How do you pronounce ...

[Joe Republic]

What does having a Masters in English have to do with learning those little squiggles?

I assume part of 'not taking the Internet so seriously', or whatever it is you guys call your just-under-the-radar trolling these days, is asking a series of rhetorical questions just to see people give the answers anyway.

[minionofmidas]

What does having a Masters in English have to do with learning those little squiggles?

I assume part of 'not taking the Internet so seriously', or whatever it is you guys call your just-under-the-radar trolling these days, is asking a series of rhetorical questions just to see people give the answers anyway?

Is this a rhetorical question?

[angus]

comparable to the pronounciations of the many French-derived American river names.

Actually, what we have are cowboy-English pronunciations of Spanish (and French) transliterations of indigenous place names made up by people who had no written alphabets.  Who the hell knows how Talladega or Tallahassee or Detroit was really pronounced by the inhabitants who named them?

[Hatman 🍁]

Eh, he mangles it himself so he's fair game.

I have no idea how the "oe/ö" sound came to be pronounced as a long a sound in (American?) English. It's very weird. And I have no idea what kind of weirdo pronounces "Julia" like that.

It's not just "Boener"' either. Maybe a German speaker can help me out here... My mother's maiden name is "Frobel" (from Froebel/Fröbel) and I've been told it's pronounced in German similar to FREW-buhl. However, her family pronounces it FRO-buhl. Anyways, never would I pronounced it FRAY-buhl.  However, names like Boener and Toews use the "AY" sound. What's up with that? Are they spelled that way in German, or do they use the umlaut.

Spellings of personal names with oe instead of ö exist in Germany - ö being originally a ligature of o and e.

If you unround the ø (this the IPA sign for the sound you want), you do get the first half of what you describe as ay (rendered e in IPA... it's certainly not in any way related to anything describable as an "a".) So what he's doing makes sense - it's what you get when you pass down the correct pronounciation to descendants who can't speak German. It's mangled as opposed to simply mispronounced, which is what your mother's people seem to be doing - comparable to the pronounciations of the many French-derived American river names.

Thanks.

I note that I used the example of "Toews" which I thought for sure was a German name, but is apparently Welsh. The way it's pronounced "TAYVZ" made me think it was German.

[ZuWo]

Eh, he mangles it himself so he's fair game.

I have no idea how the "oe/ö" sound came to be pronounced as a long a sound in (American?) English. It's very weird. And I have no idea what kind of weirdo pronounces "Julia" like that.

It's not just "Boener"' either. Maybe a German speaker can help me out here... My mother's maiden name is "Frobel" (from Froebel/Fröbel) and I've been told it's pronounced in German similar to FREW-buhl. However, her family pronounces it FRO-buhl. Anyways, never would I pronounced it FRAY-buhl.  However, names like Boener and Toews use the "AY" sound. What's up with that? Are they spelled that way in German, or do they use the umlaut.

laziness and ignorance.  Even prior to importing German proper nouns into English, the transition from bo to bö in Old High German stemmed from laziness.  Maybe some linguist (ilikeverin?) can put a better spin on it, but I think languages evolve through laziness and ignorance.  The official line is that the sound is moved to the front of the mouth to accommodate another syllable.  Lohr becomes Löhrer, for example.  The prefix Um- means something like the English prefix para- and the laut is loud, so umlaut is basically "sound nearby" or "sound around."  But I really think that in Old German the process of the umlaut is the product of laziness, just like elision in French and Arabic probably evolved via laziness of the speakers.  (Umlaut can also refer to the actual diaresis, the diacritical mark above an a, o, or u, but I'm talking about the act of the umlaut.)  Ilikeverin can probably clarify this if he wants to.  I think he's our resident language geek.

I wouldn't describe the driving forces behind language change by using terms such as "laziness" or "ignorance" but I see what you are getting at. Anyway, you are referring to a process called "i-mutation" (or "i-umlaut") which occurred in all Germanic dialects except in Eastern Germanic (though, to be fair, whenever we speak of "Eastern Germanic" we essentially mean "Gothic"). It's always difficult to explain why a certain change has happened and why languages evolve in a certain way but in this case we are dealing with a case of assimilation, a kind of articulatory simplification so to speak. You may call this "laziness" if you like but we must be aware that processes such as these aren't conscious.

[Lief 🗽]

What does having a Masters in English have to do with learning those little squiggles?

I assume part of 'not taking the Internet so seriously', or whatever it is you guys call your just-under-the-radar trolling these days, is asking a series of rhetorical questions just to see people give the answers anyway.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say. I assumed from your post that you were implying that opebo was lying about either not understanding what the symbols meant or about having a Masters in English. From my experiences, I don't think there's much correlation between the two. English departments focus mostly on literary analysis and criticism, and what linguistic study there is probably does not focus on phonology. Generally there are separate departments and degrees for the field of linguistics.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I note that I used the example of "Toews" which I thought for sure was a German name, but is apparently Welsh. The way it's pronounced "TAYVZ" made me think it was German.

That's certainly not an obviously Welsh way of pronouncing that particular combination of letters...

[Хahar 🤔]

The unrounded form of /ø/ is in fact /e/; pronouncing /ø/ as /e/ is very reasonable for an English-speaker.

[minionofmidas]

I note that I used the example of "Toews" which I thought for sure was a German name, but is apparently Welsh. The way it's pronounced "TAYVZ" made me think it was German.

That's certainly not an obviously Welsh way of pronouncing that particular combination of letters...

It is German. Low German, probably. No idea what it's supposed to mean.



583 telephone book entries for "Töws" (mapped above), 93 for Toews.

[minionofmidas]

Böhner, 1016 entries (plus 34 for Boehner). That is an odd map.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Why would anybody pronounce "G" as "ch"?

[Franknburger]

Böhner, 1016 entries (plus 34 for Boehner). That is an odd map.

Only at first sight. In fact, it shows the various roots of the name "Böhner"

1.)  Malapropism of "Böhmer"= Bohemian - that should explain part of the Bavarian cluster.
2.) (Man from the village of) Böhne - there are two such villages in Germany, one west of Berlin, and one in northern Hesse, close to the brownish district in the map. Plus, there is a village Bone to the south-west of Berlin.
3.) Bean farmer - which probably tended to be found almost everywhere.
4.) Man from a 'böne' = elevated place [the old German 'böne' lives forth as "Bühne"= stage] - etymologically first noted in Westphalia.
5.) Malapropism of the patronym "Bonhard", a traditional west-Germanic and Frisian name.

As to linguistic laziness: If you want to know how to speak the ö / oe correctly, just say "words" - and wonder why English maintained the sound of "Wörter", but not the writing.  The German "umlaut" has clear grammatical functions in distinguishing singular from plural (e.g. "Mann" =man - "Männer"= men), and denoting verbs that are derived from substantives( e.g. "Tod"= death, "töten" = to kill).

[YL]

Why would anybody pronounce "G" as "ch"?

Some Chermans can't pronounce the English J sound...

Anyway, [ˈgɪlɑːd].  Or "GILL-ard" for those who can't read the squiggles.

[opebo]

[ˈd͡ʒʷuli.ə ˈgɪlɚd̥]

What the hello is that?  Arabic?

International Phonetic Alphabet.  Arabic looks nothing like that...

He knows.  Opebo claimed at one point to have a Masters in English.

what on earth would some phonetic crap have to do with the study of literature? (plus it was justa BA in that field)

[Franknburger]

I note that I used the example of "Toews" which I thought for sure was a German name, but is apparently Welsh. The way it's pronounced "TAYVZ" made me think it was German.

That's certainly not an obviously Welsh way of pronouncing that particular combination of letters...

It is German. Low German, probably. No idea what it's supposed to mean.

That's what I found in the internet:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Which leaves us with the question what "van Toovs" means. Toov is not in any Dutch online dictionary, but Google maps has two streetnames - Tooverkamp in Zeeland, and Tooverberg in Amersfort. My best guess is that it is similar to Low German "dove", denouncing an unfertile (=deaf) area.

[Mr. Morden]

Another one like the Boehner/Gillard thing was when Kevin Rudd was PM and attending an event being put on by the Bill Clinton Global Initiative, Clinton introduced him as "Prime Minister Rude":

http://www.smh.com.au/national/mr-rude-chooses-polite-option-20090924-g3pb.html

The Australian pronunciation of Gillard and Rudd can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHIp58zIHJY

[Хahar 🤔]

Why would anybody pronounce "G" as "ch"?

Not "ch", but "s" as in "measure".

[angus]

As to linguistic laziness: If you want to know how to speak the ö / oe correctly, just say "words" - and wonder why English maintained the sound of "Wörter", but not the writing.  The German "umlaut" has clear grammatical functions in distinguishing singular from plural (e.g. "Mann" =man - "Männer"= men), and denoting verbs that are derived from substantives( e.g. "Tod"= death, "töten" = to kill).

That post really doesn't address my hypothesis of laziness at all.  It merely gives me an idea of how to pronounce it and what its grammatical function is, which I don't need since I studied German from a German with a degree in teaching German for quite some time before living in Germany. 

Anyway, I think I may be on to something with this laziness hypothesis, although some may not like my phraseology.  I really wish ilikeverin would chime in on this.  He probably knows not only the right word to describe how language evolves, but I do think it is something akin to laziness.  Zuwo's post agrees with this precisely when he says it is not intentional, although I don't know whether he's a linguist by training.  I have sort of an amateur interest in the subject, but really I only know enough to be dangerous.  I do know that I detest those squgglies.  I'm familiar with them, but I prefer noninternatinally-standardized phoneticizations, like Pin-yin, for example.  Having one international system takes away most of the fun.  It also requires one to have to look at some really stupid-looking characters and generally has that obnoxious Lisa Simpsonesque feel of faux moral superiority to it.

[Хahar 🤔]

I'm not ilikeverin, but I suspect he would not take kindly to this idea of "laziness", reeking as it does of prescriptivism.

[Hatman 🍁]

I note that I used the example of "Toews" which I thought for sure was a German name, but is apparently Welsh. The way it's pronounced "TAYVZ" made me think it was German.

That's certainly not an obviously Welsh way of pronouncing that particular combination of letters...

It is German. Low German, probably. No idea what it's supposed to mean.

That's what I found in the internet:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Which leaves us with the question what "van Toovs" means. Toov is not in any Dutch online dictionary, but Google maps has two streetnames - Tooverkamp in Zeeland, and Tooverberg in Amersfort. My best guess is that it is similar to Low German "dove", denouncing an unfertile (=deaf) area.

I guess I didn't look hard enough. Damn Wikipedia.

[ilikeverin]

I'm not ilikeverin, but I suspect he would not take kindly to this idea of "laziness", reeking as it does of prescriptivism.

Yes and no.  Angus seems to be mixing together quite a few phenomena, but, to be fair, some of what he's talking about is a bona fide tendency for speakers to do a lot of things that historical linguists like to lump together as "minimizing articulatory effort" - say, to avoid pronouncing a consonant cluster in Arabic, they started just geminating a consonant.  Of course, that's a really catch-all term and my advisor and I think that talk of "articulatory effort" is really silly, as "articulatory effort" could easily be quantified yet no one seems to want to do so.

I haven't ever heard the historical process of umlaut ever described as something that came about because of these sorts of concerns, but, looking at it, I suppose you could posit some sort of "laziness"-related explanation.  Like, if you've already started moving your tongue for a word-final /i/, you might as well start moving it earlier than the end of the word.

However, that doesn't explain the "laziness" of English speakers in their borrowings; that has everything to do with the fact that English speakers aren't perceptually attuned to perceiving the roundedness distinction in front vowels.  The way that Boehner's last name is pronounced actually makes a lot of sense given that, as previously mentioned, /ø/ is just the rounded version of /e/, just like the way we pronounce "feet" makes a lot of sense given that it used to be pronounced /fyt/, with /y/ ("ü" in German) as the rounded version of /i/.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Why would anybody pronounce "G" as "ch"?

Not "ch", but "s" as in "measure".

But that's not what was written.

And why was Jillard left off?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     It looks French, so I say Zhee-yar.

[Knives]

Jul as in Jewel and ia as in Austral{ia} and the Gill as in a fishes gill and 'ard' as in h{ard}

[Linus Van Pelt]

Anyone in Canada called "Toews" is likely of Mennonite background.