Lost In Pronunciation from "Amigo" to "Zeitgeist"
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- Опубліковано 9 чер 2024
- Take the pronunciation challenge with me and Gideon from @LetThemTalkTV! From "amigo to zeitgeist, we’ll explain how loanwords are pronounced in English.
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00:00 - Intro
00:39 - amigo
04:19 - ciabatta
05:26 - café
06:46 - doner kebab
09:16 - entrepreneur
11:01 - cul-de-sac
11:32 - gyro
13:52 - English words in other languages
14:08 - karaoke
16:07 - karate
16:54 - pasta
18:39 - pho
20:01 - quinoa
21:56 - zeitgeist
24:23 - which was the hardest?
Disclaimers and further information
1. There is no one "correct" way to pronounce a loanword either in the source language or in English. There is linguistic variety around the world and different people will pronounce words in different ways. I'm unable to mention every possible pronunciation of a loanword within this video.
2. Not all speakers of the languages we talk about will have the same phonetic features (or these features to the same degree) as I describe. However, the comments I do make are true for some speakers.
This great video perfectly captures the zeitgeist and is best watched while munching a croissant at a café. Thanks Luke for inviting me. It was a pleasure.
Cool video! Dr. Geoff Lindsey had a video on the observation that in the US, we tend to use the closest vowels to the 5 Spanish vowels in loanwords, even when this is an overcorrection. We try to be polite by anglicizing words less, but sometimes it backfires!
I appreciate your effort while explaining words you have chosen.❤
long time no see
Great video! I had just never heard before about that intrusive 'H' in KhILL, PhASTA etc.... Would you consider making a whole video about this topic one day?
It's called aspiration 😊 You can find out more about this topic in my online course.
Thank you Luke. I get lost in time watching you speaking about pronunciation. All the little differences. I had never noticed that in English the K is pronounced with expiration . Amazing video
Thanks ☺
Sometimes K is pronounced as an ejective in English with a click sound rather than a typical aspiration.
Good to see you back! 👏👏👏👏
Thank you to both of you for this interesting video.
Tzaitgeist - yay, first I time heard it being pronounced "correctly"
Guys, what cool you are! It was really a pleasure to see you both in this video!
Used to work in a phone shop and was nothing better than talking about Germans coming in for a handy
Good job! Cheers
A great, informative video.
Very interesting 😊
So for ages my friends would make fun of the way I pronounce popeye, as in the comic book character. They pronounce it as pop-eye and I do it more like pup-eye.
Then I realised the other day that it’s because I’m pronouncing it the US way because the US doesn’t know how to pronounce a straight O sound and I grew up watching the cartoons and the Robin Williams film.
That or I’m wrong
I guess Popeye is an American character and he has always been voiced by American actors. So your original pronunciation is the closest to how Popeye would pronounce his own name!
You can have vegetarian kebab where I live (Palermo - Sicily). The doner part got me unprepared, never heard! 😊
Nice one! Entertaining and informative. Personally, I think zeitgeist should pronounce the Z the German way, but only the Z, bit like with the Italian ci, just for that nod to the language of its origin.
I think that Turkish voiceless r might be a Welsh rh but I never figured out how to pronounce a rh
It's similar to Welsh "rh", but I think the Turkish one actually just ends up as a fricative rather than a tap or trill (contrary to what I might have said in the video). To make a voiceless trill, make a voiced trill (like for Spanish ) and turn off voicing. If you're unsure how to turn off voicing, switch between [s] and [z] (former is voiceless, latter is voiced) so you understand how to switch.
I teach ESL to mostly Spanish speakers and I HATE correcting their pronunciation of Spanish words and place names when they say it in a Spanish way… it makes me cringe, but it’s the right thing to do so they can communicate well with English speakers.
Very interesting , could you please also make a video about Indian and Chinese accent when speaking English please ? Thanks
Luke has already made a video about Chinese accent:
ua-cam.com/video/rlKMIdYsjDo/v-deo.html
Thank you, Luke and Gideon! Great video! However "sandwich" is normally "сэндвич" in Russian:
ua-cam.com/video/yxQQGsjpNAA/v-deo.htmlsi=b99VYfE4l8RJbfdJ&t=842
ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D1%8D%D0%BD%D0%B4%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87
14:02 with sandwich you've chosen probably one of the -worst- multifaceted words for a Russian example.
The "сандвич" spelling/pronunciation is probably growing out of fashion today, even if derived from original spelling, it's harder to pronounce. More and more words (especially newcomers) follow the original spelling closer. Sandwich is no stranger, the increasingly common spelling and pronunciation is indeed сэндвич or сендвич (the latter spelling corresponds to the former pronunciation but is more typical for writing, such as прогресс = progress instead of an Э). Cache? It's both кэш и кеш. Oh, and "cash" too :) And that's despite an "Е" indicating that the previous letter is ought to be soft.
A classic example of a loanword in Russian is kangaroo = кенгуру, it doesn't even have a declension, which is important, including lack of a plural form, due to its foreign ending. At least the word is masculine.
This can't be said about coffee = кофе. The dictionaries say it's masculine, but it's also spoken with the neuter gender and too does not decline.
Thanks for all that interesting information! 😊
I have never encountered "сандвич" in Russian. I think Luke made a mistake. I don't think "сандвич" is harder to pronounce than "сэндвич" or "сендвич", but the way the TRAP vowel is pronounced in American English sounds very close to "Э" in Russian, that's why words with the TRAP vowel are often translated with "э" into Russian. Although the dish originates from England, not the US. It's named after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who popularised the placing of meat between two slices of bread in the 18th century.
Do a Russian accent next please
I'm American, and can definitely say you're wrong about café. Americans generally pronounce it the same as the British way. I've never heard anyone pronounce the A differently than in the word cat.
For General American, one should consult entertainment and news media, and the majority pronunciation will typically reflect the average American. There are exceptions where people in the media, usually politicians, have a tendency to pronounce things differently to sound cultured. Some of the most ridiculous are those words that are colloquially pronounced with one less syllable; for example, temperature and comfortable are pronounced with three syllables by normal people, but politicians will often pronounce them with four (tem-puh-chure/tem-per-chure vs. temp-uh-ruh-chure and comf-tur-bul vs. com-fur-tuh-bul.) Another well-known example would be Florida being pronounced floor-duh by most people, but media people are the ones most often to say floor-uh-duh. Likewise, media people are the ones more likely to do fhe pretentious thing you mentioned of pronouncing foreign words and names more foreign; most notably, Mexico as meh-hee-ko.
The vowel in words like "café", "cat", "trap", "rat" is usually lower in SSBE and higher in General American. I hear this all the time.
@@ImproveYourAccentI would say you had it the other way around in the video. You pronounced it more like schwa for the American, and I've never heard that in America or on American television. For example, in the classic Muppets skit of Fat Cat, the vowel sounds exactly like your British cafe.
@@ImproveYourAccent Yes, I also hear it. There is an article in Wikipedia on this phenomenon:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki//%C3%A6/_raising#:~:text=In%20the%20sociolinguistics%20of%20the,a%20raising%20of%20the%20tongue.
However the British aren't unanimous in their pronunciation of the TRAP vowel as I've noticed. Some pronounce "man" the same as Germans pronounce "Mann", but others pronounce it differently. And the way some pronounce the STRUT vowel sounds like others pronounce the TRAP vowel so the way one speaker pronounces "fun" might sound the same as another speaker pronounces "fan". My experience as a non-native English speaker. :-)
Canadians pronounce pasta in the British style not the American style. I disagree that the British version is closer to the Italian though. Americans get the first vowel sound more accurately in my opinion.
There's variation in Canada (like in all accents/countries). You're right that traditionally Canadians pronounce "pasta" like the British. However, younger speakers in Canada are likely being influenced by speakers from the USA. You can search Google Scholar for the paper "Age and the Foreign (a) in Canadian English" for a study (though the sample size is small). Regarding the vowel in British "pasta" being closer to the Italian, listen to the comparisons of Italian "pasta" and British "bastion" on this page: www.englishspeechservices.com/blog/british-vowels/ (search the page for "pasta" and you'll find it)
Thank you, Luke
It's because the Canadian TRAP vowel is higher than British. The way you pronounce "pasta" (probably) sounds virtually like "pester" in Southern British pronunciation and the way "pasta" is pronounced in the US sounds the same as "pastor" in Southern Britain, but quite different from Italian "pasta". The OED even uses different symbols for the TRAP vowel in British and American English, /a/ for the former and /æ/ for the latter. The British aren't unanimous in their pronunciation of the TRAP vowel, though. Some pronounce "man" the same as Germans pronounce "Mann", but others do it differently. And the way some pronounce the STRUT vowel sounds like others pronounce the TRAP vowel so the way one speaker pronounces "fun" might sound the same as another speaker pronounces "fan". My experience as a non-native English speaker. :-)
The generalized American pronunciation is killing me, because that’s a fallacy.