BS: ...age pronunciation

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: fat B****rd
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 07:11 AM

I say 'kaffee' and always will.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: melodeonboy
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 01:16 PM

'No-one of consequence says "caff".'

Ah, I know my place then!

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 09:47 AM

Jim, I learned he Phonetic Alphabet when studying Phonetics as an 'extra' subject at Uni. It's very useful, as you say, for transcribing speech accurately. But it can come unstuck as it depends on the ears of the listener. For example, when I did exercises alongside other students, we each heard different things, eg breathiness on vowels, fricative or plosive, voiced/unvoiced. It got more and more complex. You're right in that the spelling of speech is very misleading, even when writing English from different parts of the world. I loved the book about 'Strine' for example, (Australian) which tries to 'spell as it sounds'.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 07:55 PM

Sorry, Dave MacKenzie. I was addressing Dave Oesterreich, who posted right before me.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 06:54 PM

In other words, depends on level of education?

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 03:15 PM

Sorry Jim, I'm definitely not American - never been out of Europe. When you say "the British way of pronouncing an R" presumably you mean Cockney,

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 01:50 PM

Dave: Putting the second R in "gararjh" seems odd to you because you're American and the people who wrote that were British. You've got to think of the British way of pronouncing an R, which means (from the American point of view) not pronouncing it at all!

The R is really there to change the quality of the A before it.

If an American were writing that, he'd probably spell it "garahjh."

The H would be there for the same reason.

That's why real linguists have given up trying to describe pronunciation with the unadorned Roman alphabet and have invented a whole different set of symbols. See International Phonetic Alphabet. Trouble is, it's too cumbersome for us ordinary mortals to use.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 11:16 AM

Gararjh???

I'm 80 now, and in that time I have NEVER heard anyone
put an R sound in after the second A and before the
final "jh" or "dj".

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 04:53 AM

"Gararjh (emphasis equal between syllables - second syllable is US or very Lord Peter Wimsey)"

That makes three syllables- I've only heard two. It's usually pronounced with the stress on the first (garridge), though my late aunts used to put the stress on the second syllable (garaage).

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 04:05 AM

Gararjh (emphasis equal between syllables - second syllable is US or very Lord Peter Wimsey)

At one point in Dorothy L Sayers' "The Nine Tailors", the word is spelt garridge. I can't, for the moment, remember whether this was in quoted speech, but it cetainly wasn't italicised, or otherwise noted.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: GUEST,999
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 09:24 PM

Poor guy was so POed he went into a ridge.



I don't get it.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 09:14 AM

Do you hold your eating knife like a pencil ("that way")?

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 07:41 AM

Forage...........FOR-AJ

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: GUEST,PeterC
Date: 15 Sep 11 - 02:19 AM

Everybody pronounces "driveway" pretty much the same.
The driveway connects the road to the garage.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 10:11 PM

And I ain't even had a garage, you can call home and ask my wife!

(Not to make it a music thread or anything.)

I heard the canNIBBLEism on a BBC programme (see, I can spell in English too) about Japanese stuck on some island in WWII with their POWs and how they used to eat them a limb at a time, sometimes making them run and be hunted. The narrater, good public school voice (comma, best of British), used the term throughout the documentary, and I couldn't take it seriously.

My fave in English is tachypneic, which takes the root tachy (pr. TACKy) and -pneic (PNEE-ic) and gets taKIPnik.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 04:06 PM

Thank you Q. Mea culpa.

But as to "garage", we po' folks don't worry about how it's pronounced. Everybody pronounces "driveway" pretty much the same.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 03:11 PM

spuds??

My father once was eating with men in a railroad workers rail car (just a gray thing with some windows & bunks, and a small stove). They cooked for themselves.
   One guy hollered to the other end of the table, "Hey...pass the spuds!" Old codger with the bowl hollered back, "Don't call 'em spuds! Call 'em 'taters, whut they aire!".

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 03:10 PM

B-w-ll- The spice is spelled filé, not filet.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: gnu
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 02:55 PM

You say potatoe and I say spud...

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 02:46 PM

Around here, "filet" (one L) is ground sassafras root used in preparing Cajun gumbo. It's pronounce "FEE-lay". "Fillet" (two Ls) is what you one does to a fish. It's pronounced "fil-LAY".

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 02:13 PM

Café is always ka-FAY. Proper pronunciation of a word taken from the French in turn taken from Turkish kahve.

Always inventive, only North Americans could coin a word such as cafetorium. (Webster's Collegiate and International.)

Garage- 'garridge' always good for a laugh in North America.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 01:41 PM

British:caNIBBLEism

I'm afraid not.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Crowhugger
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 01:38 PM

I normally say fee-LAY-ing but certain of my in-laws have a profound complex about others being more educated than they, so to help keep their hackles down, in their presence I say filleting. (They think a French pronunciation is an attempt to make them feel dumb, but it's simply the one I grew up with, Ottawa area.)

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 12:38 PM

I say Fill-it-ing.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Charmion
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 12:30 PM

Jim, you're doing it in English and talking about it à la française.

I recognize this right away because, as a Canadian resident on the Quebec-Ontario border, I do it all the time -- but usually the other way around. "C'est une jolie robe, mais je n'aime pas le way qu'elle hang."

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 12:21 PM

Although I am not an avid fisherman, I do live in the land of 10,000 lakes and I have learned the art of filleting (pronounced fil-LAY-ing) fish, and I have discussed it with other fishermen. (It is, after all, a skill that must be taught.) I even own a filleting knife, with a long, narrow, slightly curved blade. And I have never heard anyone in Minnesota or Wisconsin pronounce it FILL-et-ing.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Mrrzy
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 12:17 PM

Well, if we're going to talk pronunciation, I give you Cannibalism...

America: CANnibalism

British:caNIBBLEism

Now THAT was funny!

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: fat B****rd
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 11:38 AM

I am often accused of talking 'garbidge'.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Mr Happy
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 11:21 AM

marridge

carridge

couridge

foridge

sausidge!

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: frogprince
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 11:03 AM

People around here in the USian midwest generally keep their car in a one-sylable "grahj". I spent a year just above the Minnesota border in Ontario, and most folks right there seemed to have "gairidges"

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 10:48 AM

Nor me, Mr Happy.

Garidge or gararge usually depending on whether you think grass rhymes with ass or with arse, scone with gone or with bone, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 10:46 AM

On this occasion, and this is not to be taken as setting a precedent, Bonzo is right even if his examples are not wholly so..

Gararjh (emphasis equal between syllables - second syllable is US or very Lord Peter Wimsey)
Siledge
Messedge or Messij
Dressarjh, I think but I'm not horsey, emphasis second syllable.
Tree-arjh, emphasis second syllable
Massarjh, ditto
Mirarjh, ditto
Sab-ott-arjh
Porridge - or pouradge if you are very Scottish.

No-one of consequence says "caff". Caf-fay often but not CAF-ay.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Mr Happy
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 10:15 AM

never 'eard anyone say 'gairidge'

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 09:53 AM

Jim Dixon told us:

Fillet – American: fil-LAY – British: FILL-it.

This word, in French, is "filet"--one L. "Fee-LAY".
As in "filet Mignon", a particular dish prepared from
a specific meat cut, not the meat cut itself, whether
raw or prepared in some other manner, which dish might
be named something like "filet Gladys" or "filet Oscar".

"Fillet", on the other hand, may be either a verb
or a noun in English.

The verb is the operation of separating the muscle tissues
of a fish (or a meat animal) from the bone(s). Pronounced
"FILL-it" or "FILL-et". The two-L word is English, not
French, and should not be pronounced "fee-LAY".

As a noun, fillet refers to either the flesh thus removed from the
bone(s) or to a physical feature making a smooth curve at the
joint of two straight lines perpendicular to each other.
("Straight" and "perpendicular" here are approximate descriptions,
of course.)

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 09:24 AM

Invariably, all these are pronounced; 'garridge', 'messidge', 'silidge'


It's a matter of education and breeding.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 09:19 AM

This is one of several words that Americans stick closer to the French pronunciation while Brits have anglicized it.

Examples:

Café – American: caf-FAY – British: CAFF-fay or CAFF.
Fillet – American: fil-LAY – British: FILL-it.
Garage – American: ga-ROZH or ga-RODGE – British: GAIR-ridge.

But there are also words where the opposite has happened:

Lingerie – American: LAWN-jer-AY – British: LAN-jer-ee.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Mr Happy
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 09:14 AM

Porage?

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 08:36 AM

dressage, triage, mirage, sabotage

The suffix is French, but I don't know why we say 'idge' or 'arge' rather indiscriminately!

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: GUEST,999
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 08:35 AM

I opine it has to do with which language the -age suffix was borrowed from, Mr H.

We see pronunciations vary in words that have ough in them.

rough
though
bough
through

and the 'awe' sound in thought.

-age entered English through Old French from Latin. Lotsa things get changed along the way. English as a language had both the Great Vowel Shift and the Great Consonant Shift. Academics think that we only have about 10% of our original language (Old English, sometimes wrongly called Anglo-Saxon) still with us. Irish monks saved what there is left of it when Norsemen raiders were looting and burning the books that then existed in monasteries.

Your question is a good one.

Subject: RE: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 08:25 AM

Some people have a gararge...

Subject: BS: ...age pronunciation
From: Mr Happy
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 08:19 AM

About words ending '..age', like garage, message, silage etc.

Invariably, all these are pronounced; 'garridge', 'messidge', 'silidge'

Yet inconsistencies can arise with such as 'massage' which is never 'massidge'

what the??