[meteorite-list] Pronouncing Willamette and other meteorite names

[Michael L Blood]

"Loosers" eh?
        Well, I guess that settles that.
        Michael

on 4/23/08 8:16 AM, Darren Garrison at cynapse at charter.net wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:45:25 -0700, you wrote:
> 
>>        As for Allende, someone said there is nothing wrong
>> With "Anglicizing" a word....You would have a VERY
>> Difficult time living in So. CA - going to El Cajon (el ca hone)
>> And La Jolla (la hoy ya) etc. Even in LA, they pronounce
>> It "row DAY oh" Drive, not rodeo drive, as it was the Spanish
>> Name place originally.
> 
> You can pick and choose names that keep their original pronounciation if you
> want.  But you can also pick and choose names that have been Anglicized if you
> want.  The point is, if a word LOOKS like it follows the spelling of a
> "traditional" English word-- unless you have evidence otherwise-- you will
> usually try to pronounce it as if it were a "traditional" English word (and
> the
> same goes for non-English speakers, of course-- if the word LOOKS to fit the
> conventions of your languge, I'll bet that, with no instruction otherwise,
> you'll try to pronounce it according to the conventions of your language).
> Your
> examples "El Cajon" and "La Jolla" look obviously Spanish and not English.
> But
> "Allende" looks like a perfectly cromulent English word-- you have, Allentown,
> PA, for example, not Ayantown, PA.  So "Allende" just didn't trigger an alarm
> in
> my head to pronounce it differently-- I wasn't being contrary, it simply never
> occured to me.
> 
> MexicoDoug, try this little experiment while in the US-- write down the word
> "Allende" on a piece of paper.  Show it to every gringo you meet, ask them how
> to pronounce it.  Better yet, get the whitest looking guy you can find to ask
> for you.  I woud be shocked if anything more than a small minority of English
> speakers got it right.
> 
> Also, another issue, I've never heard the large majority of all meteorite
> names
> (and, indeed, possibly the majority of all techinical scientific terms,
> species
> names, etc that are well known to me) pronounced aloud.  Except for those who
> are professionals in the field and/or go to meteorite sales, I'd say that
> stands
> for most people who are hobbyists in obscure fields that are mostly accessed
> through books and the internet, without a local population of like-minded
> people
> to meet with.  Back to Williamette, the first (and only) time I have ever
> heard
> that word spoken aloud was in that film Darrly Pitt had someone put together--
> that guy was pronouncing it right, I thought he was a rube getting it wrong.
> 
> Meteorites can come from anywhere in the world-- which means that you are
> potentially faced with knowing the pronounciation rules/phonics for any
> language
> in the world-- does that assume that we should be assumed to know how all
> those
> other languages work when you just see the word in print?  (And I shudder to
> think of a meteorite named in a Khoisan or similar language that strays
> profoundly from Indo-European phonics-- "anyone have a partslice of
> clickpopgulp?")
> 
>>        The problem with "Anglicizing" a word is two fold:
>> 1) it assumes an ethnocentric approach to the word and
> 
> So what?  If you get rid of all the words that have been adopted into and
> modified to make English, you'll have-- well, I guess you'll have nothing,
> English is such a mongrel.  Would you rather have English more massively
> complicated with exceptions to spelling/pronounciation rules than the chaos
> that
> it already is?  I've been reading and writing English for all my life, and I
> still have to look up spellings of words (including in this post) because of
> the
> mess that English conventions are.  Pronouncing the names of all foreign
> cities
> and countries the same way the natives do in their language would take massive
> effort.
> 
>>        Anyway, of course, you can call your mother or father's sister
>> "ant" or "aunt" and people will understand.... But one is correct and
>> One is less so.
> 
> Right-- "ant" is correct.  Only losers pronounce the silent "u".
> 
> (Myself, I always wonder how the word "o-rang-utan" to most people is
> pronounced
> "arang-atang")
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