English language question

[Richard Bos]

*Every time* I (as a Briton living in the US) have asked why herb is
pronounced "erb",
*ouch*

or fillet as "fill-eh" out here (California), I've
been told by native Californian-English speakers it's because they're
French words and should be pronounced as such.

Cue joke about Loose Angie Lees.

Richard

 

[Richard Bos]

Your teacher didn't like Americans? Couldn't find a book on USAnian?
Didn't appreciate a great difference (Is there a great difference)?
Perhaps the sound of it. People from Oxford sound more delightful to
the refined Dutch ear than people from New York (I agree actually)?

No, don't be daft, no, and possibly. Though, mind you, an Irish accent
can be delightful as well - and one of the few accents from the USA that
don't rile me is Simon and Garfunkel's, which is from New York - one of
the many accents from that rather large and diverse city, I gather.

I am curious why you, Richard Bos of Holland,

Oi! From the Netherlands, if you please! Or should I ask my friends in
the Taffia to come 'round to your place and explain, with the aid of a
couple of large leeks, the difference between a country and the most
loud-mouthed part of it?

choose to deprecate nearly all things American in favour of things English.

I don't necessarily deprecate all things USAnian, but I do read the
newspapers, _and_ I know my history. Brittannia was discovered before
Vinland, and it's there that the language evolved. They've got first
dibs.

Richard

 

[Alan Balmer]

Nah, it's because 'erbert was a Cockney.

That was always my assumption ;-)

Calais, Maine, is
pronounced to rhyme with Dallas (or Maria Callas). Note the
prevalence of C in these facts.

Another one - there's a town in upstate NY named Chili, pronounced
Chai-lai, as in jai-lai (assuming I don't mispronounce the latter. Any
how, the 'i' is long.

 

[Alan Balmer]

... snip ...

I think you will find that is a relatively recent affectation. I
recall a musical, circa 1945, (I think it was 'State Fair') where
some of the principle songs were 'The Trolley Song' and 'Meet me
in St Louis, Louie'. From which I conclude that the Lewis
prononciation was not in effect, or at least not universal, then.

One scene in the musical was when one character corrects another's
pronunciation, but I can't remember which way it was. Online
dictionaries seem to favor the "lewis" variation, but they may be
reflecting current usage.

 

[Alan Balmer]

How do you explain, then, that I learned English, not USAnian?

Perhaps you learned it before the 21st century?

 

[Alan Balmer]

Now I'm totally confused. In Britain, that would be said as "Hines
means beans" - and was sung that way as an advertising jingle. Isn't
that more or less the correct pronunciation of the vowels if we treat
"Heinz" as a German word? I think Heinz is an American company - are
you saying that the correct American pronunciation is "Heans"?

Having asked for the joke, I didn't want to complain that it wasn't
funny ;-) But you are of course correct - Heinz is pronounced "hines"
in America, as well.

 

[Default User]

... snip ...

I think you will find that is a relatively recent affectation. I
recall a musical, circa 1945, (I think it was 'State Fair') where
some of the principle songs were 'The Trolley Song' and 'Meet me
in St Louis, Louie'. From which I conclude that the Lewis
prononciation was not in effect, or at least not universal, then.

The musical was "Meet me in St. Louis."

I'll think you find that those songs were written by people who weren't
native St. Louisans and quite possibly had never been there. They also
had other considerations, like how the song sounded.

The "St. Looey" pronounciation was certainly not prevalent around 1945,
otherwise there'd be a significant number of people still using that. It
is the tendency in St. Louis to completely squash all French
pronounciations. The street name Gravois is not Grav-WAH, it is GRAV-oi
or GRAV-ois. My town of Florissant is FLOOR-uh-sant. Bellefontaine is
BELL-fountain.

The likelyhood of "St. Looie" being prevalent anytime recently is pretty
slim. It's one of those outsider things, like Frisco.



Brian Rodenborn

 

[Coos Haak]

Op Wed, 23 Jun 2004 01:26:34 GMT schreef CBFalconer:

Nah, it's because 'erbert was a Cockney. Calais, Maine, is
pronounced to rhyme with Dallas (or Maria Callas). Note the
prevalence of C in these facts.

In Europe the pronouncing of Dallas is significantly different from Callas
;-)

 

[Hamish Reid]

Nah, it's because 'erbert was a Cockney. Calais, Maine, is
pronounced to rhyme with Dallas (or Maria Callas).

And the town of Verdi, in Califonia, is pronounced "VER-dye". And
Versailles is, well, predictably, "VER-sales". You don't want to know
how the little town of Weimar's name is pronounced.

But then this is a country where "Notre Dame" is pronounced so it rhymes
with "voter maim"...

Hamish

 

[Hamish Reid]

Hamish Reid said the following, on 06/22/04 13:52: [...]

*Every time* I (as a Briton living in the US) have asked why herb is
pronounced "erb", or fillet as "fill-eh" out here (California), I've
been told by native Californian-English speakers it's because they're
French words and should be pronounced as such.

This has been happening for 15 years now. It never ceases to amaze me.

In the case of 'fillet', I suspect it results because most Americans
born before about 1960 or so probably heard the word first only as part
of 'filet mignon' (which of course is French), and have just carried
over the pronunciation. (Actually, you will probably notice that many
menus spell the word with one 'l', though 'fillet' is a perfectly proper
American English word.)

I spent some time working in Atlanta, every day passing a fast-food
outlet called "Chick-Fill-A". It took me *weeks* to work out that this
didn't mean "Chick. Fill. Eh?" or "Chick-filler". (No, I'm not the
sharpest tool in the toolshed).

The pronunciation of 'herb' without the 'h' is not so common in most of
the US (the part not on either the East or West Coast).

I've been made fun of everywhere in the US for pronouncing "herb" the
way it's written, flyover states included....

Hamish

 

[J. J. Farrell]

[It's ironic that American English seems to suffer much more from
French corruption these days. It always tickles me when I hear
Americans pronounce words such as 'valet', 'fillet' and 'herb' as
if they were modern French -

I'm not sure what you mean.

It's ironic that the spelling of English English got corrupted by
French some time ago while American English preserved the original
spellings, but then later on (I assume) the pronunciation of American
English got corrupted by French.

I (and everyone I know) pronounce these
words as if they were American English, which they are, regardless of
their origin.

I take your word for it that they are now (is it widespread across
the USA?) but it would be interesting to know when they changed and
why. My guess is pretention that caught on, but I'd be interested
to know if anyone has researched it. There are no hard divisions on
the road from "wrong" through "slang" to "correct".

Nobody who uses valet service, or orders a fillet of fish, is under
the illusion that they're speaking French.

That's not so. I've been told more than once in the USA that these
words are pronounced that way "because they are French".

 

[J. J. Farrell]

I am unaware of the difference between ancient and modern French
pronunciations

To the first order (which is the limit of my knowledge) read
written French by following the common English pronunciation
rules. I understand it more or less gives you the earlier
pronunciation, for trailing consonants at least. French
spelling was mostly standardized before the French speakers
started eliding lots of consonants. Words like "fillet" came
into English hundreds of years before that.

 

[J. J. Farrell]

Having lived and worked in Britain for a number of years, I have to say
that I was also amused by the insistence of Britons (even the BBC
presenters, who should have known better) on pronouncing the name of the
large city in eastern Missouri, on the Mississippi River, as "St.
Louie". Anyone who lives there will tell you the name of the place is
pronounced "Saint Lewis".

Yep, sheer ignorance - you'd think we never got to see "Meet me in
St. Louis". Mind you, it makes the use of "fillay" and "erb" seem
all the stranger when you use the old pronunciation for St. Louis.
The Scots got round this one pragmatically by spelling it "Lewis".

 

[J. J. Farrell]

... snip ...

I think you will find that is a relatively recent affectation. I
recall a musical, circa 1945, (I think it was 'State Fair') where
some of the principle songs were 'The Trolley Song' and 'Meet me
in St Louis, Louie'. From which I conclude that the Lewis
prononciation was not in effect, or at least not universal, then.

It was "Meet me in St. Louis", named after the popular song
from the time that the film was set. Right at the beginning,
the small female character sings a chorus of it to the milkman
then says something like "It's a silly song, though, because
everybody knows that it's called St. Lewis really".

 

[Richard Bos]

[It's ironic that American English seems to suffer much more from
French corruption these days. It always tickles me when I hear
Americans pronounce words such as 'valet', 'fillet' and 'herb' as
if they were modern French -

I'm not sure what you mean.

It's ironic that the spelling of English English got corrupted by
French some time ago while American English preserved the original
spellings,

*cough* History, history... AFAIK, and IICR Chaucer himself bears this
out, English inherited any such words directly from the French. There
were no original spellings to preserve.
For example, "exercise" should not be spelled "exercize" is you want to
be historically accurate, since English got this word from French, not
from Greek. In fact, it's a Latin word, and while I'm not sure how the
Romans spelled the verb, I'd be surprised if they used a 'z'. Thus, it
is the USAnian spelling which is a corruption, not a correction.

but then later on (I assume) the pronunciation of American
English got corrupted by French.

Hardly. "Urb" is even further from the French pronunciation than "hurb"
(and the French word is, at least today, written "herbe").

Richard

 

[Richard Bos]

Perhaps you learned it before the 21st century?

Yeah, well. This far into the 20th century, the UK was still Top Nation,
and history had not yet come to a .

Richard

 

[Arthur J. O'Dwyer]

On 21 Jun 2004 20:58:39 -0700, (e-mail address removed) (J. J. Farrell) wrote:
[It's ironic that American English seems to suffer much more from
French corruption these days. It always tickles me when I hear
Americans pronounce words such as 'valet', 'fillet' and 'herb' as
if they were modern French -

I'm not sure what you mean.

It's ironic that the spelling of English English got corrupted by
French some time ago while American English preserved the original
spellings,

*cough* History, history... AFAIK, and IICR Chaucer himself bears this
out, English inherited any such words directly from the French. There
were no original spellings to preserve.
For example, "exercise" should not be spelled "exercize" is you want to
be historically accurate, since English got this word from French, not
from Greek. In fact, it's a Latin word, and while I'm not sure how the
Romans spelled the verb, I'd be surprised if they used a 'z'. Thus, it
is the USAnian spelling which is a corruption, not a correction.

I have no idea about its history, but the USAnian spelling is, and
AFAIK has always been (modulo crazy spelling-reform movements)
"exercise." Ditto "excise," "improvise," "circumcise." I think it's
because "cize" just looks ugly.

Hardly. "Urb" is even further from the French pronunciation than "hurb"
(and the French word is, at least today, written "herbe").

Would I be correct in assuming it's pronounced "airb" in French?
That seems closer to "urb" than to "hurb" to me. But regardless,
see
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=herb
The explanatory paragraph squares with what I know of the matter
(though while I've heard "when in the course of yoomun events,"
I've never heard anyone called "a yumble man," and I thought the
pronunciation "'umble" was just routine H-dropping... still, I
agree with their analysis of "herb/'erb").

-Arthur,
pardon my French

 

[Richard Bos]

I have no idea about its history, but the USAnian spelling is, and
AFAIK has always been (modulo crazy spelling-reform movements)
"exercise."

'twas just an example. The same is true of all words ending in -ise; I
don't think you'll find any in Chaucer ending in -ize.

Would I be correct in assuming it's pronounced "airb" in French?

You would, and it seems I remembered incorrectly; I thought it was
pronounced [herb(@)], but my dictionary agrees with you.

Richard

 

[Alan Balmer]

I have no idea about its history, but the USAnian spelling is, and
AFAIK has always been (modulo crazy spelling-reform movements)
"exercise."

'twas just an example. The same is true of all words ending in -ise; I
don't think you'll find any in Chaucer ending in -ize.

Would I be correct in assuming it's pronounced "airb" in French?

You would, and it seems I remembered incorrectly; I thought it was
pronounced [herb(@)], but my dictionary agrees with you.

I worked for a while with a fellow from Louisiana. He came in one day
talking about the marvelous science fiction writer he had just
discovered, name of Ayebear. Took me half the morning to realize he
was talking about Frank Herbert.

 

[Dan Pop]

I worked for a while with a fellow from Louisiana. He came in one day
talking about the marvelous science fiction writer he had just
discovered, name of Ayebear. Took me half the morning to realize he
was talking about Frank Herbert.

I worked for a while with a fellow from Los Alamos. It was a real
challenge to figure out even the most common English words, as
pronounced by him...

Dan