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Pronunciation - Delete if not interested

Hello All,

Dave wrote:

> Tomato...Toe-may-toe... Tomato (this one pronounced toe-mah-toe).

OK. So far, so good. These two pronunciations are accepted as BE
(British English) and AE (American English) variants. The "may"
variant is acceptable because the a-sound in "tomato" is long.
Those among us who speak German may be reminded of the following
examples:

mag > may,  Tag > day,  lag > lay,  sag(e) > say

Now, by analogy one might envision :-)

Potato [po-tay-toe] ... and  potato [po-tah-toe]

... which doesn't work.

> And then there's Bass fishin' and Bass guitar.

The German word for this kind of fish is "Barsch" and to understand
its pronunciation, we have to look at its historical ancestors:
In OE (Old English => 450-1150) it was "boers". In ME (Middle English =>
1150-1500) this word lost the "r" and changed into "bas"; the "a" here
is as short as the a-sound (!) in "cut". Such a short a-sound is
nowadays pronounced the way you find it in "hat, cat, rat, chat," etc.

Well, hmm, the  b a s s  guitar ?

One of its late ME forms "base" + ss taken from the Latin root
"bassus" could well account for the [ei] pronunciation ([ei] as in
may, day, etc).
In other words, the present day pronunciation of the word refers to one
of its historical variants. Mere speculation ? No, just think of the
word "busy". How come you pronounce it [bizi] ? To anyone unfamiliar
with the English language it should be [bazi] like in the word "bus".
Here again, the present day English language has retained ONE of the
Middle English variants (there were three of them: busig, bisig, besig).
It's the "bisig" pronunciation but the "busig" spelling :-)

> well....at least beer, and pizza, ... do not confuse me.

Nor me ... both Alex and me, we both agree :-)

Piper wrote:

> Does anyone know with reasonable certainty how Mr. Nininger
> pronounced his last name? Is the first "i" long or short?

Mike (Blood) wrote:

> Nine (as in ... nine), ing (as in swimming,...), er (as in  swimmer)

Nick wrote:

> NINE-en-grrrr

Both H.H. Nininger's and Henry A. Kissinger's last name are of German
origin. A German can pronounce Nininger's name with a short and a
relatively long first "i" and still write it "Nininger". When the first
"i" becomes too long, we would probably write it like this: "Nieninger".

As for Mike's and Nick's "NINE" pronunciation, this would imply a long
German "i". The only one(s) who can "with reasonable certainty" answer
this pronunciation problem are family members, of course.

Now what about the remaining part of the family names "Kissinger"
and "Nininger" ? Nick's "NINE-en-grrrr" definitely refers to the
German roots of the name. We pronounce his name [nininger] =>
ni- (very) short like the "i" in "Nick's name, -ning- like "king",
and the -er like Mike's example of a "swimm e r " (the Hebrew
schwa-sound again). The same applies to Mr. Kissinger's name.
The Anglicized pronunciation of the -inger part is, course, like
in Ginger's first name (BTW, Ginger, did you know that your
name is derived from Virginia or Regina?)

Nick wrote:

> LEG-luh (with the second syllable almost
> inaudible and rhyming with "duh")

Gaetan wrote:

> L'hey gl "huh"

Well, with respect to L'AIGLE", we are once again at odds because
of the different analogies, or forms/systems of transcription used
here. You will probably know that it is the French version of the
English word "eagle", the first "l" representing the masculine form
"le" of the French definite article which has an apostrophe to avoid
the collision of two vowels (comparable to: "an old man" instead of
"a old man").

Nick's version is closer to the real thing than Gaetan's whose "hey"
might be misleading - "hey" like "May", etc. which is definitely not
the case with that word.

When pronouncing L'Aigle" accurately, take an "l" + the 'open e' of the
French word "merci" + g (like the 'g' in "give"; the 'g' must be clearly
audible!) + another 'l' (well, the problem here is that English speaking
people probably have a tendency to use a dark 'l' whereas it is a very
clear 'l' in both cases as in the word "million"). What is still missing
is the often mentioned schwa-sound that you have for the "a" in "a
house".

Sorry, I just could not resist. And now, ladies and gentlemen,
I am in for a good German beer - a Warsteiner - P r o s t ! :-)


Bernd

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