Pronunciation of Poughkeepsie
Peter Moylan
something like 'poopsie', but recently I read something that seemed
to imply that the name rhymes with 'tipsy'.
--
Peter Moylan peter at ee dot newcastle dot edu dot au
http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au (OS/2 and eCS information and software)
Bob Cunningham
pe...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au (Peter Moylan) said:
> How do you pronounce Poughkeepsie? I'd always assumed that it was
> something like 'poopsie', but recently I read something that seemed
> to imply that the name rhymes with 'tipsy'.
See http://tinyurl.com/d6ga7 , where it says --
transliterating to ASCII IPA -- [p@'kIpsi:].
The _American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:
Fourth Edition_ at http://tinyurl.com/8vpxk has that
pronunciation but it gives the alternative first syllable
[poU].
At the latter URL you can click on the little loudspeaker
and hear a lady pronounce "Poughkeepsie" -- with the [p@],
not the [poU].
R J Valentine
} How do you pronounce Poughkeepsie? I'd always assumed that it was
} something like 'poopsie', but recently I read something that seemed
} to imply that the name rhymes with 'tipsy'.
Right. Puckipsy.
Next stop, Schenectady. Have you heard the Schenectady song? Oh, the
head bone Schenectady the neck bone, the neck bone Schenectady the
shoulder bone, ...
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@theWorld.com>
Areff
> How do you pronounce Poughkeepsie? I'd always assumed that it was
> something like 'poopsie', but recently I read something that seemed
> to imply that the name rhymes with 'tipsy'.
Oy. As I recently posted, it's /p@'kIpsi/ (= BrE/AusE "per-KIP-see"), so,
yes, it does rhyme with "tipsy" (ignoring the issue of whether /I/ or /i/
is used for final -y).
ray o'hara
"Areff" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:d9o1tu$n7r$1...@news.wss.yale.edu...
Those squiggles that look like the dialog for Sgt Snorkle in the old Beetle
Baily comic are worse than useless. If someone can't figure out how to say
the conventional every day letters how on earth are they or anyone ever
expected to pronounce @ or any of the rest of the obscure symbols that
routinely get posted here. stupid stupid stupid, I doubt what you posted
would help anybody arrive at the pronunciation of Poughkeepsie NY.
Your second example is better but adding an r that you must be expecting
them to drop when they say it. I have agood friend from there and she
says it po KIP see,
Areff
>
> "Areff" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
> news:d9o1tu$n7r$1...@news.wss.yale.edu...
>> Peter Moylan wrote:
>> > How do you pronounce Poughkeepsie? I'd always assumed that it was
>> > something like 'poopsie', but recently I read something that seemed
>> > to imply that the name rhymes with 'tipsy'.
>>
>> Oy. As I recently posted, it's /p@'kIpsi/ (= BrE/AusE "per-KIP-see"), so,
>> yes, it does rhyme with "tipsy" (ignoring the issue of whether /I/ or /i/
>> is used for final -y).
>>
>
>
>
> Those squiggles that look like the dialog for Sgt Snorkle in the old Beetle
> Baily comic are worse than useless. If someone can't figure out how to say
> the conventional every day letters how on earth are they or anyone ever
> expected to pronounce @ or any of the rest of the obscure symbols that
> routinely get posted here. stupid stupid stupid,
Maybe so, but we've been trying to use that system (Evan R. Kirshenbaum
American Standard Code for Information Interchange International Phonetic
Alphabet) for many years now, and *some* of us like it. And uh-oh, now
you've gone and wook up Sparky.
> I doubt what you posted
> would help anybody arrive at the pronunciation of Poughkeepsie NY.
> Your second example is better but adding an r that you must be expecting
> them to drop when they say it.
Yes; most Brits and Aussies are non-rhotic. I think that should help a lot
of your Eastern Massachusetts brethren too.
Raymond S. Wise
And the fact that "er" can (and is) used in British English as a
stand-in for the schwa in phonetic spelling is a good reason for using
ASCII IPA, especially when the readership is an international one.
Ordinary phonetic spelling using just the 26 letters of the English
alphabet is a very poor system, indeed.
I expect that nonrhotic Americans avoid using "er" in this fashion,
because they know that many of their readers would pronounce it as
"urr" rather than the "uh" which was intended (that is, as [@r] rather
than [@]).
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Bob Cunningham
<m...@privacy.net> said:
> ray o'hara wrote:
> > "Areff" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
> > news:d9o1tu$n7r$1...@news.wss.yale.edu...
> >> Peter Moylan wrote:
> >> > How do you pronounce Poughkeepsie? I'd always assumed that it was
> >> > something like 'poopsie', but recently I read something that seemed
> >> > to imply that the name rhymes with 'tipsy'.
> >> Oy. As I recently posted, it's /p@'kIpsi/ (= BrE/AusE "per-KIP-see"), so,
> >> yes, it does rhyme with "tipsy" (ignoring the issue of whether /I/ or /i/
> >> is used for final -y).
> > Those squiggles that look like the dialog for Sgt Snorkle in the old Beetle
> > Baily comic are worse than useless. If someone can't figure out how to say
> > the conventional every day letters how on earth are they or anyone ever
> > expected to pronounce @ or any of the rest of the obscure symbols that
> > routinely get posted here. stupid stupid stupid,
> Maybe so, but we've been trying to use that system (Evan R. Kirshenbaum
> American Standard Code for Information Interchange International Phonetic
> Alphabet) for many years now, and *some* of us like it. And uh-oh, now
> you've gone and wook up Sparky.
/'-'..'-'\ ... /'-'..'o'\ ... /'o'..'o'\ ... /'O'..'O'\
See http://www.alt-usage-english.org/ipa/nutshell.shtml
/'-'..'-'\ .
ray o'hara
Poughkeepsie is close enough to Massachusetts that we know how to pronounce
it.It is where you cross the Hudson River{Rte 44} when the Newburgh and
Tappansee bridges are choked with traffic {a common occurance}.
ray o'hara
> ray o'hara wrote:
> >
> > "Areff" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
> > news:d9o1tu$n7r$1...@news.wss.yale.edu...
> >> Peter Moylan wrote:
> >> > How do you pronounce Poughkeepsie? I'd always assumed that it was
> >> > something like 'poopsie', but recently I read something that seemed
> >> > to imply that the name rhymes with 'tipsy'.
> >>
> >> Oy. As I recently posted, it's /p@'kIpsi/ (= BrE/AusE "per-KIP-see"),
so,
> >> yes, it does rhyme with "tipsy" (ignoring the issue of whether /I/ or
/i/
> >> is used for final -y).
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > Those squiggles that look like the dialog for Sgt Snorkle in the old
Beetle
> > Baily comic are worse than useless. If someone can't figure out how to
say
> > the conventional every day letters how on earth are they or anyone ever
> > expected to pronounce @ or any of the rest of the obscure symbols that
> > routinely get posted here. stupid stupid stupid,
>
> Maybe so, but we've been trying to use that system (Evan R. Kirshenbaum
> American Standard Code for Information Interchange International Phonetic
> Alphabet) for many years now, and *some* of us like it. And uh-oh, now
> you've gone and wook up Sparky.
It is easier to just learn to say the usual letters than to learn an extra
bunch of symbols that is just as arbitrary. Ifsomeone can't figure out ough
what makes anyone think looking up @ will help. all that will lead to is
another place that has how that should be said, will one find a new set of
symbols there or the usual letters?
the Omrud
> Poughkeepsie is close enough to Massachusetts that we know how to pronounce
> it.It is where you cross the Hudson River{Rte 44} when the Newburgh and
> Tappansee bridges are choked with traffic {a common occurance}.
Well, it's even close enough to Warrington that I know how to
pronounce it.
--
David
=====
replace usenet with the
Sara Lorimer
> How do you pronounce Poughkeepsie? I'd always assumed that it was
> something like 'poopsie', but recently I read something that seemed
> to imply that the name rhymes with 'tipsy'.
puh-KIP-see, with the "puh" barely being audible.
--
SML
Bob Cunningham
<r...@comcast.net> said:
[...]
> It is easier to just learn to say the usual letters than
> to learn an extra bunch of symbols that is just as arbitrary.
The usual letters have no generally understood sounds. In
ASCII IPA, each symbol stands for a well-defined group of
sounds in a relatively small part of the vowel space.
The [@] that you seem to particularly object to stands for
the schwa, and there is no satisfactory way to represent
that sound in ad hoc symbols. Some people use "uh", the
vowel sound in "but" for the "schwa", but they would also
use "uh" for the "u" in "button", and the "u" and the "o" in
"button" have quite different sounds.
In ASCII IPA "button" is ['bV?@n], not ['bV?Vn]
If you think you can represent the ways words are pronounced
using the "usual letters", you're kidding yourself. Readers
in Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Newcastle, and London will
in general take your letters to stand for different sounds,
so most people will not know what you mean.
The difference between your "usual letters" and IPA is that
the sound corresponding to each IPA symbol is well-defined,
and sound files are available to show what the sound is for
each symbol, while there is nothing to compare with that for
your "usual letters".
But people will continue to kid themselves into thinking
they can use ad hoc symbols (your "usual letters") to tell
others how words are pronounced, and I suppose no real harm
will result. What harm is really done if you tell me how a
word is pronounced and I understand you to say it's
pronounced some quite different way?
What real harm results from people jabbering about "ah"
sounds and "aw" sounds, even though "ah" and "aw" are each
pronounced different ways in different parts of the world
and are pronounced identically in some parts? I, for one,
am not harmed: I can just dismiss such discussion as
meaningless and go on to other things.
Mike Lyle
[...]
> It is easier to just learn to say the usual letters than to learn
an
> extra bunch of symbols that is just as arbitrary. Ifsomeone can't
> figure out ough what makes anyone think looking up @ will help. all
> that will lead to is another place that has how that should be
said,
> will one find a new set of symbols there or the usual letters?
As an IPA-sceptic, I can agree, or at any rate sympathise, up to a
point. But the "ough" example is about as fine an example of a bad
example as you could have selected. Much of the time, "uh" (or even
just an apostrophe) will do for schwa; but far too often it will give
a seriously false impression, so why not take an instant to get used
to "@"? Evan's system is simple to learn and genuinely useful -- I
think he was the first person to point out the things it just
couldn't be asked to do.
Full-bore IPA is an impossible project, not a bad idea; but even so,
it's very useful.
--
Mike.
Bob Cunningham
> Peter Moylan <pe...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au> wrote:
You seem to be saying the "ough" in "Poughkeepsie" is
pronounced like the vowel in "but", but barely audibly. I
suspect that you don't really pronounce it that way and that
you really pronounce it with a schwa. A schwa is not a
barely audible "u" of "but": it's the "o" in "button". If
anything, it's a barely audible "oo" as in "took", but it's
not really that, either; it's a different sound, [@], from
either the "u" in "but", [bVt], or the "oo" in "took",
[tUk].
But who knows? Maybe some people do pronounce "button"
['bVtVn] with a barely audible {V] in the second syllable.
The Merriam-Webster people seem to think so. They use the
same symbol for the equivalents of ASCII IPA [V] and [@].
In stressed syllables they say it stands for [V]; in
unstressed, [@]. But I suspect even they don't really talk
that way.
Frances Kemmish
The real test is Skaneatles.
ray o'hara
"Frances Kemmish" <fkem...@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:3ifivtF...@individual.net...
I know folks from there. they said it ike skein ee atlas
R J Valentine
} "Frances Kemmish" <fkem...@optonline.net> wrote in message
} news:3ifivtF...@individual.net...
...
}> The real test is Skaneatles.
}
}
} I know folks from there. they said it ike skein ee atlas
Skinny Atlas.
Frances Kemmish
> On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:06:24 -0400 ray o'hara <r...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> } "Frances Kemmish" <fkem...@optonline.net> wrote in message
> } news:3ifivtF...@individual.net...
> ...
> }> The real test is Skaneatles.
> }
> }
> } I know folks from there. they said it ike skein ee atlas
>
> Skinny Atlas.
>
I already failed the test - I spelled the name wrong. It's Skaneateles.
ray o'hara
"R J Valentine" <r...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
news:d9vh5e$846$2...@pcls4.std.com...
> On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:06:24 -0400 ray o'hara <r...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> } "Frances Kemmish" <fkem...@optonline.net> wrote in message
> } news:3ifivtF...@individual.net...
> ...
> }> The real test is Skaneatles.
> }
> }
> } I know folks from there. they said it ike skein ee atlas
>
> Skinny Atlas.
Yeah , that works. The accent is hard to describe too.
de...@aol.com
Peter Moylan wrote:
> How do you pronounce Poughkeepsie? I'd always assumed that it was
> something like 'poopsie', but recently I read something that seemed
> to imply that the name rhymes with 'tipsy'.
LOLOL! I remember someone who pooped on the toilet seat once. We
called her "poopsie" or "poopseat" or something like that!
de...@aol.com
Areff wrote:
> > I doubt what you posted
> > would help anybody arrive at the pronunciation of Poughkeepsie NY.
> > Your second example is better but adding an r that you must be expecting
> > them to drop when they say it.
>
> Yes; most Brits and Aussies are non-rhotic. I think that should help a lot
> of your Eastern Massachusetts brethren too.
Well, Fonts, why not just write it "puh-KIP-see", like O'Hara said?
The "R" was unnecessary; you know that people don't say, "per-KIP-see".
If you had written it as O'Hara suggested, it would've helped ALL
people to pronounce it, instead of just accented Brits, Aussies, and
New Englanders (a very SMALL minority of ALL English speakers).
de...@aol.com
Bob Cunningham wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 08:24:58 -0700,
> que.sara....@gmail.com (Sara Lorimer) said:
>
> > Peter Moylan <pe...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au> wrote:
>
> > > How do you pronounce Poughkeepsie? I'd always assumed that it was
> > > something like 'poopsie', but recently I read something that seemed
> > > to imply that the name rhymes with 'tipsy'.
>
> > puh-KIP-see, with the "puh" barely being audible.
>
> You seem to be saying the "ough" in "Poughkeepsie" is
> pronounced like the vowel in "but", but barely audibly.
Yes, just like the "ough" in "thoroughly".
I
> suspect that you don't really pronounce it that way and that
> you really pronounce it with a schwa. A schwa is not a
> barely audible "u" of "but": it's the "o" in "button". If
> anything, it's a barely audible "oo" as in "took", but it's
> not really that, either; it's a different sound, [@], from
> either the "u" in "but", [bVt], or the "oo" in "took",
> [tUk].
>
> But who knows? Maybe some people do pronounce "button"
> ['bVtVn] with a barely audible {V] in the second syllable.
>
> The Merriam-Webster people seem to think so. They use the
> same symbol for the equivalents of ASCII IPA [V] and [@].
> In stressed syllables they say it stands for [V]; in
> unstressed, [@]. But I suspect even they don't really talk
> that way.
So, what, exactly, is the deal with "schwa"? What's it mean and
where's it come from? I remember seeing the pronunciation guide of a
dictionary, and one of the vowel sounds was made for "A", "E", "I",
"O", and "U" in certain words--is this "schwa"? To me, the second
syllable of "button" sounds a lot like "tin", with a short "I", more so
than a short "U".
Comments?
ray o'hara
<de...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1120266496.6...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Bostonians would sary per like purr , as if the word were person.