Talk:2819: Pronunciation

These are all heteronyms

(/ɪ/|/t/)+(/ɪ/|/juː/)+(/ɛ/|/ɨ/)+(/s/|/z/)+(/t/|/d/)+(/eɪ/|/æ/)+(/aɪ/|???) ...what's the alternate (anglophone) pronunciation for the 'y' in "gyro"? 141.101.98.81 19:03, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

...oh, ok, now there's an explanation on this. Not convinced by the alternate 'y' at all. And I pronounce "putting" exactly like "putting", as well. Consider me additionally confused. 172.70.90.90 19:22, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

gyro as in the sandwich (pronounced like Euro), or gyro as in short for gyroscope.

Never even heard of a "gyro" sandwich. (And "Euro" can be YOU-ro, OY-ro, ERR-oh, etc, depending on which country you're(-oh) in.) Clearly something very Leftpondian, this comic. 172.70.90.90 21:51, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Oh man! Come on, we're going to the grocery store. You're one of today's lucky 10,000.- 172.70.131.172 22:43, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

It's a Greek dish similar to a shawarma. It's pronounced YEE-ro, I believe. (Which is kind of similar to that first pronunciation of "Euro", so that's probably what they were going for.) 172.70.43.118 22:04, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Putting/putting - think southern England if you want to appreciate the difference. The golfing sense is somewhere between "patting" and "potting"; the placing sense more like...well, like "putting". "Pooting," I suppose, with a "book" type "oo".Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 22:46, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

It's actually gyros, or γύρος using Greek spelling, there is no singular form because it is uncountable, like news. It's not like you can have one new. It's still probably the same word but I guess the meat is more likely to be pronounced in the original Greek way while words like gyroscope, which is a device originally used to measure (scope) the rotation (gyros) of the earth, have been anglicized in their pronunciation. Tharkon (talk) 23:25, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

So in English, is it gyros meat or gyro meat?

The "original" Greek way would be /gyros/, but the word for the sandwich was borrowed from modern Greek, while the word for the device was borrowed by way of Latin and maybe French. And English has this silly habit of treating mass nouns with final /z/ or /s/ as plural count nouns, especially if the masses are made of many countable objects, like pease and cherise. Anonymous11:54, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Also, Most Americans pronounce it /hiɹoʊ/, as in "I need a hero", a pun Arby's made ample use of when they started selling gyros. I presume this also where the name "hero" for a sub comes from, despite the fact that most gyros I'm familiar with look more like Greek tacos than subs. Anonymous11:54, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

OED has references to the hero sandwich from 1938. Arby's was founded in 1964, and references in English to gyro sandwiches only date back to 1971. So it's unlikely that the hero sandwich is derived from gyro. Barmar (talk) 14:44, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

In Finland that's not far away. By starting with T and removing æ you are almost correct. Tuesday in Finnish /Ti:stai/

Someone has GOT to find a better joke than "TOMATO BOTATO" - 172.69.59.83 22:41, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I think maybe the counter-example of orthography might work for everyone? I linked it, for those who might still be confused. 172.70.90.94 22:48, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

That's a lot better, and I feel like an idiot for not thinking of it, since I was just watching Tom Fawkes last night when he mentioned Ghoti of the Deep Beyond.- 172.71.255.24 01:52, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Does someone familiar with the IPA have a silly-looking but reasonably accurate transcription of /ɪɛstæaɪ/ they want to add to the page? GreatWyrmGold (talk) 23:19, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Listening to the IPA reader, it sounds almost like "yesterday", which is interesting because the comic was posted on Wednesday... 108.162.250.155 00:04, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I think for the 'e' he means the 'schwa' (ə) sound, basically an unstressed neutral vowel sound (as in the 'a' in 'about', the 'e' in 'taken', the 'i' in 'pencil', the 'o' in 'havoc', the 'u' in 'supply', the 'y' in 'sibyl', or sometimes not even written as in 'rhythm') Trogdor147 (talk) 01:31, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

My naive reading of this is: the T in buffet is silent. U in minute is UH, E in record is EH, S in use is Z, D in moped is T, A in bass is AH, Y in gyro is YI. together this makes: UHEZTAYI 172.68.4.169 04:23, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

There's a more modern semivocalic analysis of English diphthongs that could affect how the T and Y are interpreted. The video focuses on British dialects, but anecdotally, the main principles also apply to General American, so they may be more intuitive here. Not sure if this is worth going against convention to incorporate, but I figured it'd be worth suggesting.

The relevant transcriptions would become buffet /-fej/, minute /majˈn(j)uwt/, use /juw-/, moped /mow-/, bass /bejs/, gyro /jij- dʒaj-/; and in the prose, pronounce /-aw-/, wound /wawnd wuwnd/. In the mispronunciation of Tuesday, the /-æaj/ would correctly look like a sequence of two vowels instead of three.

Since E doesn't usually represent /ej/, Great Vowel Shift and all, you might analyze the T of buffet as corresponding to the /-j/ rather than being silent. That would add an extra phone at the start of the mispronunciation. Maybe that's a bit ghoti, though.

Anyway, for readers who don't know the IPA, my attempt at a pronunciation respelling would be (y)ih~ess-ta~eye. I can't think of a foolproof way to evoke unchecked /æ/ instead of /ə ɑ ej/. I tried adding silent GH, but that can also yield /ij/ as in shillelagh. ~AgentMuffin

Is it worth adding a note about the old "ghoti" being pronounced as "fish" thing? That was my first exposure to deliberately pathological pronunciations in English, but I'm not sure if that's common? The joke is that you take "gh" from "enough", "o" from "women", and "ti" from "nation", to get "ghoti" = "fish".