Pronunciation of Argyll

[TheBrus]

Would anyone be willing to put together a pronunciation guide to common Scottish placenames/surnames? I'm sure it would be a valuable addition to the X Marks Reference Library.

[Holcombe Thomas]

"Would anyone be willing to put together a pronunciation guide to common Scottish placenames/surnames?"

+ 1, with thanks.

[English Bloke]

I love accents and dialect.

EDIT: Don't have time to write a book on it though. Sorry!

[Morris at Heathfield]

Breadalbane seems to give rise to the same sort of pronunciation problem.

Yes, for the longest time I thought it followed the vowel pattern of the word "weathervane". Then at the Campbell clan tent at Arlington I heard someone pronounce it with a vowel pattern like "Godolphin", which makes sense if you think of the original Gaelic form of the name.

Speaking of toponyms, in the last few years I also discovered that my ancestral town of Heathfield in East Sussex is pronounced locally as "Heffle".

[unixken]

Even Chicago gives people problems. Locally we call it shi-KAW-go. The New Yorkers would say shi-KAA-go. But here we'd say new-YORK, and there they say new-YAWK. Boston would say new-YAAK. Gotta love that English silent "R" that so characterizes the East Coast.

Not meaning to hijack the thread, but I've been formulating a theory of U.S. accents.

The New England replacement of the letter "R" with the letter "H" (I pahk my cah), is possibly because 400 years ago, the coast of New England was largely tied to the maritime industries of fishing and whaling. And you can not yell the sound of an "R" from deck to crow's nest... or from ship to ship. Pursed lips don't yell very well. After being at see for years at a time, these sailors come home having developed an accent that they then propagate to their families. Over time the accent moves somewhat inland. So in Boston, we suffer simple letter substitution... an "R" for an "H".

Meanwhile, in the midwest, where I live (and particularly more toward the southern half of Ohio), people tend to introduce the letter "R" where it doesn't belong. They "warsh" their clothes in "warter.", for example. With the insertion of the letter, I realized my previous New England theory was a bust, and that the "R" just migrated west with the settlers (and since nature abhors a vacuum, the New England "H" stepped up to fill the void.)

Years ago in the service, I was apartment hunting in northeast North Carolina. Talking with my future land-lady, I'd been asking what the rent and utilities and so on usually cost in the area, and then she asked if I had any pay-ettes. I assumed she was asking for payroll advices or other proof of income, until she re-phrased the question... "Do you have any cay-etts or daw-ugs?" So... not satisfied with single-letter substitutions, or single-letter insertions, southerners ("suthuhnuhs") tend to go all out, adding whole syllables, and hyphenating what are normally single-syllable words. (Is the plural of "y'all" really "all y'all"?)

As I come to live in other parts of the country, my theory will evolve.

I hope this didn't digress too far off the beaten path. If it's any help, I grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts (pronounced "Quin-Zee"), not to be confused with Quincy ("Quince-See"), Illinois (Illi-Noy).

[OC Richard]

American English doesn't have many words in which the last syllable is stressed, as in the case of Argyll.

Gaelic nearly always has the stress on the first syllable of two-syllable words. The stress is on the second syllable of Argyll because it's not a Gaelic word, it's two Gaelic words.

In these compound names the stress is often on the second word.

English likewise nearly always has the stress on the first syllable of two-syllable words, except in the case of borrowed words, and they eventually "go native".

Americans tend to pronounce words borrowed from French closer to the French original than the English do, putting the stress on the second syllable cf US garAGE (with the French soft "g") v English GARRidge, US baLAY v English BALee, US bufFAY v English BUFFee etc etc.

(I was at a loss when, in a Glasgow restaurant, the waiter asked me if I would like the "buffy". He had to point to the word on the menu for me to get the notion that he was talking about the buffet.)

[OC Richard]

The New England replacement of the letter "R" with the letter "H" (I pahk my cah)

Actually the reason is because those areas were originally settled by people from places in England where final "r" had never been pronounced. Some of those people also settled in the South, which is why some Southern accents likewise have no final "r". (Most of southeastern England was non-rhotic, and these people brought their non-rhotic speech to the colonies. Southwest England, on the other hand, had accents with strong final "r" and it was these people who brought the rhotic speech to the colonies.)

Here's the accent from southwestern England, the "west country accent", where you can clearly hear the strong final "r". It's worth a listen! Because most of the time the English accents we're exposed to are the non-r ones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruCG8HGRKR0&feature=fvst

Here's the Wikipedia article which describes the division in English all over the world between rhotic and non-rhotic speech

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_...rhotic_accents

If you're interested in all this stuff I highly recommed the book Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer in which he traces regional US accents, food styles, approaches to family, religion, etc etc back to four mass migrations from various parts of Britain to various parts of the USA in the 17th century.

[SeumasA]

Is the plural of "y'all" really "all y'all"?

In some places it's "you 'uns"

Gaelic nearly always has the stress on the first syllable of two-syllable words. The stress is on the second syllable of Argyll because it's not a Gaelic word, it's two Gaelic words.

In these compound names the stress is often on the second word.

The other one we really noticed on our trip was InverNESS. We had always stressed the first syllable.

[Mike_Oettle]

Ken, your frustration over the town of Versailles (Ver-sails!) chimes with mine over the street names in a part of Port Elizabeth named Lorraine – the place was developed following the First World War, and the developers were asked to use names that recalled battlefields and other places associated with the Western Front.
Verdun Road is hardly ever pronounced the French way, while Longwy Avenue (where my daughter lives) has transformed into Longway Avenue.
My daughter talks of Mont-meedy Road, even though I have pointed out that it is Montmédy.
Lunéville Road, while rarely spelt with an accent on the E, is (surprisingly) usually pronounced correctly (although it sometimes comes out as Loon-ville).
A crime committed in Rennes Road last month had the police talking about Ren-ness.
I shudder to think what the residents make of Vosges Avenue, Arras and Versailles roads, Ardennes Drive, Le Havre Close or Besançon Road.
Lyon Crescent is, I am almost sure, known as Lion Crescent.
But leaving this assemblage of oddities aside, I am most grateful to those knowledgeable members for their helpful tips on Scottish placenames.
Regards,
Mike

[ThistleDown]

The other one we really noticed on our trip was InverNESS. We had always stressed the first syllable.

We hear that pronounciation often, so not to worry, Seamas. In fact Inverness is two words combined, not three syllables, and means the mouth of the Ness. Actually it's the pouring out of waters, more than "mouth", but mouth is close enough as long as you don't think "delta". Aber has the same meaning in Brithonic, so you will see both used, the former mostly in the North and the latter in the South. Think of saying the "mouth of the Ness" with emphasis on the first word. It will come out MOUTHoftheness and you will immediately hear the error. Try it with other Inver and Aber names: Inverary, Aberfeldy, Invercauld, Abertarff, and so on. Don't lay a big heavy on the second word, just a tad more emphasis is good enough.