Bayer is pronounced like buyer

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combatentropy said:
I think in this instance I will try to say Bayer how Bayer said Bayer.
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Brilliant!

Things you can do in writing that you cannot do in film.

This was one of the reasons that Denis Villeneuve turned down 'Arrival', initially. And it is a reason why I dislike it when script writers are too caught up in the format of script writing, as they often revert to things that work well in writing, but don't particularly translate well to the screen.
 
I actually think it's a problem to conceptualize or at least have to describe the film in words instead of images first
 
You say tow-may-tow, I say toe-mah-tow...

I wouldn’t want to attend a horse-riding & steer-lassoing event with someone who is used to shopping on LA’s Rodeo Drive.

‘Enry ‘Iggins claimed he could use the accent, dialect and pronunciation choices of a person to narrow down their London place of birth to within a few blocks. Wouldn’t that be loverly?

None of this matters, all languages transform over time, and their shifts are often as arbitrary as the fashion of hairstyles and lengths of hemlines.

And don’t call me Shirley.
 
Mitch Gross said:
Well just ask the family of Andrew Carnegie, pronounced “kar-NEG-ee”. Carnegie Mellon University and Carnegie Hall use the pronunciation “KAR-neh-gee” even though Andrew Carnegie himself funded them into being.
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I think the accent in that name falls under what I mentioned earlier about word stressing in English. In this case I'm pretty sure the stress is changing to make Carnegie flow better with the word following it, because I realized I pronounce the name two different ways based on what follows.

If I say Carnegie Mellon, it has a better flow to me to say it as KAR nuh ghee MEH lun.

If I say the Carnegie Corporation, it sounds better to me to say it as the Kar NEH ghee cor per AY shun.

If I try to reverse the stressing for the Carnegie Corporation, it doesn't sound as nice, because the stress patterns don't match as well (NEH ghee and AY shun end in the same stress pattern.)
If I try to reverse the stressing for Carnegie Mellon, it's a mouthful and becomes more of a tongue twister if I say the word pairing fast - I have to take a slight pause between each word. Again, the stress patterns also don't match as well (KAR nuh and MEH lun start with the same stress patterns).


Mitch Gross said:
None of this matters, all languages transform over time, and their shifts are often as arbitrary as the fashion of hairstyles and lengths of hemlines.
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Surely you're not trying to say we need to give up pedantry. Where's the fun in that? I want my internet points.
 
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Mitch Gross said:
... I wouldn’t want to attend a horse-riding & steer-lassoing event with someone who is used to shopping on LA’s Rodeo Drive...
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Let's not forget that LA also used to have the Rodeo Road.

As to mangled and manacled names, it's common everywhere. The English speaking world even renamed the entire German cities - München into Munich, Braunschweig into Brunswick, Nürnberg into Nuremberg, Köln into Cologne. The Eye-talians don't escape either where Venezia is Venice, Firenze is Florence, Roma is Rome and Napoli is Naples. Of course, the Germans pronounce Napoli as Neapel and Milan as Mailand. I say it's all bologna.
 
PS. ARRI is Arnold und Richter or AR-RI. Now, who can tell a Bavarian R from a Viennese one?
 
Mitch Gross said:
Is it an African swallow or a European swallow?
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The Austrians roll their R's similarly to the Slavs. Most Germans pronounce it like the French.

I pronounced it like the French too. That was not considered an attractive trait. My parents took me to a speech therapist.
 
DLD said:
The Austrians roll their R's similarly to the Slavs. Most Germans pronounce it like the French.

I pronounced it like the French too. That was not considered an attractive trait. My parents took me to a speech therapist.
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They had speech therapy classes in my elementary school. I had a class a week for several years for... you guessed it... my R's.
 
Run&Gun said:
They had speech therapy classes in my elementary school. I had a class a week for several years for... you guessed it... my R's.
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My throaty R's made me sound too stereotypically Jewish, which didn't play well in the USSR. I, obviously, had to readjust to the American English. After forty years here, I still have a hint of an accent of an uncertain origin. I sounded closer to a Yakov Smirnoff type back in the 80's - he exaggerates his for the comedic effect a little - but have worked at it to sound more like a native American speaker.

Looking at the sounds, one has to relearn pretty much all of them off a Russian diction. On a music thread, I once posted a clip of a very popular (and very cute) Soviet era singer performing the Beatles' "Fool on the hill" in English when that was allowed in 1986 but, because she couldn't control her vowels and digraphs, she sang it as "Full on ze heel".

I even got into a little online scuffle with a very popular Soviet era band vocalist as he did some other Beatles song with a pretty heavy accent. And he did it in the UK for a Beatles based event where the band was a special guest.

https://www.thoughtco.com/sounds-in-english-language-3111166
 
DLD said:
My throaty R's made me sound too stereotypically Jewish, which didn't play well in the USSR. I, obviously, had to readjust to the American English. After forty years here, I still have a hint of an accent of an uncertain origin. I sounded closer to a Yakov Smirnoff type back in the 80's - he exaggerates his for the comedic effect a little - but have worked at it to sound more like a native American speaker.
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Back then, mine were a little closer to this. Lol

killwabbit.jpg

tenor.gif
 
I had also problems with "L", where I was doing a Polish "W". But my parents must have thought, "The poor kid spent enough time at the therapist's office. Woe is him". I think I was five at the time. I worked on my "L's" for the following decade. Oddly enough, it was easier for me to do the English version.

Other sounds were also work in progress. In the summer of 1980 (only 40 years ago!), I was working at a warehouse with other high schoolers/college students. We were talking baseball, where I opined how much I hated the New York Yan-kees. A coworker immediately caught up - he was playing bass in a band, had a good ear - and told me that "n" was a digraph and a different sound than a stand-alone "n".

In Russian, even an American "j" is spelled as "dj", so every John and Jake is of two different letters/sounds. More mental notes to make.

As to "R's", here are my "L's too'.


When I first saw the skit, I didn't get the joke. An American had to explain it to me.
 
Clermond said:
wait. You were working at a warehouse? Before or after your legendary 100m dash run?
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We did a lot of silly stuff there. Played soccer and football using a rolled up piece of foam packing wrapped into shape by a masking tape. Once we played tag - just tossing the foam pack at other players - and one of the guys decided to be clever and move to a lower floor (we were on the 5th) via the fire escape. Otherwise, he would have had to take an elevator and definitely be subjected to some venomous tosses. He swung one of his legs over the wall and was about to swing the other, only to discover that he was in the wrong window. The fire escape was one slot over. And he was this close to taking a leap onto a sidewalk from about seventy feet.
 
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