Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 April 4

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April 4

Reading figures of section

As for figures of legal section, such as, "section 1234 of the Constitution," it should be read:

1. "Section one two three four of..." or
2. "Section one thousand, two hundred and thirty four of..."
3. Or it should be elsewise read.

Thank you, once again. — 118.172.68.170 (talk) 04:37, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Probably "section twelve thirty-four". rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:24, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

So, "section 103" is read "section one o/zero three," isn't that correct?

And what about "section 103-2" ("one o three dash two" ?), and "section 103/2" ("...slash two" ?).

Moreover, is that a fomal way of reading figures of section?

With thankfulness,, ^^

— 118.172.68.170 (talk) 05:57, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Usually it is "one o three" and not "one zero three". If there is a dash or slash, it should be read, but usually law texts use the § symbol, which is read "section".

In Britain, the / is called "stroke", as in "27B stroke six". Shii (tock) 17:43, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

"Tragedy" as generic term for misfortune or disaster

The use of the word "tragedy" as a generic term for any misfortune or disaster (whether or not it could fairly be called tragic according to the more proper use of the term involving a misfortune having its origin in a great man's "missing the mark" in a way wholly consistent with his character)dates back to about 1500. Does anyone know when this usage became commonplace? Fifty years ago, were accidents and natural processes often called "tragic"? What about 100 years ago? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.104.119.240 (talk) 05:26, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Exaggeration is older than time itself a very old practice. Probably the first person or few people to use the word in this sense were also the first to use it in an exaggerated manner. If you're only interested in recent history, I imagine if you looked, there'd be a correlation between the rise of literary education, a rise in usage of the word, and a rise in exaggerated use of it.
(Imperfect understanding of precisely defined words is also a time honored tradition :p) ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:36, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

A bit of hunting through Google News Search gave me the impression that 50 years ago disasters such as shipwrecks were commonly called "tragic", and 100 years ago the term was reserved for personal misfortune, and 150 years ago there had to be some kind of connection to classical history, the stage, or poetry; but you might form a different impression. 81.131.23.57 (talk) 11:55, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Assuming the information is correct, Hamlet, which was written over 400 years ago, is properly titled The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. In more recent times, Mel Brooks has been quoted as saying, "Tragedy is if I have a hangnail. Comedy is if you get killed." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:59, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

As you say, tragedy has been used to mean a disaster since 1500, along side the tragedy of an individual meaning, and the nature of english someone will still probably try to claim that calling a huge fire a tragedy is wrong. The Tragedy of Pelee: A Narrative of Personal Experience and Observation in Martinique by George Kennan (a 1902 volcanic eruption), The Tragedy of the Korosko (1898), The Tragedy of the Negro in America: a Condensed History of the Enslavement, Sufferings, Emancipation, Present Condition and Progress of the Negro Race in the United States of America by P. Thomas Stanford (1897) are a few of the early use in the more modern sense. Also tragic in the manner of tragedy: An American field of Mars; or A universal history of all the important tragic events that have occurred in the United States of North America... by Benjamin Eggleston (1839). Calamity or disaster would have been more common words for this kind of tragedy, as to when and why tragedy supplanted them, I would guess in part it was due to the rise in melodrama. The classical rules of drama were followed frequently in the renaissance but there was a steady move away from them, works were too varied to be classed as either only comedy or tragedy. Tragedy turned from meaning one type of drama you could expect to go see and became a more abstruse definition which the people wanting entertainment didn't care to know. meltBanana 21:05, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you all for your wonderful, thoughtful answers! Special thanks to those of you who took the time to research the answer to this question. 71.104.119.240 (talk) 05:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

"Cowboy" builder?

Our article on the Fawlty Towers episode, "A Touch of Class", refers to Mr. O'Reilly as "a 'cowboy' builder". Is this slang? What is a "cowboy" builder? Is it similar to a shade tree mechanic? Dismas|^(talk) 10:36, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22cowboy%20builder%22 ¦ Reisio (talk) 11:11, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Should have known to check Urban Dictionary. Dismas|^(talk) 13:23, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

In the UK, a common sign on the vans of builders, plumbers or electricians of south Asian origin; "You've had the cowboys, now try the Indians!". Alansplodge (talk) 13:45, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd be afraid of being scalped. :-) StuRat (talk) 14:17, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

OOI, the point of that particular line is that he quite clearly is a cowboy builder. It's dramatic irony in the sense the audience know that, and have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen (as you almost certainly did). - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 19:49, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I wonder why there's an association between someone who herds cattle and a poor builder. Perhaps there was a particularly poor builder who liked to wear western clothes (cowboy hat and boots) ? StuRat (talk) 14:19, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Mr Google has let me down on the etymology of this one, but I can take a guess. A UK children's comic character called Desperate Dan has been around since the 1930s[1]. He's a larger-than life cowboy who lives in a (wierdly British) wild-west town and is always clumsily breaking things (he's the world's strongest man) and bodging them back together again. Maybe that's the association in the British psyche between cowboys and careless workmanship. Unless anyone knows better? Alansplodge (talk) 16:00, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

In the US, at least, cowboys are associated with the Wild West, the American Frontier that was wild and lawless, as compared to the more established cities to the east. The archetypal cowboy is ill mannered and crude, prone to gambling and drinking, has little regard for the law, is hot tempered, and is likely to rush into things with little consideration. Even the cowboy lawmen, though generally regarded favorably, dispense frontier justice. Calling someone a "cowboy" (in the US) implies that they are reckless (e.g "cowboy diplomacy"). See also Cowboy#Negative associations. -- 174.31.194.126 (talk) 17:15, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

The OED's first reference to unscrupulous tradesmen is from The Times in 1972. Seems to have come to the UK from the earlier US meaning of a reckless driver, first recorded 1942 and apparently frequently used to refer to the juvenile delinquents of the 50s. Drugstore cowboy was used to refer to an idle young man, who wanted to be a cowboy and who hung around drugstores since at least the 20s. One other fairly negative use of the word is almost buried in the cowboy article is Claudius Smith's militant group. meltBanana 19:49, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if a "cowboy builder" is similar to a "shade tree mechanic". What is a "shade tree mechanic"? Here in the UK, a cowboy builder is the type of incompetant builder who will use substandard materials and/or deliberately breach regulations if it will help him make more money while avoiding as much actual work as possible. The van with "You've had the cowboys, now try the Indians!" written on the side is a deliberate play on the term cowboy builder, and is used by builders of south asian descent to claim they are better than the usual cowboy builders. Whether they actually are any better I have no idea. Astronaut (talk) 03:11, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Shadetree Mechanic (a TV series named after the slang). Apparently it means amateur. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 14:06, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

To me, that name implies a lazy mechanic who takes a nap under a shady tree, when they should be working. StuRat (talk) 14:35, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I believe bad builders became called cowboys because they habitually wear blue denim jeans rather than overalls or smarter trousers. Denim jeans are American clothing associated (in the minds of British people) with cowboys. Someone is probably going to point out that you should not wear jeans when riding horses, unless you use chaps, but nethertheless. During the seventies, when the expression began use, high-heeled cowboy boots for men were in fashion. It may also allude to the machismo and fly-by-night qualities sterotypically associated with cowboys. 84.13.53.211 (talk) 12:24, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

The blue jeans explanation sounds like a bit of etymythology to me, unless some evidence can be found. --ColinFine (talk) 22:07, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

How do you translate "故鄉" in Chinese into English?

I've been looking for an English translation of "故鄉" in Chinese that captures the essence of the word. "故鄉" literally means "old country" ("country" as in a rural area, and as in "country-style", not as in a nation). It implies being born in and spending one's childhood years in a rural area, like a village, but that the place is no longer where one lives. It also suggests one has familial and emotional ties to the place. The word is meaningful in a society in which a lot of people were born in rural areas but have moved out of those areas (to cities) but people still emotionally regard their birthplaces as "home", a place where they're from. I guess you can translate it as "home" if the reader understands the context and the intended connotations, but is there a word in English that conveys the same connotations without needing explanation? --173.49.77.185 (talk) 18:05, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

The phrase "old country" was used by American immigrants to mean the place of their birth, but doesn't often imply emotional ties for the reader. Shii (tock) 18:41, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm aware of that. I was trying to explain the meaning of the word so that people not familiar with it could still suggest English equivalents. "Old country" is a literal translation but not a correct translation (and, as I noted, the "country" in my literal translation of "故鄉" means a rural area, not a nation.) --173.49.77.185 (talk) 00:16, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

"Homeland", perhaps? rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:41, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

My Old Country Home? Karenjc 19:04, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

故郷 is used in Japanese with the same meaning. See this online dictionary page. Oda Mari (talk) 04:46, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Another answer would be "motherland". --FOo (talk) 06:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I usually say "home village" or "hometown". -- Vmenkov (talk) 08:22, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I would translate it as "home --", where -- is whatever unit the term is being applied to - homeland, hometown, etc. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:07, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

It's usually taught as 'home village', but sometimes people use it to refer to the town/village where their grandparents or great grandparents came from, and they've never been there. In these situations, 'ancestral village', or 'ancestral hometown' is better. For a Chinese person, it's important to know where your ancestors came from, even if you never live there. Thus there are a lot of people in big cities like Shanghai who were born there, and so were their parents, but they will still talk about their 故鄉, and tell people that they're from there. (This also results in my notion that not many of the 20 million people who live in Shanghai consider themselves to be Shanghainese, but people who happen to live in Shanghai). Steewi (talk) 00:17, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I presume you are talking about such people speaking in mandarin, because 故鄉 is not a commonly encountered word in Shanghainese. I would use the more technically correct 籍贯 if it was necessary to differentiate hometown from ancestral home. If asked, I would say that I am from Shanghai and that's my 故鄉 though I am of Zhenjiang descent (6 generations ago, in the male line). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:07, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

American pronunciation of foreign names

I've had the unfortunate experience of being in hospital for a day and was forced to watch CNN for hours on end. During this period I noticed that the American newsreaders continuously mispronounced Iran (as ee-ran when it should be ee-raan) and Iraq (as eye-rack when it should be ee-raak) yet took meticulous care in pronouncing Srebenica (shrer-ber-nitza?) correctly. My first question is - why pronounce the I's in Iran and Iraq differently? The second question is - why don't they take the same care to pronounce eastern terms correctly when taking care to pronounce (more difficult) western (European) terms? And yet the CNN newsreaders of non-American descent take such care in pronouncing all foreign names and terms correctly. I'd love to hear Americans' comments (BTW the eye-rack thing has always irritated me). Sandman30s (talk) 22:48, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I have always thought it is based on how familiar the word or name is. So newscasters go out of their way to make a showy pronunciation of "Medvedev", but they don't do the same thing for "Paris" or "Berlin", and I have never heard mainstream newscaster affect a Chinese accent. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:39, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Anthony Kuhn, NPR's current Beijing correspondent, and Rob Gifford, who preceded him, both take great care in their pronunciation of personal names in Chinese, including tones, e.g., Wēn Jiābǎo, Hú Jǐntāo, &c. They tend to relax somewhat when it comes to geographical names, especially those that are well-known to Westerners; you're likely to hear Yúnnán's tones pronounced distinctly, Beijing's less so. Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 17:08, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I've never understood why eye-rack is such a horrible mispronunciation when saying Kewba, Meks-ih-ko, and Iz-ree-uhl are perfectly okay. AlexiusHoratius 23:52, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, Iz-ree-uhl is not perfectly ok except in the US. The first two of those three are the standard pronunciations throughout the anglosphere, but Iz-ree-uhl and Eye-rack are particularly American things (they're pronounced Iz-rail and Ee-rahk elsewhere). Btw, I've never heard a non-Russian newscaster pronounce Medvedev, or Putin, correctly. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 00:05, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Me neither, but often I hear them make a show of it, while I never hear them make a show of "Eiffel tower". — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:11, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Could it be that Americans just don't know any better? After all, until Carl (CBM) just mentioned it, I didn't know that there was any other way to pronounce "Eiffel tower" other than "eye-full". Dismas|^(talk) 00:16, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I would say Americans have pronounced "eye-rack" and "eye-ran" that way for so long, it's almost become like a pronunciation exonym, like saying "pare-iss" instead of "pah-ree" for the French capital. In fact, saying "ee-rahn" sounds pedantic or "foreign" to an American ear. There is no alternate pronunciation of Srebenica as far as I know for U.S. broadcasters to use instead. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:21, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I've usually heard "Israel" pronounced "Iz-rail" in the U.S. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

"is-ree-ul" is very common in the US, along with "Is-rye-ell" in certain religious settings (especially in hymns where three syllables are required). — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:29, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

While we're here, I note Obama says Iran-ian, whereas everyone I've heard in the UK draws out the vowel: Ir-arn or Ir-ahn; Ir-ray-ni-an or I-rar-ni-an. Is this endemic in the US? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 16:33, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

While we're at it, what's with the British "nick-a-rag-yoo-uh" for Nicaragua or "koss-uh-voe" for Kosovo? Marco polo (talk) 00:40, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Huh? So how do Americans pronounce Kosovo then?--91.148.159.4 (talk) 01:04, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Every "o" is the same in American English for Kosovo, as in the o in "no". AlexiusHoratius 01:12, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Without the second one, I presume: Koe-suh-voe (that's what I find on youtube, too). Well, in British pronunciation, the "short <o>" as in "Kossovo" is more similar to the Serbian one than the "long <o>" would have been. Not to mention that the Serbian word has no long vowel there anyway, as far as I know. But I can see how the American pronunciation may be justified for American accents, because in most American accents, the "short <o>" is basically a Serbian /a/, so that the "long <o>" is actually closer to the Serbian vowel at least in terms of quality.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 01:30, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, now that you mention it, I suppose I probably do say "Koh-sah-voh" when saying it quickly, although if I were asked to speak it really slowly, I'd say "Koh-soh-voh". AlexiusHoratius 01:43, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Anyway, the point is that from the point of view of Serbian pronunciation of "Kosovo", the ideal thing would probably be to have the British vowel of "cot" in all three syllables (well, it's not exactly the same vowel, but it's the closest thing available). Of course, that's not even possible. As for the American Koh-suh-voh, it would probably suggest to a Serb a spelling like "Kousavou" (that is Kaw-oo-saw-oo-vaw-oo). The British "Kossovo" at least gets the stressed vowel (almost) right, suggesting a spelling like "Kosavou" (or perhaps "Kosaveu"). An American "Kossovo" would have been spelt "Kasavou", which is not better than "Kousavou". --91.148.159.4 (talk) 02:04, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

...or Los Anjaleez, but then again the US pronunciation for Los Angeles isn't correct in Spanish either, but then again it's been an American city for 150 years...I guess what I'm saying is that there isn't any "right" or "wrong" in the end, just different pronunciations based on where you're from. I'm still sticking to by my point about the Meksico thing - why demand Americans modify their pronunciation to what the natives use on one but not on another? Also, the person who made the point about ee-rahn sounding a bit pedantic to an American is correct, at least for me, anyway. AlexiusHoratius 01:00, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree, there's no right or wrong here, pronunciation is just a matter of convention, and it is both unnecessary and impossible to reproduce foreign pronunciation. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 01:04, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Srebrenica has two Rs. -- Wavelength (talk) 02:53, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

It's a question of how far you want to go in trying to imitate the correct local pronunciation vs. saying it the "English way". To really say "Israel" the right way, it should be more like "YEES-rrah-ell". Those who say it "Eye-ran" and "Eye-rack", I have long suspected are mispronouncing it on purpose, with a degree of contempt. Like those who pronounced "Vyet Nahm" as "Veet Nam". The Spanish way to say "Los Angeles" is actually phonetically not too far from the way we typically say it. Another example, the way "Paris" sounds to my ears, as spoken by a Frenchman, is something like "pah-WEE". The French drop the trailing "s" and round off the "r", which is not a natural thing to do in English. In Spanish its "pah-RREES", which is arguably the way it should be anglicized, except we emphasis the first syllable for some unknown reason, and turn it into an "eh" sound the way we say "pair" (or "pare" or "pear"), hence we say "PAIR-iss", which admittedly sounds both ignorant and apathetic, but the apparent bottom line is that we don't know and don't care. (I wonder how a Frenchman would pronounce "Albuquerque" or "Kankakee" or "Spuyten Duyvil"? And I know how Hispanics say "Chicago", namely "chee-CAH-go", which is not correct.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:03, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Don't assume too much with the Anglicized pronunciations of Iran and Iraq. The "mispronunciation" is so common that it is, essentially, correct. The word paris was borrowed a very long time ago into English, when stress worked differently in French so that it couldh ave been stressed on the first syllable in that language. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 03:37, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I doubt that any English speaker pronouncs "Iraq" correctly, unless they know better. The "I" and the "q" aren't even English sounds. (I know better but I still can't pronounce the "I".) Adam Bishop (talk) 03:52, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

When native speakers say those words, they sound like "ee-RRAHN" and "ee-RRACH" (the latter almost like the Scottish way to say "loch"). I usually say "ih-RAHN" and "ih-ROCK", which I fancy to at least be somewhat closer than "eye-ran" and "eye-rack". Americans aren't so good at pronouncing their own place names, though. I've heard countless persons pronounce Oregon as "or-ee-gahn" (as if it rhymes with "polygon") when it's more like "or-ih-gun" or even "or'gun". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:56, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

George Donikian is an Australian newsreader who prides himself on his correct pronunciation of foreign names, but for his troubles he's regularly spoofed by comedians. There's an Aussie cultural thing at work there, whereby people who actually care about proper pronunciation of non-English words are looked upon somewhat askance ("Are you a poof or something?"); and to avoid such criticism, the typically homophobic Aussie male will go out of his way to appear to be ignorant, sometimes astoundingly and unbelievably so, and will take considerable pride in how little he knows about how to say words more complex than "cat" or "rat". It's changing, but vanishingly slowly. The wider picture is that, as Baseball Bugs rightly says, the further one goes down the track of "correct" pronunciation, the more likely one is to be regarded as pretentious, and that doesn't work. Finding the right balance is tricky. The Eiffel Tower is probably mispronounced by more people than any comparable object in the world; but say "Eiffel" the French way to anyone but a Frenchman, and few people would know what you're talking about, which makes it all a bit pointless. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 04:17, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Making fun of people who try to use English correctly is certainly not limited to Aussies. :) I gather from the IPA stuff that "Eiffel" is supposed to be pronounced as if the "ei" and the "e" were long-A's, to rhyme with "hay-bale". Am I reading it correctly? "eye-ful" is perhaps closer to the German way to say the "ei". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:59, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

No, it's pretty much as if you were spelling out F-L: "efel". The Germans would say "eye-fell". Anglos say "eye-full", or even "oy-full". -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 06:36, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

One could add that since the surname Eiffel is originally German, Germans and others can be somewhat justified in pronouncing it the German way. Same with Noam Chomsky - Russians still use the original East Slavic pronunciation of the surname (roughly "Khomskee") and still treat the -sky part as a Slavic adjectival ending, even though this doesn't match the current American pronunciation and morphology.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 13:36, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I've heard that many Russians are not aware that the polemicist Ном Чомски and the linguist Ноам Хомский are the same. (Or did I get that backward?) —Tamfang (talk) 00:58, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Chomski - not Chomsky - is a Polish surname. 83.31.77.212 (talk) 11:20, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

It might be worth pointing out that pronouncing Srebrenica as "shrer-ber-nitza" is actually also incorrect, contrary to what the OP seems to believe. The initial "S" in the name is really a "s", it should not be pronounced as "sh".—Emil J. 14:52, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

The same applies to Sri Lanka. -- Wavelength (talk) 15:27, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Does it? The article says that the local pronunciation is IPA: [ˌɕriːˈlaŋkaː], and as far as I can see, [ɕ] is closer to English [ʃ] than to [s] (for example, Japanese [ɕ] is routinely transliterated as "sh" into English).—Emil J. 16:02, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Apparently you are correct about the local pronunciation. I still pronounce the "s" as in "set". -- Wavelength (talk) 16:27, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

It's mass displays of ad hoc pronunciation notation like this that make me glad IPA exists. There, I said it. ;-) Some smug fool^{with an opinion}18:26, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

IPA exists for (more or less) precise scientific designations, not for mass discussions involving people who are not language nerds. Typing, say, [ˈxomskʲii̯] instead of "khomskee" in such a context risks causing a complete breakdown in communication with 80% of the participants, in addition to taking noticeably longer time to format. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:01, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

How about another: is it Hay-tee or Hi-ee-ti? Ja-may-ca or Ja-my-ca? Grsz¹¹ 19:23, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Which are both in the karə-BEE-ən, or is it the kə-RIB-iən? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 19:35, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

On a related note, is "Sri Lanka" pronounced "sri laanka" or "sri lunka"? ~AH1^(TCU) 20:21, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I've never heard lunka, but I do hear differences between Shri or Sree. Grsz¹¹ 20:28, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm off to the Apple store to pick up an ee-PAHD. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:38, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

There you go, I've misspelled and mispronounced Srebrenica. I guess I qualify to become a CNN employee? Amazing what the mind concocts when on painkillers and antibiotics. BTW I've always said Shree-Lunka, not Sree-Lanka. I guess it's always down to 'you say toe-may-toe, I say toe-maa-toe'. Sandman30s (talk) 23:05, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

When I first heard Munich, Bach, Chopin and van Gogh in English conversation, I couldn't understand them. Oda Mari (talk) 06:02, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok, don't make me bring up Gloucester. Forget Oregon, what about Worcestershire? Anyway, I think there is an old habit in America of pronouncing "i" as "eye". There is mountain near where I live called Mount Si. Before you check the link, guess the pronunciation? When I moved here I called it Mount "see", not realizing it is Mount "sigh". Anyway, when it comes to non-English place names, the better known places have standard pronunciations, which may differ in the various English dialects. But the lesser known place names have no established dialectical pronunciation, as so one must attempt to pronounce it the way the people who live there do, or invent something new. Naturally, as lesser known names become common, as in wartime, dialectical pronunciations take hold. It's no surprise that news reports use the standard dialectical pronunciations for common place names according to the audience they are addressing, but make some attempt at "proper" pronunciations of place names that have no standard dialectical pronunciation. This is part of why I enjoy listening to the BBC world news that is broadcast from time to time on the local radio station here in Seattle. It's not just the alternate viewpoints (sometimes wildly alternative), but the alternative pronunciations. I must relate a story about a trip to Italy. I heard an Italian talking on the phone to some speaker of English (American, British, who knows?), and she was trying to spell out the name of a hotel. She said, "it is spelled ee teh a el... no, no ee,.. no no, ee as in ee-tahlia!" Pfly (talk) 10:09, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. I've always wondered how they get "Glouster" out of "Gloucester", "Wooster" out of "Worcester", and for that matter, "Folks'll" out of "Forecastle". The point about the long I is valid. Consider Hiawatha, whose correct pronunciation is like "hee-ah-wat-hah", but has evolved into "high-ah-wath-ah". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

How synchronistic that you should mention the name Hiawatha, given what I created only yesterday. :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 10:19, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Wow. Well, as the tabloids might have said when Angelina married Brad, "The stars have aligned." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:32, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

You can always spell it Gloster if you prefer; many do [2] www.aviastar.org/manufacturers/0985.html [3]. Alansplodge (talk) 17:54, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Heh, last time I was in Boston I made an effort to pronounce Gloucester the way people tend to in Gloucester, Massachusetts, or so I was informed--something like glaah-stuh. Pfly (talk) 19:18, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Here's the list of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations. Featherstonehaugh is a good one. 213.122.3.202 (talk) 06:59, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

The people in Worcester, Massachusetts pronounce it in what sounds to my California ear as "WUHS-tuh". But then, there was a waitress there who asked me if I wanted chad as my vegetable with dinner. It took a while to realize she was asking if I wanted chard. Woogee (talk) 02:21, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

English names are always good to trap visitors. Southwark,Greenwich and Leicester usually trip up a couple.And there are those names that are just pronounced differently I believe to amuse the natives when visitors mangle them or come out with something completely different. Cirencester used to be Sisitter or Sitter.Near us we have St.Juliet pronounced St.Jilt and Woolfardisworthy which truncates down to something like Wolsey. Lemon martini (talk) 00:27, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

American broadcasters can't even get American names right sometimes! I recently saw a network newsreader refer to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, pronouncing it like the city in California /ˈlænkæstər/ rather than the proper /ˈlæŋkɨstər/, used for the cities in Pennsylvania and England. — Michael J 21:57, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

It is my understanding that Americans pronounce Calais in a much more French-sounding way than the British which seems to rhyme with Callous. And let's not even get into Leghorn. Woogee (talk) 02:23, 10 April 2010 (UTC)