To think it's Ter -meric and not Too-meric?

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Listening to the Food Programme this morning about adulteration of herbs and spices, and nearly every one was pronouncing Turmeric as if it didn't have the first "r". Is that right? Have I been saying it wrong for years?

Wikipedia with tju as an alternative suggests chewmeric is a normal and correct pronunciation along with termeric

Why though? On what planet would anyone read the letters tur and pronounce them as chew or tew ? It's tur as in turn.

If you took out the R then by all means say tew meric, but with the R, no way. I'm not having it.

That’s a fair point, was going off the spelling in the title but yes!

‘Ter’ and ‘tur’ sound the same in my accent, but neither would be pronounced ‘too’ or ‘chew’.

Also Wikipedia is not of the arbiter of anything at all.

Actually it’s pronounced like scone

I pronounce it too-meric because that’s how it’s said where I’m from. It just depends on your accent.

Bloody John Torode.

It's not wrong about this though.
Both are correct, neither prevails over the other.

Torode without the r is pronounced turd.

Ha OP. I was also listening to the Food Programme and was annoyed by the tewmeric pronunciation by the presenter. But the dude she was talking to pronounced it correctly (turm-e-ric) to start but I noticed he changed his pronunciation to match the presenters after a couple of minutes. He's a people pleaser that one.

You're getting the entire first syllable wrong - it's not a t/ch problem. It's an "er" sound not an "oo" sound.

This is one of those things where a few high profile people on the telly start saying something wrongly and pretty soon it gathers momentum and then most people are also saying it wrongly, in the mistaken belief that everyone else is right, so they must follow their lead. It's a word most people only ever see written down and rarely need to say out loud. So if they hear a chef saying tewmeric, they assume it must be tewmeric.

The fastest ever Google search tells me the word originates from Latin “terra merita”, so “ter meric” would be the closest.

Chew metic here

Ar Monds

Yog urt

Scone as in gone

You mean like "turret"? Ratehr than like "Turkey"?

No more so than it clearly is for you

Because it's the same sound as "daughter". Like turkey, turn turd etc.

Lorna Miller on BBC Scotland can't say "secretary".

She says "sekker - tree".

I shout at the telly every time she does it.

Nope. Just nope

Wait… surely wasp and wosp are pronounced the same in all accents?

So what's your alternative? I couldn't say it with a u like "turret", because of the "m". So are you saying a short"oo" sound?

Turnip. TUR-nip or TEW-nip?

Mermaid. MER-maid or MEW-maid?

Nursing. NUR-sing or NEW-sing?

Curtain. CUR-tain or CEW-tain?

Purpose. PUR-pose or PEW-pose?

It's TUR-MERIC. It's fucking TUR-MERIC for crying out loud.

I’m sure when I did phonetics and phonology as part of my degree that /j/ represented the sound ‘y’. So yes ‘tyoomeric’.

If they’d wanted to show a representation of ‘chewmeric’ it would be [tʃumərik].

I'd agree with all of that. And that you're saying that the "er" of "mermaid" is the same as the "ur" of "turnip" and of "turmeric".

@TwigletsAndRadishes , it's chewnip. Twiglet is Chwiglet. The Turner Prize is The Chewner Prize. A term is a chewm.

So where are you from that pronounces 'tur' as 'too'? In that case, do you pronounce 'turkey' as tookey'? 'Turtle' as 'tootle'?

It's got nothing to do with accent. Surely it's a mispronounciation that has somehow become acceptable.