Friday, 30 September 2011
what the L?
Every now and again someone asks why pronunciation dictionaries do not show dark l explicitly. If milk is pronounced mɪɫk, why do we write it as mɪlk?
There are various kinds of answer one can give.
1. The distinction between clear and dark l is not particularly important for EFL. And anyhow there are plenty of native speakers who do not make the distinction.
2. There are no pairs of words in English distinguished by the clear-dark distinction. Writing the clearer variant as lj (which exaggerates its palatalization somewhat), we can say that [lj] and [ɫ] are allophones of the same phoneme /l/. Their distribution is conditioned by the phonetic context: in RP and similar accents, lj is used before a vowel or j, ɫ is used elsewhere (including before a major boundary). As with other allophonic variation, we ignore it in dictionary transcription because it is more economical to state it once rather than mention it on every occasion. The learner needs to learn the general rule rather than memorize the appropriate variant for each word. Dictionary transcription, and EFL transcription in general, is phonemic (or, if you prefer, broad).
3. Every word or stem that ends in the lateral is sometimes pronounced with ɫ, sometimes with lj, depending on what follows. Although the citation form of kill is kɪɫ, and killed is always kɪɫd, in killing we have ˈkɪljɪŋ. While kill them is ˈkɪɫ ðəm, kill it is ˈkɪlj ɪt. And likewise for thousands of other items.
4. Even among NSs who follow the rule given, there is some disagreement in the precise definition of ‘boundary’. Whereas mainstream RP of my generation has lj in phrases such as Isle of Man and Middle East, there are other NSs who use ɫ in these phrases. For stylize I say ˈstaɪljaɪz, just as in island ˈaɪljənd, but there are many others for whom the morpheme boundary triggers pre-l breaking and/or dark l, thus ˈstaɪəljaɪz, ˈstaɪ(ə)ɫaɪz.
Whereas my kind of speech applies the rule to syllabic l just as to non-syllabic, there are other speakers who claim to make all syllabic laterals dark. How this works out in cases of potential compression (positional loss of syllabicity), e.g. fiddling ˈfɪdl̩ɪŋ ~ ˈfɪdlɪŋ, I am not sure.
Abercrombie adduced a nice example. In I feel ill he (like me) would use a clear l at the end of feel: aɪ fiːlj ˈɪɫ. But in I may not look ill, but I do feel ill it switches to dark: aɪ ˈmeɪ nɒt ˈlʊk ɪɫ | bət aɪ ˈduː ˈfiːɫ ɪɫ. I'd do just the same in not the Far East, but the Midd[ɫ̩] East. Why?
There are various kinds of answer one can give.
1. The distinction between clear and dark l is not particularly important for EFL. And anyhow there are plenty of native speakers who do not make the distinction.
2. There are no pairs of words in English distinguished by the clear-dark distinction. Writing the clearer variant as lj (which exaggerates its palatalization somewhat), we can say that [lj] and [ɫ] are allophones of the same phoneme /l/. Their distribution is conditioned by the phonetic context: in RP and similar accents, lj is used before a vowel or j, ɫ is used elsewhere (including before a major boundary). As with other allophonic variation, we ignore it in dictionary transcription because it is more economical to state it once rather than mention it on every occasion. The learner needs to learn the general rule rather than memorize the appropriate variant for each word. Dictionary transcription, and EFL transcription in general, is phonemic (or, if you prefer, broad).
3. Every word or stem that ends in the lateral is sometimes pronounced with ɫ, sometimes with lj, depending on what follows. Although the citation form of kill is kɪɫ, and killed is always kɪɫd, in killing we have ˈkɪljɪŋ. While kill them is ˈkɪɫ ðəm, kill it is ˈkɪlj ɪt. And likewise for thousands of other items.
4. Even among NSs who follow the rule given, there is some disagreement in the precise definition of ‘boundary’. Whereas mainstream RP of my generation has lj in phrases such as Isle of Man and Middle East, there are other NSs who use ɫ in these phrases. For stylize I say ˈstaɪljaɪz, just as in island ˈaɪljənd, but there are many others for whom the morpheme boundary triggers pre-l breaking and/or dark l, thus ˈstaɪəljaɪz, ˈstaɪ(ə)ɫaɪz.
Whereas my kind of speech applies the rule to syllabic l just as to non-syllabic, there are other speakers who claim to make all syllabic laterals dark. How this works out in cases of potential compression (positional loss of syllabicity), e.g. fiddling ˈfɪdl̩ɪŋ ~ ˈfɪdlɪŋ, I am not sure.
Abercrombie adduced a nice example. In I feel ill he (like me) would use a clear l at the end of feel: aɪ fiːlj ˈɪɫ. But in I may not look ill, but I do feel ill it switches to dark: aɪ ˈmeɪ nɒt ˈlʊk ɪɫ | bət aɪ ˈduː ˈfiːɫ ɪɫ. I'd do just the same in not the Far East, but the Midd[ɫ̩] East. Why?
Thursday, 29 September 2011
0.083
Robin Walker has been canvassing opinions.
Nit-picking, I might further object that you can’t elide phonemes. Phonemes are mental representations, and I would prefer to say that it is a not a mental construct /f/ but a physical segment (speech sound) [f] that might or might not be elided.
Anyhow, I just replied
Jack Windsor Lewis gave a longer answer.
I surely cannot be the only one whose ordinary slow pronunciation of this word is indeed twelfθ. OK, the labiodental and dental fricatives certainly overlap (though surely the labiodental turbulence starts before the dental). But segment overlap is nothing new or exceptional. The l in this word overlaps with the f, too. The w overlaps with the t. The mental representation underlying my articulation is clearly twelfθ, and that formulation faithfully represents the articulatory targets that my actual articulations may or may not achieve (depending, as usual, on speech rate, formality etc.).
Similarly, I have no hesitation in claiming that my basic pronunciation of sixth is sɪksθ. And that of clothes, kləʊðz.
True, there are speakers for whom reduced forms of various kinds have been lexicalized, so that the unreduced form is in some sense irrecoverable. Most (all?) of us have lexicalized the two-syllable reduction of every (i.e. ˈevri rather than ˈevəri). I’m aware that for victory I personally do not feel at all happy with the dictionary form ˈvɪktəri, since I feel I can naturally say only ˈvɪktri. On the other hand I cannot go along with people who claim that police is pliːs — for me, although I might sometimes reduce it this way in rapid speech, it is basically unquestionably pəˈliːs, i.e. comparable to polite and pollution rather than to pleat and playful.
Similarly, for me twelfth is not a good rhyme for health.
The citation form of 'twelfth' in all the dictionaries I've checked is /twelfθ/, but the other day I thought I caught myself eliding the /f/. Was that me being 'sloppy' or is this something that we tend to do in colloquial speech?Given that Robin is the newsletter editor of the IATEFL Pronunciation SIG, one can only assume that the question is somewhat faux-naïf. You’d think he would not just THINK but KNOW whether he ‘caught himself’ performing a common casual-speech reduction. Whether or not one calls such reductions ‘sloppy’ is not a phonetic question but rather a reflection of how far we have shaken off (or otherwise) popular attitudes to language and acquired a degree of scientific objectivity. Anyone interested in English pronunciation must surely know that this reduction IS something we tend to do in colloquial speech. So why ask us?
Nit-picking, I might further object that you can’t elide phonemes. Phonemes are mental representations, and I would prefer to say that it is a not a mental construct /f/ but a physical segment (speech sound) [f] that might or might not be elided.
Anyhow, I just replied
Both.
Jack Windsor Lewis gave a longer answer.
In my opinion anyone who pronounces twelfth in clearly the way dictionaries seem to suggest is normal actually produces something very likely to sound artificial and pedantic. I dou•t that anyone much notices if in naturally fluent speech [twelθ] is used. I'm uncomfortable that dictionaries generally suggest that [twelθ] is a less usual than versions with at least two simultaneous fricatives. Those who aim at saying /twelfθ/ and succeed in not sounding abnormally deliberate in the way they say it probably always have at least some overlap of the two fricatives and may sometimes produce a bilabial voiceless fricative at the same time. A phonetic notation [twelθ͡f] wdnt be far wrong.
I felt happiest recommending in my Concise Pronouncing Dictionary of British and American English (Oxford University Press 1972,1979) "twelfθ with f and θ usually made simultaneously".
I surely cannot be the only one whose ordinary slow pronunciation of this word is indeed twelfθ. OK, the labiodental and dental fricatives certainly overlap (though surely the labiodental turbulence starts before the dental). But segment overlap is nothing new or exceptional. The l in this word overlaps with the f, too. The w overlaps with the t. The mental representation underlying my articulation is clearly twelfθ, and that formulation faithfully represents the articulatory targets that my actual articulations may or may not achieve (depending, as usual, on speech rate, formality etc.).
Similarly, I have no hesitation in claiming that my basic pronunciation of sixth is sɪksθ. And that of clothes, kləʊðz.
True, there are speakers for whom reduced forms of various kinds have been lexicalized, so that the unreduced form is in some sense irrecoverable. Most (all?) of us have lexicalized the two-syllable reduction of every (i.e. ˈevri rather than ˈevəri). I’m aware that for victory I personally do not feel at all happy with the dictionary form ˈvɪktəri, since I feel I can naturally say only ˈvɪktri. On the other hand I cannot go along with people who claim that police is pliːs — for me, although I might sometimes reduce it this way in rapid speech, it is basically unquestionably pəˈliːs, i.e. comparable to polite and pollution rather than to pleat and playful.
Similarly, for me twelfth is not a good rhyme for health.
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
Duke of York sound changes
You’ll have heard of the grand old Duke of York. As you know, he had ten thousand men. He marched them up to the top of the hill, and he marched them down again.
It’s thirty-five years since Geoff Pullum wrote an article entitled ‘The Duke of York gambit’, about derivations of the general form A→B→A, that is derivations in which an underlying representation is mapped on to an intermediate form distinct from it, and then on to a surface representation which is identical with the earlier stage. Whether such derivations can be justified synchronically is an issue on which I express no opinion. But there certainly seem to be historical sound changes that proceed in just this way: something changes to something else, then changes back again.
Take popular London English. If Dickens is to be believed, London working-class speakers in the nineteenth century tended to confuse v and w: bevare of vidders! (beware of widows). They certainly don’t now. Historically, w → v → w.
Another well-known, nay stereotypical, Cockney feature is h-dropping. Remarkably, current London yoof — despite the supposed influence of Jamaican English, which shares this feature — generally don’t drop h. So, in the appropriate lexical contexts, h → Ø → h.
Londoners have diphthong shift, no? That is, the PRICE vowel has shifted in popular London speech from aɪ to something in the area of ɑɪ, ɒɪ? And the FACE vowel has gone from eɪ to ʌɪ, æɪ? Not any more. Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox and associates have shown that in inner-London Multicultural London English (blog, 2 July 2010) PRICE has reverted to aɪ and FACE to eɪ (or even eː). So we have aɪ → ɒɪ → aɪ and eɪ → æɪ → eɪ.
If you’ve got the odd twenty minutes to spare, I’d like to recommend this brief talk by Paul Kerswill on just this topic of MLE, given at a TEDxEastEnd event in the wake of the recent rioting.
We like to think of sound changes as typically originating in the working-class speech of big cities, then spreading out socially and geographically. Many of the BrE sound changes of the last 500 years can be explained in this way, with working-class London as the point of departure. But that’s clearly far from the whole story.
It’s thirty-five years since Geoff Pullum wrote an article entitled ‘The Duke of York gambit’, about derivations of the general form A→B→A, that is derivations in which an underlying representation is mapped on to an intermediate form distinct from it, and then on to a surface representation which is identical with the earlier stage. Whether such derivations can be justified synchronically is an issue on which I express no opinion. But there certainly seem to be historical sound changes that proceed in just this way: something changes to something else, then changes back again.
Take popular London English. If Dickens is to be believed, London working-class speakers in the nineteenth century tended to confuse v and w: bevare of vidders! (beware of widows). They certainly don’t now. Historically, w → v → w.
Another well-known, nay stereotypical, Cockney feature is h-dropping. Remarkably, current London yoof — despite the supposed influence of Jamaican English, which shares this feature — generally don’t drop h. So, in the appropriate lexical contexts, h → Ø → h.
Londoners have diphthong shift, no? That is, the PRICE vowel has shifted in popular London speech from aɪ to something in the area of ɑɪ, ɒɪ? And the FACE vowel has gone from eɪ to ʌɪ, æɪ? Not any more. Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox and associates have shown that in inner-London Multicultural London English (blog, 2 July 2010) PRICE has reverted to aɪ and FACE to eɪ (or even eː). So we have aɪ → ɒɪ → aɪ and eɪ → æɪ → eɪ.
If you’ve got the odd twenty minutes to spare, I’d like to recommend this brief talk by Paul Kerswill on just this topic of MLE, given at a TEDxEastEnd event in the wake of the recent rioting.
We like to think of sound changes as typically originating in the working-class speech of big cities, then spreading out socially and geographically. Many of the BrE sound changes of the last 500 years can be explained in this way, with working-class London as the point of departure. But that’s clearly far from the whole story.
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
details
At the running club these days I can, alas, do no more than jog a mile or two if neither my arrhythmic heart nor my arthritic hip are playing up. But it’s still a great place to socialize with friends old and new.
One of our coaches is something of a linguistic paradox: a highly educated man, with a degree from one of our oldest universities, established in his chosen profession. But he retains a strong working-class south London accent. As he was giving out the announcements recently, he told us in connection with some forthcoming event that further ˈdɪiʔɛ̈oz were available on the club website.
This pronunciation of details exemplifies, inter alia, intervocalic t-glottalling and l-vocalization, stigmatized features that one would not usually hear from someone with his educational background. Naturally he also has the usual British word-initial stress for this lexical item. (Compare AmE: in Yuko Shitara’s poll, 75% of Americans voted for final stress in detail.)
This set me musing about similarities and differences between the two major sound changes now vying for supremacy in the world of English non-initial t, namely voicing and glottalling. I am thinking above all of cases such as butter and a lot of, where AmE normally has a voiced tap ɾ and BrE may have any of t, ɾ, ʔ.
It is clear that an American-style voiced tap is by no means uncommon in Britain, particularly in high-frequency items such as a lot of. Conversely, a British-style glottal stop seems to be not unknown in north America.
But the two rival developments affecting t do not operate in identical environments. Yes, their environments overlap, as in the cases quoted. But t-voicing is blocked by a non-vowel right-hand environment (as in the two plosives in that’s right!), an environment in which glottalling is clearly more frequent than prevocalically. ˈðæʔs ˈraɪʔ
Furthermore, t-voicing is blocked (somewhat mysteriously, from my point of view) if the following vowel is unreduced and there is no word boundary. You get it in later ˈleɪɾə(r) and my late uncle maɪ ˈleɪɾ ˈʌŋkl̩, but not in latex ˈleɪteks.
For Americans, then, there is no chance of voicing the t in detail. For those who stress the second syllable, the t is like a word-initial t, always voiceless. For the 25% of Americans who prefer initial stress the same constraint as in latex comes into play, and again there is no chance of voicing the t. But for Brits who revel in glottalling — like our running coach — this is just one more candidate item for a glorious glottal stop.
One of our coaches is something of a linguistic paradox: a highly educated man, with a degree from one of our oldest universities, established in his chosen profession. But he retains a strong working-class south London accent. As he was giving out the announcements recently, he told us in connection with some forthcoming event that further ˈdɪiʔɛ̈oz were available on the club website.
This pronunciation of details exemplifies, inter alia, intervocalic t-glottalling and l-vocalization, stigmatized features that one would not usually hear from someone with his educational background. Naturally he also has the usual British word-initial stress for this lexical item. (Compare AmE: in Yuko Shitara’s poll, 75% of Americans voted for final stress in detail.)
This set me musing about similarities and differences between the two major sound changes now vying for supremacy in the world of English non-initial t, namely voicing and glottalling. I am thinking above all of cases such as butter and a lot of, where AmE normally has a voiced tap ɾ and BrE may have any of t, ɾ, ʔ.
It is clear that an American-style voiced tap is by no means uncommon in Britain, particularly in high-frequency items such as a lot of. Conversely, a British-style glottal stop seems to be not unknown in north America.
But the two rival developments affecting t do not operate in identical environments. Yes, their environments overlap, as in the cases quoted. But t-voicing is blocked by a non-vowel right-hand environment (as in the two plosives in that’s right!), an environment in which glottalling is clearly more frequent than prevocalically. ˈðæʔs ˈraɪʔ
Furthermore, t-voicing is blocked (somewhat mysteriously, from my point of view) if the following vowel is unreduced and there is no word boundary. You get it in later ˈleɪɾə(r) and my late uncle maɪ ˈleɪɾ ˈʌŋkl̩, but not in latex ˈleɪteks.
For Americans, then, there is no chance of voicing the t in detail. For those who stress the second syllable, the t is like a word-initial t, always voiceless. For the 25% of Americans who prefer initial stress the same constraint as in latex comes into play, and again there is no chance of voicing the t. But for Brits who revel in glottalling — like our running coach — this is just one more candidate item for a glorious glottal stop.
Monday, 26 September 2011
an unexpected assimilation
I spent last week in Poznań, Poland, where I ɡave some Esperanto-medium lessons on general articulatory phonetics at Adam Mickiewicz University as part of their Interlinguistic Studies programme. The students were enthusiastic, mostly young, and from a variety of different language backgrounds, which makes for lively sessions.
These students had never previously experienced the dictation of nonsense words, so we had good fun working on them as a relief from the hard-core stuff. I find nonsense words a great way to revive the attention of those who are beginning to flag a little in class.
One topic that came up was assimilation in the place of articulation of nasals before various obstruents. We discussed whether the sound corresponding to the first n in dankon ‘thank you’ is, or ought to be, a dental/alveolar n, or whether it can, or should, get allophonically assimilated to the homorɡanic velar ŋ. (As you may know, this type of assimilation happens in many languages, but not — strangely — in Russian.)
When we turned to nasals before various other obstruents, an Italian participant remarked that in his own speech (in Esperanto as in Italian) he pronounces n before s as palatalized, nj (older IPA, ᶇ) : so for penso ‘thought’ he says penjso. This is unexpected, because the following consonant, for him as for everyone else, is a plain common-or-garden s. Is this some kind of assimilation to the preceding vowel rather than to the following consonant? Or some kind of consonantal dissimilation?
We didn’t have time to pursue the matter then in class, but what I ought to have done — I realize now — is to investigate whether he does the same thing when the preceding vowel is back (e.g. monstro ‘monster’).
I have never seen any such phenomenon mentioned in phonetic descriptions of Italian. I wonder how widespread it is. Here is what Mioni says on the subject in the Italian section of Fonematica contrastiva (Bologna, 1973). Before s he reports a straightforward apico-dental n. The “lievemente palatalizzato” (lightly palatalized) nj he mentions as found only in the position before tʃ, dʒ, ʃ.
The English Wikipedia article on Italian phonology says baldly
Perhaps we’ve discovered something new.
_ _ _
I notice that above I used the expression ‘common or garden’. I’m aware that this is a British expression for which the AmE equivalent is ‘garden-variety’. And that gives me an opportunity to pass on Karen Chung’s recent discovery of an interesting article about Briticisms creeping into American English. Go here to read about run-up, go missing, snog, sort out, laddish etc.
_ _ _
European Day of Languages
These students had never previously experienced the dictation of nonsense words, so we had good fun working on them as a relief from the hard-core stuff. I find nonsense words a great way to revive the attention of those who are beginning to flag a little in class.
One topic that came up was assimilation in the place of articulation of nasals before various obstruents. We discussed whether the sound corresponding to the first n in dankon ‘thank you’ is, or ought to be, a dental/alveolar n, or whether it can, or should, get allophonically assimilated to the homorɡanic velar ŋ. (As you may know, this type of assimilation happens in many languages, but not — strangely — in Russian.)
When we turned to nasals before various other obstruents, an Italian participant remarked that in his own speech (in Esperanto as in Italian) he pronounces n before s as palatalized, nj (older IPA, ᶇ) : so for penso ‘thought’ he says penjso. This is unexpected, because the following consonant, for him as for everyone else, is a plain common-or-garden s. Is this some kind of assimilation to the preceding vowel rather than to the following consonant? Or some kind of consonantal dissimilation?
We didn’t have time to pursue the matter then in class, but what I ought to have done — I realize now — is to investigate whether he does the same thing when the preceding vowel is back (e.g. monstro ‘monster’).
I have never seen any such phenomenon mentioned in phonetic descriptions of Italian. I wonder how widespread it is. Here is what Mioni says on the subject in the Italian section of Fonematica contrastiva (Bologna, 1973). Before s he reports a straightforward apico-dental n. The “lievemente palatalizzato” (lightly palatalized) nj he mentions as found only in the position before tʃ, dʒ, ʃ.
The English Wikipedia article on Italian phonology says baldly
Nasals assimilate to the point of articulation of whatever consonant they precede. For example, /nɡ/ is realized as [ŋɡ].The Italian Wikipedia mentions a ‘mediopalatale’ variant of /n/, but does not elaborate.
esistono altri allofoni di /n/ come la dentale e la mediopalatale, di solito non riportati nella trascrizione larga. (Other allophones of /n/ are found, for example dental and mediopalatal, usually not reflected in broad transcription.)
Perhaps we’ve discovered something new.
_ _ _
I notice that above I used the expression ‘common or garden’. I’m aware that this is a British expression for which the AmE equivalent is ‘garden-variety’. And that gives me an opportunity to pass on Karen Chung’s recent discovery of an interesting article about Briticisms creeping into American English. Go here to read about run-up, go missing, snog, sort out, laddish etc.
_ _ _
European Day of Languages
Friday, 16 September 2011
Cilybebyll
At the time of writing we’re still waiting for news of the miners trapped underground in a drift mine in the Swansea Valley. We hope for the best but fear the worst.
The Gleision ˈɡlaɪʃɒn mine is at Cilybebyll ˌkɪləˈbebɪɬ, a village near Pontardawe ˌpɒntəˈdaʊi. I was impressed by the way the Sky News newsreader on TV yesterday evening handled the Welsh place names. He didn’t hesitate or stumble; he didn’t even break his rhythm. His ɬ was exemplary.
Gleision is a straightforward Welsh name, the plural of glas ‘blue, green’, so meaning just ‘blues’ or ‘greens’. The other two names involved are more interesting, because they bear witness to the influence of Latin on Welsh, dating from the time before the Anglo-Saxons arrived, when southern Britain was part of the Roman Empire.
Pontardawe means ‘bridge on the (river) Tawe’. The first element is pont, the Welsh for ‘bridge’, an obvious borrowing from the Latin pons, pont- of the same meaning. This word also gave us French pont and Spanish puente. No doubt the Romans introduced their bridge-building technology into Britain, and with it their word into the British (= Old Welsh) language.
Cilybebyll literally means ‘back of the tents’. The last element, bebyll, is the soft-mutated plural of the word pabell ‘tent, tabernacle’, from the Latin papilio, papilion-. In Latin this word primarily meant ‘butterfly’, but it was also a Roman army slang word for ‘military tent’, “probably from the similarity of shape when the ends of the covering are turned over at the entrance of the tent” (OED). The same word came into English via French as pavilion pəˈvɪliən, -ljən.
_ _ _
I shall be away again next week. Next blog: 26 September.
The Gleision ˈɡlaɪʃɒn mine is at Cilybebyll ˌkɪləˈbebɪɬ, a village near Pontardawe ˌpɒntəˈdaʊi. I was impressed by the way the Sky News newsreader on TV yesterday evening handled the Welsh place names. He didn’t hesitate or stumble; he didn’t even break his rhythm. His ɬ was exemplary.
Gleision is a straightforward Welsh name, the plural of glas ‘blue, green’, so meaning just ‘blues’ or ‘greens’. The other two names involved are more interesting, because they bear witness to the influence of Latin on Welsh, dating from the time before the Anglo-Saxons arrived, when southern Britain was part of the Roman Empire.
Pontardawe means ‘bridge on the (river) Tawe’. The first element is pont, the Welsh for ‘bridge’, an obvious borrowing from the Latin pons, pont- of the same meaning. This word also gave us French pont and Spanish puente. No doubt the Romans introduced their bridge-building technology into Britain, and with it their word into the British (= Old Welsh) language.
Cilybebyll literally means ‘back of the tents’. The last element, bebyll, is the soft-mutated plural of the word pabell ‘tent, tabernacle’, from the Latin papilio, papilion-. In Latin this word primarily meant ‘butterfly’, but it was also a Roman army slang word for ‘military tent’, “probably from the similarity of shape when the ends of the covering are turned over at the entrance of the tent” (OED). The same word came into English via French as pavilion pəˈvɪliən, -ljən.
_ _ _
I shall be away again next week. Next blog: 26 September.
Thursday, 15 September 2011
names, names
Thanks to Karen Chung for pointing me towards a website called The Name Engine.
Pronunciations are given in respelling (no IPA) and as sound clips. This is an American website, and both are strictly in AmE only.
At the moment the database of names included is very limited. It is divided into Sports (twelve subsections) and Miscellaneous (Companies/Brands, Entertainment, Newsmakers, Places, Politics).
Under Places there are just fifty or so geographical names, all of them places in the US except Abbotabad, Kyrgyzstan, Montevideo, and Qatar. (The “correct” pronunciation of the last-mentioned is given as ˈkɑːtɚ, a possibility I don’t countenance in LPD. In Arabic it’s ˈqɑtˁɑɾ.)
I looked in vain under Sports for Sharapova (blog, 1 and 5 July) and under Entertainment for Beyoncé. In the latter section I also learnt that Björk is “correctly” pronounced disyllabically, as biˈjɔːrk. H’m. (In Icelandic, monosyllabic bjœɾ̥k, and in BrE usually bjɔːk.) Under Companies/Brands, Bombardier (blog, 6 July) is given the respelling “bom-BAR-dee-ay”. But the associated sound clip is stressed differently, as bɑːmˌbɑːrdiˈeɪ.
The website looks very professional and clearly has great potential. There is no information given about who sponsors it or runs it. On the face of things, if it lives up to its grandiose claims, it might in time be more reliable than do-it-yourself Forvo (which currently boasts “1,108,951 pronunciations in 279 languages”).
I wonder whether The Name Engine® will get round to giving Americans guidance on the pronunciation of “difficult” British names such as Leicester.
The Name Engine® provides the correct name pronunciations of athletes, entertainers, politicians, newsmakers, and more. Even well-known names are often pronounced in different ways, leaving you to wonder what the correct pronunciation is. You'll find the right answer here. Better yet, you'll actually hear the right answer.Sounds as if the BBC Pronunciation Unit will be put out of business, not to mention pronunciation dictionaries.
All names are painstakingly researched for authenticity. Personal confirmation is the ultimate goal. At a minimum, they are confirmed by individuals with firsthand knowledge of the name in question. These individuals include team play-by-play announcers, public relations representatives, sports information directors, agents, etc.
Pronunciations are given in respelling (no IPA) and as sound clips. This is an American website, and both are strictly in AmE only.
At the moment the database of names included is very limited. It is divided into Sports (twelve subsections) and Miscellaneous (Companies/Brands, Entertainment, Newsmakers, Places, Politics).
Under Places there are just fifty or so geographical names, all of them places in the US except Abbotabad, Kyrgyzstan, Montevideo, and Qatar. (The “correct” pronunciation of the last-mentioned is given as ˈkɑːtɚ, a possibility I don’t countenance in LPD. In Arabic it’s ˈqɑtˁɑɾ.)
I looked in vain under Sports for Sharapova (blog, 1 and 5 July) and under Entertainment for Beyoncé. In the latter section I also learnt that Björk is “correctly” pronounced disyllabically, as biˈjɔːrk. H’m. (In Icelandic, monosyllabic bjœɾ̥k, and in BrE usually bjɔːk.) Under Companies/Brands, Bombardier (blog, 6 July) is given the respelling “bom-BAR-dee-ay”. But the associated sound clip is stressed differently, as bɑːmˌbɑːrdiˈeɪ.
The website looks very professional and clearly has great potential. There is no information given about who sponsors it or runs it. On the face of things, if it lives up to its grandiose claims, it might in time be more reliable than do-it-yourself Forvo (which currently boasts “1,108,951 pronunciations in 279 languages”).
I wonder whether The Name Engine® will get round to giving Americans guidance on the pronunciation of “difficult” British names such as Leicester.
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