tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post7534721420540522152..comments2024-03-16T00:21:43.240+00:00Comments on Separated by a Common Language: Barack Obamalynneguisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10171345732985610861noreply@blogger.comBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-7961640284168105282020-08-16T19:23:42.728+01:002020-08-16T19:23:42.728+01:00BrE (Scot, 60+). In either of the president’s name...BrE (Scot, 60+). In either of the president’s names, I have no problem putting the stress where it seems to belong, although I DO believe those who find this (physically) difficult. The problem for me is the vowel represented by the letter A. Palm, trap bra, David crosbie’s long list of words: they all have the same vowel to me. I can just about hear the difference between northern and southern English pronunciations of bath, but I don’t hear them as DIFFERENT vowels. It’s just that the southern pronunciation is given a slightly longer duration. When I try to do that it sounds as if I am taking the piss. BaRACK is the same as BaRAACK, and rhymes with both Iraq and attack, unless I overcorrect and sat BaRAAAAAACK.<br /> To me, rack never rhymes with rock, nor Mac with mock, sack with sock. That’s what several commenters mean by respected stress patterns, but living with your own accent.<br /> Re Colin Powell. At the time of the first Gulf War, the syllable Col rhymed with Paul. By the time of the second Gulf War it rhymed with coal. I’m sure there is a very short comic scene at the end of one of the Back to the Future films with the rhymes-with-Paul version is used. But my memory may be wrong.Shy-replyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01891566073375322808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-284409014245725502019-10-24T00:18:11.971+01:002019-10-24T00:18:11.971+01:00All much confused by so penchantmany commenters...All much confused by so penchantmany commenters' penchant for respelling, which only works in the commenter's own accent. ROCK as a respelling comes out different either side of the Atlantic.<br />I am left wondering whether the former President's name was rather baroque.<br />I'm a great fan of IPA in these matters, as there is a slim chance it could remove some of the ambiguities.Simonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01628722112979043156noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-74625022665573032342016-04-21T15:29:06.837+01:002016-04-21T15:29:06.837+01:00I had an uncle Maurice in New Jersey (where I, AmE...I had an uncle Maurice in New Jersey (where I, AmE, lived for a long time). His name was pronounced Morris, and the shortened version was Uncle Mar. I think this was an uncommon pronunciation of Maurice for this side of the Atlantic. Usually it's said like More-eese.Steve Dunhamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970801099772755392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-65940845753719761882016-02-20T13:35:21.494+00:002016-02-20T13:35:21.494+00:00Unknown, when you'r discussing the history of ...Unknown, when you'r discussing the <b>history</b> of sounds, terms like <i>long A</i> are very useful. The <b>sounds</b> changed over time, but the groups of words containing each sound was relatively stable.<br /><br />Both <i>tomato</i> and <i>potato</i> were imported with the pronunciation of '<i>long A</i>' that was current at the time. <br /><br /><i>potato</i> <br />• was imported before the change <br />• passed into speech<br />• changed its pronunciation with all the other '<i>long A</i>' words<br /><br /><i>tomato</i><br />• was imported at a botanical name before the change <br />• did not pass into speech, because botanists didn't discover a popular use for the plant<br />• was imported <b> into popular speech</b> as an international word with similar pronunciations in familiar languages — at a time when the Great Vowel Shift was over and done <br /><br />By contrast<br /><br /><i>bath</i><br />• is an extremely old word with a '<i>short A</i>' — as is clear from the Old English spelling <i>bæð</i><br />• did not change with the Great Vowel Shift, which only affected long vowels <br />• is therefore not pronounced B-ay-TH in any accent<br /><br /><i>bathe</i><br />• is an extremely old word with a '<i>long A</i>' — as is clear from the Old English spelling <i>baðian</i><br />• change with the Great Vowel Shift<br />• is therefore pronounced B-ay-TH-in any accent (with TH-sound as in <i>this</i>, not as in <i>thick</i>)<br /><br />The current variation in pronunciation of <i>bath</i> (and BATH words in general) in Northern English, Southern English and American accents is important and interesting, but nothing to do with the concept of '<i>long A'</i>.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-26023335348439589472016-02-20T08:45:56.793+00:002016-02-20T08:45:56.793+00:00A long A? So B-ay-th? Not quite. A long vowel is h...A long A? So B-ay-th? Not quite. A long vowel is how we say it in the alphabet. AY.I think you mean a broad A.Which sounds like "Ah". B-ah-th. Same as Americans use in Ob-ah-ma, f-ah-ther and I suspect in certain other words which when said fast sounds like an "O" to our British ears: pahsta,mahzda,lahs Vegas,Janey73https://www.blogger.com/profile/00362045612956644615noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-13911150564932196462016-01-28T12:08:44.836+00:002016-01-28T12:08:44.836+00:00vp
Yes that's what I. thought you meant.
I&#...vp<br /><br />Yes that's what I. thought you meant.<br /><br />I'd go further and suggest that along with the decision to use his full name he made a conscious decision to give it American stress. This AmE/BrE divide occurs in the name <i>Maurice</i> and the 'foreign' borrowing cited by John Wells in his response to Lynne: <br /><br /><i>It's the usual BrE vs AmE treatment of foreign disyllables: cf cliché, café etc.</i>David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-60293736300821244172016-01-28T07:13:52.634+00:002016-01-28T07:13:52.634+00:00@David Crosbie
Sorry if my earlier post wasn'...@David Crosbie<br /><br />Sorry if my earlier post wasn't particularly clear. What I take from Obama's biography is:<br /><br />* The President's father, Barack Obama Sr. pronounced his own name with first-syllable stress.<br /><br />* As a child and adolescent, he was known as "Barry" rather than "Barack".<br /><br />* At some point (it's not exactly clear when, but it must have been some time after he left home for undergraduate studies) he made the conscious decision to be known by his full first name "Barack", and decided to adopt second-syllable stress at that time.<br /><br /><br />vphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16647609487352038948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-83756292335941128822016-01-25T13:04:00.217+00:002016-01-25T13:04:00.217+00:00the 'non-rhotic' accents of Southern Engla...<i>the 'non-rhotic' accents of Southern England</i><br /><br />Sorry, that's very misleading. Non-rhotic (R-less) accents prevail in most of England. The main exceptions are in the West, including the South West.<br /><br />R-lessness is common all over the world in British former colonies — including pockets on the Eastern Seabord of America.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-82744386434453760612016-01-25T12:56:19.699+00:002016-01-25T12:56:19.699+00:00The turning point came approximately between impor...<i>The turning point came approximately between importing potatoes and finding a use for tomatoes.</i><br /><br />Sorry, this may not make sense to some (many? all?) AmE speakers. The point is that here we say to-MAH-toh and po-TAY-toh. And never (I believe) to-MAY-toh.<br /><br />When we imported the potato, we immediately began saying the word as well as writing it. So the vowel 'shifted' just as 'long-A' did in native English words.<br /><br />When we imported the tomato, we didn't know what to do with it. Botanists wrote about it but it wasn't common in speech. When we discovered that out was edible, the Great Vowel Shift was over. So when it became a widely <b>spoken</b> word, it received the foreign long-A; it was too lae to shift to the FACE vowel. Nevertheless, a <b>spelling</b> pronunciation was still a possibility, and I presume that's what happened in America.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-47055553256845070142016-01-25T02:28:33.332+00:002016-01-25T02:28:33.332+00:00markn
John Wells, who Lynne, consulted, is the au...markn<br /><br />John Wells, who Lynne, consulted, is the author of the book <b>Accents of English</b> and the concept and formulation of <b>lexical sets</b>. According to John's scheme, if you subtract the BATH words from the PALM group there is a vestigial, but somewhat odd group remaining. Odd in that almost all of them are in some way foreign words — broadly speaking words from the world of Empire and other foreign parts, as well as the Italian words used in describing music. And even these lists are unstable, with some speakers using the TRAP vowel for at least some of them.<br /><br />{This is mostly down to the Great Vowel Shift. Foreign words adopted earlier have the FACE sound. The turning point came approximately between importing <i>potatoes</i> and finding a use for <i>tomatoes</i>.)<br /><br />Looking more closely at the 'foreign' PALM words, it's striking how many of them have the vowel next to the end before an unstressed syllable. Very few have the vowel followed by a final consonant and only two end in a voiceless consonant: <i>Bach</i> and <i>baht</i>.<br /><br />The 'native' core is largely accounted for in this list<br /><br /><i>calm, balm, palm, alm, father,<br />bra, ma, pa, mamma, papa, aha,<br />ah, ha(h), blah, hurrah</i><br /><br />Of course, the vowel sound isn't as rare as that — at least not in the 'non-rhotic' accents of Southern England,Ireland and part of Wales. In these accents START words have the same sound with no audible /r/-sound.<br /><br />So if you want these BrE speakers to pronounce Barack your way, you'd best spell it <i>Burark</i>.<br /><br />2. <i>but I can see no justifiable reason to change the position of the stress</i><br /><br />And yet that seems to be exactly what the future President did as a young man.<br /><br />3. For me /bə'roʊk/ is an exclusively American pronunciation, although (to my surprise) John Wells includes /bə'rəʊk/ as a BrE alternative in his <b>Longman Pronunciation Dictionary</b>. The OED is misleading. In John's notation the first BrE choice is /bə'rɒk/. <br /><br />There's the same BrE/AmE split with words like <i>cosmos</i>. Your pronunciation sounds to me like <i>cosmose</i>.<br /><br />4. The key to intelligibility with the name <i>Bath</i> is to use exactly the same pronunciation as you use for the <i>bath</i> you wash in.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-92053665048333508452016-01-24T18:34:09.207+00:002016-01-24T18:34:09.207+00:00I see that three posters — vp, Lisa and Sir Watk...I see that three posters — vp, Lisa and Sir Watkin — have commented on <i>Barak</i>.<br /><br />Yes there is a Barak in the Old Testament. And Ehud Brog adopted the name in 1972. But my little investigation of the President's father's name (from root b-r-k) revealed to me that this is a different name — from the root b-r-q meaning 'lightning'.<br /><br />I believe we stress <i>Barak</i> as a first name on the first syllable. I know I do. But Ehud chose it as a surname. It doesn't seem strange to stress the surname on the second syllable — which seems to bear out Edda's theory that male <b>first</b> names tend to have initial stress, unlike surnames and female first names.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-84215421592417568052016-01-24T18:08:39.882+00:002016-01-24T18:08:39.882+00:00On the 'correct' pronunciation of Bath...
...On the 'correct' pronunciation of Bath...<br /><br />Last Friday the broadcaster Samira Ahmed revealed on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06wj7bv#play" rel="nofollow">this episode of the News Quiz</a> (click) that she gets her husband to amuse her by pronouncing <i>Bath</i> with his Cheshire accent. In return she amuses him by saying <i>Newcastle</i>. Simple pleasures.<br /><br />Do press that link; the News Quiz is very funny. The link to this episode should be active for two or three weeks. Samira starts toward the end at 25:18. Then Jeremy Hardy goes to town commenting.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-38879520801692635002016-01-24T17:45:39.507+00:002016-01-24T17:45:39.507+00:00Thinking more about the pronunciation of the city ...Thinking more about the pronunciation of the city of Bath, it occurs to me that if I did start using the open a in this word, other AmE speakers would view it as highly marked, even humorous, as if I were trying to imitate a British accent. (Actually it probably wouldn't even be understood, I'd have to clarify "you know, that city in England... as in The Wife of Bath?") I don't think anyone in this thread has raised this point, but is this part of the issue, that you feel that other BrE speakers around you would view your pronunciation of Barack as humorous or silly?<br /><br />--Markmarknhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13276874205913141933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-21682087507695677762016-01-24T17:45:10.754+00:002016-01-24T17:45:10.754+00:00@David
Thanks for your well considered comments.
...@David<br /><br />Thanks for your well considered comments.<br /><br /><i>The PALM vowel is hugely problematic. Most words pronounced with that vowel are in the BATH group, but there is a great geographical divide between those who pronounce BATH words with the PALM vowel and those who pronounce it with the TRAP vowel.</i><br /><br />Do that latter group not have the PALM vowel (as pronounced by the former group) in their phonological inventory at all? In other words, are there no words at all that they pronounce with the open a? If so, then I would understand how Barack would be difficult to pronounce. But if the issue is that the two groups both use the same two vowel sounds but use them in different words, then my point stands; if you can pronounce all the phonemes in the name, there's no reason to substitute other phonemes.<br /><br /><i>It seems that you want us to rhyme Barack with Iraq. Well OK, that means a BATH vowel, but to a huge swathe of English. Welsh and Irish speakers that means a TRAP vowel. So Barack rhymes with attack.</i><br /><br />Even in the US, some people pronounce Iraq with a TRAP vowel and others with a BATH (open a) vowel. Some people (perhaps even myself although introspection has not produced a definitive answer) pronounce it differently at different times. So it's hard to confirm or deny that I want you to pronounce Barack to rhyme with Iraq. The pronunciation should be /bə'rɑːk/. If the second vowel is hard to pronounce a substitution can be made, but I can see no justifiable reason to change the position of the stress.<br /><br /><i>For me, the name is nearly the same as "the rock" with the initial "th" replaced with "b".<br />In any British accent that i know of, that would be baroque.</i><br /><br />Hm, in my dialect, "baroque" is pronounced with a long o: /bə'roʊk/, nothing like "rock" which is pronounced with an open a /rɑːk/. Is that the same for you? The OED seems to agree with my pronunciation.<br /><br /><i>For 1, it may be true that most (or even all) disyllabic male British names are stressed on the first syllable ... What's the difference if it's a name?<br />The answer is there is Edda and Kate's postings. Girls' names are largely French-derived. ...</i><br /><br />I think it's also true in the US that most disyllabic male given names are stressed on the first syllable. Offhand I can't think of a counterexample. Nevertheless, this does not in the slightest impede my ability to say "Barack" with the stress on the second syllable. Anyway, it's not like Barack is a common name in the US. It's just as foreign for us as it is for you. (Actually before he was elected I thought his name was one of his biggest liabilities. Many Americans are not comfortable with foreign names, especially one that sounds Arabic.)<br /><br /><i>Only some British English speakers pronounce the city of Bath — as well as the thing you bathe in — with that vowel.</i><br /><br />Ah, in that case I won't bother to modify my pronunciation. :-)<br />In general I would say the pronunciation of the residents of a city should prevail, but I admit that I am not consistent on this point. For example, the city of New Orleans is pronounced by most of its residents something like /'nɔːlɪnz/. But I, like most of the rest of AmE speakers who don't live there, pronounce it with three syllable, an r and a long i: /nuː 'ɒrliːnz/.<br /><br />But a personal name is different; there is exactly one authority on how it should be pronounced. And that pronunciation should not be altered due to the spelling of the name. If someone whose name was spelled "Smith" pronounced his name "Greeble", I would do the same. Or more realistically, I would think it rude to pronounce "Featherstonehaugh" with four syllables after hearing its owner pronounce it with two.<br /><br />--Markmarknhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13276874205913141933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-91742801569171155472016-01-24T12:51:11.907+00:002016-01-24T12:51:11.907+00:00I missed vp's post. Sorry vp!
If the Presiden...I missed vp's post. Sorry vp!<br /><br />If the President's friends called him Bear-ick, that would strongly suggest that he was then using his father's pronunciation. It's hard to see how you could get bear-ick from the spelling, but it's perfectly plausible as an aural imitation.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-63310637092904521082016-01-24T12:40:26.091+00:002016-01-24T12:40:26.091+00:00I looked up Barack Obama Senior, the President'...I looked up Barack Obama Senior, the President's father, yesterday.<br /><br />The name Barack, everybody seems to agree is from the Arabic root b-r-k meaning 'blessing'. Not that it's a name used by Arabs, but it's found among sub-Saharan Muslims. So it would make sense to use spelling <i>Barak</i>.<br /><br />There's no long history of the name in the Obama family because they weren't Muslim until they converted and called a baby boy by that Muslim name. But either they were unaware of the Arabic etymology or the birth certificate was written by (or under) a British colonial administrator. Either way, they chose a same spelling more like that of the word for soldiers' lodgings: <i>barracks</i>.<br /><br />Sure enough, Wikipedia gives the pronunciation as <i>barracks</i> without the final /s/ sound. This might be open to doubt, but that a footnote quotes his biographer<br /><br /><i> The Old Man had also been called Barack, but his was a working man's name, with the emphasis on the first syllable.</i><br /><br />So presumably the pronunciation was changed by the President's mother. Intriguing that this change can be seen as a departure from regular working class speech. That's how the pronunciation of <i>Maurice</i> in the French way sounds to British ears. For us <i>Maurice</i> sounds just like <i>Morris</i>.<br /><br />Incidentally, if ever you come across <i>habbit-al-baraka</i> 'seeds of blessing', buy them and mix them with cubes of feta cheese in olive oil. Alternatives — which may be the same thing under different names — are <i>kalonji</i> and <i>nigella seeds</i>. Delicious.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-53610002728205721532016-01-23T18:09:55.211+00:002016-01-23T18:09:55.211+00:00For 1, it may be true that most (or even all) disy...<i>For 1, it may be true that most (or even all) disyllabic male British names are stressed on the first syllable ... What's the difference if it's a name?</i><br /><br />The answer is there is Edda and Kate's postings. Girls' names are largely French-derived. French inherited a lot of similar-sounding pairs of male and female names, which they differentiated by adding a suffix to the female name. This suffixes is gently stressed in French and heavily stressed when the name is anglicised.<br /><br />Now British reader-speakers are aware of the end stress on French-derived words <b><i>when it's reflected in the spelling</i></b>. But there's a significant number of French words absorbed into, such as <i>ballet</i>, English which <b>don't</b> imply end-stress in the spelling. American reader-speakers pronounce them with heavy English end stress. British read-speakers don't. <br /><br /> I'm sure many BrE speakers associate the AmE stress in <i>Barack</i> with the AmE stress in <i>ballet</i>. To their ears it's just a regional variation. (I sort-of feel that myself, at least some of the time.)David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-3483582885810399322016-01-23T17:44:34.220+00:002016-01-23T17:44:34.220+00:00For example, I did not know until today that the v...<i>For example, I did not know until today that the vowel used in the name of the city of Bath is the open "a" rather than the hard "a" of "cat", "sat", "pan". Now that I know, I will make an effort to use the correct pronunciation, even though it sounds very wrong to me, having pronounced it and heard it pronounced like the thing you do in a tub for my whole life.</i><br /><br />A perfect example of why your approach to the pronunciation of names doesn't work. Only <b><i>some</i></b> British English speakers pronounce the city of Bath — as well as the thing you bathe in — with that vowel.<br /><br />There are two common pronunciations of <i>Bath</i> and <i>bath</i>. In the bad old days people would say only <b>one</b> was 'correct', though they would disagree as to which. In these more civilised times we just observe that there are two alternatives.<br /><br /><i>How would you feel if a foreigner pronounced "Britain" to rhyme with "obtain" and offered the explanation that it "sounds more correct" to him?</i><br /><br />I would fee sympathetic, even apologetic. It's not their fault but ours for having such a difficult spelling system.<br /><br />And I for one <b>never</b> tell anyone that their pronunciation is 'incorrect'. If it's a pronunciation that nobody uses, that's what I tell them. If a different pronunciation is preferred by some or most English speakers, I tell them that.<br /><br />(In the event, it's much easier with foreigners. You just supply the pronunciation you prefer. Most of the time they're grateful. And often they immediately imitate you. But if they take no notice, why should it matter? If they prefer to say Britayne, that's their lookout.)David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-2266407370217302512016-01-23T16:57:21.032+00:002016-01-23T16:57:21.032+00:00Mark
Are there really BrE dialects that don't...Mark<br /><br /><i>Are there really BrE dialects that don't contain the open "a" of "calm", "hot", "sob"?</i><br /><br />I'm not aware of any British accents which would pronounce those three words with the same vowel. The LOT and PALM vowels are not only distinct but don't sound remotely similar to our ears.<br /><br />The PALM vowel is hugely problematic. Most words pronounced with that vowel are in the BATH group, but there is a great geographical divide between those who pronounce BATH words with the PALM vowel and those who pronounce it with the TRAP vowel. To complicate this divide, there's a <b>class</b> divide, mostly, in the northern half of England by which some speakers identified as socially aspirational use the PALM vowel sometimes or always with all or some BATH words. And then there are people who have moved geographically or along the social scale, thus complicating even further their choice of BATH vowel.<br /><br />This confusion has the result of inconsistency at the higher phonological level. Unfamiliar words with letter-A spellings are assigned by some to the BATH group, by others to the TRAP group.<br /><br />It seems that you want us to rhyme <i>Barack</i> with <i>Iraq</i>. Well OK, that means a BATH vowel, but to a huge swathe of English. Welsh and Irish speakers that means a TRAP vowel. So <i>Barack</i> rhymes with <i>attack</i><br /><br />Note that spelling. The inherited conventions of English spelling are that we mark the stressed 'short' vowels of TRAP, DRESS, KIT and STRUT with two consonants. Most consonants are represented by double letters; /k/ is represented by CK. For most 'short vowels' this convention is dropped when the consonant sound is word-final. But the convention still stands for /k/ ~ CK.<br /><br />The spelling -<i>ack</i> is the regular sign of the pronunciation you object to as in <i>alack, back, cack, frack, hack, jack, Jack, lack, mack, nicknack, pack, quack, rack, sack, tack, whack</i>.<br /><br />I can't help thinking that the Obama family back in Kenya originally chose the <i>Barack</i> spelling to reflect a 'short A' pronunciation. At some point in recent generations somebody decided to change the pronunciation. Could it have been the President himself? Ot his father? <br /><br /><i>For me, the name is nearly the same as "the rock" with the initial "th" replaced with "b".</i><br /><br /> In any British accent that i know of, that would be <i>baroque</i>.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-84184284441095618392016-01-22T22:49:25.360+00:002016-01-22T22:49:25.360+00:00Coming in VERY late but I had to make a few commen...Coming in VERY late but I had to make a few comments. AmE speaker here.<br /><br />First, excellent blog! I've spent a couple of days reading the posts herein and am finding it fascinating.<br /><br />Now to my point -- I think it's very disrespectful to deliberately mispronounce a person's name after learning what the correct pronunciation is. I always make an attempt to pronounce names as the name's owner would, to the extent that it's possible given the phonemes available to me, and I would expect others to do the same. For example, it's not reasonable to expect an English (either BrE or AmE) speaker to pronounce Pang Qing's name exactly correctly since the Mandarin "q" phoneme is not native to English. But it _is_ reasonable to expect the name to be pronounced "ching" rather than "kwing", the former being a close approximation, while the latter (which I actually heard from an Olympic commentator) can only be excused by ignorance.<br /><br />From the posts here it sounds like there are three arguments being offered for why it's acceptable for BrE speakers to pronounce Barack incorrectly:<br />1. The stress is on an unexpected syllable.<br />2. The vowel is not a native phoneme to the speaker.<br />3. It just sounds wrong.<br /><br />For 1, it may be true that most (or even all) disyllabic male British names are stressed on the first syllable (I honestly don't know). But surely _some_ words in BrE are stressed on the second syllable. You don't stress words like "engage", "balloon", "create" on the first syllable, do you? (Or perhaps you do, please inform me if I'm woefully mistaken about BrE pronunciation.) What's the difference if it's a name? You can still make those sounds come out of your mouth.<br /><br />For 2, I assume it's the second vowel that's in question, since the first is just a schwa. Are there really BrE dialects that don't contain the open "a" of "calm", "hot", "sob"? Even if your pronunciation of these words is not exactly as in AmE, it would still (I think) sound closer to correct to use whatever vowel you use for these words.<br /><br />Argument number 3 is the one I find hardest to understand. Whether the pronunciation sounds "wrong" to you is surely irrelevant after you know what the correct pronunciation is. For example, I did not know until today that the vowel used in the name of the city of Bath is the open "a" rather than the hard "a" of "cat", "sat", "pan". Now that I know, I will make an effort to use the correct pronunciation, even though it sounds very wrong to me, having pronounced it and heard it pronounced like the thing you do in a tub for my whole life. How would you feel if a foreigner pronounced "Britain" to rhyme with "obtain" and offered the explanation that it "sounds more correct" to him?<br /><br />For me, the name is nearly the same as "the rock" with the initial "th" replaced with "b". If you did the same, I would think it would be a better approximation than calling him "barrack".<br /><br />--Markmarknhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13276874205913141933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-6897138967859243812015-03-01T17:09:03.314+00:002015-03-01T17:09:03.314+00:00Coming in late to the discussion...
The girls'...Coming in late to the discussion...<br />The girls' names that Edda lists are all French-influenced. More traditional English names such as Susan, Mary, Helen, Judith have the stress on the first syllable (and I would pronounce Christine that way, too).Kate Buntinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17223976536411967222noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-88178638984758351852012-10-18T00:35:46.923+01:002012-10-18T00:35:46.923+01:00I Believe that Names should be pronounced the way ...I Believe that Names should be pronounced the way that particular person wants it to be pronounced (if possible, I for one can not pronounce the icelandic valcano the blew a few years back.)<br /><br />another example that comes to mind for me is Simon Cowell on American Idol refusing to pronounce Kara Dioguardi(care ah)the way that she wanted her name pronounced but instead persisted in calling her Car ah.Mindynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-60960114779107796232012-08-25T14:50:40.812+01:002012-08-25T14:50:40.812+01:00Zhoen says:
For the BBC to mispronounce the name o...Zhoen says:<br /><i>For the BBC to mispronounce the name of a major foreign leader is just insulting.</i><br /><br />Although commentators on both sides of the pond do this with the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, whose first name should be VlaDEEmeer not VLAdimeer.<br />enitharmonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17829757748223670291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-23874385672417223472012-05-06T10:46:37.313+01:002012-05-06T10:46:37.313+01:00Just a quick observation.. I tried every male name...Just a quick observation.. I tried every male name I could think of in English that has 2 syllables and they ALL stress the first syllable in an English accent; Roger, Matthew, Stephen, Allan, Bernard, Colin, David etc etc. In contrast, girls names with 2 syllables can be stressed on the second syllable; Diane, Suzanne, Marie, Christine, Janine, Collette, etc. The response seems to be that the iambic name (ti- tum) sounds feminine (and 'fancy' and French!) while the trochaic (tum-ti) sounds masculine (and 'solid' and nit French!). So, perhaps to say buRACK somehow feminizes him and we don't want that!Edda Sharpehttp://www.howtodoaccents.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-45867104269522234022010-04-22T20:26:59.106+01:002010-04-22T20:26:59.106+01:00I don't know whether anyone is still following...I don't know whether anyone is still following this thread, but I have a new discovery to share with the blog, from <i><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=MnhodV2aADoC" rel="nofollow">The Bridge</a></i>, which is a new biography of Obama.<br /><br />According to my interpretation of this passage, Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr., pronounced his own first name the British way (i.e. like the verb "barrack"). However, the text is problematic, as we shall see. Here it is (p. 51):<br /><br />Obama's new friends knew him as "<i>Bear</i>-ick" -- not "Buh-<i>rock</i>"<br /><br />[Since the same chapter tells us that Obama Sr. had a British accent (unsurprisingly, having learned English in Kenya), this is sure to be a travesty of his actual pronunciation. It manages to rely on no fewer than three mergers which the speaker would probably not have had: not only the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes_before_historic_r#Mary-marry-merry_merger" rel="nofollow">Mary/Marry/Merry</a> merger, and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_low_back_vowels#Father-bother_merger" rel="nofollow">father/bother merger</a>, but also the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_high_front_vowels#Weak_vowel_merger" rel="nofollow">weak vowel merger</a>. Do the publishers of these books hope to sell copies outside North America? Why they couldn't have said BA-ruck and bu-RAHK, which would have been far more widely comprehensible, is beyond me. Anyway...]vphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16647609487352038948noreply@blogger.com