Today's post is brought to you by the letter U
After reading bella's latest post, and considering posting a totally typical response that focused purely on one tiny and irrelevant aspect of said post, I got to thinking, and decided to create a whole post on the topic here instead.
But enough with the preamble.
There are a couple of words that contain the letter U that I've never been sure how to pronounce. One of them is Pulitzer and the other one is culinary. Are they pronounced PYU-litzer and CYU-linary, or PULL-itzer and CULL-inary? When I speak them myself, I favour the former, even though when I hear them spoken in the media, they are often pronounced the latter way.
Enter the internet! What a great tool. A quick check of the American Heritage Dictionary on Bartleby.com tells me that Pulitzer is pronounced both ways (plt-sr, pylt- ), but the pronunciation you can listen to says it with a short U (listen here). Likewise culinary, the word is phoneticized both ways, but pronounced with a long U.
Not satisfied with the American Heritage explanation I went to what for me is the final word on these issues, the Oxford English Dictionary. Its pronunciation guide shows (pjultz(r); in U.S. also pltz(r)) and (kjulnr, k-), which did satisfy my sneaking suspicion that, in the former case at least, the American pronunciation is not the "officially" correct one, though as in so many things, it has become the predominant one. Of course, Joseph Pulitzer himself, though foreign-born, is, ultimately, an American, so who's to say the American pronunciation is incorrect?
And that, my friends, is your phonetics lesson for today.
But enough with the preamble.
There are a couple of words that contain the letter U that I've never been sure how to pronounce. One of them is Pulitzer and the other one is culinary. Are they pronounced PYU-litzer and CYU-linary, or PULL-itzer and CULL-inary? When I speak them myself, I favour the former, even though when I hear them spoken in the media, they are often pronounced the latter way.
Enter the internet! What a great tool. A quick check of the American Heritage Dictionary on Bartleby.com tells me that Pulitzer is pronounced both ways (plt-sr, pylt- ), but the pronunciation you can listen to says it with a short U (listen here). Likewise culinary, the word is phoneticized both ways, but pronounced with a long U.
Not satisfied with the American Heritage explanation I went to what for me is the final word on these issues, the Oxford English Dictionary. Its pronunciation guide shows (pjultz(r); in U.S. also pltz(r)) and (kjulnr, k-), which did satisfy my sneaking suspicion that, in the former case at least, the American pronunciation is not the "officially" correct one, though as in so many things, it has become the predominant one. Of course, Joseph Pulitzer himself, though foreign-born, is, ultimately, an American, so who's to say the American pronunciation is incorrect?
And that, my friends, is your phonetics lesson for today.
posted by infobabe | 10:35 a.m.
2 Comments:
rut roh..i think i say QUEUE-linary or KU-linary...ok, now i don't know what i say.
and i think i say PEWWW-litzer. i probably shouldn't talk in public.
I guess I pronounce both the American way. Never thought about these two words until today....kinda sad seeing how my Bachleor's degree is in Linguistics.
...so, is it a skillet or a frying pan?
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