Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Sure I do, and so's the Queen

I'm watching Time Team and getting distracted by dialects again. I can't help but notice the British don't correct each other. Or even pause, or seem to notice. But I've heard the same thing in podcast discussions between an international group of archaeologists or historians.

Sure, let's just pass over "Mycenae" versus "Mykenae." That's the c-k problem inherited from the long history of Latin within other Western cultures. I've run into people who make a point of not just pronouncing, but spelling "Akropolis" et al. And other more accurate transliterations, which can slow your reading a bit while you puzzle out the new form of a too-familiar name.

I'm talking more of distinctly different pronunciations of other words. Like mesolithic; in one programme I recently watched, there were conversations between a mezo-lithic and a miso-lithic.

In the one I'm watching now, I'm hearing tsu-nami (the wall of water), su-nami, and tu-nami.

Oh, yes. And this on top of dialectic distinctions that can be generally made between British english and American english; shed-ule/sked-ule, gla-ceer/glay-seer, geyser/geezer, etc.

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