(no subject)

[owl]

Are any of the names on the Colquhoun/Colhoun/Calhoun/Calhoon/Cahoon variation not pronounced 'Ca-hoon'?

Also, is speak-as-you-spell sending Dee-yell the way of Mackenzie? Though in a small sample size I have noticed that Dalziel seems to be the original pronunciation more often than Dalzell.

What other disconnects between spelling and speaking are there around?

Comments

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

There's Belvoir (pronounced 'Beaver', of course), and since my office is mostly non-native to NI, Irish names cause great wailing and gnashing of teeth, especially Caiomhe.

[owl]

LOL. With people our age Keava seems to turn up too, but babies are all Caoimhe nowadays. I often see the files of people who have been to uni in GB, carefully labelled 'Neev', 'Onya' etc. I can mostly get the consonants right, though I have to guess at vowels if I haven't seen the name before. It's when you get the Irish surnames that I run into difficulties.

[tree_and_leaf]

Umpteen placenames in Fife - such as the notorious 'Kilconqhaur' (pronunced 'Kinnuchar', more or less)' Kirkaldy (Kirkaddy), Burtisland (generally pronunced 'Bruntisland, though that one seems under threat....) Or on the West side of Scotland, Milngavie (pron. 'Milngai')

In surnames, and moving away from Scotland, there's the obvious 'Featherstoneshaugh'/ Fanshawe....

[owl]

Oooh, and Kirkcudbright's always good for a laugh (Kirkoobri), and Edinburgh, with two pronunciations neither of which match the spelling.

[tree_and_leaf]

How could I have forgotten Kirkudbright?

And I never even think about the fact that I normally say something resembling 'Embra".

[skywalker-child.livejournal.com]

Anything REMOTELY Gaelic is going to get butchered by a tongue that doesn't know better. (Woe am I to say what "Siobhan" first sounded like when I said it.) Even if you KNOW how you're saying it is wrong, I can never remember what to do with all the w's and l's next to each other. ;)

"Calhoun" is the last name of a basketball coach in Connecticut; we pronounce the "l" so you have Cal-hoon.

[owl]

Um, neither Irish nor Gaelic orthography has a w. I suspect you may be thinking of Welsh, where it's a long u sound. And the double ll is voiceless like hl.

[white_hart]

The nearest sizeable town to my parents' village in Norfolk is Wymondham. Pronounced like the author of Day of the Triffids.

Also, there is a suburb of Coventry which can be spelt either 'Styvechale' or 'Stivichall'. In either case, it's pronounced Sty-chall (rhymes with shall).

[carrole.livejournal.com]

In my particular area of the US, cot and caught are pronounced the same. There's a lot of this kind of linguistic variation in Eastern Kentucky, dealing with o and the au dipthong. Pin and pen are the same as well.

[marionravenwood.livejournal.com]

Are any of the names on the Colquhoun/Colhoun/Calhoun/Calhoon/Cahoon variation not pronounced 'Ca-hoon'?

There is a small town called Calhoun near the small town where I'm from in the Southern US, and it's pronounced "Cal-hoon," with the "cal" pronounced the same as in "California."

Native American place names sometimes have weird disconnects between spelling and speaking, probably not much stranger than Gaelic or Welsh.

[leeflower.livejournal.com]

There's always 'craic.' I've seen it spelled 'crack,' but 'good crack' has a very different meaning than 'good craic.' At least to Americans.

And yes, Gaelic names. The MC in my new novel is named Niamh, but I'm probably going to have to change it so that my poor American readers won't get confused. I don't want to anglize it because the pronunciation changes between the original and the anglized spelling (at least in the states-- nee'iv/nee'if verses neev), so I'll probably end up looking for a different name entirely. Which is unfortunate, because I really like Niamh.

[fiendish-cat.livejournal.com]

And then there's Cholmondeley (Chum-ley)

Near me is an area of London called 'de Beauvoir' widely pronounced by locals as d'beever.