Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 July 31

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July 31

American pronunciation of family name Weis

How would Americans pronounce the family name "Weis"? I guess this is treated on an individual basis, and some pronounce themselves "Weese", others "Wise". But which is probably more common? --KnightMove (talk) 12:39, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

My guess (based on some personal experience) is that most pronounce it neither of the ways you suggest but rather to rhyme with mice. Deor (talk) 12:50, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

How is that different from "Wise"? JIP | Talk 13:31, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

/waɪz/ vs. /maɪs/ (from [1]). --Wrongfilter (talk) 13:35, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I guess I could have been clearer. The Weises I have known pronounce their name like German Weiss but with the English rather than the German pronunciation of the w—i.e., /waɪs/. Weis Markets, however, do pronounce it like "wise", apparently. Deor (talk) 14:43, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) However, in this YouTube video, Weis Markets is pronounced "Wise", both by the TV presenter and the company executive. But the sports coach, Charlie Weis, seems to be pronounced as suggested above - see this video. So take your pick. Alansplodge (talk) 14:58, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Well, USians do have a wise president, as opposed to a dumb president. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 17:05, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

People with surnames of ambiguous pronunciation get to decide how their own name is pronounced and are also accustomed to mispronunciation. I speak from personal experience. Cullen328 (talk) 17:11, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Also goes for personal names, I guess. I'll accept most mispronunciations of my Swedish name Håkan. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:24, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I will agree with Cullen above; surnames adopted into English from languages with different vowel systems or writing conventions will be pronounced any number of ways in English. My own last name is from French, and has a vowel that doesn't exist in most American English dialects, so people with my last name have to choose an approximately close English vowel to move it to, and I know of at least three different pronunciations of it. Weis, coming from German, probably has similar differences. If you are reading this name in an English speaking context, you really need to ask the person directly, as though it really only has one German pronunciation, in English it has many. --Jayron32 12:16, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Jayron32 -- The German pronunciation of "Weis" doesn't have any sounds which would be exotic to English, and has only one spelling correspondence which is exotic to English (i.e. letter "w" = sound [v]), so I imagine it allows less scope for mispronunciation than many other names with foreign-language origins... AnonMoos (talk) 22:45, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

See for example, the fictional Hyacinth Bucket, 'who insists that her surname is pronounced "Bouquet"'. Alansplodge (talk) 10:32, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Although her long-suffering husband, from whom she acquired her surname, was never so categorical. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:18, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Cullen328 and Jayron32 have it exactly right. Surname pronunciations change with time, just as spellings do, and there is no guarantee that different branches of a family will end up with the same pronunciation or spelling. I know someone with an Eastern European surname who drastically changed both the spelling and the pronunciation of the family name between the official registration of the birth of one child and the next. And the Canadian branch of the rare Orkadian Richan family (not Richard) decided at a1980's family reunion that all the descendants of the 18th Century immigrant would change the pronunciation of the name from a sibilant ch (like the French-Canadian surname "Richard") and other pronunciations to teh ch pronunciation as in "rich". The surname has died out in the Orkneys but there is a related Utah line of Richans that oriignated in the 19th Century. I don't know how they pronounce it. Meters (talk) 05:16, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

In junior high school I knew a Polish-American kid whose ancestors had been named Krzywosiński. When they arrived in America, they decided to simplify that, not by eliminating the highly intimidating string Krzyw-, but by deleting the -si- (and dropping the acute accent over the n), leaving Krzywonski, which they pronounced /kərˈʃɑnski/ ("ker-SHON-skee"). Ah yes, thank you for simplifying that, now it's much easier to guess the pronunciation from the spelling. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:25, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Those Polish-Americans have always been the Krazy Oneskies... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:57, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Pronounciation of Jane Goodall

According to Jane Goodall, her last name is pronounced as /ˈɡʊdɔːl/. For me as a non-native speaker of English and IPA, this seems to mean good doll, but I expected the name to be pronounced as /ˈɡʊdɛl/ like in good Dell.
Is the article correct and did I correctly translate the IPA to English ? -- Juergen 5.147.163.199 (talk) 22:05, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you expected a dell sound, from the spelling dall. I could live with /ˈɡʊdəl/. But it's definitely /ˈɡʊdɔːl/. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:14, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I expected the dell sound like in Dallas where æ seems almost like ɛ or ə but very different from ɔ. -- Juergen 5.147.163.199 (talk) 22:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

It might be possible to find a YouTube video where she says her own name. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:22, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

English words ending on -all almost all rhyme with all: ball, call, fall, gall, hall, pall, small, squall, stall, tall, thrall, wall.  --Lambiam 09:49, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

That's true, but all your examples are monosyllables. The issue here is whether an unstressed final '-all' in a polysyllable has its vowel reduced to /ə/

or not. In my experience they doi not, unlike words ending in '-al'. ColinFine (talk) 11:05, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Recall, befall, downfall, windfall, football, footfall, enthrall..... HiLo48 (talk) 05:17, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Some of those are relevatn, HiLo, but others have final stress. ColinFine (talk) 15:10, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

I suspect even that varies between different versions of English. HiLo48 (talk) 21:59, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Goodall is also British, where many dialects are less likely to reduce unstressed vowels to a schwa. Not never, just less often than American dialects. --Jayron32 12:08, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's less often, Jayron, so much as in different places. Consider "secretary" and "medicine", which (at least traditionally) have one fewer syllable in most BrE than AmE. Then there's "laboratory", which has about the same number of syllables, but distributed very differently. ColinFine (talk) 15:16, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Maybe Jayron can give some examples; I don't think that's true at all. For Goodall specifically I would expect that a random Goodall in the US would pronounce their name good-all, and a British (or, at least, English) one would say "good'l." Of course that's not how Jane says it, but I mention it to praise the OP for their good instincts for a general rule of this kind of name. I don't know what rule I mean, but the gist of it is that the older and more British a surname is, the more the second half of its pronunciation collapses into nothing. Temerarius (talk) 02:22, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

And "respiratory" rhymes with "presbytery". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:16, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Even this computerized voice prounounces it correctly.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 12:47, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Looking at other people called Goodall reminded me of the composer Howard Goodall, who (audio in article) pronounces his own name as described above by JackofOz. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 14:51, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Just a quick note to the OP — it's not really the same as good doll. The vowels are about right, but in good doll, the d would be geminated (IPA /ˈɡʊd.dɔːl/). --Trovatore (talk) 00:16, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm not even convinced the vowels are right, at least in British English. In good doll, the final 'o' would be /ɒ/ and not /ɔː/. (Disclaimer: this is my first time trying to use the IPA template) AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 13:54, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree that it's pronounced /ˈɡʊdɔːl/, which corresponds to "good–all", i.e. basically exactly the way it's spelled. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:14, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Ah, well, now you've touched on a point where I get confused — the distinction between /ɒ/ and /ɔː/ (or maybe just /ɔ/ without the length marker) is a bit obscure to me.

I think I distinguish "cot" and "caught", at least in careful speech, but my "caught" vowel is nothing like the vowel in "fort". Pronouncing "caught" with the "fort" vowel strikes me as "very New York". Rather, it's something like the vowel in "loss".

So one possible account is that I pronounce "caught" as /kɒt/, and that may be correct. On the other hand, someone here told me once that the "fort" vowel has moved towards /oː/ in many accents, and is being rendered as /ɔː/ out of historical inertia.

Back to the discussion, I can accept the second syllable of "Goodall" with the "loss" vowel, but absolutely not with the "fort" vowel. The latter would sound very weird to me, even coming from a British person.

I think for me the second-syllable "Goodall" and "good doll" vowels are about the same, except that the "doll" one is longer and maybe has a secondary stress. --Trovatore (talk) 16:20, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Surely you just have to link the words "good" and "all"? Alansplodge (talk) 18:59, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Hmm, well I certainly don't have an /ɔː/ in "all". But yeah, whatever vowel I do have in "all" seems like the same one I'd have in the second syllable of "Goodall". --Trovatore (talk) 19:32, 3 August 2022 (UTC)