How do you pronounce Merry?

[HS Mom in NC]

5 hours ago, Matryoshka said:

When you speak Spanish (general you), please don't use an O that is in any way similar to anything Americans say, certainly not rhyming dose - okay, which is closer than aw or ah, but still not right.  It's a super-hard sound to teach because Americans simply don't have it.  Very technically, it's the same sound as in the first half of our long-O diphthong, but you can't finish the diphthong with the 'oo' sound we do.  Which people have no idea that they do, or that it's a diphthong, or what a diphthong is (unless perhaps they're singers; this comes up all the time in choral singing), so it's almost impossible to have them stop, or to hear one half of the diphthong without the other after having been taught forever that it's one vowel sound.

Actually, as I type this, I realize there is one place it's in English - it's pretty much the same O as in 'or', but of course without the 'r'.  It's not aw, nor ah, nor long O - that's the one.  (unless, of course, we now find out that 'or' is pronounced a totally different way than I do in much of the country and no one understands what I'm getting at ... 🤣)

Yes, I'm sure you're right, but non-native Spanish is typically learned in public school where it's taught by non-native speakers, and that level of instruction isn't the norm. Why are non-native speakers in AZ teaching it when it's full of native speakers?  I dunno.  Apparently native speakers aren't applying for those jobs.  And when explaining here the sounds we mean in text to an intentional crowd and people from the US, many of whom have probably never heard a native Spanish speaker speaking Spanish, you have to give them something relatable. And we can't even get into the wide ranges in Spanish pronunciation across the Americas with their own unique pronunciations. The native Spanish speakers I was around (about 40% of my high school was Latino with the majority being native Spanish speaking Mexicans, the rest being from all over the Americas) corrected people by telling them  long o (AZ style) is the closest sound native American English speakers can produce, and that's what Spanish teachers in high school go with too.

[Tanaqui]

Quote

Regional variations are one of the big barriers that will probably prevent any of the various phonologically standardized spelling movements from really catching on in English. Whose dialect would you standardize the spelling for?

 

I have actually given serious thought to this question of spelling reform, and come to the conclusion that "regional dialects" is overplayed as a reason against it. If nothing else, there are reforms we could make that would fit nearly everybody's dialect - for example, we could choose to pick either c or k for the initial sound in cut and then reuse the other letter to cover all instances where we want to represent the initial sound in shoe. We could drop word-final doubled consonants, or else make them universal. We could drop ph in favor of spelling all those words with an f.

But inertia is a bigger reason why this will never happen. English has... a LOT of printed matter already. Hoo boy, it's a lot. Who's gonna transcribe all that in the new system? Not me.

[maize]

1 hour ago, Homeschool Mom in AZ said:

I didn't make myself clear.  I was trying to clarify someone else's pronunciation of Las and Los, not stating my own. Some words are just unique because they're universally known in regions unfamiliar with Spanish pronunciation.  Since Los Angeles is a city well known all over the country and internationally, it's often pronounced as loss because it's been anglicized. People who have never in their lives heard Latin American Spanish have heard of Los Angles, so it's a word that is very likely pronounced in a very American English way as loss, even by people from the SW where other words are very consistently pronounced lose (rhymes with dose.) That's what I was asking about, if the matching sound in Los and Las are restricted to heavily Anglicized well known words or if it's done universally with all Los and Las words in the PNW.

Where I come from words like Los Alamos and Los Dos Molino's (famous in PHX restaurant) are always pronounced with the long o sound like in dose, never with an ah sound.

Also, there's been a huge generational cultural shift in Spanish pronunciations in the area.  When I was in high school (graduated in 1991) if I had pronounced a word like Casa Grande in an Anglicized way   cass uh GRAND (a sounds pronounced like cat)    I would've been mildly openly mocked for doing so and asked where I was from and informed English doesn't have the word grande, and corrected by native Spanish speakers and non-Spanish speakers from the region. 

It happened all the time because so many Spanish words are on streets, neighborhood signs, building names, organizations, restaurants, churches, it comes up often.  And PHX is full of transplants mispronouncing them with American English pronunciations. I corrected people nicely when I heard it to keep them from doing it in front of people who aren't so nice. Ocotillo and Guadalupe are the most common mispronounced words in the area I live in.  Plenty of new transplants say  ah kuh TILL oh, assuming the ah sound for an o because that's the norm in short o English words there, but they' re quickly corrected with oh koh TEE yoh.  

But here's a new wrench in the works.  Some in younger generations tend to not like people using Spanish pronunciations of Spanish words in an English conversations. I don't know if it's an appropriation argument or not liking the fact that non-native speakers aren't exactly imitating each sound or something else, but they do tend to let people trying to get it close to the correct Spanish pronunciation that they don't approve of the practice.  So there's that.  And the region I'm from has native Spanish speakers from all over the Americas who don't all pronounce the same Spanish words exactly the same way.  So it's getting really complicated. 

I have a friend there married to a man whose family came to AZ from Spain when he was 10.  His brother was a little older. His brother married a woman whose family immigrated from Mexico.  He can't use his European Spanish accent around his in-laws from Mexico because they find it deeply offensive, so he fakes the Mexican Spanish accent.  He and his wife can't use a Mexican Spanish accent around his family because they find it offensive, so she fakes a European accent.  So clearly there are underlying social attitudes for many people about Spanish pronunciation.  I'm not qualified to even guess what all the underlying motivations are.

When we moved to the Los Angeles area we were corrected by locals for pronouncing Spanish-origin place names according to (more or less) Spanish phonetics. They aren't pronounced that way by locals. The city of El Segundo is always pronounced with an English short u, that middle syllable is gun like a firearm. San Pedro has an English long E sound, like pea.

It took me years to correct myself, my brain did not want to do that 😂

 

[maize]

2 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

 

I have actually given serious thought to this question of spelling reform, and come to the conclusion that "regional dialects" is overplayed as a reason against it. If nothing else, there are reforms we could make that would fit nearly everybody's dialect - for example, we could choose to pick either c or k for the initial sound in cut and then reuse the other letter to cover all instances where we want to represent the initial sound in shoe. We could drop word-final doubled consonants, or else make them universal. We could drop ph in favor of spelling all those words with an f.

But inertia is a bigger reason why this will never happen. English has... a LOT of printed matter already. Hoo boy, it's a lot. Who's gonna transcribe all that in the new system? Not me.

Personally I like the etymological clues retained in traditional spelling. 

[Matryoshka]

21 minutes ago, maize said:

When we moved to the Los Angeles area we were corrected by locals for pronouncing Spanish-origin place names according to (more or less) Spanish phonetics. They aren't pronounced that way by locals. The city of El Segundo is always pronounced with an English short u, that middle syllable is gun like a firearm. San Pedro has an English long E sound, like pea.

It took me years to correct myself, my brain did not want to do that 😂

 

LOL, oh, I pronounce Spanish-origin US city/place names with the normal American accent - I know how to pronounce them in Spanish, but yeah, no one would understand me - or I'd sound pretentious.

Although some of the ones you'd mention, that aren't commonly known outside of their local area, I might guess wrong.  Like I would have guessed the u in Segundo was like the sound in book (which is not its sound in Spanish, but it would've been my best guess for Americanization...).   And same thing for San Pedro, which I would have guessed would've gotten a long A sound for the E in Pedro (rather than a long E).  

[Matryoshka]

23 minutes ago, maize said:

Personally I like the etymological clues retained in traditional spelling. 

This.

[Jean in Newcastle]

I thought of this thread when I was in an Asian grocery store today and Feliz Navidad was playing on the loudspeaker.  I was trying to figure out what was "off" about the Spanish pronunciation and then the song (by the same singers) changed to Hark the Herald Angels Sing.  Then I could tell that the singers had a Chinese accent that was coming through these songs sung in Spanish and then English! 

On the broader topic though:  I am a firm believer in communication being the goal of language.  I am not super picky about people's pronunciation - which is affected by country of origin, region and even things like a lisp.  If I can understand someone, I am not going to be bothered by the details. 

[Tanaqui]

4 hours ago, maize said:

Personally I like the etymological clues retained in traditional spelling. 

 

I think they're interesting, sure - but given that we don't teach students etymology, it seems a bit silly to make them put in a lot of extra effort into learning to read and write just so that they can have etymological clues that they don't know how to look for, don't know how to use, and (mostly) wouldn't care about if they did.

[busymama7]

12 hours ago, maize said:

While you are correct that the spanish o is not a dipthong and therefore not equivalent to most English long o's, I don't think it is a disaster when Americans speak Spanish with an American accent. So many people are held back from learning and speaking foreign languages because they don't think they can produce a native sounding accent.

It doesn't bother me when foreigners speak English with a foreign accent; in the interest of communicating across language barriers, I personally favor an approach of not being picky about accents. The fact that many adults can't even hear the differences in sounds in a foreign language is a great argument for not being nitpicky. 

If you can hear and imitate the sounds of a foreign language by all means practice using them, but really an approximation is better than being afraid to speak.

I love this so much.  I am trying to learn spanish and every time I try to use even just one word my husband corrects my pronunciation.  He is a native English speaker but spent two years speaking portuguese in brazil and has learned spanish recently although he's always understood it as it's so close to portuguese.  He is also dyslexic and I think his process of learning languages is much more methodical and precise as it needed to be.  But I am a more natural learner who taught myself to read at 3.  And I think if I just could practice more I would get better and understand more. I actually understand a fair amount as my daughter in law is Hispanic and a couple of my sons speak Spanish and I live in the southwest so hear a lot.  I feel like the immersion method of just listening a lot and doing my best to copy/speak it would work well for me.  But I am sick of being corrected in what feels like a nit picky way.   For the record, my daughter in law doesn't do that. She is super encouraging and tries to help me just say what words I can.  I know I just need to ignore it as I know he thinks he's being helpful and I am sure it's the way his brain works but I just get so annoyed that I quit trying.  

 

[maize]

I learned both Spanish and French through immersion as a child and while I doubt my accent in either sounds native (I wasn't young enough for that) I think it is a fairly close approximation. 

Unfortunately my brain wants to default to Spanish pronunciation for every other foreign language; I'm certain I speak Japanese with a Spanish accent. Arabic (which I'm  pretty limited in anyway) is even worse because it sounds nothing like Spanish when spoken by native speakers but my brain really wants to turn it into Spanish. Japanese at least shares some phonetic characteristics with Spanish.

[maize]

10 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

 

I think they're interesting, sure - but given that we don't teach students etymology, it seems a bit silly to make them put in a lot of extra effort into learning to read and write just so that they can have etymological clues that they don't know how to look for, don't know how to use, and (mostly) wouldn't care about if they did.

A valid argument, but clearly the best solution is to teach more etymology 😁

I've struggled with how to teach language arts to my kids because I'm not a big fan of traditional grammar and that's what so many educational resources (especially those targeted at homeschoolers) focus on.

This year I decided I could be enthusiastic about teaching language arts if we focused on etymology. 

So if you have any favorite etymological resources let me know 😉

[Matryoshka]

1 hour ago, maize said:

A valid argument, but clearly the best solution is to teach more etymology 😁

I've struggled with how to teach language arts to my kids because I'm not a big fan of traditional grammar and that's what so many educational resources (especially those targeted at homeschoolers) focus on.

This year I decided I could be enthusiastic about teaching language arts if we focused on etymology. 

So if you have any favorite etymological resources let me know 😉

Absolutely the answer is to teach the etymology! I'm working with a couple of kids on English grammar and I can't help tossing etymology lessons in there for good measure.  I prefaced asking if they've ever watched a spelling bee,  and if they noticed the kids always ask for word origins. Miraculously,  they all had. I told them that's because it gives clues to how a word is spelled - they said, oh, I thought they were just trying to look smart! 

My favorite etymological resource is MCT's the Word within the Word - love how it teaches to look for the root and decipher meaning. I do kind of use it 'my way' though, taking the parts I like and leaving the rest.  But that's true if any material,  and that's the one I've found I can bend to my uses the best.  Caesar's English is also great for younger kids, but I always have to pause and yell at the book when he claims, quite falsely, and repeatedly, that English comes from Latin. Um, NO. But we do have a kajillioon Latin-based words, so still useful. 

Edited December 23, 2020 by Matryoshka
so many typos...

[Jean in Newcastle]

6 hours ago, maize said:

I learned both Spanish and French through immersion as a child and while I doubt my accent in either sounds native (I wasn't young enough for that) I think it is a fairly close approximation. 

Unfortunately my brain wants to default to Spanish pronunciation for every other foreign language; I'm certain I speak Japanese with a Spanish accent. Arabic (which I'm  pretty limited in anyway) is even worse because it sounds nothing like Spanish when spoken by native speakers but my brain really wants to turn it into Spanish. Japanese at least shares some phonetic characteristics with Spanish.

My French teacher in college thought that it was hilarious that I speak French with a Japanese accent!  Doesn't do much for my French r's! 

[Jean in Newcastle]

6 hours ago, maize said:

A valid argument, but clearly the best solution is to teach more etymology 😁

I've struggled with how to teach language arts to my kids because I'm not a big fan of traditional grammar and that's what so many educational resources (especially those targeted at homeschoolers) focus on.

This year I decided I could be enthusiastic about teaching language arts if we focused on etymology. 

So if you have any favorite etymological resources let me know 😉

 

5 hours ago, Matryoshka said:

Absolutely the answer is to teach the etymology! I'm working with a couple of kids on English grammar and I can't help tossing etymology lessons in there for good measure.  I prefaced asking if they've ever watched a spelling bee,  and if they noticed the kids always ask for word origins. Miraculously,  they all had. I told them that's because it gives clues to how a word is spelled - they said, oh, I thought they were just trying to look smart! 

My favorite etymological resource is MCT's the Word within the Word - love how it teaches to look for the root and decipher meaning. I do kind of use it 'my way' though, taking the parts I like and leaving the rest.  But that's true if any material,  and that's the one I've found I can bend to my uses the best.  Caesar's English is also great for younger kids, but I always have to pause and yell at the book when he claims, quite falsely, and repeatedly, that English comes from Latin. Um, NO. But we do have a kajillioon Latin-based words, so still useful. 

This might give a clue to my age but I definitely learned the etymology of words when I was learning to spell them.