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

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Jane Williams:
>  > Just like the four-syllable alloominum. ;-)
>
>??
>The metal? The one I'd spell aluminium? (And, come to think of it, the init=
>ial "u" *would* sound like "oo" in this case.

It does. But it is frequently pronounced al-yew-min-i-um, which is
simply incorrect, on more than one count.

>Only if we're using their language... what language is that from, anyway? N=
>ot Spanish, presumably, or the initial J would turn into an H?

You _are_ using their language, or at least a part of it. While I can
see the possibility of adjusting the pronunciation of a "foreign"
word to suit one's own tongue, what I object to is the occasional
assertion that failure to do this is somehow incorrect, that adoption
of a "foreign" word into English makes it an English, and exclusively
an English, word, and the implication that South Americans who fail
to pronounce "jaguar" as "jag-yew-ar" and North Americans who don't
pronounce "aluminum" as "al-yew-min-i-um" are pronouncing those words
incorrectly.

>  > 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...
>
>Logic? In language? I doubt it! Works sometimes, but not often.
>
>My *guess* would be that it's based on what language they originally came f=
>rom (Norman French, Saxon, Norse, Welsh...), but I'm no linguist. I seem to=
>  remember being told that the apparent inconsistencies of "rough" and "thro=
>ugh" are due to differences between Norse and Saxon: maybe this is somethin=
>g similar?

Possibly. Each is consistent with examples from its source language,
if not with those from others.

>Though there must be *some* useful consistencies left to us. I find when re=
>ading a cookery book (ye gods, back on topic!) in Middle English, it makes =
>more sense if I read it aloud. Their pronounciation must have been at least=
>  vaguely similar to mine?

Probably. Actually even the spelling in Middle English is a lot more
consistent than a lot of people make it out to be, at least within
individual documents, so obviously the writers of the documents felt
that spelling counted.

Adamantius