Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 September 13

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September 13

Pronunciation of Bathurst (surname)

Hi there,

how to pronounce Bathurst? Especially Benjamin Bathurst. Best regards --Yoursmile (talk) 16:42, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Do any of these help? --Jayron32 16:52, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Are they correct? People in Perleberg, where Benjamin Bathurst (diplomat) disappeared, pronounce his name like [baːˈtuːɐ̯st], which sounds terrible. Best regards --Yoursmile (talk) 17:33, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

The pronunciation of words from one language (such as English) will be altered by people who natively speak another language (such as German). This is called "Interference" or commonly Language transfer. Thus eople from Perleberg may very well say the name differently than people from London. --Jayron32 17:45, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

@Yoursmile: Done, see the article.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:23, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

You can hear the correct pronunciation of Canadian Bathurst (/ˈbæθɚst/ by a Canadian male), as well as Australian Bathurst (/ˈbæθəst/ by an Australian male and a female) here. —Stephen (talk) 19:10, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Does the lack of a language authority in English explain why the spelling has not evolved with the pronunciation?

Unlike most other languages, English has a very archaic spelling; many words are spelled in the way they were pronounced many centuries ago. E.g. we write "laugh", while we now pronounce the "gh" as an "f", 500 years ago the "gh" sound was used. Another example is that there is now no difference between how we pronounce "witch" and "which" but just a century ago the h after a w was actually pronounced. So, the question is why the spelling isn't updated as it is in most other languages. IS this due to the fact that English lacks a language authority that issues rules for spelling, grammar etc. like there exists for the French language? Count Iblis (talk) 19:00, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't think lack of a language authority has anything to do with it. There are two main paths that written language may follow: phonetic spelling and etymological spelling. Many languages, such as Spanish, German, and Korean, choose phonetic spelling (and require occasional spelling reforms). A few languages, such as English and Tibetan, choose etymological spelling, and spelling reforms are rarely needed. —Stephen (talk) 19:16, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Arguably, yes; see e.g. [1] -- "Substantial reforms would require centralised authority and a critical mass of collective, coherent will – neither of which seems likely." Of course it wouldn't necessarily have to be a French-style academy: there's no reason why persuasive authorities such as dictionary writers couldn't do the job (as to a certain extent Webster did in the US). Incidentally, your opinion regarding "witch" and "which" is far from universal (which is a nice illustration of the difficulties involved). Henry^Flower 19:19, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

I find that the "t" in "witch" distinguishes it from "which" even when it's pronounced "wich" instead of "which". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:45, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean by that. The "ch" phoneme in English is pronounced /tʃ/, so it's not possible to pronounce "which" without a "t" sound. Of course, one can emphasize the "t" more strongly in certain contexts. CodeTalker (talk) 21:37, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

See the section "Whine–wine merger".—Wavelength (talk) 20:49, 13 September 2016 (UTC) and 21:02, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

When you talk of "the pronunciation", you may as well be talking of "the grain of sand" on the beach as if one grain tells you all you ever need to know about sand. The spelling of English words is, by and large, universal across the Anglosphere, but the pronunciation varies enormously. So, which pronunciation do we take as the base for deciding how to update our spellings? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:16, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Our article on English-language spelling reform outlines the multitude of proposals which had been put forward over the centuries. It also discusses the obstacles on their way. --My another account (talk) 07:57, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Ghoti.--Phil Holmes (talk) 08:45, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

The problem with Shaw's "ghoti" - as the article points out - is that it picks letters with no context. English has 26 letters for anything between about 35 and 45 distinctive sounds, so any spelling system has to rely on context. According to the rules of English spelling - and they do exist - "ghoti" is pronounced like goatee. Kahastok talk 19:00, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Initial stress is regular, so that would be goaty, not "goatee". μηδείς (talk) 01:45, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Must be a dialect thing - round here "goatee" also has initial stress. Kahastok talk 18:50, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Wow, really? The things you learn hanging out here.... --Trovatore (talk) 19:07, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Is the /t/ aspirated? In American English, the /t/ in "goatee" is aspirated, but the one in "goaty" is a flap. --Trovatore (talk) 19:09, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

It rhymes with "floaty" - normally an unaspirated [t], though it wouldn't take much for it to turn into a [ʔ]. Kahastok talk 19:40, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

A couple of years ago I read a book about writing systems by (i think) Geoffrey Sampson. It argued that phonemic spelling is a convenience for the writer, but if a text is to be read by more than one person then the readers' convenience ought to prevail, and the morphology reflected in conservative spelling is important. —Tamfang (talk) 07:21, 15 September 2016 (UTC)