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HelpRe: oh do we?
in reply to a message by Alix
The fashion for using "authentic" pronunciations for originally foreign names is a recent one. Browning could and did rhyme 'Calais' with 'malice' quite comfortably, and Maria was Ma RYE a until the end of the 19th century, more or less. Peking has only recently become Beijing.
As for Saintjohn, aka Sinjin, think about saints and churches. In British English certainly, one would worship at Sin Thomas's, though not on Sin Valentine's Day. As a ln, and later a fn, the emphasis in Saintjohn is on the first syllable, leaving the second one unstressed; instead of the usual schwa (upside-down e neutral vowel), as we would expect for a middle-to-low vowel, the influence of the i in the stressed syllable raises the schwa to an i.
QED?
As for Saintjohn, aka Sinjin, think about saints and churches. In British English certainly, one would worship at Sin Thomas's, though not on Sin Valentine's Day. As a ln, and later a fn, the emphasis in Saintjohn is on the first syllable, leaving the second one unstressed; instead of the usual schwa (upside-down e neutral vowel), as we would expect for a middle-to-low vowel, the influence of the i in the stressed syllable raises the schwa to an i.
QED?
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interesting
sort of reminds me of a phenomenon surrounding the name of a town near where I live. The town is named Lafayette, which should be correctly pronounced something like la-fye-ETT, but which is pronounced by the natives phonetically, La-FAY-it. (I live in the south and we turn our e's to i's all the time.) The thing is, I live in Alabama, and almost everyone in Lafayette has a really strong accent; almost always when you hear FAY-it, it is actually just Fett stretched out and twanged by the dialect. So those of us without strong southern accents calmly and automatically correct the phonetic La-FAY-it to La-FETT.
So we're actually pretty wrong!
Anyway.
I had a teach in HS surnamed St. John and everyone just said Saint John. Sinjin wouldn't have occurred to me before I was a namenerd
In general I think it's pretty OK to adopt names into your own language rules.
sort of reminds me of a phenomenon surrounding the name of a town near where I live. The town is named Lafayette, which should be correctly pronounced something like la-fye-ETT, but which is pronounced by the natives phonetically, La-FAY-it. (I live in the south and we turn our e's to i's all the time.) The thing is, I live in Alabama, and almost everyone in Lafayette has a really strong accent; almost always when you hear FAY-it, it is actually just Fett stretched out and twanged by the dialect. So those of us without strong southern accents calmly and automatically correct the phonetic La-FAY-it to La-FETT.
So we're actually pretty wrong!
Anyway.
I had a teach in HS surnamed St. John and everyone just said Saint John. Sinjin wouldn't have occurred to me before I was a namenerd
In general I think it's pretty OK to adopt names into your own language rules.
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Interesting. In the town of Lafayette, California, it is always pronounced "la-fay-ETT" or "la-fee-ETT".
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