Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 October 27

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October 27

Pronunciation of place names by soldiers

How did the English-speaking soldiers and officers during WWI and WWII know how to pronounce French, Dutch, German, etc. place names on their military maps? Were they taught a basic language course before being sent to Europe? Or were they taught only the reading rules? I could have only found some instructions for American soldiers [1][2], but it did not say anything about how to read French.

What about other times, how did they know how to pronounce place names in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:49, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

In the British Army, officers and better educated soldiers would have learned some French at school. In the First World War, place names in Flanders often acquired humorous nicknames that the ordinary soldiers could pronounce:

"Eetapps" = Etaples, "Funky Villas" = Fonquevillers, "Ocean Villas" = Auchonvillers, "Plug Street" = Ploegsteert and most famously "Wipers" = Ypres. War Slang Alansplodge (talk) 22:56, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

More often a case of Eat Apples, I think. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:01, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

And don't the British go out of their way to avoid pronouncing French words in the French way ? For example, the "filet" in "filet mignon" becomes "fill-it" not "fill-ay". StuRat (talk) 23:10, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

As a 60-y-o Brit, I've never heard "fill-it" used in the term filet mignon (though that pronunciation is of course close to standard in an English term such as "fillet steak"). It's the sort of thing one might say as a deliberate joke, but not as one's normal usage. It's more likely that a BrE speaker lacking any knowledge of French at all (which would be rare*), would spell the word "fillay", as they would have heard it.

* Under the National Curriculum, all state-school pupils must study a(t least one) foreign language between the ages of 7 and 14. This most often in the recent past comprises of or includes French (over 70%, see this), for obvious historical and geographical reasons. Non-state schools usually feature at least as much, if not more, foreign language study (especially if one includes Latin). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.202.208.54 (talk) 07:25, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. "Fillet steak" must have been the one I heard pronounced "fill-it". StuRat (talk) 11:43, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

I know nothing about the British pronunciation of "filet" (when I was in the UK years ago, I doubt that I ate any filet mignon, or that most of the people I associated with ate it very commonly ), but the UK does have some Anglified pronunciations which sound quite strange to American ears, such as [ɡærɪdʒ] (with stress on first syllable) for "garage" and [kwɪksət] for "Quixote". Then there are semi-Anglified compromise pronunciations, such as [ɡærɑːʒ] and [kwɪksoʊt], which don't sound quite as strange, but still stand out (with the first-syllable stress). I don't know which pronunciations of those words are most common in the UK now, but that's the kind of thing that StuRat was probably referring to. AnonMoos (talk) 08:34, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Shall we get back to the question? Alansplodge (talk) 11:39, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

My response was related to the Q, in that I doubt if many soldiers would actually care if they pronounced foreign place names correctly. They would just muddle through, and not worry if it sounds wrong to the natives. StuRat (talk) 11:45, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Probably right. The closest I got to a reference was BELGIAN TELLS HOW TO PRONOUNCE WAR NAMES ( Los Angeles Herald > 18 April 1918) but that seems to aimed at armchair generals back home. Alansplodge (talk) 12:59, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

A BBC Radio 4 newsreader was lampooned in the press after he pronounced the name of the London suburb of Pentonville (where the prison is) as Pon-ton-veel. A hapless Australian traffic reporter on L B C Radio referred to "congestion at St Pancreas". This led the presenter to remark "Dave in medical mood at St Pancras". 92.8.223.3 (talk) 14:51, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Too obscure. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:51, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
A visitor to Hawaii back in the 1950s was puzzled by a sign he saw, and couldn't understand why the natives couldn't tell him what "ee lee-kay ee-kay" meant. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:11, 28 October 2017 (UTC) So what did "ee lee-kay ee-kay" mean? —Stephen (talk) 12:33, 29 October 2017 (UTC) The sign actually read "I LIKE IKE". :) The point being that in Hawaiian, all syllables are short and are fully pronounced. The observer thought it was Hawaiian, when actually it was a campaign sign for Eisenhower. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:46, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

If you listen to the old song, Mademoiselle from Armentières, you will hear that the town name is pronounced very differently to the correct French version, with one less syllable and rhyming with "years" Wymspen (talk) 17:55, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Jack Charman has no Wikipedia article, but I imagine that here was his best shot at the upper middle class RP of 1915? But here's Line Renaud a few years later. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:32, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't expect that they should or could pronounce place names with native pronunciation. On the contrary, I'm sure they pronounced with Anglicized pronunciation, employing only the sounds of English. However, there are a lot of cases where spelling is counter-intuitive for English speakers. E.g. "ch" is pronounced differently in English, French, Italian and German; French has many peculiar di- and trigraphs like "eau" and many mute consonants; while in German on the contrary "au" is like English "ow", not like "long aw", etc. They could care less how to pronounce local names with native-like accent, still they had to communicate with each other somehow, like "go to village A, then to village B, bomb the enemy position on the street X in city C". And European languages are quite easy in that respect as many Americans (and others: Canadians, Britons, etc.) were acquainted with those languages. But I'm quite curious how they might struggle with Korean and Vietnamese, which are even more alien, though their Romanization might be more straightforward than, e.g., French. Looking over the map of Vietnam, I wonder how they pronounced those place names. Despite knowing the basic reading rules of Vietnamese, even I myself am not sure how I would pronounce them in English.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:48, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

It works both ways. A young girl was in the street with her family in Lisbon and looking in the window of the American library. She began reading the name: oo - nee - ted. That was when Edward Kennedy was a U S senator, but sadly this resource of the United States Information Service is no more (the British Council library has gone as well). 82.14.24.95 (talk) 19:13, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

This map of England for Polish forces has been going the rounds on Facebook the last few days. --ColinFine (talk) 13:25, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Very curious example, but I still haven't got the answer to how the English-speaking soldiers were supposed to read place names on the maps and communicate with each others. There must have been a confusion if one read French "-eux" as "yooks", and another as "uh"--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:57, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

There is no general answer to how English speakers decide to pronounce place names in various languages. This is a pointless discussion and against the purpose of Wikipedia. Legacypac (talk) 03:49, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

No. The OP is interested in linguistics and this seems a reasonable question to ask. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:11, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Read this. I was looking for some sort of military manual or instruction. You haven't even read the question properly, but rush to attack the OP (me).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 19:59, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

For reasons known only to himself, Legacypac has been doing a lot of this kind of thing recently. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:26, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs, perhaps you should be the next person banned from RefDesk. I note your strident support the behavior that got StuRat Topicban ed and similar behavior yourself. Trolling me as you did at ANi is not going to be well received or reflect well on your case when your behavior is discussed. Legacypac (talk) 00:12, 3 November 2017 (UTC)