Cava - cavver or carver?

[StillCoughingandLaughing]

Just been on the phone to my mother, who was waxing lyrical about the lovely ‘cavver’ (Cava) she’s bought to go with Christmas lunch. I’ve always pronounced it ‘carver’, with a soft A, and that’s what I hear more often than not, but she’s not alone in her pronunciation, so I have a nagging doubt I could be wrong. Can I get the views of the MN jury?

YABU = Cavver with a hard A
YANBU = Carver with a soft A

Cah-va

But it should cah-ba

@Hoppinggreen

I am from Yorkshire, I went to visit a friend in London last year and ordered a latte from one of those Artisan places. Wanker Barista said “ do you mean a laarrrrrtay?”. I gave him a small lecture on the meaning and providence of the word latte.

Provenance?!

Neither.

It's Kahva

There are no R's in the word cava.

The reason these threads are a war zone is because most people have absolutely no knowledge of phonetics. The End

I say it like the word car - I don’t pronounce the R in the word “car”. I have a fairly southern English accent. It wouldn’t feel right for meto say ca va as if the a was apple.
I try not to say lah-tay but saying a short a as lattay in an English accent sounds equally silly.
I try not to worry too much - plenty of non-native English speakers don’t pronounce English words correctly e.g. London rather than Lundun but I don’t mind, it’s just an accent.

Fauvist you are correct, unlike bloody auto bloody correct

swphonetics.com/2013/05/08/rhoticitylancslivman/

There are no R's in the word cava.

There’s no R in the word aga either.

@StillCoughingandLaughing

There are no R's in the word cava.

There’s no R in the word aga either.

Who said there were any Rs in aga? Don't tell me you add them there as well 🙄

I can't believe this has gone on for 9 pages LOL!

If people are adding ‘r’ to aga (whether the sound itself in the spoken word, or the letter in the written word or ‘phonetic spelling’) that is incorrect. There is an established convention for phonetic representation of sounds/words.

@DowntonCrabby

I’d say cahvah in my Scottish accent.

Me too, there is no r

(Not commenting on accents being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, btw)

Carver for me OP! No distinction in my accent between an 'a' and 'er' ending - farmer and lava end with the same sound etc.

Soft a and no r sound

Oh, for heaven's sake. When people say they pronounce it like 'car-' they aren't saying there is an 'r' in it, they are saying that they pronounce the first syllable in the same way as they pronounce the word 'car'. They don't sound the letter 'r' in the word 'car', like a huge number of English speakers. Do people really not understand this or they just being obtuse?

*are they just being

Kaa-vuh

@HostaFireAndIce

Oh, for heaven's sake. When people say they pronounce it like 'car-' they aren't saying there is an 'r' in it, they are saying that they pronounce the first syllable in the same way as they pronounce the word 'car'. They don't sound the letter 'r' in the word 'car', like a huge number of English speakers. Do people really not understand this or they just being obtuse?

Then they should use the established convention for pronunciation, which I believe in that case would be ‘ah’ (or whatever the case may be). Not borrow an r from a random other word.

Sorry meant not just borrow an ‘ar’ word to try to illustrate it.

But I suppose part of the problem is that people really don’t use the established dictionary pronunciation guide anymore. Most people probably don’t even know it exists.

It would be easier if they used the established convention, yes, but they're not 'borrowing an r from another word' as I said, they're explaining how they pronounce it i.e. like the word 'car'. They have non-rhotic accents, like the majority of English speakers in England, and don't pronounce the word 'car' with an audible 'r' sound.

Sorry, reading that back, I sounded crosser than I meant to!!

@DowntonCrabby

I’d say cahvah in my Scottish accent.

I suppose part of the problem is that people really don’t use the established dictionary pronunciation guide anymore

And yes, I agree!

I can't say it 2 different ways cos the a would just sound the same, Goodness knows how it would ever sound as if it had a letter r in it