV manners. Is this current article is good enough? Of couse, not. -- Taku 03:56 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

Hello. This article wasn't "split off" from list of words commonly mispronounced. It originally was that article, but I moved it here to make the title NPOV. I also made a first attempt at NPOVisation of the contents. It was not intended to be a separate article from the mispronunciation one, but just a NPOVisation of it. All along, the page was a list of words for which the pronunciations are (a) different for different people, and (b) argued about. So I changed the title to reflect that. The word "disputed", in its simplest usage, just means that there are people who enagage in disputes (in the sense of arguments, or debates) about these matters. It is not a point of view that the pronunciation of these words is disputed; anyone can observe such disputes occurring - many of them on this very talk page! (Or at least on the original version of it.) Unfortunately, the matter is complicated in that the verb "to dispute" also has another meaning: "to question the truth or validity of". But even with this meaning, the word is still applicable. For each of the words in the list, there exists at least one pronunciation which some people question the validity of. So even though I didn't originally mean the word in this way, it still seems to me appropriate enough.

Sadly, many people misunderstood my intentions. Tannin put forward the opinion that there really are objectively correct ways of pronouncing at least some words, so that the old title deserved an article. So he added some content to that article (which was at that time just a redirect), with the result that there were now two articles where previously there had been only one. I disagreed with this action, and proposed that the contents of list of words commonly mispronounced should be merged back into this one. Then Zoe came along and made repeated attempts to destroy this article, even though she seemed to arguing exactly the same point that I was - that the word "mispronunciation" was intrinsically POV. (I asked her to point out where in the article it made any assertions about anything being mispronounced, but she didn't, so I still have no idea what her objection was.) At this point I got too annoyed to carry on, and decided to leave the article until some later date.

It still needs work, of course, and I'm still intending to do some things to it. But I don't think it is useless. Perhaps, since so many people don't understand the title, it should be moved again. But even if the title is objected to, I still maintain that:-

the article is not useless, as there certainly are some words whose pronunciations arouse strong feelings in some people, and a comprehensive encyclopaedia should tell us what these words are and why, and
calling one pronunciation "right" and another "wrong" is inescapably POV, so that the contents of the article at list of words commonly mispronounced should be merged into this article, with list of words commonly mispronounced itself reverted to a redirect.

Okay, so do people still want to dispute either of these two points? :) -- Oliver P. 03:20 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

On the priviso that the list does not contain words where the correct pronunciation is undisputed and the mangled version simply wrong. that's OK with me. However, I must point out a fundamental error in logic in the above: if it is POV to call one P "right" and another P "wrong (everyone agrees on this), and if opinions as to the range of the acceptable vary considerably (another premise to which all agree), then taking a position, any position on the "rightness" or "wrongness" of an attitude towards pronunciation is and must be equally POV. In other words, arguing that all pronunciations are equally valid is every bit as POV as arguing the reverse. A subtle point? Yes. A difficult point? No. An important point? Absolutely! Consider the difference between atheisim and agnosticism: it is vast. To regard all pronunciations as valid is the linguistic equivalent of hard-line atheisim. We cannot do that here. Tannin

I made no error of logic in the above, regarding the POV issue. (I think I did make an error in my discussion of the meaning of the word "disputed", but I'll come to that.) I fully agree with you that taking any position on the "rightness" or "wrongness" of an attitude towards pronunciation is and must be POV. That is why the article takes no such position. It is why the page is not, and can never be, about the "rightness" or "wrongness" of any pronunciation. That's what I've been saying all along. This page is just about words for which pronunciations exist which some people dispute. And I think I did mean "dispute" in the sense of "question the truth or validity of", after all. If someone pronounces "Melbourne" as "Mel-BORN", and you tell them that they're wrong, then you are disputing their pronunciation of the word. You misunderstand the issue when you speak of words for which "the correct pronunciation is undisputed". For Wikipedia purposes, we can't even say that there is a "correct" pronunciation. (And, as you point out, we can't say that there isn't, either.) All we can report on, within the NPOV policy, is the fact that some people dispute the pronunciations of some others. And that is what this article is for. I hope that clarifies things. But since a large part of the misunderstandings going on here (on both sides) are related to the word "dispute", I think we need to change that in the title. The problem is, I can't think of a better way of phrasing it right now. List of words commonly pronounced in ways which other people don't like is a bit unwieldy. ;) -- Oliver P. 13:54 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Ugh. I've just discovered this page and I hate it and also think it should be deleted. BUT I can't leave it alone as it is so I've tweaked a few things. Here are some notes to justify myself on some of my changes. First, capitals are usually used for stress in pronunciation guides, not emphasis of the difference: so we're not comapring feb-U-ary to feb-RU-ary. Second, I prefer to keep as much of the original spelling as is clear, so I've changed arken-saw and ar-KAN-zus to AR-kan-saw and ar-KAN-zas, because this marks out the differences and doesn't raise irrelevant questions about why -zus when it's just a neutral vowel. Third: Reich is [raIC] with the sh-like ich-laut, not [raIk]. Fourth: 'mores' would originally have been (in English) MOR-eez with the old-fashioned English pronunciation of Latin, and the change to -ayz came about when (c. 1900) they started teaching the 'new' pronunciation). -- I've added a couple of new words or names but I really don't think this has much value in this form. Gritchka 12:32 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yet another bone to pick with this controversial page. There are a variety of pronunciations for Vincent Van Gogh's name. Most Americans use a version similar to the French pronunciation: Van Go. The current page cites Van Gok as correct, but this is actually the German pronunciation of his name, and Vincent Van Gogh was Dutch, not German. The Dutch pronunciation of the letter G is like the throaty sound in chutzpah, so Van Gogh's name in Dutch is fon KHOKH--a pronunciation that doesn't work well in spoken English.

In other words, I think the "Van Gogh" should be deleted. Anyone object to that? --Thirdreel 03:43, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A point nobody else seems to have brought up. In all of these pages, pronunciations are given using the popular US system (e.g. Ar-KAN-zus, feb-RU-ary, etc), but surely this system is useless for describing pronunciation, since you already have to know how to pronounce the elements of the breakdown! For example, who says 'oo' is pronounced "ooh" (see, I can't even write it in a way that explains this unambiguously), if you'd never heard this sound, you might think it was sounded "oh". This whole system is self-referential and does not give absolute sound values to syllables. Wouldn't it be better to use the International Phonetic Alphabet? It is supported by Unicode. It may look arcane, but at least every phoneme has a distinct and regular written form, there can be no argument about how something is pronounced, once the system is understood. I can see one obvious problem with the international alphabet - it's darn hard to type - a solution to this is to use SAMPA. GRAHAMUK 06:26, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

cafe - properly caff-fay, but more usually caff.

Huh? Does this mean that "caff" is more often given in dictionaries today than "caff-FAY" is, or that people pronounce it more often as "caff" in practice? What is this supposed to mean?

And by the way, shouldn't the division be con-TRO-ver-sy rather than con-TROV-er-sy, since we want to keep the sound of the long vowel? Wiwaxia 06:56, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I think this is a difference between written and spoken usage - colloquially, many people will say "caff", as a slang term for café, but I'd say it was slang rather than a different pronunciation of the original word. Café (caff-ay) is still the correct word and pronunciation. But this is just my view. GRAHAMUK 07:00, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC).

Isn't caff British slang for a cafe? Dysprosia 06:58, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

They are talking about the word "café", as in small, coffeeshop-like, restaurant aren't they? I've never heard anything other than "caff-FAY" in my LIFE! Wiwaxia 07:07, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Maybe they mean the mispronunciation of the é to render café as "kay'fe" or something similar... Dysprosia 07:17, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Possibly, but I've never heard it mispronounced. On another note, aren't Lima and lima distinguished homographs? (With it being LIGH-muh for the bean but LEE-muh for the capital?) Wiwaxia 13:54, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)

caff is slang and is pronounced more like "kaf", the word cafe is pronounced kaf-ay (or kaf-eh alternate spelling of same pronunciation). -- sgb 2003-09-04

I redid this page and put it at List of words of disputed pronunciation/IPA because I used IPA for all the pronunciations, which is probably going to be controversial. It is, however, far more precise than the ad-hoc pronunciation schemes on the current page, and I also rewrote all the commentary for the words, using research from dictionaries. If no one objects, I'll move the subpage to here in 1 week Nohat 21:18, 2003 Sep 4 (UTC)

The fact that they don't render well, IMO, means this version is not helpful - and even if they did I still wouldn't understand it. (for arctic, i get "box box box - t box k") How about IPA or Sampa and something understandable as well? -- SGB 2003-09-05

Surely ["{.pr@.kAt], ["eI.pr@.kAt] and ["kAn.tr@.%v@r.si] - to my ears, almost ap-ricat, ape-ricat and cantroversy - are US pronounciations and ought to be distinguished as such. Or if there's some general rule that US SAMPA-A goes to RP SAMPA-Q maybe it should be pointed out.

But regardless, I'd be surprised if either ap-ricat or ap-ricot (["{.pr@.kAt] or ["{.pr@.kQt]) is standard here in the UK. My (admittedly not very big) dictionary just gives one version, something like ["eI.pr@.kQt] (ape-ricot).

On the other hand, there's a guy at work who seems convinced that "ceramic" is pronounced "keramic", so maybe I will be surprised. Andy G 21:31, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I always pronounce apricot ["eI.pr@.kAt], as most native Californians do. After moving to the east coast I heard ["}.pr@.kAt] often, which is why I included it here. Among Americans, there seem to be large groups that pronounce the first vowel both ways.

As for SAMPA-Q vs SAMPA-A, well it's a sticky issue. From what I know, there are three of what we might call "<A> sounds" in BrE (Q, A:, and {) and two in AmE (A, {). The correspondence is fiendishly unpredictable. Br-Q always corresponds to AmE-A (hot), but sometimes BrE-A: corresponds to AmE-A (father), and sometimes to AmE-{ (bath). BrE-{ always corresponds to AmE-{ (cat). These correspondences are for regular words. Words that have idiosyncratic pronunciations in either BrE or AmE don't count here. Therefore an American can't know if a word that is pronounced with A in AmE is pronounced Q or A: in BrE and if a word that is pronounced with { in AmE is pronounced with { or A: in BrE. Similarly, a British person can't know if a word that is pronouced with A: in BrE is pronounced with A or { in AmE. If we wanted to have a scheme that represented both BrE and AmE using the same symbols, there would have to be at least four (one each for "hot", "father", "bath", and "cat"). One suggestion would be to use SAMPA Q, A, {, and a, which correspond to IPA [ɒ], [ɑ], [æ] and [a], using [a] for those words which are pronounced A: in BrE and { in AmE, but this doesn't seem ideal. I think that the different pronunciations should be indicated separately, but since this page is about disputed pronunciations and not about the differences between BrE and AmE, I didn't think it was necessary to include BrE versions of everything. I think though, that for the ambiguous words it would be helpful. If you identify the words that seem wrong, like "apricot", we can work out how best to transcribe them by including BrE pronunciations as well.

The pronunciations on this page are probably all essentially American pronunciations, unless they are described as being in OED, and even then, in some cases, I considered equivalent pronunciations that had non-rhotic vowels in OED and rhotics in American dictionaries. I don't think this is the ideal way to do it, but I'm not sure what is. I think one thing that is for certain is that everything is much more precise (if not necessarily clearer) than it was before. And certainly my research into what pronunciations are in which dictionary is much more factual and neutral than what was previously here. There has been some discussion on the lists about standardizing how Wikipedia does pronunciations but no consesus has been reached. For now I guess probably a note that these are (mostly) American pronunciations is in order.

--Nohat 23:52, 2003 Sep 23 (UTC)

I have recently heard a Scotsman say "ap-ricot" (["{.pr@.kQt]) so I was wrong. But Daniel Quinlan has deleted it anyway. Andy G 18:17, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Contents

1 Spelling!

2 Centimeter, envelope, envoy - and kilometer

3 "English Speakers"

4 What are...

5 reich and the consonant sound of "she"

6 Some US place names

7 "often", and its "preferred British pronunciation"

8 Unicode

9 Oregon, Newark

10 Route

11 Marylebone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marylebone)

12 Some changes

13 Proposed move to Wiktionary

14 Uranus

15 Linux

16 Wednesday and scone

Spelling!

Reading this page, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that some contributors actually believe that the word 'pronunciation' is spelt 'pronOunciation'. Can this really be so, or are there just a large number of typos here?

It seems like an easily understandable typo, as the verb 'pronounce' is spelled with 'ou'. The page title is correct, and on the actual page, there was only one such misspelling, and I have fixed it.

-- Nohat 15:05, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Centimeter, envelope, envoy - and kilometer

Forgive me for not making the entries, I'm not up to speed on the phonetic alphabet... issue is whether the "en" is pronounced as in "enter," or like the "on" in "song." The three words noted above are in different stages of Anglicization. For some reason, in my experience it is not uncommon for medical people have a distinct tendency to pronounce "centigrade" and "centimeter" as "sahntigrade" and "sahntimeter." This is not one of the pronunciations given in AHD4 and is not used within the general scientific community. "ahnvelope" is still heard, but old-fashioned. "Ahnvoy" was still the more frequent pronunciation until fairly recently. Dpbsmith 20:35, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I don't think ayone would say "sahntigrade" or "sahntimetre" in the UK but then we seem to use French-style spelling and English-stlye pronunciation while the US (which you're describing, I presume) does the opposite. But "ahnvelope" would be possible among the very posh.

On a related point, what about kilometres? Logic favours "Killa-meters" but many peolpe say "Kee-lommeters". Andy G 02:02, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Same rhyme and rhythm as centimetres, millimetres, &c., but on U.S. television the other pronunciation appears universal. I always say "ahnvoy", and almost always "ahnvelope", here on the Canadian prairies.

What about schedule; is it "skejool" or "shejool"? —Michael Z. 22:18, 2004 Sep 20 (UTC)

"English Speakers"

We need to distinguish "Speakers of English" from "Speakers who are English". When you're talking about a Scottish word and then say "English speakers" it's very ambiguous. Andy G 02:02, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I would think it would be obvious by a phrase "XXX speakers", XXX is the name of a language. If you mean people from England, you would say English people. Nohat 19:02, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What are...

Of the English words that are commonly pronounced in a way no dictionary accepts, what are the 10 most common?? 66.245.100.136 23:48, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This depends on your definition of dictionary. There are dictionaries that concern themselves with including all "non-standard" pronunciations... --Chinasaur 05:24, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This article lists 2 such words, indict and mortgage. 66.245.92.131 23:39, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

reich and the consonant sound of "she"

copied from above:

Reich is [raIC] with the sh-like ich-laut, not [raIk].

Gritchka 12:32 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I am mystifyed by the paragraph on reich that currently sounds:

reich - (1) [ʁaɪç] [R\aIC], (2) [ɹɑɪx] [raIx], (3) [ɹɑɪk] [raIk], (4) [ɹɑɪtʃ] [raItS]
The German pronunciation is approximately like (1), and the closest pronunciation using sounds of English is (3), which is the most common pronunciation. Some English speakers have the [x] [x] sound (like in 'loch' and 'chanukah') and so may produce (2). (4) is uncommon, but is how composer Steve Reich pronounces his name.

Since I'm no native English speaker myself, I think it would be more appropriate if someone else changed what I understand as an error above.

The final sound in reich is, as far as I'm concerned, close to the same, but not really the same, as the initial sound in she, i.e. SAMPA [S]. In German, the proper sound is SAMPA [C]. Both sounds are voiceless fricatives, although they are articulated differently. In German both sounds are in use, which is why the difference must be emphasized for English students of German, but as the closest pronunciation using sounds of English [S] would do perfectly well — in my private and humble opinion.

Thus I think it's an error to write that [raIk] should be the closest pronunciation using sounds of English, as I think that position ought to be occupied by [raIS], or maybe [rajS].

I've no knowledge on how usual different pronounciations are, and no reason to doubt that [raIk] should be the most common, but maybe it would be a good idea to point out that the pronounciation (2) with [x] is more wrong than the other?
--Ruhrjung 23:35, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

To English-speakers' ears, I think, any voiceless fricative back of [ʃ] (namely [ç], [x], and [χ]) gets filed into the category of "guttural fricatives" and gets pronounced as [x] if the speaker has that sound; otherwise, it gets pronounced as [k] or [h] depending on the context. Typically, [h] gets used word-initially, and [k] gets used otherwise. English dictionaries do sometimes give [ɹɑɪʃ] as a possible pronounciation for "reich" [1] (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=reich&x=0&y=0), but pronunciations with [k] and [x] are more common. [2] (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=reich), [3] (http://www.bartleby.com/61/0/R0130025.html), [4] (http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict?in=reich&stress=-s) Nohat 18:59, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've never heard reich pronounced as [ɹaɪʃ], only as [ɹaɪk]. From what I've seen on various pages in Wikipedia (see Voiceless palatal fricative) and the Internet, the closest sound to the German [ç] in English is the sound of 'h' when it is followed by a 'u' in words such as human /hjumən/ or [çumən]. I think it's accurate enough to say that the [hj] sound is more closer to the [ç] sound than the [ʃ] sound. -- AxSkov 08:48, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps, but /hj/ doesn't occur in syllable codas in English, so it is unlikely a native speaker would spontaneously end a borrowed word with the sound [ç]. /h/ and h-like sounds just don't occur at the ends of words in English, even in borrowed words. Also, the supposed [ç] sound of English human is not really pronounced like the [ç] sound of German reich—the English [ç] is very lightly if at all fricated at the palatal point of constriction. Most of the noise comes from the glottalic constriction of the [h]. In German, on the other hand, [ç] is heavily fricated at the palatal point of constriction.Nohat 16:16, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

My music history professor (not a native speaker of English) claims that the composer Steve Reich pronounces his name [reIk] and not [raItS] -- does anyone know something on this subject, whom should you trust?
-- valter 07:34, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Certain dialects, varieties and accents in fact do pronounce the sound at the end of Reich as a hard k, and it is not uncommon among English (and Danish) speakers. I don't know, however, how the composer pronounces his own family name, but [raIS] seems much more likely to me than [raItS]. Ruhrjung 22:07, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)

For reference: the pronunciation of family names in English is famously idiosyncratic. From a fellow composer of Reich who has actually met the man, the name is in fact pronounced [raItS]. Nohat 09:26, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Some US place names

Just found these in a mailing list, neither of them yet mentioned here:

My next-door neighbor broke me of saying "Lou-eez-i-an-a" like a Yankee (even though I am one) and inculcated "Looz-i-an-a". And how many people know that Pierre, South Dakota is pronounced "Peer"?

— Hippietrail 06:36, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Another place name not mentioned on the list that is frequently mispronounced (at least, from my view, being a native) is Nevada. Most people outside the state pronounce it n@-VAH-d@, while natives (and people from surrounding states) say n@-VA-d@, where the first "a" is like the a in "apple". I wanted to add it to the wikipedia article, but I do not know IPA or anything of the sort.

--68.224.111.84 08:12, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"often", and its "preferred British pronunciation"

"Many dictionaries list (2) as the preferred British pronunciation." -- Could we have some citations pro and con? This sounds wrong to me, but I'd like to see what the dictionaries we're using say. Marnanel 22:46, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Oxford English dictionary gives the following as pronunciation for "often":

Brit. /ˈɒf(t)n/, /ˈɒftən/, U.S. /ˈɔf(ə)n/, /ˈɑft(ə)n/

Perhaps it shouldn't say "many dictionaries" Nohat 18:44, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree, and I'll change it to "some," unless anyone has any objections. In addition, the O.E.D. says, "Several orthoepists of the 16th and 17th centuries, including Hart, Bullokar, Robinson, Gil, and Hodges, give a pronunciation with medial -t-. Others, including Coles, Young, Strong, and Brown, record a pronunciation without -t-, which, despite its use in the 16th cent. by Elizabeth I, seems to have been avoided by careful speakers in the 17th cent... Loss of t after f occurs in other cases; cf. SOFTEN v., and also RAFT n.1, HAFT n.1, etc. The pronunciation with -t- has frequently been considered to be hypercorrection in recent times: see for example H. W. Fowler Mod. Eng. Usage (1926), s.v."

Fowler says: "The sounding of the t, which as the OED says is 'not recognized by the dictionaries', is practised by two oddly consorted classes—the academic speakers who affect a more precise enunciation than their neighbours' and insist on de'vil & pi'ktur instead of de'vl & pi'kcher, & the uneasy half-literatues who like to prove that they can spell by calling hour and medicine howr & me'disin instead of owr & me'dsn." Lesgles 22:44, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Unicode

I made a template to helps get Unicode displaying right on IE (and other browsers?). Try this:

ˈɑɹ.tɪk ==> ˈɑɹ.tɪk
{{Unicode|ˈɑɹ.tɪk}} ==> Template:Unicode

If the two both appear in Unicode characters, then your browser is not so deficient as IE6. If the two both appear as dead boxes, then your browser is more deficient than IE6.

Seems to me as long as we have the IPA stuff in the article, we may as well implement it like this so that it works in more browsers. I'll do a quick regexp to change the whole article if people are cool with that. --Chinasaur 06:10, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

~~Ah crap, I totally forgot about the 5 templates per page limit. I guess this won't work; any suggestions? --Chinasaur 06:41, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)~~

I guess this will start working soon since in the new versions of MediaWiki the restriction is dropped. I'll make the regexp change when that happens unless there are objections. --Chinasaur 07:16, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, although I am hopefully understandably hesitant to specify Microsoft-specific fonts. However, since most non-IE browsers display the IPA fine regardless of font, I guess it doesn't really matter. Nohat 18:33, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oregon, Newark

Most people outside Oregon pronounce it "ore-eh-GONE", while most people from Oregon pronounce it "ORE-eh-guhn".

Newark is also pronounced differently in different areas: it's either "NEW-uhrk" (said quickly, almost like "nork") or "new ark" as two distinct words. Don't know if that's notable enough to make it here.

– User:Flamurai/Signature 05:04, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Route

I've hestitated adding this to the page, as I'm unsure of its current status. How about 'route'? In UK English, this is pronounced 'root', and the OED agrees. I've heard Americans using 'rowt', which is the UK pronunciation of 'rout'. It's caused some confusion in discussions, making people think we're retreating, so it may be worth adding. --11:46, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, in American English, both pronunciations are widely used. There are some set words and phrases that use one pronunciation or the other, such as "Route 66" which is always "root 66", but the computer networking device called a "router" (which is a device that routes, not a device that routs) is always pronounced "router" and never "rooter". For general usage, both pronunciations are widely used and recognized; some speakers even use both. In my experience, the "rout" pronunciation is more likely when the word is used as a verb than as a noun, but I don't think there is substantial evidence in favor of one pronunciation or the other. Nohat 19:18, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Marylebone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marylebone)

Famous for its varied pronunciations? Ojw 18:02, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Some changes

I've added information based on two pronunciation dictionaries hitherto left out of the discussion: Kenyon & Knott's Pronouncing Dictionary of American English and Wells' Longman Pronunciation Dictionary which includes both RP and (a British person's perception of) General American. I did delete the following sentence from the "Linux" entry, because it seemed more confusing than helpful:

Example words are, "bean" vs. "bin" and "who'd" vs "hood". Swedish has equivalent distinctions with e.g. the words sil [sil] "strainer" vs. sill [sIl] "herring" and bot [but] "penance" vs. bott [bUt] "lived".

--Angr 00:15, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Proposed move to Wiktionary

I removed the notice that this article should be moved to Wiktionary because it should not. It is not a definition or list of definitions. It is a list of linguistic trivia. Definitions belong in Wiktionary; linguistic trivia belongs in Wikipedia. If you disagree with the policy, then go discuss at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not. Nohat 18:36, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think you should read what is there at WP:WWIN first. This is a direct quote from rule #3 under WP is not a dictionary:

WP is not: "A usage guide, or slang and idiom guide. Wikipedia is not in the business of saying how words, idioms, etc., are used. We aren't teaching people how to talk like a leet cracker or a Cockney chimney-sweep. However, it may be important in the context of an encyclopedia article to describe just how a word is used. E.g., the article on freedom will, if it doesn't already, have a discussion about this. In some special cases an article about an essential piece of slang may be appropriate."

This article is not in the context of anything encyclopedic. It is only about pronunciation, and as such belongs in the Wiktionary. This does not mean that it will be lost, just moved.--Dmcdevit 18:55, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This article is not a usage guide, or slang or idiom guide. It is a list of words of disputed pronunciation with information about the disputed pronunciations. There are tons and tons of articles on Wikipedia which consist of little more than lists of trivial minutiae. The fact that the trivial minutiae in this article happens to be linguistic in nature does not mean that it should necessarily be removed from Wikipedia. The "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" policy was invented to avoid a situation where Wikipedia is full of one-sentence articles defining terms. Use of that policy to justify removing a long, old article which has been contributed to by a number of contributors over a period of years is a perversion of the original intent of that policy. I of course have no problem with this information also being at Wiktionary, but there is no consensus-supported policy that that justifies this article being removed from Wikipedia. Nohat 19:22, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

First off, I partly agree with you. I certainly don't think it should be deleted, or I would have listed it (where not a single person would vote for its deletion, I think). I do think that its contents should at the very least be moved to Wiktionary as well as being here. (note, the "move to Wiktionary" template does not say it will be deleted). Having said that, unless this article can provide some kind of encyclopedic context to many of the entries, they are simply idiomatic pronunciations. By the way, appealing to other articles you view as less worthy is simply throwing out a red herring, especially as I do not dispute the article because of triviality, but because of lack of encyclopedicity (which I think should be a word :) ). I hope I am making myself clear.--Dmcdevit 19:55, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps then what is needed is a "copy to Wiktionary" template that indicates that this content is a good candidate to be content at Wiktionary without making any implications (real or imagined) that the content does not belong at Wikipedia. I can't really reply to any of your other points because it's not clear to me what the difference between "triviality" and a "lack of encyclopedicity" is. Also, I'm curious which entries you believe lack "encyclopedic context" and are simply "idiomatic pronunciations". Nohat 20:36, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm not on any crusade so I'm stopping arguing right now. I thought the Wiktionary template had no such implications, at least the actual wording doesn't say anything about deletion. But I do realize that many pure dictionary definitions are deleted after being transwikied. How about if we just put the tag on with the constriction that whenever it is transwikied, we will not lose what's here at the WP.--Dmcdevit 21:51, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)- BTW, there are lots of things that are trivial, but encyclopedic, check out every single pokemon character (hundreds).

Can you tell me what your criteria for distinguishing that which is trivial and encyclopedic and that which is trivial and unencyclopedic? Irrespective of this issue, I'm curious how you distinguish the two. Nohat 03:54, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have a feeling this is a loaded question and you're getting ready to pounce on me for my answer, but I'll indulge. I think of trivial as something small or dull, but that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't encyclopedic. Triviality is relative to the reader, so whereas some obscure topics may seem trivial to some (maybe even this article) they are nonetheless encyclopedic. That's why I said I didn't care whether anyone thought this article was trivial or not, that wasn't why I tagged it. So, do you think I can put the tag back up with that stipulation (mentioned above)?--Dmcdevit 05:07, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I promise not to pounce :-). But I'm not sure where you're going with this. Can you give examples of something that is (a) trivial and encyclopedic and (b) something that is trivial and unencyclopedic? I'm unclear how things are divided between being (a) and being (b)? Because, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the implication that you're making is that e.g. Pokemon are (a) but some of the content on this page may be (b), and I'm curious by what criterion you make the distinction. Just so it's clear, it's my belief that there is no difference between (a) and (b) and there's nothing on this page that doesn't warrant being in this encyclopedia. I am, however, perfectly willing to accept that there are those who disagree with me; I just want to understand where they draw the line and why.Nohat 06:17, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually I'm not drawing a line; I said I think it is relative. I think Pokemon are trivial to many people (like me) but not unebcyclopedic. I also think many things on this page are trivial to many people, though probably not you (or me), but it is also not unencyclopedic. As far as I can imagine, most things that we have problems with here on WP, vanity and the like, are both trivial and unencyclopedic. My only concern with this page, which I raised a while ago, and perhaps it's what made you think I think this is unencyclopedic, is that it is important for these word entries to provide sufficient context to be encyclopedic. --Dmcdevit 22:20, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Uranus

By what standard is "urinous" a "nonexistant adjective"? It occurs in several dictionaries (cf. www.dictionary.com). It is, however, less familiar than the words "your" and "anus", so I find the second part of the following entry hard to believe without a compelling cite to back it up.

"Most dictionaries list both (1) and (2). (1) is historically the older pronunciation and reflects the first-syllable stress of the original Latin word. It is the only pronunciation given by K&K, and the first pronunciation given by LPD. (2) began as a form of taboo avoidance because (1) sounds like the nonexistant adjective "urinous", but the euphemism was hardly successful as (2) can be homophonous with your anus."

You're right, "urinous" is a word. It isn't in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate 11th edn. (where I looked in the first place), but it is in Webster's Third New International. As for (2) originating as a way of avoiding the "urinous" sound of (1), I don't have a published source for it; just a personal communication from someone of the generation during which the change took place (about 50-60 years ago). He told me that back then, the word "anus" really wasn't particularly well known among the general population, so pronunciation (2) didn't sound "dirty" until the '60s and '70s, when "anus" became better known. --Angr 05:58, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Linux

The reference to phonics as a rule for pronouncing "Linux" should not be ignored (and I have put it back). Phonics is the set of rules which speakers of a language use - usually subconsciously - to guess how to pronounce an unfamiliar word. The phonics rules in English are particularly unreliable but I would suggest that most people use them subconsciously all the same. Taking the examples given in the article, we know that "paper" would be pronounced differently from "papper" and "unnix" differently from "unix", even though some of these words do not exist. My instinct has always been to pronounce "Linux" 'laɪnəks - and I would suggest that this is not due to a subconscious attachment to the name "Linus" but more to the phonics rule which tells me that if "Linux" is pronounced 'lɪn.ʊks then it should be spelt "Linnux". Rollo 10:33, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wednesday and scone

A couple of suggestions, and as I'm not familiar with IPA, I can't really add them myself:

Wednesday, pronounced usually as 'wensdi', but sometimes as 'weDnsday'

Scone, over which there are religious battles between rhyming with 'con' or 'cone' WLD 21:36, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

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