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HelpWhy?
in reply to a message by writerALD93
Why is St. John pronounced "sinjin"? It defies modern pronunciation. We do not pronounce "saint" like "sin" or "John" like "jin" in English. I've never heard this pronunciation and it makes absolutely no sense to me, especially coming from a culture that pronounces phonetically "Don Quixote" as "Don Quicks-Oat" and "Don Juan" as "Don Jew-in."
Can someone shed some light on this? Is it from the French pronunciation or something?
Can someone shed some light on this? Is it from the French pronunciation or something?
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oh do we?
I've never heard quicks-oat/jewin
I've never heard quicks-oat/jewin
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I've never heard "Quicks-oat" or "Jew-in" either, but I am American. *shrug*
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Australians say quicks-oat. :/
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I'm speaking of British English, not American English. I don't know where you live, but in America, typically you do hear Spanish pronunciations.
The poem "Don Juan" by Lord Byron uses the pronunciation "jewin." It may be intentional mispronunciation, but it's a famous work of English poetry that uses an incorrect pronunciation.
And as for Don Quixote --
Wikipedia sources the American Heritage Book of English Usage for the sentence: "English speakers generally attempt something close to the modern Spanish pronunciation when saying Quixote/Quijote, as [dɒŋ kiːˈhoʊteɪ], although the traditional English pronunciation /ˈkwɪksət/ or /ˈkwɪksoʊt/ is still frequently used, more in the United Kingdom than in the United States... The traditional English rendering is preserved in the pronunciation of the adjectival form quixotic, i.e., /kwɪkˈsoʊtɨk/."
The poem "Don Juan" by Lord Byron uses the pronunciation "jewin." It may be intentional mispronunciation, but it's a famous work of English poetry that uses an incorrect pronunciation.
And as for Don Quixote --
Wikipedia sources the American Heritage Book of English Usage for the sentence: "English speakers generally attempt something close to the modern Spanish pronunciation when saying Quixote/Quijote, as [dɒŋ kiːˈhoʊteɪ], although the traditional English pronunciation /ˈkwɪksət/ or /ˈkwɪksoʊt/ is still frequently used, more in the United Kingdom than in the United States... The traditional English rendering is preserved in the pronunciation of the adjectival form quixotic, i.e., /kwɪkˈsoʊtɨk/."
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I've never heard of that
I'm British and I've never heard anyone use those pronunciations here.
I'm British and I've never heard anyone use those pronunciations here.
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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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Wow that's really interesting! Never knew that. Thanks
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