Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 June 3

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June 3

"accidents and conveniences" (May 15)

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I don't think that Will Adam became Archdeacon of Canterbury by chance [1] (at 18:47). Don't you think that Keir Starmer looks a lot like Will Adam and [redacted] these days? Favonian appears to think so [2]. Will Adam's career at University and beyond mirrors that of [redacted] in many ways. After Favonian's intervention the interview with Adam was pulled from the University's website. - 92.25.128.239 10:08, 17 May 2024 And that was before the Diane Abbott debacle! Harking back to Future Perfect at Sunrise's outburst (08:06, 3 September 2008) Jon Stewart tells Fox News to "go f**k itself. Patrick Kidd in the Times of 23 May puts it very well: Vennells is not a sympathetic figure, who seems to have lacked the charity and good faith [administrators please note] towards her flock that one might hope from an ordained priest. Anthony Trollope, that chronicler of Victorian churchmen as well as a high-up Post Office administrator in his day, would have depicted her as a rather cold and managerial archdeacon. Is there a connection between these sentences or do they concern unrelated topics collected under one heading? As archdeacons of the Church of England are not selected by sortition, it is fairly certain that Adam's appointment was not "by chance".  --Lambiam 11:50, 1 June 2024 (UTC) "We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate." --ColinFine (talk) 14:18, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Why are placenames are not pronounced the same everywhere?

I would have thought that placenames are pronounced the same everywhere. For example, both Cambridge s (in England and Massachusetts are pronounced the same [keim-brije], along with Gloucester [glos-te] (UK, USA). However, is Palestine (state) [pa-les-tain] and East Palestine, Ohio [pa-les-tin] really said that way? How about the Thames River (Connecticut)? Do people actually say [temz], as in the one thru London, or [theymz]? I was thinking that because they are likely familiar with the UK Thames and say it that way rather. Are all of the other Thames at thames (disambiguation) pronounced [temz] since they do not all list the IPA? JuniperChill (talk) 16:04, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Toponyms and hydronyms often retain significantly older pronunciations even as the surrounding language evolves, leaving them with often highly unintuitive written forms. See also Frome, Dong'e, et al. Folly Mox (talk) 16:09, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

To me, having placenames pronounced differently is not the same as normal words. For example, I do see why water is pronounced in many different ways depending on the region. Another example I can think of is how Gaelic can be pronounced [ga-lik] as in Scottish Gaelic or [gei-lik] as in Irish Gaelic. I tend to say [gei-lik] for both.

But back to rivers, I do see that this is being discussed at Talk:Thames_River_(Connecticut)#Change_of_name so I need to see if people in Connecticut actually say it that way and not [temz]. Also, I (and possibly many) never heard hydronym before so I am linking it. JuniperChill (talk) 16:31, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

I'll throw in Gillingham, Kent and Gillingham, Dorset. Just because. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:59, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Gloucester, USA is in New England: consider New England English. If it were a place in, say, Alabama, like Birmingham, USA, the pronunciation might not have been conserved.  Card Zero  (talk) 08:14, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

"I would have thought that placenames are pronounced the same everywhere" Why? They're words. Words are pronounced differently in different accents, dialects, and languages. Even fairly common words. I know of three ways to say "aunt" (and actually use 2 of them). My real life personal name isn't even the same to all English speakers, and it's a very common name. My mother's maiden name is pronounced differently by some of her own siblings. Why would you expect place names to be different? --- User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:13, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

People re-shape names to fit their native dialect. One of the many things Americans get legendarily wrong, is what we do to foreign and Native-American names. From my native Tennessee, I cringe when I remember how we pronounce Bolivar (TN) and Montezuma (TN), to say nothing of Kosciusko (MS); and Σάρδεις in the Lydian Empire was probably pronounced rather differently from Sardis, Tennessee. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:19, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, this. Where the same placename occurs in two regions, even if it was originally pronounced the same, it will often have been subjected to pronunciation shifts, e.g. a name with historical -r may lose the -r in the speech of non-rhotic British accents but retain it in rhotic American accents. This may also be why even placenames created relatively recently and from a common origin develop different pronunciations, e.g. the NH vs NC places named wikt:Concord, both derived from the common noun concord, have different pronunciations. And in many cases, especially with the more obscure Biblical names that see use as US placenames, settlers may have picked the name out of a book and used a spelling pronunciation. Also, occasionally placenames only superficially look the same in spelling but have different origins (and had different pronunciations to begin with), though I can't relocate a good example offhand (the best I can find offhand is Moscow, Tennessee, and Moscow, Russia, which are pronounced differently by Americans and have different etymological origins, although Britons pronounce them the same). -sche (talk) 17:29, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

The letter sequence "kansas" is pronounced differently in the names of the states of Kansas and Arkansas, both in the same general region of the United States... -- AnonMoos (talk) 20:49, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

And the Arkansas River is pronounced differently depending on which state you're in. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:12, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

I heard once that the first senators from Arkansas disagreed on the pronunciation, so the presiding officer called on them as "the gentleman from Arkánzass" and "the gentleman from Árkansaw". —Tamfang (talk) 21:40, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Speaking of Kosciusko [sic]: That was how Australia spelled the name of its tallest mountain until only a couple of decades ago. We finally got the spelling right (apart from the Polish diacritics), but we've never got the pronunciation right, and probably never will, given our national ethos of not only being ignorant of the pronunciations of foreign names but actually being proud of that ignorance. It would never do to be seen to be knowledgeable in such matters; that would make you probably gay, certainly suspect. Yet we're among the most multicultural nations on planet Earth, and we're some of the most intrepid international travellers anywhere. Go figure. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:03, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it was good to see that spelling correction. Australians can't even agree among themselves about how to pronounce the name of the Queensland city of Cairns. Some pronounce it the same as the Campbells soup cans, while to others it's multiple piles of rocks. HiLo48 (talk) 23:37, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

When I was in Western Australia, I mentioned the name of its southernmost city, Albany (there are some interesting references at the beginning of the lead), making the first syllable rhyme with "All-Bran". I was corrected (I suspected that would happen before I opened my mouth). The first syllable actually rhymes with "Albania". 2A00:23D0:EAC:C101:14CB:81DB:A836:FF5D (talk) 14:16, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

The first syllable of "Albany" is "Al". How do you make it rhyme with something that ends in an /n/ or a vowel?  --Lambiam 16:09, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Possibly meant to say the first syllable is like that of Alabama. —Tamfang (talk) 21:40, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I see the city also has an aboriginal name (Kinjarling). I was unaware till now that they might have both. 2A00:23D0:EAC:C101:14CB:81DB:A836:FF5D (talk) 14:23, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I just looked at the Cairns article and I think the IPA in the lead has changed. Do Aussies say cairn like they do for the city? Maybe the IPA should also be added to cairn because it may be pronounced completely differently to the city. Likewise, the '-bourne' in Eastbourne and Melbourne is different. I still pronounce both Palestine (the one people are familiar with) and East Palestine, Ohio (I only knew this because of the train derailment) the same way and I think I am not alone in this. JuniperChill (talk) 18:15, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

The good people of Shrewsbury pronounce the name in one of two different ways, depending (as I was told by a Salopian) on one's perceived social class. Alansplodge (talk) 22:40, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Salopian might have some different connotations to a French speaker... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:55, 10 June 2024 (UTC)