Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 February 12

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February 12

Pronunciation of "issue"

I've always pronounced "issue" roughly as "ishue" (i.e. with a "sh" sound roughly as in "ship"). Listening to the Nature-podcast, I've now repeatedly heard it pronounced more like "is-U" or "is-you" (i.e. as the auxiliary verb, followed by the letter U or the pronoun "you"). Is this a local variation or have I always been wrong? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 00:36, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

You haven't been wrong, or even slightly unusual. I've heard adult speakers of English as a first language using all the pronunciations that you mention. -- Hoary (talk) 00:43, 12 February 2020 (UTC) For my sleepy "all", read "both". -- Hoary (talk) 01:11, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

I had a college professor who used to say "iss-you". I concluded that he was a wacko. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 00:58, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

He may think it iss-you who is the wacko.  --Lambiam 08:08, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

In which case he would have thought all of us were wackos. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 12:39, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

In which case he probably would have been right ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:02, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

He was American, so I don't know what his excuse was. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 20:43, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

There a more than a few reddit and stack exchange discussion about this. Many cite Wells' Longman Pronunciation Dictionary giving the following stats for British English speakers: /|Isju:/: 30%, /|ISju:/: 21%, /|ISu:/: 49%.[1] or further breaking it down by age. I don't have that dictionary to verify it.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 02:02, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

My Webster's 10th Edition (1993) gives the "iss-yoo" variant as being "chiefly British". But it would interest me to know how the other pronunciation gained prominence. I suspect it was simply easier than the s-y transition. Jmar67 (talk) 06:47, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Wiktionary has: (Received Pronunciation) /|Isju:/, /|IS(j)u:/; (General American) /|IS(j)u/. You can listen to various pronunciations there.  --Lambiam 08:08, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks all - it seems that either way it won't make my bastardised RP/Scottish/Australian/American/Wernher-von-Braun accent mix any worse ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:13, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Tom Lehrer made me scratch my head with a crack about "Sessyu" Hayakawa. Eventually I worked out that he was reading Sessue like tissue. -- And now, on following my own link, I learn that his stage name was properly Sesshu, of which Sessyu would be a legitimate variant spelling. O what a tangled web we weave / when first we practice to anglicize. --Tamfang (talk) 01:51, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, this BrE speaker pronounces it as Iss-ue when using it as a verb and Ish-ue when as a noun: "You have an ish-ue? I can iss-ue a form for that." However, I may not always be consistent. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.205.58.107 (talk) 18:38, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

How do you pronounce it? You sneezed just as you were going to tell me.  --Lambiam 19:31, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

And why isn't "issue" pronounced "iss", when for example "analogue" and "vague" are pronounced without the "ue" part at the end? JIP | Talk 09:10, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Because the "u" in those words is to indicate that the "g" has its "hard" pronunciation, something totally irrelevant for "issue"... AnonMoos (talk) 11:35, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

But then there's ague to show that, yet again, there are no rules. Mikenorton (talk) 16:48, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

"Ague" comes from the same root as "acute".[2] I don't know how the French say it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:58, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Sunrise

The Portuguese for sunrise is nascer (lit. "birth") do sol. Sunset is pôr ("setting") do sol. However, in French the corresponding terms are lever du soleil (the sun getting out of bed) and coucher du soleil (the sun going to bed). Do other languages employ this imagery? 95.150.52.239 (talk) 14:58, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Turkish also uses the birth imagery: gündoğumu (gün = sun). 70.67.193.176 (talk) 15:35, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

It is not clear, though, whether the astronomical sense of the root doğ- derives from the biological one, or whether both are specializations of an original sense "to emerge", "to rise". Compare the Turkish name for a falcon, doğan, literally a 'riser".  --Lambiam 21:19, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Not in Japanese, or anyway not obviously: hi no de, "emergence of the sun"; hi no iri, "entrance of the sun". But I don't claim to know any non-obvious (archaic, minor) meanings of de or iri. -- Hoary (talk) 23:50, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Croatian uses izlazak and zalazak (though these are not the most common terms), which are both related to the word for "to go", but in a third way. Izlaziti/izaći means "to go/get out" (for example izlazak also means a night out), while zalaziti means to frequent some place (like a cafe), but also there's also the more common sense of zaći, to go around a corner. It's not clear which sense is older and/or if the usage for Sun's movements inspired it or vice versa. The reason being Sun "turns a corner" around the horizon, but the place under the horizon is also only its temporary abode which it regularly "frequents". 89.172.2.183 (talk) 22:49, 15 February 2020 (UTC)