Pronunciation of 'Waco'

[occam]

This infamous place in Texas is in the news once again. Netflix has a
3-part series on the events that unfolded 30 years ago. The ex-President
of USA, Mr. Wacko, has also organized a rally in Waco recently, in the
race leading up to the presidential election of 2024.


ObAUE: Why is Waco pronounced 'way-co' and not 'wack-o'? The wacko
pronunciation surely makes far more onomatopoeic sense.

[Silvano]

occam hat am 26.03.2023 um 09:48 geschrieben:

Precisely to avoid that onomatopoeic sense, I guess.
Inhabitants of Waco probably don't like at all that onomatopoeic sense.

That reminds me of an Italian acquaintance who strongly insisted in
Germany and the US that his surname MUST be pronounced with an accent on
the "i" and a long "f", as written, even if he was aware there's no such
thing in English. Wikipedia tells me under "Gemination" that an
approximation is possible in English, e.g. when you speak out "life force".
Sunday quiz: try and guess his surname.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Likewise in word sequences like "in new white tennis shoes".

> Sunday quiz: try and guess his surname.

No suggestions, I'm afraid. However, on the rare occasions when I want
to refer to the philosopher Kant I call him "the philosopher Kant" or
"Immanuel Kant" rather than just plain "Kant". Is this a similar case?

--
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 36 years; mainly
in England until 1987.

[occam]

The Italians famously had an electricity generating company whose web
page was accessed by 'GenItalia.com'. (No longer in existence.)

[occam]

On 26/03/2023 10:55, Silvano wrote:
> occam hat am 26.03.2023 um 09:48 geschrieben:
>> This infamous place in Texas is in the news once again. Netflix has a
>> 3-part series on the events that unfolded 30 years ago. The ex-President
>> of USA, Mr. Wacko, has also organized a rally in Waco recently, in the
>> race leading up to the presidential election of 2024.
>>
>>
>> ObAUE: Why is Waco pronounced 'way-co' and not 'wack-o'? The wacko
>> pronunciation surely makes far more onomatopoeic sense.
>
>
> Precisely to avoid that onomatopoeic sense, I guess.
> Inhabitants of Waco probably don't like at all that onomatopoeic sense.
>

Are you aware of the history of Waco? It was infested by a cult of
wackos, who though their leader was Christ v2- the second coming. The
town was called Waco before, during and after the 1993 events.

[J. J. Lodder]

Too difficult for my sunday brain.
FYI, Dutch has some deliberate misspellings of Italian words
in order to get the natural Dutch pronunciation right.
Typical example, 'maffia' for 'mafia',

Jan

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Den 26.03.2023 kl. 13.30 skrev J. J. Lodder:

> Too difficult for my sunday brain.
> FYI, Dutch has some deliberate misspellings of Italian words
> in order to get the natural Dutch pronunciation right.
> Typical example, 'maffia' for 'mafia',

Danish has a simpler strategy: We just pronounce the words right
regardless of the spelling.

--
Bertel, Denmark

[Silvano]

J. J. Lodder hat am 26.03.2023 um 13:30 geschrieben:

> Silvano <Sil...@noncisonopernessuno.it> wrote:
>> That reminds me of an Italian acquaintance who strongly insisted in
>> Germany and the US that his surname MUST be pronounced with an accent on
>> the "i" and a long "f", as written, even if he was aware there's no such
>> thing in English. Wikipedia tells me under "Gemination" that an
>> approximation is possible in English, e.g. when you speak out "life force".
>> Sunday quiz: try and guess his surname.
>
> Too difficult for my sunday brain.
> FYI, Dutch has some deliberate misspellings of Italian words
> in order to get the natural Dutch pronunciation right.
> Typical example, 'maffia' for 'mafia',

You got it. I've no idea if he ever went to the Netherlands, but he'd
insist even more strongly than in the US that the "f" must be twice as
long as usual in Dutch and the accent goes on the "i".
According to what you tell us, he'd probably have to spell it MaffffIa
and hope you get the message.

[Silvano]

occam hat am 26.03.2023 um 13:02 geschrieben:

> On 26/03/2023 10:55, Silvano wrote:
>> occam hat am 26.03.2023 um 09:48 geschrieben:
>>> This infamous place in Texas is in the news once again. Netflix has a
>>> 3-part series on the events that unfolded 30 years ago. The ex-President
>>> of USA, Mr. Wacko, has also organized a rally in Waco recently, in the
>>> race leading up to the presidential election of 2024.
>>>
>>>
>>> ObAUE: Why is Waco pronounced 'way-co' and not 'wack-o'? The wacko
>>> pronunciation surely makes far more onomatopoeic sense.
>>
>>
>> Precisely to avoid that onomatopoeic sense, I guess.
>> Inhabitants of Waco probably don't like at all that onomatopoeic sense.
>>
>
> Are you aware of the history of Waco?

OC! That's why I bet that its inhabitants would love to kill whoever
dares to call their town 'wack-o'.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

When they're not busy killing other people?

[Paul Carmichael]

El Sun, 26 Mar 2023 16:04:51 +0200, Silvano escribió:

> You got it. I've no idea if he ever went to the Netherlands, but he'd
> insist even more strongly than in the US that the "f" must be twice as
> long as usual in Dutch and the accent goes on the "i".
> According to what you tell us, he'd probably have to spell it MaffffIa
> and hope you get the message.

But isn't F a non-voiced fricative?


--
Paul.

https://paulc.es

[Silvano]

Paul Carmichael hat am 26.03.2023 um 16:51 geschrieben:

Please enlighten me. What does the length of a consonant have to do with
its being voiced or voiceless or a fricative rather than a plosive or
something else?

The length of a consonant is probably a strange concept to a native
English speaker and learning Spanish may not have helped you. But you
can read
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination>
or wait for comments from the AUE reader who told us recently that he
lives in Finland.

[J. J. Lodder]

Which would be quite wrong. [1]

> According to what you tell us, he'd probably have to spell it MaffffIa
> and hope you get the message.

Dutch has the long a, spelled as aa, and the short a,
spelled with a single a.
(as in words like 'lat' and 'laat' for example)
That is, that was how it was long ago.

In a spelling reform, about a hundred years ago, it was decided
that the long 'aa' would be dropped in 'open' syllables.
So the spelling of for example 'baa-ken' became 'ba-ken'.

However, this gives 'ma-fia' a long 'aa' as the matural pronunciation,
in Dutch, which conflicts with the Italian pronuncition.
So the Italian spelling 'ma-fia' was modified to 'maf-fia'
to make 'maf' a closed syllable.
This leads Dutch speakers to pronounce it with a short 'a',
in better agreement with the Italian pronunciation.

Jan

[1] So if your friend would want the Dutch to get it his way
he would have to respell it as 'maffía', with an accent for emphasis.
Probaby mafía would be even better, if the emphasis was noticed,
because the emphasis forces the syllables to be maf-í-a,
making the first 'a' short again.

[Silvano]

J. J. Lodder hat am 26.03.2023 um 20:46 geschrieben:

> Silvano <Sil...@noncisonopernessuno.it> wrote:
>
>> J. J. Lodder hat am 26.03.2023 um 13:30 geschrieben:
>>> Silvano <Sil...@noncisonopernessuno.it> wrote:
>>>> That reminds me of an Italian acquaintance who strongly insisted in
>>>> Germany and the US that his surname MUST be pronounced with an accent on
>>>> the "i" and a long "f", as written, even if he was aware there's no such
>>>> thing in English. Wikipedia tells me under "Gemination" that an
>>>> approximation is possible in English, e.g. when you speak out "life force".
>>>> Sunday quiz: try and guess his surname.
>>>
>>> Too difficult for my sunday brain.
>>> FYI, Dutch has some deliberate misspellings of Italian words
>>> in order to get the natural Dutch pronunciation right.
>>> Typical example, 'maffia' for 'mafia',
>>
>> You got it. I've no idea if he ever went to the Netherlands, but he'd
>> insist even more strongly than in the US that the "f" must be twice as
>> long as usual in Dutch and the accent goes on the "i".
>
> Which would be quite wrong. [1]

You must have misunderstood what I was trying to say. That Italian guy
was ready to do almost everything short of murder to make sure that his
surname Maffia is NOT pronounced like the criminal organisation called
mafia.

[Sam Plusnet]

The town has been there for around 200 years, whilst that cult only
started in 1955.
Thus it had plenty of time to be known for other things[1].

[1] Like a fondness for lynching black men.


--
Sam Plusnet

[J. J. Lodder]

Not at all.
I explained why your suggestion would be quite wrong, for Dutch,

Jan

[Ross Clark]

On 26/03/2023 9:55 p.m., Silvano wrote:
> occam hat am 26.03.2023 um 09:48 geschrieben:
>> This infamous place in Texas is in the news once again. Netflix has a
>> 3-part series on the events that unfolded 30 years ago. The ex-President
>> of USA, Mr. Wacko, has also organized a rally in Waco recently, in the
>> race leading up to the presidential election of 2024.
>>
>>
>> ObAUE: Why is Waco pronounced 'way-co' and not 'wack-o'? The wacko
>> pronunciation surely makes far more onomatopoeic sense.
>
>
> Precisely to avoid that onomatopoeic sense, I guess.
> Inhabitants of Waco probably don't like at all that onomatopoeic sense.
>

Onomatopoeia has nothing to do with it. Nor does homophony-avoidance.

Wacovians were pronouncing it that way long before Branch Davidians
(1955) or "wacko" for a crazy person (1960) came along.

According to Bright, the place name is from Wichita /wi:ko/, name of a
local sub-tribe. Previously spelled <Wico> by Anglos and <Hueco> by
Hispanics.

[David Kleinecke]

When I introspect my pronunciation of "mafia" I feel gemination. The syllables feel to me like "maf" followed by "fiy^". I haven't explored this with a sound spectrograph. IMO this isn't a phonemic gemination. There aren't (so far as I know) any minimal pairs. Many monosyllables - like "bat" - do indicate gemination when a suffix is added - "batted". I think there is a rule against CV stressed syllables (V short).

Perhaps "bat" should be spelled "batt". In some cases the final is doubled - "bluff". The last word on English phonology remains to be said.

[David Kleinecke]

In 1898 controversial journalist William Cowper Brann was shoot on the street in Waco' He drew his own gun and killed his assassin before he died. I have read that he was accused of insulting Baylor University.

[Jerry Friedman]

On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 3:17:43 AM UTC-6, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2023-03-26 08:55:33 +0000, Silvano said:
>
> > occam hat am 26.03.2023 um 09:48 geschrieben:

...

> >> ObAUE: Why is Waco pronounced 'way-co' and not 'wack-o'? The wacko
> >> pronunciation surely makes far more onomatopoeic sense.
> >
> >
> > Precisely to avoid that onomatopoeic sense, I guess.
> > Inhabitants of Waco probably don't like at all that onomatopoeic sense.
> >
> > That reminds me of an Italian acquaintance who strongly insisted in
> > Germany and the US that his surname MUST be pronounced with an accent on
> > the "i" and a long "f", as written, even if he was aware there's no such
> > thing in English. Wikipedia tells me under "Gemination" that an
> > approximation is possible in English, e.g. when you speak out "life force".
> Likewise in word sequences like "in new white tennis shoes".

...

And between morphemes. I believe a classic example is "unaimed" and
"unnamed".

--
Jerry Friedman

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <tvq937$2rbrb$1...@dont-email.me>,

Ross Clark <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

>According to Bright, the place name is from Wichita /wi:ko/, name of a
>local sub-tribe. Previously spelled <Wico> by Anglos and <Hueco> by
>Hispanics.

So the spelling was changed to more closely match the Spanish
pronunciation?

Relevant to the OP's question, "Waco" follows the normal pattern of
English pronunciation: the first vowel in -VCV is pronounced "long";
for the vowel to be "short" the consonant would be doubled. (That's
"long" and "short" in the English sense, not phonetically long or
short.)

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wol...@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 5:30:56 PM UTC-4, David Kleinecke wrote:

> When I introspect my pronunciation of "mafia" I feel gemination. The syllables feel to me like "maf" followed by "fiy^". I haven't explored this with a sound spectrograph. IMO this isn't a phonemic gemination. There aren't (so far as I know) any minimal pairs. Many monosyllables - like "bat" - do indicate gemination when a suffix is added - "batted". I think there is a rule against CV stressed syllables (V short).

"Batted" is spelled that way because it isn't "bated."

> Perhaps "bat" should be spelled "batt". In some cases the final is doubled - "bluff". The last word on English phonology remains to be said.

"Bat" is spelled that way because it isn't "bate."

Nothing to do with (phonetic) gemination for about 1000 years.

/f/ isn't normally a candidate for ambisyllabicity.

[Peter Moylan]

The actual name was powergenitalia.com, and to me it's memorable because
Snopes seems to deny that it ever existed, even though the web site can
still be found on the Wayback machine.

Actually, the Snopes claim is more nuanced. It says that it's untrue
that that web site was created by a British company called Powergen.
That's true. But nobody ever claimed that it was a British company. It
was an Italisn company, called Powergen Italia. (The company later
changed its name, after somebody explained to them what it sounded like
in English.)

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW http://www.pmoylan.org

[Peter Moylan]

On 27/03/23 04:33, Silvano wrote:

> The length of a consonant is probably a strange concept to a native
> English speaker and learning Spanish may not have helped you. But
> you can read <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination> or wait for
> comments from the AUE reader who told us recently that he lives in
> Finland.

English does have gemination of some consonants, despite what you'll
read on the web. It's just that most English speakers don't notice that
that's what they're doing.

I think it was Jerry who recently gave an example, a word something like
"unnoticed".

(But English spelling also has lots of doubled letters that don't
indicate gemination. There are two examples in my previous sentence.)

[Peter Moylan]

On 27/03/23 05:46, J. J. Lodder wrote:

> However, this gives 'ma-fia' a long 'aa' as the matural
> pronunciation, in Dutch, which conflicts with the Italian
> pronuncition. So the Italian spelling 'ma-fia' was modified to
> 'maf-fia' to make 'maf' a closed syllable. This leads Dutch speakers
> to pronounce it with a short 'a', in better agreement with the
> Italian pronunciation.

Australians use the Italian spelling, but we pronounce it with a long
[A:] anyway. That's despite the fact that we've had a great many Italian
immigrants who could have taught us the right way.

We do better with some other Italian words, like pasta. That has an [a]
vowel that doesn't otherwise occur in AusE, except in diphthongs.

That's possibly because incoming Italians were happy to talk to us about
pasta, but a bit more reluctant to talk about the Mafia, even though
most of them came from Sicily and Calabria.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 9:52:11 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 27/03/23 04:33, Silvano wrote:

> > The length of a consonant is probably a strange concept to a native
> > English speaker and learning Spanish may not have helped you. But
> > you can read <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination> or wait for
> > comments from the AUE reader who told us recently that he lives in
> > Finland.
>
> English does have gemination of some consonants, despite what you'll
> read on the web. It's just that most English speakers don't notice that
> that's what they're doing.

Only at a morpheme boundary, never within a single morpheme. You
can probably construct an example for every consonant (though [D],
as in "though," would probably take some doing). [Z]? If there were
genres depending on different kinds of makeup, someone might
find a use for "rouge-genre."

[Peter T. Daniels]

The BBC cannot agree on how to pronounce your PM's name. The
opera diva was Licia Albanese (4 syll., -[-ejsej]), the girl whose murder
in Queens, NY, in 1965 led to the 911 (BrE 999) system was Kitty
Genovese (3 syll., [-ijs]). The two options seem about equally used
(by the same folks who can't manage "Barack"). How does he say it?

[Peter Moylan]

On 27/03/23 13:35, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> The BBC cannot agree on how to pronounce your PM's name. The opera
> diva was Licia Albanese (4 syll., -[-ejsej]), the girl whose murder
> in Queens, NY, in 1965 led to the 911 (BrE 999) system was Kitty
> Genovese (3 syll., [-ijs]). The two options seem about equally used
> (by the same folks who can't manage "Barack"). How does he say it?

[&lb@n'izij]. That doesn't sound very Italian, I know. But he was
brought up by a single mother, who wasn't Italian.

The Australian broadcaster ABC used to have a pronunciation department,
which among other things told the newsreaders how to pronounce the name
of a foreign person in the news. They did a pretty good job, so that for
example names like Krushchëv and Gorbachëv ended up being pronounced in
the Russian way rather than the American way. Sadly, it seems that
broadcasters can no longer afford that luxury, so more names than before
are being butchered.

For an extreme example - but it's not the fault of broadcasters -
consider the Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (/ˈpæləʃeɪ/. At
some stage someone must have decided that Australians couldn't handle
the Polish pronunciation, so switched it to sound French.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Den 27.03.2023 kl. 03.42 skrev Peter Moylan:

> was an Italisn company, called Powergen Italia. (The company later
> changed its name, after somebody explained to them what it sounded like
> in English.)

Did they really need an explanation? I would have thought that
"genitalia" was pretty much international.

And thanks to everyone for the reminder. I heard about the company back
when it had the name, but I had forgotten.

--
Bertel, Denmark

[occam]

On 27/03/2023 01:28, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> In article <tvq937$2rbrb$1...@dont-email.me>,
> Ross Clark <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>
>> According to Bright, the place name is from Wichita /wi:ko/, name of a
>> local sub-tribe. Previously spelled <Wico> by Anglos and <Hueco> by
>> Hispanics.
>
> So the spelling was changed to more closely match the Spanish
> pronunciation?

...and so, it appears, did the pronunciation.

>
> Relevant to the OP's question, "Waco" follows the normal pattern of
> English pronunciation:

An example? The pattern I had in mind is the pronunciation of "Taco"
(ta-co, NOT tay-co). (OK, "taco" is not a native English word, but
neither are 'Waco', 'Wico' or 'Hueco'. )

[phil]

On 26/03/2023 22:30, David Kleinecke wrote:

>
> Perhaps "bat" should be spelled "batt".

That would be a pre-cut piece of fibreglass insulation, in BrE at least.
Also in AmE and AusE by the looks of it.

[Paul Carmichael]

El Mon, 27 Mar 2023 09:56:07 +0200, Bertel Lund Hansen escribió:

> Den 27.03.2023 kl. 03.42 skrev Peter Moylan:
>
>> was an Italisn company, called Powergen Italia. (The company later
>> changed its name, after somebody explained to them what it sounded like
>> in English.)
>
> Did they really need an explanation? I would have thought that
> "genitalia" was pretty much international.

S'funny. Here in Europe, it's all the rage to use English words (usually
totally inappropriate). All wholesale outlets use the word "Cash" in
their publicidad.

There's a food distribution warehouse up the road called "GM Foods".

--
Paul.

https://paulc.es

[Silvano]

I forgot to point out that the length of the vowel is irrelevant to
Italians like him and me. We barely notice the difference in Italian
words like mafia or pasta, because it has no function, and we have to
learn different vowel lengths carefully when we learn a language where
the difference is important, as in German and English.

To us it's the length of the _consonant_ which is important in many
Italian words.
Pala is a shovel, but palla is a ball.
M'ama = he/she loves me, mamma = mom.
cola = it runs down, colla = glue.
peli = body hair, beard stubbles, pelli = skins, furs, hides.
We have hundreds of such minimal pairs.

Even more important is the accent on the i in his surname.

[Ross Clark]

On 27/03/2023 9:58 p.m., occam wrote:
> On 27/03/2023 01:28, Garrett Wollman wrote:
>> In article <tvq937$2rbrb$1...@dont-email.me>,
>> Ross Clark <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>>
>>> According to Bright, the place name is from Wichita /wi:ko/, name of a
>>> local sub-tribe. Previously spelled <Wico> by Anglos and <Hueco> by
>>> Hispanics.
>>
>> So the spelling was changed to more closely match the Spanish
>> pronunciation?
>
> ...and so, it appears, did the pronunciation.

Or perhaps, to put it another way, the Spanish pronunciation became the
(general) pronunciation. I don't think we have nearly enough information
to determine the history.

>>
>> Relevant to the OP's question, "Waco" follows the normal pattern of
>> English pronunciation:
>
>
> An example? The pattern I had in mind is the pronunciation of "Taco"
> (ta-co, NOT tay-co). (OK, "taco" is not a native English word, but
> neither are 'Waco', 'Wico' or 'Hueco'. )

That would have been better phrased as "follows _a_ normal pattern of
English pronunciation: as in Plato, dado, potato, halo, Tobago, Plano
(TX), tornado...

[Silvano]

Peter Moylan hat am 27.03.2023 um 04:01 geschrieben:

Rather than "even though", I'd say: _precisely_ because many of them
came from Sicily. In many parts of Sicily, for several decades you could
submit to the whims of the local mafiosi, join the police or, even
safer, the carabinieri <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carabinieri>, or
emigrate.

Actually, emigrants from Calabria never had any problems with the mafia.
The 'ndrangheta
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Ndrangheta>
would have never allowed the mafia to spread over there.

This applies to the many emigrants from Campania, too. References:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camorra>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(book)>

[Paul Carmichael]

El Mon, 27 Mar 2023 12:15:56 +0200, Silvano escribió:

> I forgot to point out that the length of the vowel is irrelevant to
> Italians like him and me. We barely notice the difference in Italian
> words like mafia or pasta, because it has no function, and we have to
> learn different vowel lengths carefully when we learn a language where
> the difference is important, as in German and English.
>
> To us it's the length of the _consonant_ which is important in many
> Italian words.
> Pala is a shovel, but palla is a ball.
> M'ama = he/she loves me, mamma = mom.
> cola = it runs down, colla = glue.
> peli = body hair, beard stubbles, pelli = skins, furs, hides.
> We have hundreds of such minimal pairs.

I always think of Italian as being similar to Spanish and I do generally
understand it. We hardly have consonants doubled. So I'm now seeing
Italian in a different light.

Things like "innecesario" are easy do diferenciate because the n is
voiced.

And I'm sure you know thaat "rr" and "ll" used to be distinct letters.

Pronunciation of "ll" (along with 'y') is largely regional. Here it's
mostly 'y' or "dy/j" whereas in Argentina, for example, it's "sh".

Is the 'z' pronounced in italian like the 'z' in German? Or only when
it's doubled (pizza)?


--
Paul.

https://paulc.es

[Paul Carmichael]

El Mon, 27 Mar 2023 10:04:39 +0000, Paul Carmichael escribió:

> El Mon, 27 Mar 2023 09:56:07 +0200, Bertel Lund Hansen escribió:
>
>> Den 27.03.2023 kl. 03.42 skrev Peter Moylan:
>>
>>> was an Italisn company, called Powergen Italia. (The company later
>>> changed its name, after somebody explained to them what it sounded
>>> like in English.)
>>
>> Did they really need an explanation? I would have thought that
>> "genitalia" was pretty much international.
>
> S'funny. Here in Europe, it's all the rage to use English words (usually
> totally inappropriate). All wholesale outlets use the word "Cash" in
> their publicidad.

Bugger. "Publicity" or "Advertising".

--
Paul.

https://paulc.es

[occam]

On 27/03/2023 12:26, Ross Clark wrote:
> On 27/03/2023 9:58 p.m., occam wrote:
>> On 27/03/2023 01:28, Garrett Wollman wrote:
>>> In article <tvq937$2rbrb$1...@dont-email.me>,
>>> Ross Clark  <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>>>
>>>> According to Bright, the place name is from Wichita /wi:ko/, name of a
>>>> local sub-tribe. Previously spelled <Wico> by Anglos and <Hueco> by
>>>> Hispanics.
>>>
>>> So the spelling was changed to more closely match the Spanish
>>> pronunciation?
>>
>> ...and so, it appears, did the pronunciation.
>
> Or perhaps, to put it another way, the Spanish pronunciation became the
> (general) pronunciation. I don't think we have nearly enough information
> to determine the history.
>
>>>
>>> Relevant to the OP's question, "Waco" follows the normal pattern of
>>> English pronunciation:
>>
>>
>> An example?  The pattern I had in mind is the pronunciation of "Taco"
>> (ta-co, NOT tay-co). (OK, "taco" is not a native English word, but
>> neither are 'Waco', 'Wico' or 'Hueco'. )
>
> That would have been better phrased as "follows _a_ normal pattern of
> English pronunciation: as in Plato, dado, potato, halo, Tobago, Plano
> (TX), tornado...
>

Hmm. I accept your rephrasing of the statement, but am not too keen on
your 'examples'. Plato, Tobago, Plano are all proper nouns (not English
words), and - when you dig a little deeper - neither are 'potato',
'tornado' or 'dado'.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Den 27.03.2023 kl. 12.04 skrev Paul Carmichael:

>> Did they really need an explanation? I would have thought that
>> "genitalia" was pretty much international.
>
> S'funny. Here in Europe, it's all the rage to use English words (usually
> totally inappropriate). All wholesale outlets use the word "Cash" in
> their publicidad.

"Genitalier" is a Danish word and wellknown.

> There's a food distribution warehouse up the road called "GM Foods".

Shops in Denmark have for some time had signs with "sale" in their
windows. "Sale" is a Danish word that means "ballrooms".

--
Bertel, Denmark

[Silvano]

Bertel Lund Hansen hat am 27.03.2023 um 13:51 geschrieben:

Not so bad. It'd be much worse in France. "Sale" is also the French word
for "dirty".

[J. J. Lodder]

For Dutch you shouldn't confuse a 'lange a' and a 'korte a'
with the length of the vowel. These are different things.
They are different sounds, and they remain different
also when the 'a' sound is streched or the 'aa' is short (in length).
Extreme example: a drill sergent may shout the command
'pas op de plaats' with a very long 'short a' sound in 'pas'.
OTOH the 'long a' in 'paasfeest' or 'pasen' can be quite short.

> To us it's the length of the _consonant_ which is important in many
> Italian words.
> Pala is a shovel, but palla is a ball.
> M'ama = he/she loves me, mamma = mom.
> cola = it runs down, colla = glue.
> peli = body hair, beard stubbles, pelli = skins, furs, hides.
> We have hundreds of such minimal pairs.
>
> Even more important is the accent on the i in his surname.

Yes, as I said his solution for Dutch is to use an accent or a trema.
This forces a shift of emphasis, and hence a change of pronunciation.
BTW, 'maffia' will be hyphenated in Dutch as maf-fi-a.

Jan

BTW, unlike most Anglosaxons Italians are quite capable
of doing the long Dutch vowels.
Singing: 'do re mi fa' with long notes will be just right.

[Silvano]

Paul Carmichael hat am 27.03.2023 um 12:39 geschrieben:

> El Mon, 27 Mar 2023 12:15:56 +0200, Silvano escribió:
>
>> I forgot to point out that the length of the vowel is irrelevant to
>> Italians like him and me. We barely notice the difference in Italian
>> words like mafia or pasta, because it has no function, and we have to
>> learn different vowel lengths carefully when we learn a language where
>> the difference is important, as in German and English.
>>
>> To us it's the length of the _consonant_ which is important in many
>> Italian words.
>> Pala is a shovel, but palla is a ball.
>> M'ama = he/she loves me, mamma = mom.
>> cola = it runs down, colla = glue.
>> peli = body hair, beard stubbles, pelli = skins, furs, hides.
>> We have hundreds of such minimal pairs.
>
>
> I always think of Italian as being similar to Spanish

IMHO even more similar to Spanish than written Dutch to German, but
still different.

> and I do generally
> understand it.

When I travelled in Spain with a group of Germans, I spoke
understandable* Spanish (very different from good Spanish, I'm afraid)
ending sometimes with: "Perdóname, yo hablo Español solo como un Italiano".
Several questions and puzzled looks followed, when the Spaniards had
heard me speaking German with the Germans.

*It must have been understandable, as I always got appropriate answers.

> We hardly have consonants doubled. So I'm now seeing
> Italian in a different light.

Fine.

> Things like "innecesario" are easy do diferenciate because the n is
> voiced.
>
> And I'm sure you know thaat "rr" and "ll" used to be distinct letters.

You're right.

> Pronunciation of "ll" (along with 'y') is largely regional. Here it's
> mostly 'y' or "dy/j" whereas in Argentina, for example, it's "sh".
>
> Is the 'z' pronounced in italian like the 'z' in German?

In many Italian words, yes, but see below. It's also a regional matter.
My dictionary tells me I should say /tsio/ (zio, i.e. uncle), but I'd
have to make a conscious effort not to say /dzio/.

Or only when
> it's doubled (pizza)?

It depends on the word. Even dictionaries admit e.g. both /dz/ and /ts/
in melanzana (eggplant). The only hard-and-fast rule I can think of on
the spot: it's /ts/ in the endings -zione and -zionismo, as in azione
and associazionismo.
And careful Italian speakers pronounce razza /rattsa/ (race) differently
from razza /raddza/ (the fish you can see here:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajiformes>). Many don't, however.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Etymological fallacy!

All those words and names are part of current English and therefore
are available as models for pronouncing "new" words.

My father was a mail clerk in the Army during WWII and apparently
found it hilarious that Waco, TX, and Saco, ME, existed.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Monday, March 27, 2023 at 9:22:38 AM UTC-4, J. J. Lodder wrote:

> > Even more important is the accent on the i in his surname.
> Yes, as I said his solution for Dutch is to use an accent or a trema.

As has been pointed out before, the word "trema" isn't used in English.
(Shut up, Cooper.)

> This forces a shift of emphasis, and hence a change of pronunciation.
> BTW, 'maffia' will be hyphenated in Dutch as maf-fi-a.

The English word raffia is divided raf-fia.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 11:35:55 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 27/03/23 13:35, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> > The BBC cannot agree on how to pronounce your PM's name. The opera
> > diva was Licia Albanese (4 syll., -[-ejsej]), the girl whose murder
> > in Queens, NY, in 1965 led to the 911 (BrE 999) system was Kitty
> > Genovese (3 syll., [-ijs]). The two options seem about equally used
> > (by the same folks who can't manage "Barack"). How does he say it?
>
> [&lb@n'izij]. That doesn't sound very Italian, I know. But he was
> brought up by a single mother, who wasn't Italian.

The [z] is surprising. Do y'all have z in Chrysler and Tesla, like the Brits
but unlike the companies' advertising?

> The Australian broadcaster ABC used to have a pronunciation department,
> which among other things told the newsreaders how to pronounce the name
> of a foreign person in the news. They did a pretty good job, so that for
> example names like Krushchëv and Gorbachëv ended up being pronounced in
> the Russian way rather than the American way. Sadly, it seems that
> broadcasters can no longer afford that luxury, so more names than before
> are being butchered.

I wonder whether my friend Bob Fradkin's Classical Music Pronunciation
Guide for Radio Announcers (which also has a bunch of names from politics)
is still available (Indiana UP, long ago). It makes me crazy that WNYC has
been carrying a promo for weeks for the Philadelphia Orchestra's appearance
at Newark's NJPAC featuring Beethoven and Mo[z]art.

> For an extreme example - but it's not the fault of broadcasters -
> consider the Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (/ˈpæləʃeɪ/. At
> some stage someone must have decided that Australians couldn't handle
> the Polish pronunciation, so switched it to sound French.

The -uk makes it look Ukrainian. They could at least _try_ for the -shch-
like we do for Khrushchev!

According to Bernard Comrie in WWS, the Ukrainian letter is pronounced
the same as the Russian one (though it's not used in Belarusian), and the
Polish digraphs sz and cz agree (he doesn't give szcz as a unit).

[bruce bowser]

On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 10:35:57 PM UTC-4, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 10:01:26 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
> > On 27/03/23 05:46, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> >
> > > However, this gives 'ma-fia' a long 'aa' as the matural
> > > pronunciation, in Dutch, which conflicts with the Italian
> > > pronuncition. So the Italian spelling 'ma-fia' was modified to
> > > 'maf-fia' to make 'maf' a closed syllable. This leads Dutch speakers
> > > to pronounce it with a short 'a', in better agreement with the
> > > Italian pronunciation.
> > Australians use the Italian spelling, but we pronounce it with a long
> > [A:] anyway. That's despite the fact that we've had a great many Italian
> > immigrants who could have taught us the right way.
> >
> > We do better with some other Italian words, like pasta. That has an [a]
> > vowel that doesn't otherwise occur in AusE, except in diphthongs.
> >
> > That's possibly because incoming Italians were happy to talk to us about
> > pasta, but a bit more reluctant to talk about the Mafia, even though
> > most of them came from Sicily and Calabria.
>
> The BBC cannot agree on how to pronounce your PM's name.

Its 'obscurity'.
I've noticed that a few influential people from across the pond (in and outside of the BBC) probably never ventured outside of the small 'obscure' towns they grew-up until reaching their mid-teenage years. That can severely jade a person's pronunciation of anything.

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <72095676-be16-427a...@googlegroups.com>,

Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:

>My father was a mail clerk in the Army during WWII and apparently
>found it hilarious that Waco, TX, and Saco, ME, existed.

And Saco, of course, does *not* follow the pattern (pronounced
/'sAkoU/ "SOCK-oh"). But nearby Sebago Lake (/s@'beI,goU/
"suh-BAY-go") does. (When I was in high school, Docksides by Sebago
were a popular casual shoe, mentioned in "The Official Preppy
Handbook", although I don't think even then the factory was still in
Maine. Saco and its sister city Biddeford were a major center of shoe
and boot-making, commemorated in Saco native Catie Curtis's song
"River Winding".)

-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wol...@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

[J. J. Lodder]

Hence it is 'solde', but always plural, 'soldes'.
And from there the horrible Belgicism 'solderen',

Jan

[Ken Blake]

On Mon, 27 Mar 2023 12:42:38 +1100, Peter Moylan
<pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

>On 26/03/23 21:50, occam wrote:
>> On 26/03/2023 11:17, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>
>>> No suggestions, I'm afraid. However, on the rare occasions when I
>>> want to refer to the philosopher Kant I call him "the philosopher
>>> Kant" or "Immanuel Kant" rather than just plain "Kant". Is this a
>>> similar case?
>>
>> The Italians famously had an electricity generating company whose web
>> page was accessed by 'GenItalia.com'. (No longer in existence.)
>
>The actual name was powergenitalia.com, and to me it's memorable because
>Snopes seems to deny that it ever existed, even though the web site can
>still be found on the Wayback machine.
>
>Actually, the Snopes claim is more nuanced. It says that it's untrue
>that that web site was created by a British company called Powergen.
>That's true. But nobody ever claimed that it was a British company. It

>was an Italisn company, called Powergen Italia. (The company later
>changed its name, after somebody explained to them what it sounded like
>in English.)

The web site of the local art museum here is
https://www.tucsonmuseumofart.org

I suggested that they change it to something like
https://www.tucson-museum-of-art.org
to avoid that juxtaposition of the last four letters before .org, but
they never did.

[Ken Blake]

On a vacation in China a number of years ago, I saw a fish store with
signs in English. One of the signs advertised a fish called "crap."

[Ken Blake]

On 27 Mar 2023 10:39:28 GMT, Paul Carmichael <wibble...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>El Mon, 27 Mar 2023 12:15:56 +0200, Silvano escribió:
>
>> I forgot to point out that the length of the vowel is irrelevant to
>> Italians like him and me. We barely notice the difference in Italian
>> words like mafia or pasta, because it has no function, and we have to
>> learn different vowel lengths carefully when we learn a language where
>> the difference is important, as in German and English.
>>
>> To us it's the length of the _consonant_ which is important in many
>> Italian words.
>> Pala is a shovel, but palla is a ball.
>> M'ama = he/she loves me, mamma = mom.
>> cola = it runs down, colla = glue.
>> peli = body hair, beard stubbles, pelli = skins, furs, hides.
>> We have hundreds of such minimal pairs.
>
>
>I always think of Italian as being similar to Spanish and I do generally
>understand it. We hardly have consonants doubled. So I'm now seeing
>Italian in a different light.

In Italian, when a consonant is doubled, each of them is in a
different syllable (always? usually?).

So, for example, "ano" (ass) is pronounced ah-no, but "anno" (year) is
pronounced on-no

>
>Things like "innecesario" are easy do diferenciate because the n is
>voiced.
>
>And I'm sure you know thaat "rr" and "ll" used to be distinct letters.
>
>Pronunciation of "ll" (along with 'y') is largely regional. Here it's
>mostly 'y' or "dy/j" whereas in Argentina, for example, it's "sh".

I thought it was more like zh in Argentina.

>Is the 'z' pronounced in italian like the 'z' in German? Or only when
>it's doubled (pizza)?

I'm not completely sure, but I *think* only when doubled.

Each z in "pizza" is pronounced differently. It's only the first z
that is ts--peets-za. Nobody would say peets-tsa

If what I say above isn't completely correct, I'll defer to the native
Italian speaker,

[Ken Blake]

On Mon, 27 Mar 2023 13:01:18 +1100, Peter Moylan
<pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

>On 27/03/23 05:46, J. J. Lodder wrote:
>
>> However, this gives 'ma-fia' a long 'aa' as the matural
>> pronunciation, in Dutch, which conflicts with the Italian
>> pronuncition. So the Italian spelling 'ma-fia' was modified to
>> 'maf-fia' to make 'maf' a closed syllable. This leads Dutch speakers
>> to pronounce it with a short 'a', in better agreement with the
>> Italian pronunciation.
>
>Australians use the Italian spelling, but we pronounce it with a long
>[A:] anyway. That's despite the fact that we've had a great many Italian
>immigrants who could have taught us the right way.
>
>We do better with some other Italian words, like pasta. That has an [a]
>vowel that doesn't otherwise occur in AusE, except in diphthongs.

In Rome, there's a pasta-making museum. I remember going through it
with headphones that described each exhibit in English. In AmE (and
Italian), I'm used to the pronunciation PAH-sta, but the recording
said PASS-ta. I assumed that PASS-ta was the BrE pronunciation. Is
that correct?

>That's possibly because incoming Italians were happy to talk to us about
>pasta, but a bit more reluctant to talk about the Mafia, even though
>most of them came from Sicily and Calabria.

I believe the Mafia is Sicilian. In Calabria, they have the
'Ndrangheta.

[Ken Blake]

On Mon, 27 Mar 2023 10:58:12 +0200, occam <oc...@nowhere.nix> wrote:

>On 27/03/2023 01:28, Garrett Wollman wrote:
>> In article <tvq937$2rbrb$1...@dont-email.me>,
>> Ross Clark <benl...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>>
>>> According to Bright, the place name is from Wichita /wi:ko/, name of a
>>> local sub-tribe. Previously spelled <Wico> by Anglos and <Hueco> by
>>> Hispanics.
>>
>> So the spelling was changed to more closely match the Spanish
>> pronunciation?
>
>...and so, it appears, did the pronunciation.
>
>>
>> Relevant to the OP's question, "Waco" follows the normal pattern of
>> English pronunciation:
>
>
>An example? The pattern I had in mind is the pronunciation of "Taco"
>(ta-co, NOT tay-co). (OK, "taco" is not a native English word, but
>neither are 'Waco', 'Wico' or 'Hueco'. )

...and "tako," the Japanese word for octopus.

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

On Sun, 26 Mar 2023 09:48:21 +0200, occam <oc...@nowhere.nix> wrote:

>This infamous place in Texas is in the news once again. Netflix has a
>3-part series on the events that unfolded 30 years ago. The ex-President
>of USA, Mr. Wacko, has also organized a rally in Waco recently, in the
>race leading up to the presidential election of 2024.
>
>
>ObAUE: Why is Waco pronounced 'way-co' and not 'wack-o'? The wacko
>pronunciation surely makes far more onomatopoeic sense.

A better question might be 'Why is the town pronounced as "way-co"
spelled "Waco"?'.

Waco is a spelling of the name of the Native Americsn tribe who lived
there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_people

The Waco (also spelled Huaco[2] and Hueco[3]) of the Wichita people
are a Southern Plains Native American tribe that inhabited
northeastern Texas.[4] Today, they are enrolled members of the
federally recognized Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, headquartered in
Anadarko, Oklahoma.

History
The Waco were a division of the Wichita people, called Iscani or
Yscani in the early European reports, kinsmen to the Tawakoni
people. The present-day Waco, Texas, is located on the site of their
principal village, that stood at least until 1820.[5] French
explorer Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe travelled through the
region in 1719, and the people he called the Honecha or Houecha
could be the Waco.[6] They are most likely the Quainco on Guillaume
de L'Isle's 1718 map, Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du
Mississipi.[7][8]

<more>


--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

[Jerry Friedman]

On Monday, March 27, 2023 at 12:40:40 PM UTC-6, Peter Duncanson [BrE] wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Mar 2023 09:48:21 +0200, occam <oc...@nowhere.nix> wrote:
>
> >This infamous place in Texas is in the news once again. Netflix has a
> >3-part series on the events that unfolded 30 years ago. The ex-President
> >of USA, Mr. Wacko, has also organized a rally in Waco recently, in the
> >race leading up to the presidential election of 2024.
> >
> >
> >ObAUE: Why is Waco pronounced 'way-co' and not 'wack-o'? The wacko
> >pronunciation surely makes far more onomatopoeic sense.
>
> A better question might be 'Why is the town pronounced as "way-co"
> spelled "Waco"?'.
>
> Waco is a spelling of the name of the Native Americsn tribe who lived
> there.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_people
>
> The Waco (also spelled Huaco[2] and Hueco[3]) of the Wichita people
> are a Southern Plains Native American tribe that inhabited
> northeastern Texas.[4] Today, they are enrolled members of the
> federally recognized Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, headquartered in
> Anadarko, Oklahoma.

...

So at this point we don't know whether "Waco" is based on the spelling of
"Huaco" or the pronunciation of "Hueco" or both. Maybe we could ask in
Anadarko.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Den 27.03.2023 kl. 15.29 skrev Silvano:

>> I always think of Italian as being similar to Spanish
>
> IMHO even more similar to Spanish than written Dutch to German, but
> still different.

I learnt French in high school. My youngest daughter was interested in
Italian when she considered going to high school (10th to 12th school
year), so we visited a high school a day where they had a presentation
evening. We could visit different stands where a teacher could answer
questions and display study books about their subject.

I glanced through an Italian book, and I could understand quite a lot of it.

--
Bertel, Denmark

[David Kleinecke]

On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 5:30:11 PM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 5:30:56 PM UTC-4, David Kleinecke wrote:
>
> > When I introspect my pronunciation of "mafia" I feel gemination. The syllables feel to me like "maf" followed by "fiy^". I haven't explored this with a sound spectrograph. IMO this isn't a phonemic gemination. There aren't (so far as I know) any minimal pairs. Many monosyllables - like "bat" - do indicate gemination when a suffix is added - "batted". I think there is a rule against CV stressed syllables (V short).
> "Batted" is spelled that way because it isn't "bated."
> > Perhaps "bat" should be spelled "batt". In some cases the final is doubled - "bluff". The last word on English phonology remains to be said.
> "Bat" is spelled that way because it isn't "bate."
>
> Nothing to do with (phonetic) gemination for about 1000 years.
>
> /f/ isn't normally a candidate for ambisyllabicity.
>
Agreed. I am more interested in spoken phonology than in the script.

[Peter Moylan]

Speaking of French, I'm always taken a little aback when passing a local
business called Dent Extractors.

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW http://www.pmoylan.org

[Peter Moylan]

On 28/03/23 01:12, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 11:35:55 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
>> On 27/03/23 13:35, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
>>> The BBC cannot agree on how to pronounce your PM's name. The
>>> opera diva was Licia Albanese (4 syll., -[-ejsej]), the girl
>>> whose murder in Queens, NY, in 1965 led to the 911 (BrE 999)
>>> system was Kitty Genovese (3 syll., [-ijs]). The two options seem
>>> about equally used (by the same folks who can't manage "Barack").
>>> How does he say it?
>>
>> [&lb@n'izij]. That doesn't sound very Italian, I know. But he was
>> brought up by a single mother, who wasn't Italian.
>
> The [z] is surprising. Do y'all have z in Chrysler and Tesla, like
> the Brits but unlike the companies' advertising?

We have z in Chrysler, s in Tesla. That's probably because of the
difference in length of the preceding vowel. In all the examples I can
think of, s is always s after a short vowel in AusE, but often z after a
long vowel or diphthong.

[Peter Moylan]

On 28/03/23 04:59, Ken Blake wrote:

> In Rome, there's a pasta-making museum. I remember going through it
> with headphones that described each exhibit in English. In AmE (and
> Italian), I'm used to the pronunciation PAH-sta, but the recording
> said PASS-ta. I assumed that PASS-ta was the BrE pronunciation. Is
> that correct?

Yes. BrE, but not AusE.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Now that's interesting. Some data-mining might nail down the
"always" vs. "often."

AmE prize has a longer vowel than price (not that it makes any
difference). Clearly Over Here it's the consonant that conditions
the vowel.

[Dingbat]

On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 11:47:18 AM UTC-7, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> Silvano <Sil...@noncisonopernessuno.it> wrote:
>
> > J. J. Lodder hat am 26.03.2023 um 13:30 geschrieben:
> > > Silvano <Sil...@noncisonopernessuno.it> wrote:
> > >> That reminds me of an Italian acquaintance who strongly insisted in
> > >> Germany and the US that his surname MUST be pronounced with an accent on
> > >> the "i" and a long "f", as written, even if he was aware there's no such
> > >> thing in English. Wikipedia tells me under "Gemination" that an
> > >> approximation is possible in English, e.g. when you speak out "life force".
> > >> Sunday quiz: try and guess his surname.
> > >
> > > Too difficult for my sunday brain.
> > > FYI, Dutch has some deliberate misspellings of Italian words
> > > in order to get the natural Dutch pronunciation right.
> > > Typical example, 'maffia' for 'mafia',
> >
> > You got it. I've no idea if he ever went to the Netherlands, but he'd
> > insist even more strongly than in the US that the "f" must be twice as
> > long as usual in Dutch and the accent goes on the "i".
> Which would be quite wrong. [1]

> > According to what you tell us, he'd probably have to spell it MaffffIa
> > and hope you get the message.
> Dutch has the long a, spelled as aa, and the short a,
> spelled with a single a.
> (as in words like 'lat' and 'laat' for example)
> That is, that was how it was long ago.
>
> In a spelling reform, about a hundred years ago, it was decided
> that the long 'aa' would be dropped in 'open' syllables.
> So the spelling of for example 'baa-ken' became 'ba-ken'.

>
> However, this gives 'ma-fia' a long 'aa' as the matural pronunciation,
> in Dutch, which conflicts with the Italian pronuncition.
> So the Italian spelling 'ma-fia' was modified to 'maf-fia'
> to make 'maf' a closed syllable.
> This leads Dutch speakers to pronounce it with a short 'a',
> in better agreement with the Italian pronunciation.
>

The Italian pronunciation could sound like "muff ear" to Brits. There
was an operating system named Muck. Hearing it pronounced, an
Italian wrote it down as Mach. The latter spelling stuck. Perhaps
Italians pronounced it like English Muck but no English speaker
pronounced it that way. The sole surviving descendant of Mach is
Apple's Darwin operating system used on the Mac Pro. It's called
MacOS, OSX or Darwin, not Mach, so there's no longer a need to
pronounce Mach.

[Dingbat]

On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 7:30:33 PM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 9:52:11 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
> > On 27/03/23 04:33, Silvano wrote:
>
> > > The length of a consonant is probably a strange concept to a native
> > > English speaker and learning Spanish may not have helped you. But
> > > you can read <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination> or wait for
> > > comments from the AUE reader who told us recently that he lives in
> > > Finland.
> >
> > English does have gemination of some consonants, despite what you'll
> > read on the web. It's just that most English speakers don't notice that
> > that's what they're doing.
> Only at a morpheme boundary, never within a single morpheme. You
> can probably construct an example for every consonant (though [D],
> as in "though," would probably take some doing). [Z]? If there were
> genres depending on different kinds of makeup, someone might
> find a use for "rouge-genre."
>
I have noticed [dZ:] as one pronunciation of <dg> in <budgeriar>.
<bud> is not a morpheme, so there's no morpheme boundary there.
>
> > I think it was Jerry who recently gave an example, a word something like
> > "unnoticed".
> >
> > (But English spelling also has lots of doubled letters that don't
> > indicate gemination. There are two examples in my previous sentence.)

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2023-03-28 00:25:05 +0000, Peter Moylan said:

> On 28/03/23 04:59, Ken Blake wrote:
>
>> In Rome, there's a pasta-making museum. I remember going through it
>> with headphones that described each exhibit in English. In AmE (and
>> Italian), I'm used to the pronunciation PAH-sta, but the recording
>> said PASS-ta. I assumed that PASS-ta was the BrE pronunciation. Is
>> that correct?
>
> Yes. BrE, but not AusE.

For me, certainly, but not for all speakers of British English. The
American/Australian pronunciation is common in the north of England
(and not because of American/Australian influence).


--
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 36 years; mainly
in England until 1987.

[Silvano]

Dingbat hat am 28.03.2023 um 06:17 geschrieben:

> The Italian pronunciation could sound like "muff ear" to Brits. There
> was an operating system named Muck. Hearing it pronounced, an
> Italian wrote it down as Mach.

1) I'm not sure how Muck should be pronounced and I'm too lazy to look up.

2) Your story is possible, but unlikely. I'd write Mac or Mak according
only to Italian rules, but please read my 1). "ch" is indeed the usual
way to write /k/ in Italian, but only before "i" and "e". At the end of
a word, in practice only in surnames and perhaps a few river names in
North-Eastern Italy, it's our workaround to express the sound /tS/
without a following "i" or "e", as Italians usually do not know the
letter ć and have no easy way to type it. Burgnich, Stuparich, Boscovich
etc. - curious AUE readers can look up in the Wikipedia who they were.

[occam]

Is it a garage ('bodyworks') or a French dentist? Either way, the
proprietor has a twisted sense of humour.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

I had thought it might ba a business started by a Mr Dent, but no:

"If you need quality PDR repairs in Newcastle, you need the experts.
Dent Extractors Newcastle has been in the paint-less dent removal
industry for over 20 years. In this time, we have acquired the skills
and knowledge required to successfully restore damage to your car back
to its original condition without the need of costly resprays."

[Janet]

In article <dbbb36b6-683d-48ae-a873-
059a1c...@googlegroups.com>, ranjit_...@yahoo.com
says...

But doesn't.

Janet (Brit)

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 12:57:13 AM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:
> On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 7:30:33 PM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 9:52:11 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
> > > On 27/03/23 04:33, Silvano wrote:
> >
> > > > The length of a consonant is probably a strange concept to a native
> > > > English speaker and learning Spanish may not have helped you. But
> > > > you can read <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination> or wait for
> > > > comments from the AUE reader who told us recently that he lives in
> > > > Finland.
> > >
> > > English does have gemination of some consonants, despite what you'll
> > > read on the web. It's just that most English speakers don't notice that
> > > that's what they're doing.
> > Only at a morpheme boundary, never within a single morpheme. You
> > can probably construct an example for every consonant (though [D],
> > as in "though," would probably take some doing). [Z]? If there were
> > genres depending on different kinds of makeup, someone might
> > find a use for "rouge-genre."
> >
> I have noticed [dZ:] as one pronunciation of <dg> in <budgeriar>.
> <bud> is not a morpheme, so there's no morpheme boundary there.

??? /j/ is a unit phoneme in English. Neither "judge" nor "church"
is polymorphemic.

[Bebercito]

Le lundi 27 mars 2023 à 04:30:33 UTC+2, Peter T. Daniels a écrit :
> On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 9:52:11 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
> > On 27/03/23 04:33, Silvano wrote:
>
> > > The length of a consonant is probably a strange concept to a native
> > > English speaker and learning Spanish may not have helped you. But
> > > you can read <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination> or wait for
> > > comments from the AUE reader who told us recently that he lives in
> > > Finland.
> >
> > English does have gemination of some consonants, despite what you'll
> > read on the web. It's just that most English speakers don't notice that
> > that's what they're doing.
> Only at a morpheme boundary, never within a single morpheme. You
> can probably construct an example for every consonant (though [D],
> as in "though," would probably take some doing). [Z]?

Hmmm... Are instances of e.g. "with the", "with this", "with that", really
so hard to find?

> If there were
> genres depending on different kinds of makeup, someone might
> find a use for "rouge-genre."

[Bebercito]

An odd wording, IMO, as, if they "restore damage back to its original
condition", doesn't it mean literally that they cancel any repairs to the
damage?

[Ken Blake]

By the way, for anyone who hasn't noticed, the current American
President's name means "two teeth." There's a also a local genus of
wildflowers here called "Bidens."

[Ken Blake]

Here in Tucson, it's almost impossible to get a dent removed these
days. Instead, the body shop replaces the entire piece of the body,
and it ends up costing around $1,000 instead of $100.

[Ken Blake]

On Tue, 28 Mar 2023 08:47:40 +0200, Athel Cornish-Bowden
<athe...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 2023-03-28 00:25:05 +0000, Peter Moylan said:
>
>> On 28/03/23 04:59, Ken Blake wrote:
>>
>>> In Rome, there's a pasta-making museum. I remember going through it
>>> with headphones that described each exhibit in English. In AmE (and
>>> Italian), I'm used to the pronunciation PAH-sta, but the recording
>>> said PASS-ta. I assumed that PASS-ta was the BrE pronunciation. Is
>>> that correct?
>>
>> Yes. BrE, but not AusE.
>
>For me, certainly, but not for all speakers of British English. The
>American/Australian pronunciation is common in the north of England
>(and not because of American/Australian influence).

Thanks to both you and Peter. So my assumption was only half-correct.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 12:27:49 PM UTC-4, Bebercito wrote:
> Le lundi 27 mars 2023 à 04:30:33 UTC+2, Peter T. Daniels a écrit :
> > On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 9:52:11 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
> > > On 27/03/23 04:33, Silvano wrote:

> > > > The length of a consonant is probably a strange concept to a native
> > > > English speaker and learning Spanish may not have helped you. But
> > > > you can read <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination> or wait for
> > > > comments from the AUE reader who told us recently that he lives in
> > > > Finland.
> > > English does have gemination of some consonants, despite what you'll
> > > read on the web. It's just that most English speakers don't notice that
> > > that's what they're doing.
> > Only at a morpheme boundary, never within a single morpheme. You
> > can probably construct an example for every consonant (though [D],
> > as in "though," would probably take some doing). [Z]?
>
> Hmmm... Are instances of e.g. "with the", "with this", "with that", really
> so hard to find?

How do those fit the stipulated conditions?

[occam]

The reason for that is mainly because the effort it takes to do that is
more expensive than the 'mold-pressed' panel part. The closest place to
you where it is probably still cost effective to do it manually is Cuba.

[TonyCooper]

That may be the case where you are, but it is not the case in many US
cities. There are several "paintless" dent removal providers in the
Orlando area.

The services use "paintless" because they pull out dents rather than
replacing panels that have to be painted.

The "cost effective" aspect is that it is often less expensive than
the deductible amount required when making an insurance claim.

The severity of the damage, of course, is a limiting factor.
--

Tony Cooper - Orlando,Florida

[Bebercito]

Le mardi 28 mars 2023 à 19:33:01 UTC+2, Peter T. Daniels a écrit :
> On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 12:27:49 PM UTC-4, Bebercito wrote:
> > Le lundi 27 mars 2023 à 04:30:33 UTC+2, Peter T. Daniels a écrit :
> > > On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 9:52:11 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
> > > > On 27/03/23 04:33, Silvano wrote:
>
> > > > > The length of a consonant is probably a strange concept to a native
> > > > > English speaker and learning Spanish may not have helped you. But
> > > > > you can read <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination> or wait for
> > > > > comments from the AUE reader who told us recently that he lives in
> > > > > Finland.
> > > > English does have gemination of some consonants, despite what you'll
> > > > read on the web. It's just that most English speakers don't notice that
> > > > that's what they're doing.
> > > Only at a morpheme boundary, never within a single morpheme. You
> > > can probably construct an example for every consonant (though [D],
> > > as in "though," would probably take some doing). [Z]?
> >
> > Hmmm... Are instances of e.g. "with the", "with this", "with that", really
> > so hard to find?
> How do those fit the stipulated conditions?

How do those examples differ from "rouge-genre", which you yourself cited
for [Z]?

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 3:08:55 PM UTC-4, Bebercito wrote:
> Le mardi 28 mars 2023 à 19:33:01 UTC+2, Peter T. Daniels a écrit :
> > On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 12:27:49 PM UTC-4, Bebercito wrote:
> > > Le lundi 27 mars 2023 à 04:30:33 UTC+2, Peter T. Daniels a écrit :
> > > > On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 9:52:11 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
> > > > > On 27/03/23 04:33, Silvano wrote:

> > > > > > The length of a consonant is probably a strange concept to a native
> > > > > > English speaker and learning Spanish may not have helped you. But
> > > > > > you can read <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination> or wait for
> > > > > > comments from the AUE reader who told us recently that he lives in
> > > > > > Finland.
> > > > > English does have gemination of some consonants, despite what you'll
> > > > > read on the web. It's just that most English speakers don't notice that
> > > > > that's what they're doing.
> > > > Only at a morpheme boundary, never within a single morpheme. You
> > > > can probably construct an example for every consonant (though [D],
> > > > as in "though," would probably take some doing). [Z]?
> > > Hmmm... Are instances of e.g. "with the", "with this", "with that", really
> > > so hard to find?
> > How do those fit the stipulated conditions?
>
> How do those examples differ from "rouge-genre", which you yourself cited
> for [Z]?

Uh, they're not a word?

[Bebercito]

Le mardi 28 mars 2023 à 22:02:13 UTC+2, Peter T. Daniels a écrit :
> On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 3:08:55 PM UTC-4, Bebercito wrote:
> > Le mardi 28 mars 2023 à 19:33:01 UTC+2, Peter T. Daniels a écrit :
> > > On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 12:27:49 PM UTC-4, Bebercito wrote:
> > > > Le lundi 27 mars 2023 à 04:30:33 UTC+2, Peter T. Daniels a écrit :
> > > > > On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 9:52:11 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
> > > > > > On 27/03/23 04:33, Silvano wrote:
>
> > > > > > > The length of a consonant is probably a strange concept to a native
> > > > > > > English speaker and learning Spanish may not have helped you. But
> > > > > > > you can read <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination> or wait for
> > > > > > > comments from the AUE reader who told us recently that he lives in
> > > > > > > Finland.
> > > > > > English does have gemination of some consonants, despite what you'll
> > > > > > read on the web. It's just that most English speakers don't notice that
> > > > > > that's what they're doing.
> > > > > Only at a morpheme boundary, never within a single morpheme. You
> > > > > can probably construct an example for every consonant (though [D],
> > > > > as in "though," would probably take some doing). [Z]?
> > > > Hmmm... Are instances of e.g. "with the", "with this", "with that", really
> > > > so hard to find?
> > > How do those fit the stipulated conditions?
> >
> > How do those examples differ from "rouge-genre", which you yourself cited
> > for [Z]?
> Uh, they're not a word?

"Rouge-genre" is hardly one - if anything, it's a two-word compound, despite the
(deliberately added?) misleading hyphen.

[Ken Blake]

On Tue, 28 Mar 2023 20:03:53 +0200, occam <oc...@nowhere.nix> wrote:

Thanks. The next time I get a dent, I'll consider driving my car to
Cuba.

[Peter T. Daniels]

I'm sorry you don't understand English.

[Dingbat]

It's a relief that he's not toothless,
but this says Biden means button-maker:

<<Ultimately from Old French bouton (“button”), metonymic surname for
a button-maker, of Germanic origin>>
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Biden

<<Vulgar Latin *bautōnem, accusative of bautō, from Frankish *bautō
(“that which pushes up, bump, knob”), from Proto-West Germanic *bautan
(“to beat, push”); equivalent to bouter +‎ -on.>>
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bouton

>
> There's a also a local genus of
> wildflowers here called "Bidens."
>

That is what means 'having 2 teeth:

<<Bidens comes from the Latin bis ("two") and dens ("tooth"),
referring to the two teeth of its seed.>>
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Bidens

[Snidely]

Remember when Peter Moylan bragged outrageously? That was Monday:

As "the companies' advertising" suggests, what PTD and I are used to is
like "Christ" without the 't', and maybe a bit like "kreis", for
Walter's surname. And I've always heard the engineer's name as Tezzlah
(well, quicker than that ... Tezlah, with the accent on the tez but a
draw on the lah), and that gets used for the car as well.

(The first name is typically done as "nick Oh la", ISTM.)

/dps " "

--
The presence of this syntax results from the fact that SQLite is really
a Tcl extension that has escaped into the wild.
<http://www.sqlite.org/lang_expr.html>

[Peter Moylan]

You can get good English, or good car repairs. The two rarely come together.

[Peter Moylan]

On 28/03/23 14:26, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Monday, March 27, 2023 at 8:24:38 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
>> On 28/03/23 01:12, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 11:35:55 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan
>>> wrote:
>>>> On 27/03/23 13:35, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
>>>>> The BBC cannot agree on how to pronounce your PM's name. The
>>>>> opera diva was Licia Albanese (4 syll., -[-ejsej]), the girl
>>>>> whose murder in Queens, NY, in 1965 led to the 911 (BrE 999)
>>>>> system was Kitty Genovese (3 syll., [-ijs]). The two options
>>>>> seem about equally used (by the same folks who can't manage
>>>>> "Barack"). How does he say it?
>>>> [&lb@n'izij]. That doesn't sound very Italian, I know. But he
>>>> was brought up by a single mother, who wasn't Italian.
>>> The [z] is surprising. Do y'all have z in Chrysler and Tesla,
>>> like the Brits but unlike the companies' advertising?
>>
>> We have z in Chrysler, s in Tesla. That's probably because of the
>> difference in length of the preceding vowel. In all the examples I
>> can think of, s is always s after a short vowel in AusE, but often
>> z after a long vowel or diphthong.
>
> Now that's interesting. Some data-mining might nail down the "always"
> vs. "often."

If there's any young phoneticist out there looking for a research
project, I'll gladly hand over my comments.

(Not that I expect to meet anyone young in this newsgroup.)

> AmE prize has a longer vowel than price (not that it makes any
> difference). Clearly Over Here it's the consonant that conditions the
> vowel.

[Dingbat]

On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 12:24:35 AM UTC-7, Silvano wrote:
> Dingbat hat am 28.03.2023 um 06:17 geschrieben:
> > The Italian pronunciation could sound like "muff ear" to Brits. There
> > was an operating system named Muck. Hearing it pronounced, an
> > Italian wrote it down as Mach.
>
> 1) I'm not sure how Muck should be pronounced and I'm too lazy to look up.
>

It rhymes with puck, the disk in ice hockey. Puck is also a fairy in
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but its translation to
Italian leaves the spelling unchanged as Puck, which means Italians
pronounce the vowel wrong.
<https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogno_di_una_notte_di_mezza_estate>

>
> 2) Your story is possible, but unlikely.
>

I've read the story but it's not the only story of how Mach got its name.

>
> I'd write Mac or Mak according
> only to Italian rules, but please read my 1). "ch" is indeed the usual
> way to write /k/ in Italian, but only before "i" and "e". At the end of
> a word, in practice only in surnames and perhaps a few river names in
> North-Eastern Italy, it's our workaround to express the sound /tS/
> without a following "i" or "e", as Italians usually do not know the
> letter ć and have no easy way to type it. Burgnich, Stuparich, Boscovich
> etc. - curious AUE readers can look up in the Wikipedia who they were.
>

You type it as c in some contexts. Repubblica Ceca, ciao, Gucci and Fioroucci
have the sound of ch in ovich, but the ch in Mach is pronounced as k in English.

[Dingbat]

On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 5:52:10 AM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 12:57:13 AM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:
> > On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 7:30:33 PM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > > On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 9:52:11 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
> > > > On 27/03/23 04:33, Silvano wrote:
> > >
> > > > > The length of a consonant is probably a strange concept to a native
> > > > > English speaker and learning Spanish may not have helped you. But
> > > > > you can read <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination> or wait for
> > > > > comments from the AUE reader who told us recently that he lives in
> > > > > Finland.
> > > >
> > > > English does have gemination of some consonants, despite what you'll
> > > > read on the web. It's just that most English speakers don't notice that
> > > > that's what they're doing.
> > > Only at a morpheme boundary, never within a single morpheme.
>

I'm not sure that an Italian would hear the b in Republican as shorter than
their geminate in Repubblica. If they hear it as bb rather than b, then it is
geminate in their perception. I don't know how they hear it though.

>
> > > You can probably construct an example for every consonant (though [D],
> > > as in "though," would probably take some doing). [Z]? If there were
> > > genres depending on different kinds of makeup, someone might
> > > find a use for "rouge-genre."
> > >

FWIW, 'rogue literature' is a literary genre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_literature

> > >
> > I have noticed [dZ:] as one pronunciation of <dg> in <budgeriar>.
> > <bud> is not a morpheme, so there's no morpheme boundary there.
> ??? /j/ is a unit phoneme in English. Neither "judge" nor "church"
> is polymorphemic.
>

And how many of those phonemes are there in the pronunciation of an
Anglophone who palatalizes the d in Budgeriar?

[Snidely]

Remember when Snidely bragged outrageously? That was Tuesday:

> Remember when Peter Moylan bragged outrageously? That was Monday:
>> On 28/03/23 01:12, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 11:35:55 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
>>>> On 27/03/23 13:35, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
>>>>> The BBC cannot agree on how to pronounce your PM's name. The
>>>>> opera diva was Licia Albanese (4 syll., -[-ejsej]), the girl
>>>>> whose murder in Queens, NY, in 1965 led to the 911 (BrE 999)
>>>>> system was Kitty Genovese (3 syll., [-ijs]). The two options seem
>>>>> about equally used (by the same folks who can't manage "Barack").
>>>>> How does he say it?
>>>>
>>>> [&lb@n'izij]. That doesn't sound very Italian, I know. But he was
>>>> brought up by a single mother, who wasn't Italian.
>>>
>>> The [z] is surprising. Do y'all have z in Chrysler and Tesla, like
>>> the Brits but unlike the companies' advertising?
>>
>> We have z in Chrysler, s in Tesla. That's probably because of the
>> difference in length of the preceding vowel. In all the examples I can
>> think of, s is always s after a short vowel in AusE, but often z after a
>> long vowel or diphthong.
>
> As "the companies' advertising" suggests, what PTD and I are used to is like
> "Christ" without the 't', and maybe a bit like "kreis", for Walter's surname.
> And I've always heard the engineer's name as Tezzlah (well, quicker than
> that ... Tezlah, with the accent on the tez but a draw on the lah), and that
> gets used for the car as well.

If I'm being terse, I might slip into "Tes la", soft ess and shortened
lah.

> (The first name is typically done as "nick Oh la", ISTM.)
>
> /dps " "

^still

--
Who, me? And what lacuna?

[Silvano]

Dingbat hat am 29.03.2023 um 04:11 geschrieben:

> On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 12:24:35 AM UTC-7, Silvano wrote:
>> Dingbat hat am 28.03.2023 um 06:17 geschrieben:
>>> The Italian pronunciation could sound like "muff ear" to Brits. There
>>> was an operating system named Muck. Hearing it pronounced, an
>>> Italian wrote it down as Mach.
>>
>> 1) I'm not sure how Muck should be pronounced and I'm too lazy to look up.
>>
> It rhymes with puck, the disk in ice hockey. Puck is also a fairy in
> Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but its translation to
> Italian leaves the spelling unchanged as Puck, which means Italians
> pronounce the vowel wrong.
> <https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogno_di_una_notte_di_mezza_estate>

After listening to <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/puck> I
fully agree with you. We don't have that vowel in standard Italian, but
the nearest approximation is definitely an "a", so we should write
"Pack", if we wanted to approach the English pronunciation.

>> 2) Your story is possible, but unlikely.
>>
> I've read the story but it's not the only story of how Mach got its name.
>>
>> I'd write Mac or Mak according
>> only to Italian rules, but please read my 1). "ch" is indeed the usual
>> way to write /k/ in Italian, but only before "i" and "e". At the end of
>> a word, in practice only in surnames and perhaps a few river names in
>> North-Eastern Italy, it's our workaround to express the sound /tS/
>> without a following "i" or "e", as Italians usually do not know the
>> letter ć and have no easy way to type it. Burgnich, Stuparich, Boscovich
>> etc. - curious AUE readers can look up in the Wikipedia who they were.
>>
> You type it as c in some contexts. Repubblica Ceca, ciao, Gucci and Fioroucci
> have the sound of ch in ovich, but the ch in Mach is pronounced as k in English.

That's precisely what I said and that's why I would have written that
name Mac or Mak *in Italian*. In all your examples, we write in Italian
an "e" or an "i" after the "c" to express the sound /tS/, even when it's
not pronounced as in "ciao" or "ciocca". In these two words and many
more, the "i" serves only to show that you must NOT say /kao/ or
/kok:a/. BTW, many Germans have adopted our greeting and write it the
German way "tschau".

Now, how can we write the sound /tS/ in Italian at the end of a word, as
in -ovich? No native Italian words end in /tS/, so no problem. When we
write "-ci" as in "baci" (kisses) or Fiorucci we do pronounce the final
"i" (/tSi/ in baci, /ttSi/, geminated consonant, in Fiorucci).
But what with those surnames of Slavic origin? We don't want to write
"-ci", because that would add a spurious "i" in the pronunciation, which
would also draw the accent to the penultimate syllable, but we also
don't want to pronounce them with a final /k/, as it would happen if we
wrote a final "-c". Our established convention is to write the ending as
"-ch", which occurs nowhere else in Italian.

[Bebercito]

What did I miss, prithee?

[Silvano]

Dingbat hat am 29.03.2023 um 04:26 geschrieben:

> I'm not sure that an Italian would hear the b in Republican as shorter than
> their geminate in Repubblica.

You should.

> If they hear it as bb rather than b, then it is
> geminate in their perception. I don't know how they hear it though.

If I really want to hear a geminate in another language, I have to
listen to something in Finnish, Japanese or Hungarian. BTDT. But I
understand next to nothing.

[occam]

You are quite right about the insurance claim aspect. In Europe,
insurance companies prefer to deal with larger entities e.g. the
official car manufacturers (say VW) rather than pop-and-mom garages, as
part of their claim process. So, under a 'comprehensive' insurance
policy (where all accident costs are covered by the insurance company)
it is more cost effective for them to deal with an official dealership.
These larger dealerships are better equipped at handling the paperwork
than small garages.

If I were paying for a repair out of my own pocket - with no possibility
of a refund - I would no doubt find a 'dent extraction' garage. The
current setup unfortunately favours the big players, who rely on
insurance companies as paymasters.

>
> The severity of the damage, of course, is a limiting factor.

Quite! In the last (quite serious) accident my wife had, the official
garage warned me that if the repair costs exceeded 25% of the *residual
value* of the car, the insurance company would not approve of the
repairs. The car would be a write-off.

As the insurance company is the arbiter of the residual value of a car,
this put everyone (including me) on tenterhooks. The car was perfectly
driveable (the damage being mainly to bodywork, panels and windscreen),
but potentially uninsurable.

The official garage - which was familiar with the ways of large
insurance companies - made sure the repair costs came *just under* the
25% residual value of the car. A lesser garage would not have been able
to fight their way through the paperwork.

[occam]

<smile> This also applies to garages that work in languages other than
English. </smile>

[Paul Carmichael]

El Wed, 29 Mar 2023 06:07:12 +0200, Silvano escribió:

> Dingbat hat am 29.03.2023 um 04:11 geschrieben:

>>> 1) I'm not sure how Muck should be pronounced and I'm too lazy to look
>>> up.
>>>
>> It rhymes with puck, the disk in ice hockey. Puck is also a fairy in
>> Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but its translation to
>> Italian leaves the spelling unchanged as Puck, which means Italians
>> pronounce the vowel wrong.
>> <https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogno_di_una_notte_di_mezza_estate>
>
> After listening to <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/puck> I
> fully agree with you. We don't have that vowel in standard Italian, but
> the nearest approximation is definitely an "a", so we should write
> "Pack", if we wanted to approach the English pronunciation.

Heh. In Yanito (Gibraltar), they say "chinga" for "chewing gum".

The "Chi" from "chicle" and the "nga" from "ng gum".

--
Paul.

https://paulc.es

[Dingbat]

On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 9:07:15 PM UTC-7, Silvano wrote:
> Dingbat hat am 29.03.2023 um 04:11 geschrieben:
> > On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 12:24:35 AM UTC-7, Silvano wrote:
> >> Dingbat hat am 28.03.2023 um 06:17 geschrieben:
> >>> The Italian pronunciation could sound like "muff ear" to Brits. There
> >>> was an operating system named Muck. Hearing it pronounced, an
> >>> Italian wrote it down as Mach.
> >>
> >> 1) I'm not sure how Muck should be pronounced and I'm too lazy to look up.
> >>
> > It rhymes with puck, the disk in ice hockey. Puck is also a fairy in
> > Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but its translation to
> > Italian leaves the spelling unchanged as Puck, which means Italians
> > pronounce the vowel wrong.
> > <https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogno_di_una_notte_di_mezza_estate>
> After listening to <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/puck> I
> fully agree with you. We don't have that vowel in standard Italian, but
> the nearest approximation is definitely an "a", so we should write
> "Pack", if we wanted to approach the English pronunciation.
>

Why Pack and not Pac or Pak?

>
> >> 2) Your story is possible, but unlikely.
> >>
> > I've read the story but it's not the only story of how Mach got its name.
> >>
> >> I'd write Mac or Mak according
> >> only to Italian rules, but please read my 1). "ch" is indeed the usual
> >> way to write /k/ in Italian, but only before "i" and "e". At the end of
> >> a word, in practice only in surnames and perhaps a few river names in
> >> North-Eastern Italy, it's our workaround to express the sound /tS/
> >> without a following "i" or "e", as Italians usually do not know the
> >> letter ć and have no easy way to type it. Burgnich, Stuparich, Boscovich
> >> etc. - curious AUE readers can look up in the Wikipedia who they were.
> >>

> > You type it as c in some contexts. Repubblica Ceca, ciao, Gucci and Fiorucci

> > have the sound of ch in ovich, but the ch in Mach is pronounced as k in English.
>
> That's precisely what I said and that's why I would have written that

> name Mac or Mak *in Italian*. BTW, many Germans have adopted our greeting

> and write it the German way "tschau".
>

It means 'happy to be your servant', I read. If that were translated to German, it
wouldn't be usable as a greeting. But, I thought it means goodbye. What's
called a greeting in English usually means hello.

>
> Now, how can we write the sound /tS/ in Italian at the end of a word, as

> in -ovich? Our established convention is to write the ending as

> "-ch", which occurs nowhere else in Italian.
>

If you've established that convention, what's the problem? If <ch> is
confusing because it's pronounced differently in Italian words, establish a
new convention of <cz> to be used only in foreign words. <cz> is used in
Polish and was used in Czech.

[Silvano]

Dingbat hat am 29.03.2023 um 12:46 geschrieben:

> On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 9:07:15 PM UTC-7, Silvano wrote:
>> Dingbat hat am 29.03.2023 um 04:11 geschrieben:
>>> On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 12:24:35 AM UTC-7, Silvano wrote:
>>>> Dingbat hat am 28.03.2023 um 06:17 geschrieben:
>>>>> The Italian pronunciation could sound like "muff ear" to Brits. There
>>>>> was an operating system named Muck. Hearing it pronounced, an
>>>>> Italian wrote it down as Mach.
>>>>
>>>> 1) I'm not sure how Muck should be pronounced and I'm too lazy to look up.
>>>>
>>> It rhymes with puck, the disk in ice hockey. Puck is also a fairy in
>>> Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but its translation to
>>> Italian leaves the spelling unchanged as Puck, which means Italians
>>> pronounce the vowel wrong.
>>> <https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogno_di_una_notte_di_mezza_estate>
>> After listening to <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/puck> I
>> fully agree with you. We don't have that vowel in standard Italian, but
>> the nearest approximation is definitely an "a", so we should write
>> "Pack", if we wanted to approach the English pronunciation.
>>
> Why Pack and not Pac or Pak?

Good question. Anyone of those three is the best approximation to the
English pronunciation Italians can manage for someone who speaks
Italian, but no English at all.

>>>> 2) Your story is possible, but unlikely.
>>>>
>>> I've read the story but it's not the only story of how Mach got its name.
>>>>
>>>> I'd write Mac or Mak according
>>>> only to Italian rules, but please read my 1). "ch" is indeed the usual
>>>> way to write /k/ in Italian, but only before "i" and "e". At the end of
>>>> a word, in practice only in surnames and perhaps a few river names in
>>>> North-Eastern Italy, it's our workaround to express the sound /tS/
>>>> without a following "i" or "e", as Italians usually do not know the
>>>> letter ć and have no easy way to type it. Burgnich, Stuparich, Boscovich
>>>> etc. - curious AUE readers can look up in the Wikipedia who they were.
>>>>
>>> You type it as c in some contexts. Repubblica Ceca, ciao, Gucci and Fiorucci
>>> have the sound of ch in ovich, but the ch in Mach is pronounced as k in English.
>>
>> That's precisely what I said and that's why I would have written that
>> name Mac or Mak *in Italian*. BTW, many Germans have adopted our greeting
>> and write it the German way "tschau".
>>
> It means 'happy to be your servant', I read. If that were translated to German, it
> wouldn't be usable as a greeting. But, I thought it means goodbye.

Italians use "ciao" both as a greeting and a goodbye. The Germans who
say it use it only as a greeting and they don't know its original
meaning. This also applies to many, perhaps most Italians.

>> Now, how can we write the sound /tS/ in Italian at the end of a word, as
>> in -ovich? Our established convention is to write the ending as
>> "-ch", which occurs nowhere else in Italian.
>>
> If you've established that convention, what's the problem?

WE have no problem. YOU have one, if I understood your comment that "the
ch in Mach is pronounced as k in English". Sorry if that Italian who
wrote "Mach" instead of Mac, Mak or Mack somehow confused you. Let's
call it quits, OK?

[Dingbat]

On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 12:24:35 AM UTC-7, Silvano wrote:
> "ch" is indeed the usual way to write /k/ in Italian, but only before "i" and "e".
> At the end of a word, in practice only in surnames and perhaps a few river
> names in North-Eastern Italy, it's our workaround to express the sound /tS/
> without a following "i" or "e", as Italians usually do not know the
> letter ć and have no easy way to type it. Burgnich, Stuparich, Boscovich
> etc. - curious AUE readers can look up in the Wikipedia who they were.
>

The Spanish word for Shakespearean is Shakesperiano. AFAIK, the word is the
same in Italian. It has a suffix. If Italians pronounce <ch> as [tS] only at the end
of a word, that makes it impossible to add a suffix to a foreign word ending in
<ch> without changing the pronunciation of <ch>. So, your workaround doesn't
look adequate. These workarounds wouldn't have that problem: [tS] is spelled
<cz> in Polish ( Szostakowicz*), <č> in Czech (český) and <ç> (çay) in Turkish.
* Shostakovich got his surname from a Polish ancestor.

[Silvano]

Dingbat hat am 29.03.2023 um 13:24 geschrieben:

> On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 12:24:35 AM UTC-7, Silvano wrote:
>> "ch" is indeed the usual way to write /k/ in Italian, but only before "i" and "e".
>> At the end of a word, in practice only in surnames and perhaps a few river
>> names in North-Eastern Italy, it's our workaround to express the sound /tS/
>> without a following "i" or "e", as Italians usually do not know the
>> letter ć and have no easy way to type it. Burgnich, Stuparich, Boscovich
>> etc. - curious AUE readers can look up in the Wikipedia who they were.
>>
> The Spanish word for Shakespearean is Shakesperiano. AFAIK, the word is the
> same in Italian.

Wrong. In Italian it's either scespiriano or shakespeariano.

> It has a suffix. If Italians pronounce <ch> as [tS] only at the end
> of a word, that makes it impossible to add a suffix to a foreign word ending in
> <ch> without changing the pronunciation of <ch>.

Wrong again. In such cases we drop the h, precisely in order to keep the
name's pronunciation.

> So, your workaround doesn't
> look adequate. These workarounds wouldn't have that problem: [tS] is spelled
> <cz> in Polish ( Szostakowicz*), <č> in Czech (český) and <ç> (çay) in Turkish.
> * Shostakovich got his surname from a Polish ancestor.

Go tell it to the Italians who adopted that convention some centuries
ago, probably when the Republic of Venice had many subjects with Slavic
surnames and its bureaucrats had to find a way of writing those surnames
for tax purposes etc.
And please don't try to teach Italians how to use their own language.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2023-03-29 13:03:39 +0000, Silvano said:

> Dingbat hat am 29.03.2023 um 13:24 geschrieben:
>> On Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 12:24:35 AM UTC-7, Silvano wrote:
>>> "ch" is indeed the usual way to write /k/ in Italian, but only before
>>> "i" and "e".
>>> At the end of a word, in practice only in surnames and perhaps a few river
>>> names in North-Eastern Italy, it's our workaround to express the sound /tS/
>>> without a following "i" or "e", as Italians usually do not know the
>>> letter ć and have no easy way to type it. Burgnich, Stuparich, Boscovich
>>> etc. - curious AUE readers can look up in the Wikipedia who they were.
>>>
>> The Spanish word for Shakespearean is Shakesperiano. AFAIK, the word is the
>> same in Italian.
>
> Wrong. In Italian it's either scespiriano or shakespeariano.

I'd be surprised if it's Shakesperiano in Spanish. Many Spanish
speakers wouldn't know what do with Sh, and they might not like the k
either. I'd expect something like chequesperiano. If I remember I'll
look it up in the Dictionary of the Royal Academy.

>
>
>> It has a suffix. If Italians pronounce <ch> as [tS] only at the end
>> of a word, that makes it impossible to add a suffix to a foreign word ending in
>> <ch> without changing the pronunciation of <ch>.
>
> Wrong again. In such cases we drop the h, precisely in order to keep the
> name's pronunciation.
>
>
>
>> So, your workaround doesn't
>> look adequate. These workarounds wouldn't have that problem: [tS] is spelled
>> <cz> in Polish ( Szostakowicz*), <č> in Czech (český) and <ç> (çay) in Turkish.
>> * Shostakovich got his surname from a Polish ancestor.
>
> Go tell it to the Italians who adopted that convention some centuries
> ago, probably when the Republic of Venice had many subjects with Slavic
> surnames and its bureaucrats had to find a way of writing those surnames
> for tax purposes etc.
> And please don't try to teach Italians how to use their own language.

--
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 36 years; mainly
in England until 1987.