How do you pronounce ...

[angus]

"minimizing articulatory effort"

Ah, that's a nice ten-dollar phrase.  I knew you'd have one for it.  That's exactly what I was talking about.  Laziness conveys the message well enough, but disciplines like their exacting phraseology. 

What you said about English speakers is pretty much what I concluded as well with specific regard to Boehner, but obviously I was intentionally digressing from the original question into a more interesting one.  I was thinking more out loud about the minimizing of "articulatory effort" in general.  Like the moon and sun sounds in arabic.  al-noor and ash-shams.  And the elision in french.  Or, for that matter, certain English words.  I'd thought about that for a long time.  It occurred to me as an afterthought that the "sounded nearby" of German may come from a similar "minimizing" of "articulatory effort."   To turn teach into teacher, or land into lands doesn't require it, in the abstract, and I can't think of any better reason in the evolution of German than the minimization, so going with an Ockham's razor approach, I'd buy into that hypothesis.  I think it has always been thus.  Some hunter gatherer walks up to some other hunter gatherer and says ugabugay.  And that sticks, but then he needs to turn it into a verb or a pluralize it or whatever, and the custom had been to grunt baa at the end of stuff to make it a verb, but ugabugaybaa gets twisted in the mouth.  Requires much effort, so it gets rendered ugabugobaa.  But no one ever formalizes it because written language doesn't show up for another fifty thousand years.

Anyway, Boner doesn't particularly bother me.  Not long after we'd moved to Florida I met a kid named Schroeder who pronounced it Shre Der.  Heavy roticity on the last syllable and the first syllable rhyming with the first syllable of crayfish.  He always said, "The O is silent."  I bet the Boehners of Ohio did that as well.  Not exactly accurate but well enough for one eight-year-old to say to another eight-year-old.  With or without the silent treatment, you wouldn't expect a person speaking English to say German ö the way the Germans do any more than you'd expect one to say the Quaaf in the back of the throat when he says Al Qaeda, or the coughing g in the throat when he says the Nederlands number 9 (negen).  The florida family's anglicized (or yankified) pronunciation made sense to me at the time the same way Boner says his name.  

I do something like that, sort of, for example when I teach quantum mechanics.  I say Erwin Schrödinger's name once, correctly, and only once.  All five syllables.  The Er par, the Win part, the whole nine yards, including the throaty r letters and a very non-rhotic r on the ending, like a New York Jew would.  Thereafter, when I refer to the Schrödinger equation or something, I yankify it.  I still say the ö vowel Austrian style--that's actually not very difficult--but I do heavy roticity on the last r, and I pronounce the first r in Schr like an American.  Just the way I'd say Shrimp.  I call it laziness, but you can give it a ten-dollar name if you like.  I have colleagues that even do strange things with the G.  That one isn't so much "minimizing articulatory effort" but rather the other English thing to which you refer.

Wow, I remember when you first posted here we all thought of you as a sort of Macaulay Culkin, except even younger and more innocent.  Now, look at you:  all grown up and giving sophisticated explanations of the evolution of speech.  Thanks for the response.

hug hug.  

[minionofmidas]

Incidentally, you do get some German words today spelled and pronounced with ö that aren't Umlaut at all, but derive from e's. That's because the distinction got sufficiently lost in some dialects as to blur the boundaries.

[Hatman 🍁]

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

Makes sense, it's fairly common in Manitoba.

[Franknburger]

"minimizing articulatory effort"

Ah, that's a nice ten-dollar phrase.  I knew you'd have one for it.  That's exactly what I was talking about.  Laziness conveys the message well enough, but disciplines like their exacting phraseology. 

What you said about English speakers is pretty much what I concluded as well with specific regard to Boehner, but obviously I was intentionally digressing from the original question into a more interesting one.  I was thinking more out loud about the minimizing of "articulatory effort" in general.  Like the moon and sun sounds in arabic.  al-noor and ash-shams.  And the elision in french.  Or, for that matter, certain English words.  I'd thought about that for a long time.  It occurred to me as an afterthought that the "sounded nearby" of German may come from a similar "minimizing" of "articulatory effort."   To turn teach into teacher, or land into lands doesn't require it, in the abstract, and I can't think of any better reason in the evolution of German than the minimization, so going with an Ockham's razor approach, I'd buy into that hypothesis.  I think it has always been thus.  Some hunter gatherer walks up to some other hunter gatherer and says ugabugay.  And that sticks, but then he needs to turn it into a verb or a pluralize it or whatever, and the custom had been to grunt baa at the end of stuff to make it a verb, but ugabugaybaa gets twisted in the mouth.  Requires much effort, so it gets rendered ugabugobaa.  But no one ever formalizes it because written language doesn't show up for another fifty thousand years.

To avoid misunderstanding: I did in no way want to rule out the existence of "laziness" or "minimizing articulatory effort" in German, But, in the case of "Boehner", the umlaut may as well have originated from a grammatical pattern, namely deriving a verb from a substantive. The substantive "Bohne" (=bean) becomes the verb  "boehnern" ("beaning"), and is substantiated again into "Boehner". Same mechanism for "Schrot" (=shred) - "Schroeder" (the one who is shredding). In this case, however, you may interpret the t->d consonant shift as "minimizing articulatory effort".

You also need to take into account that High German, similar to Oxford English,  evolved as a kind of 'artificial' harmonisation of various local dialects, which nevertheless tended to remain in local use until today. Let's take the local dialect I know, namely Low German, as example. Linguists actually seem divided whether Low German constitutes a dialect or a distinct Germanic language, as it is in many respects closer to Dutch, Danish and even English than to High German [Compare e.g. "little" (English) - "lütt" (Low German) - "klein" (High German) or "to have" (English) - "heff" (Low German) - "haben" (High German)]. A standard pattern of Low German is that vowels tend to be pronounced more towards the front of the mouth. As such, a lot of what at first sight appears to be 'laziness' may in fact be continued use of local dialects, which phonetically differ from High German. 

[angus]

I'm familiar with Low German.  And with Nederlands.  I lived on the North Sea coast of Germany for about a year, then much later in the Netherlands.  I'm also aware with certain pluralization forms that require that the root consonant be "sounded nearby" and with verb formation from substantive.  We have similar constructions in English although not many require changing the root (but the diaresis, when used in English, signifies something totally different.  It's more like the trema of the French, although to my knowledge the New Yorker is the only English-language publication in the US that still regularly uses the diaresis in the English way.)  There's also lots of that back-formation from substantive going on in Arabic.  Maybe some other languages too.  My comments about laziness--call it minimization of articulation if you want--was a broader one, and I'm just hypothesizing.  As I said, I'm not a linguist by training.  Just an amateur.

As an aside, there's also quite a bit of Low German hereabouts.  The nearest cemetery to my house, which is about mile away, is small and dates from about 200 years ago and all the markers are in German.  Fairly non-standard German.  It's interesting too, because the older ones have spellings of the surname that are different than the newer (~140 years ago) ones.  Sometimes a letter is added or removed, so you can see the actual evolution of the surnames.  That's not what I referred to as "laziness" though.  That, I'd refer to as a matter of convenience.  Again, that's probably not the official linguist-approved term, but that's what I'll call it.  Also, in the Big Box stores there are various tribes of people who come in and speak some Janglish or something.  If I'd grown up here I'd probably know it.  It sounds German.  I can pick out some phrases.  I don't know whether they're one of the many flavors of Mennonite folks--and I'm told that there are many flavors--or if they're from some other cult, but I suspect that their language the infamous "Pennsylvania Dutch" and probably evolved from German.

Anyway, back to Boehner.  I saw your earlier post.  It was interesting.  You gave five possibilities for the etymology of the name.  I could only think of one.   I don't think I'm picking on him and his family's pronunciation of his name.  It seems to be the consensus here that what he is doing is reasonable.  And, to be honest, I don't much care what he calls Ms. Gillard.  I call him Boner for other reasons.  I do think it's sort of tacky to mispronounce anyone's name when you're introducing them.  Remember that corrupt Nevada Senator from Godfather 2 who introduced Michael Corleone?  Maybe the New York branch of the family doesn't pronounce it the way the Sicily branch of the Corleone family pronounces it, but the Senator should at least have the decency to pronounce it the way Michael does. 

[Platypus]

Jewel, letter e, ah; Fish's gill, aardvark ard.

[Franknburger]

As an aside, there's also quite a bit of Low German hereabouts.  The nearest cemetery to my house, which is about mile away, is small and dates from about 200 years ago and all the markers are in German.  Fairly non-standard German.  It's interesting too, because the older ones have spellings of the surname that are different than the newer (~140 years ago) ones.  Sometimes a letter is added or removed, so you can see the actual evolution of the surnames.  That's not what I referred to as "laziness" though.  That, I'd refer to as a matter of convenience.  Again, that's probably not the official linguist-approved term, but that's what I'll call it.  Also, in the Big Box stores there are various tribes of people who come in and speak some Janglish or something.  If I'd grown up here I'd probably know it.  It sounds German.  I can pick out some phrases.  I don't know whether they're one of the many flavors of Mennonite folks--and I'm told that there are many flavors--or if they're from some other cult, but I suspect that their language the infamous "Pennsylvania Dutch" and probably evolved from German.

I have always been suspecting that a lot of the differences between American and British English (e.g. theatre -> theater)  relate to (Low) German linguistic influence. What is your take on that ?

Otherwise - name changes were also quite popular in Germany in the late 19th / early 20th century. I have some examples in my own family's history. One factor was romanticism (e.g. changing "Kreuz" into "Creutz"), another one Germanisation of Slavonic (Polish ( Czech / Sorbic) names.

[Хahar 🤔]

Actually, where the British spell -re and Americans spell -er, it is generally the American form that is older; the British form is the result of later French influence.

[ZuWo]

Incidentally, you do get some German words today spelled and pronounced with ö that aren't Umlaut at all, but derive from e's. That's because the distinction got sufficiently lost in some dialects as to blur the boundaries.

That's right. Alemannic dialects are especially prone to this process, e.g. in words like Mönsch (Mensch 'human being'), Schwöschter (Schwester 'sister), Öpfel (Apfel 'apple' - probably derived from the Middle High German plural form epfel) or brönne (brennen 'burn').

[angus]

I have always been suspecting that a lot of the differences between American and British English (e.g. theatre -> theater)  relate to (Low) German linguistic influence. What is your take on that ?

Otherwise - name changes were also quite popular in Germany in the late 19th / early 20th century. I have some examples in my own family's history. One factor was romanticism (e.g. changing "Kreuz" into "Creutz"), another one Germanisation of Slavonic (Polish ( Czech / Sorbic) names.

Theater is a funny example.  It used to irk me when folks spelled it theatre, but I've learned to accept that.  It's not like color or curb, for example, which have only one correct spelling in American Standard English, but it's important to note when it's spelled one way and when it is spelled the other.  Among educated Americans, theater is a noun, and refers to a place where plays or movies are seen, whereas theatre is an adjective reflecting the act of the drama performed and worked with that relates to the noun.  For example you can take a theatre class in the United States.  In that case, the spelling is correct as it is modifies the noun class.  Among less educated Americans, this distinction does not seem to be widely understood.  Of course, in England, the distinction does not exist as both the noun and the adjective are spelled the same way.

Anyway, the American word theater comes from the French word theatre, which comes from the Latin word theatrum, which comes from the Greek word theastai, which means viewing.  I don't know how much Plattdeutsch affected the change from theatre to theater.  It is important to note that neither the spelling theater nor theatre prevailed in Great Britain in the 14th century, and both were imported to the United States by colonial Englishmen.  Later, after the the 13 colonies had declared independence, the theatre spelling prevailed in the UK, but the US still retained the theater spelling at least for the noun form.  In some other words, such as fiber and center, there was a concerted effort by Noah Webster beginning in the very late 18th century to standardize American spellings.  Not all of them took root.  We still spell acre in a French way, like the English do, despite Webster's listing it as aker.  This one is particularly bizarre since the English originally spelled it as æcer and it does not come to us from the French.   (?!)

English (all versions) is a bizarre and bastardized language, and is the odd man out when it comes to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family.  It adapts easily and is very widely distributed around the globe.  Spellings vary in old English texts as well as old American texts for all sorts of words.  For example, the US Constitution says that each state shall chuse two senators.  Chuse?  I have no idea where anyone got that.  It may have been Low German, but I suspect that there are more fundamental factors at work.  I do think that the influx of German, Irish, and Italian immigrants to the US in the 19th century certainly affected spelling and pronunciation of words.  There are certain foreign words that the English always mispronounce, typically Greek, Spanish, or Italian, and certain foreign words that Americans always mispronounce, typically French or German.  Ask any Yankee to say depot or elite and it'll sound very bizarre.  On the other hand, ask any Brit to say methane or beta or taco and it will sound very bizarre.  There's definitely a pattern there, so you may be on to something.