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AusTexSusan
Chatty Knitter
USA
345 Posts |
 Posted - 02/03/2005 : 10:05:20 AM
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Lissa
Have you visited New Orleans? There are French names everywhere, but the locals pronounce everything the way it is spelled. So Rue du Dauphine is like the pronunced like the girls name, Daff-ny. I can't even try to say Chartres like the locals.
But the funniest Anglesized French name I heard was in England. There is a small town on the south coast, Beaulieu. The locals say Bew-lee.
Susan |
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Mokihana
Warming Up
USA
54 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2005 : 1:37:08 PM
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I am Hawaiian, and have trouble pronouncing "a's" as in "Cat".. not that I can't, but the sound is very harsh to my ears. So I say "Kaht yah" for "Katia", for instance.
So how do you pronounce Gedifra? Is it Geh DIE frah or Geh DEE fra?
Great topic...
BTW.. my name is pronounced phonetically, vowels similar to Japanese...or Spanish. But I still get called Mochahana (as if I were a latte) 95% of the time.. go figure!
Aloha,
Mokihana |
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TheDishclothQueen
Chatty Knitter
112 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2005 : 1:56:33 PM
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Since we're talking about French names that are ruined by English speakers, I can't help much mention my last name: Limoges. I'm told that the correct pronunciation is something like lay-mozjh. Wanna know how MY family pronouces it? Lu-mush. I will never understand where it comes from. (A 3rd cousin with whom I had a class told me that when my family "got off the boat" we were supposed to pick a name. We picked "Limoges," but didn't bother to learn how to pronounce it.)
So you French speakers: how should I say my last name?!
Amanda
PS-->I want to marry a Smith, so I never have this problem again!
If I knit while I'm asleep
I pray the Lord my gauge to keep.
And if I die before I wake
I pray I may my knitting take.
*~*~*~*~*
thedishclothqueen.typepad.com |
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Kelly B
Permanent Resident
USA
2206 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2005 : 2:09:10 PM
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Amanda, Limoges is
Lee mow zh
Where mow is to cut the lawn, zh is the sound in the middle of leisure (assuming you don't say it funny, tee hee)
But if it's your name, you get to say it any way you please!
And I went from a maiden name that was really long so everybody said it wrong (even though it was completely phonetically obvious to us) to a short married name that everybody says wrong because it's unusual.
Only girls named Jones or Brown get to marry guys named Smith. It's fate.
My album: http://www.ofoto.com/BrowsePhotos.jsp?&collid=435997750203&page=1&sort_order=0 |
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kdcrowley
Permanent Resident
USA
4773 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2005 : 2:13:41 PM
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quote:
English pronounciations are difficult because English has stolen borrowed words from just about every other language known to man. And, often, kept the original spellings and other grammatical points. Which means that it's extremely inconsistent. The so-called rules seldom apply even 50% of the time. And that's not even counting regional diffenences!
Most other languages are far more consistent. For instance, there may be more than one way to write the long a (like in way) in French, but every time you see one of those ways, it's gonna say ay. (OK, now someone can look for exceptions to show me up  )
Barbara
[
Precisely!
But I should also say that English is more inconsistent also due to sheer size.
The english langugage contains upwards of 660,000 words, with about 5,000 new words added each year.....
As a note, lingual fluency is assumed to begin at about 5000 words.
Russian comes in at a disappointing second largest with about 175,000; German with about 160,000.
French performance in terms of word volume is considerably more disappointing due primarily to the trenchant position of it's Academie Francaise dedicated to the preservation of the French language in the past which held significantly less technology and science. There are about 115,000 words in Classic French, as opposed to the French spoken in the Carribean, AFrican or Asia.
So let's just say that most languages have irregularities on the order of 10% (just making it up here). That means that in Frence, you need to be wary of just 11,500 words that are irregular, but in English the irregularity top 66,000 and we add another 500 each year. So we are just more likely to trip over the English irregularities than say the French irregularities.....and the English ones require more byte space.
Oh, and got these numbers from a show about languages, thought they were cool and so committed them to memory!
Kelley
Everywhere you go, there you are! Imagine that.... |
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Janice
Warming Up
USA
94 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2005 : 2:26:48 PM
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So, everybody, how do you pronounce "intarsia"? In tar SEE ah? In TAR sha?
Janice |
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kdcrowley
Permanent Resident
USA
4773 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2005 : 2:30:21 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Janice
So, everybody, how do you pronounce "intarsia"? In tar SEE ah? In TAR sha?
Janice
In-TAR-zha.
Kelley
Everywhere you go, there you are! Imagine that.... |
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Sunshine_Amy
New Pal
13 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2005 : 2:43:15 PM
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Just jumping in on this great topic....(haven't posted in a while)
Is there a "correct" way to pronounce intarsia? My LYS owner, and Meg Swansen, both say "in-TAR-sha." But Merriam Webster online says "in-TAR-see-uh."
Thanks....
Amy
PS
Kelley, what an amazing factoid about how many words we have in English!
"There is no beauty in the finest cloth if..." A new cotton T-shirt uses 3 teaspoons of chemical fertilizers and 17 teaspoons of pesticides! Buy used clothing, or organic cotton! (www.greenpages.org has sources) |
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riverspirit
New Pal
USA
15 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2005 : 3:01:04 PM
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 I say puh-tay-to. I'm very concrete |
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CAJill
New Pal
29 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2005 : 3:57:16 PM
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There is some truth to finding out how the sales rep for the company pronounces the brand names. Just because a company appears to be from a certain country doesn't mean it actually is. Bernat, for example, was originally an American company (Uxbridge, MA). As pointed out by more than one person above, once families came to America, most pronunciation rules went by the wayside.
So, if Eleanor Bernat is still alive (I'm not sure she is), we should probably ask HER how to pronounce her last name... |
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Lissa
Permanent Resident
USA
4942 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2005 : 5:03:55 PM
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Susan, those folks are definitely NOT pronouncing the names as they are spelled, if your pronunciations are accurate! Makes me want to go live in a cave where I never have to hear a misprounounced word again!
Lissa
Hey - I MEANT to do that!
Oh, and I now have a blog:http://knittnlissa.typepad.com/knittnlissa/ |
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SerMom
Permanent Resident
Canada
6412 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2005 : 6:33:59 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Lissa
Makes me want to go live in a cave where I never have to hear a misprounounced word again!
We'd miss you!
Barbara
Remember, we're self-selecting!
My photos: I've gone back to yahoo!
My blog:
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claudiam
Chatty Knitter
USA
144 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2005 : 6:41:55 PM
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People do treat you like you can't enunciate in the yarn store, but I also learned a lot just reading what you said maybe now I can say the names of yarns correctly!
Claudiam |
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mkeson
Chatty Knitter
123 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2005 : 07:13:38 AM
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I was pronouncing Koigu "ko WEE gu" and Kureyon "curry-on", so thanks for correcting me on that.
I think the name Elann comes from the 2 names Ellen and Ann, so it's pronounced ell-ann, but you would have ask them to be sure.
What I'm wondering is - how do you pronounce intrelac? I've been pronouncing it intra-lack, which I'm sure is wrong, but I can't figure out the right way to say it.
Mary from VA
"housework is like threading beads on a string with no knot at the end" |
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qtpieknitter
Gabber Extraordinaire
Canada
583 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2005 : 08:45:45 AM
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| I love this post. Being French-Canadian, I always chuckle when I hear people mispronounce words when they think they have it right. The best one I've heard is when I was in a fabric store and I asked the clerck if they had toile fabric, and I know that I pronounced it correctly, and she looked at me snottily and said "You mean toil?" Oh so snotty and so wrong, and so foolish looking, as I was there with my mom and my sister, and we all looked at her, wondering what planet she came from. |
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qtpieknitter
Gabber Extraordinaire
Canada
583 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2005 : 08:50:18 AM
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| Skein is pronounced like day, or to make it even easier for us knitters, like gauge. |
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kdcrowley
Permanent Resident
USA
4773 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2005 : 10:01:54 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by mkeson
I was pronouncing Koigu "ko WEE gu" and Kureyon "curry-on", so thanks for correcting me on that.
I think the name Elann comes from the 2 names Ellen and Ann, so it's pronounced ell-ann, but you would have ask them to be sure.
What I'm wondering is - how do you pronounce intrelac? I've been pronouncing it intra-lack, which I'm sure is wrong, but I can't figure out the right way to say it.
Mary from VA
"housework is like threading beads on a string with no knot at the end"
ON-trey-loc and spelled Entrelac
Kelley
Everywhere you go, there you are! Imagine that.... |
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Momma78239
Permanent Resident
USA
4859 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2005 : 11:51:04 AM
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Don't forget that even native speakers of a language often differ in their pronunciation.
For example: "HI" in English
Is it a drawn out "ha-eee" as in the midwest? A clipped "ha-ee" as on the west coast? "Haa" as in the south? Or "yo" as in the northeast?
-Wendy
____________
He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as craftsmen, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers-all of them master craftsmen and designers.
--Exodus 35:35 |
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paper tiger
Chatty Knitter
282 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2005 : 1:14:31 PM
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I always said "eee-lonn," because I thought it was "e" for electronic and "lann" like Lana Grossa.
Off topic but still amusing -- I'm a big francophile and have dragged my parents across France as often as they'll let me. One of the best dinners we had was in Chartres, and my Mom felt she'd like a little after-dinner drink, so she asked for a glass of Baileys. The waitress responded that they didn't have that, but we could see it on the shelf, so we pointed it out. She looked at us and "corrected" us carefully: bayLAAYYYZZZ. |
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Mpenzi.Campbell@srz.com
Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2005 : 1:16:53 PM
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| Interesting topic I have a problem with the brand of yarn call Paton. I say PA-Ton like in the word baton but the lady at the yarn store say it was Pat-tin. I gave me a look. |
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