about people who pronounce cayenne "kye-ann"

[GrandTheftQuarto]

They should all be shot.

See also: chewmeric, cardamon, and cummin.

Yes I know this is unreasonable. Especially for cummin.

Oh yeah, definitely crew-dye-ts. [classy]

In honour of the thread, I am eating hoooomooooz and crewdytes for lunch. No proshecco, sadly.

I thought this was a baby name thread

FWIW, scone, they're homophones for me.

bringme - oh, no, it's 'graaaf' here.

Is medieval 'med-evil' or 'med-e-aval'? I say the first, but lots of people say it the other way. My mum would still spell it medieaval (and has corrected me gently on this point).

I know someone who says 'wike-werka' for 'vice versa'. Tosser.

@ Gautami

I drank so much Proshecco last night I have a meegraine :(

My mum would still spell it medieaval (and has corrected me gently on this point).

::cough:: mediaeval ::cough::

Medieval is surely pronounced med-ee-ee-vul or med-yee-vul if you're quick.

Ha LLJ4. Regardless of spelling, pretty sure it is still meddi-eeval. You are correct. I always preferred the 'media' spelling as an undergraduate. (Not had much call for writing it since).

Thanks, LLJ. All I know is, the way she does it has too many letters in! I think strictly it's an ae joined together.

I don't like 'med-yee-vul' - where does the 'y' sound come from?

I would pronounce it med-ee-evil. It doesn't come up often in conversation though.

It does for me. I'm a medievalist.

Thanks, Jeanne and everyone else who answered. As much time as I spend playing amateur linguist, I was not aware that the "wine/whine" merge was so predominant. It seems that the majority of English speakers merge the sounds, with the main exceptions being people from the US South, Scotland, and Ireland.

I say "med-evil," but in my accent the "med" sounds more like "mid."

Ahhh, that might explain it, as lots of my colleagues are American and I could well have picked up their pronunciation.

I like playing amateur linguist too. And I'm always fascinated by what you say about US language.

And then there's "renaissance." When I was a student in the UK many years ago, I really tried to avoid having to deal with the difference in US and British pronunciation of this word, but that proved a bit difficult in that I was studying early modern European history.

I am fine with REN-assonse and Re-NE-sanse.

Though the former does make me think of fairs rather than history.

I have a friend who really loves BASMATI vinegar on her salad.

(A bit beside the point of this thread, but never fails to make me chuckle!)

That reminds me, my DM uses bal-SARM-ic vinegar while I use ball-SAM-ic.

-yee- comes from an elision of -ee-ee-. Linguists use the letter [i] for both the y and the ee.

And yes it is a squished ae which doesn't show on my phone unless I download another keyboard and probably wouldn't work anyway.

I do little medieval now (and that's how I prefer to spell it) but the first half of my degree had Mediaeval in the title so as you can imagine I've typed and written it many times!

Oh, ok, I can see the i sound, I was thinking of a hard 'y' for some reason.

I'm not objecting to the spelling at all - just don't think it's the only one, and I suspect I partly say it 'short' because I spell it short.

MrsK - I know someone who says 'barzaaamic'. She thinks it's very the posh way.

DH's presence reminds me he says oll-monds instead of ah-monds.

I used to know someone who said "wallah" after things. Baffled me a lot until I realised she meant "voila".

And I still snurk at the (well educated, professional) mum who always referred to those big useful squares of cloth as "muslims". I thought she was being funny, but no. She asked me once to pass her one, I handed it over with the words "allahu akhbar", and I got the tumbleweed response.

Saying wallah is okay by me - it sounds like that to me sometimes when French people say it anyway. French pronunciation is weird. I once completely confused a waitress by only slightly gurgling at the end of biere. She said, "Ah, bieeerrrcccrccccrrrccccchgcgggcchre!" Spelling voila as wallah or wa-lah or whatever (other than on pronunciation threads) should, of course, be a capital offence

How about curcumin?
Kur-cumin or kur-su-min?

Cartoon?

Car-toon or car-tune?