[Sca-cooks] Reptilian Pronunciation (was Drive up ATM's OT, OOP (was Languages)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Jane Williams:
>On 22 May 2002 at 21:39, Philip & Susan Troy
>wrote:
>
>>  Also sprach lilinah at earthlink.net:
>>  >BBC newscasters say jag-yew-ar for jaguar
>>
>>  I'll concede their right to call the British auto brand by that name,
>>  but the animal is very clearly not a jagyewar, unless it is given a
>>  new name that is neither Spanish nor indigenous, native South
>>  American.
>
>OK, puzzled. How *else* would you pronounce
>"jaguar"? I know Americans tend to turn "e" into "oo"
>at times (hence "noos" for "news"),

No, they turn "ew" into "oo", and not into "yew". (Is "yew alley"
pronounced "y-yew alley?") I don't see either as being especially
more defensibly correct than the other.

>  but how does that
>apply here? Does the "u" go silent, or turned into a
>long "oo", or something?

The way it is pronounced by the South American cultures that have
Jag-yew-ars living there, and who named them. You know. Just like the
four-syllable alloominum. ;-)

Jag (very soft "g") oo-ar, or simply jag-war, with the "ar" as in
"Arthur", and not as in "war". I think in this case the people that
named and live with jaguars have a bit more authority as to proper
pronunciation.

But yes, I suppose the "u" does get turned into a "oo", but then a
long "u" often doesn't have a "y" element in its pronunciation in
America. Sometimes it does -- "Utah." "Uganda." "UPENN." Even "U.K."
-- but frequently not.

Now, in the U.K., how about words like "flute", "flue", "sprue",
"Rumania", etc. Are those words pronounced as if they had a "y" in
the first syllable? How about "flu" or "influenza?" "Screw"? "True"?
If not, why not?

I suspect there's very little logic left to the process...

Adamantius