Thalia or Cadence

[FannyTheFlamingo]

These are my 2 new favourites. What does everyone think? How would you pronounce Thalia?

Or the name of an Apprentice team.

I pronounce Ghana the same as 'garner'.

I know two Thalias. I'd never heard the name before, I thought they were saying Nathalia. And then another came along. Both pronounce it Th not T.

are not talking about ghost. We are talking about the H in Thalia and Ghana not indicating an R sound further into the word.

Nope I didn’t say that the h always indicates an ar or ah sound. What I said was that Thalia followed the pattern of ghastly and Ghana.

How? How can you make a second letter turn into a completely different third letter

The same way H in ghastly turns gastly to garstly. And Gana to Garna in Ghana. Assuming you don’t have a northern accent

RP. Explanation for incorrect use of the English language.

Or as wiki defines it: ‘RP is the accent of standard English in the UK’

You are are one who thought that Talia and Thalia would be pronounced the same.

You are are one who thought that Talia and Thalia would be pronounced the same.

Actually what I said re Thalia and Talia was to drop the needless H. The H makes the name look clumsy. I didn't mention the pronunciation until it was suggested that the H gave the word an R sound later on. It doesn't. RP is not an excuse for making up the way the English language works. Some letters DO change the sounds of words, but sticking an H in 2nd place does not give an R in 3rd place.

Or as wiki defines it: ‘RP is the accent of standard English in the UK

Not the UK. The south of England.

If she goes for Talia then I'd pronounce is tally-ah instead.

citybzg IVfly I don't understand your point either. If it's silent there is no need to add it to a word. Ever. But when we are talking about a spoken word I don't see how adding a silent letter is relevant.

I'm not saying it's universally correct, or that non-rhotic (=R-less) accents are better or worse than rhotic (=R-pronouncing) accents - in fact no accent or dialect is more or less valid than any other. I'm just explaining where the people who were adding Rs are coming from, as it was clearly confusing you.

Most people think in their own accents, so that's how it comes about that R-less people might end up adding silent Rs to make the specific vowel sounds they want. To a non-rhotic speaker, "Tar" for Talia might be more obvious in its pronunciation than, say "Taa" or "Tah". That's all. You did ask. It's just an explanation of where it's coming from, it's not an endorsement.

When I see Cadence, I'm subconsciously thinking Condensed milk...

I'd pronounce Thalia as Thar-lee-ah.

Candace yes, cadence NOT:

en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cadence

Would you call Thailand, Thighland? And the Thames Thems?

It is perfectly correct to pronounce Thalia with a "th" sound, as several people have pointed out on this thread. The Greek mythological Thalia is pronounced with a "th".

As an aside, do you pronounce Nathaniel as "Nay-tan" or Athena as "Ateena"? Don't think so.

Nathan*

The Greek Thalia at school was definitely pronounced with a TH. don't know why some people can't accept this. So much nicer that way I think.

Ar and ah sound the same.

No, they don't. They may do in RP but that's not how it is pronounced in my accent, which is just as correct as RP. AR and AH have very different sounds to my ear.

Anyway OP, I don't really like Cadence but I do like Candace. Thalia/Talia I'm not gone on, I find the Th in Thalia a bit hissy sounding and Talia isn't particularly doing it for me, either.

Not the UK. The south of England.

Read it again, that’s not wiki’s definition.

I don’t agree with OED in the sense that RP isn’t south specific, it’s actually spoken across the country including the north. It’s simply more common in the south. There are other accents in the south.

Morevoer when foreigners learn UK English, as opposed to US English etc, they learn RP pronunciation.

Actually I think Cadence is quite nice- shortened to Caidy!

RP is the standard in the uk - there may be less posh / mc people up north though. lots of people from wales / Scotland do speak RP, but they are the posher sort!

Actually what I said re Thalia and Talia was to drop the needless H. The H makes the name look clumsy. I didn't mention the pronunciation until it was suggested that the H gave the word an R sound later on. It doesn't. RP is not an excuse for making up the way the English language works. Some letters DO change the sounds of words, but sticking an H in 2nd place does not give an R in 3rd place.

Im not the one who’s making up how language works.

First you wanted to drop the H because you hadn’t grasped that Thalia wasn’t pronounced the same as Talia (as in apple). Secondly you also hadn’t grasped that the H is due to the etymological derivation from the Ancient Greek Thalia in which comes from the word thallein. You can’t just drop letters because you don’t like the look of them.

You keep making the same mistake that I claimed the H indicated an R sound as a general rule - which I never said - I have told you that before and you keep repeating the same nonsense.

I simply said that in this case the h indicates an ah sound as in ghastly or Ghana. I could also add gharry which is the English rendering of the Hindi word gari and it is pronounced gahry. And ghazi which is the English rendering of the Arabic word gazi, pronounced gahzy.

Cadence is a musical term. I've never heard of it as a name. Would sound very odd IMO.

Good afternoon

I love the fact that the two groups on here arguing are both correct. It's simply a difference in accent. To me "ar" is the easiest way of writing the sound "aaahhhh". For me, the r lengthens the a. I don't pronounce the r in car, tar, bar etc which gives me the model of "ar = aahhh". Similarly, shorn rhymes with pawn in my accent. I try when on MN to use aaaaahhhh, not ar as I recognise that while I'm in the majority in my rl, on MN the split is fairly even.

Nobody is adding a vocalised r to any of these words, merely using the r to lengthen the vowel.

Regardless, I dislike both names

It is perfectly correct to pronounce Thalia with a "th" sound, as several people have pointed out on this thread. The Greek mythological Thalia is pronounced with a "th".

To be completely fair I was pointing out that Th isn’t automomatically ‘the’ in English. Some words have a silent H. Either with T or with G.

There’s a much stronger argument for pronouncing Thalia with a ‘th’, because of its AG etymology, than there’s is for pronouncing it Talia as in apple.

On another thread yesterday I was noting how AG Chrysos meaning ‘gold’, gave the name Chrysiida which became Cressida in English. I think it was probably originally pronounced more like CrisEEDa than CRESSida.

But as no-one knows exactly how Ancient Greek was pronounced it’s a bit moot.

Regardless, I dislike both names

Funnily enough, so do I.

I simply dislike Cadence more as it reminds me of music theory.

Tatiana same re cadence. Having flashbacks to
Perfect, imperfect, interrupted and plagal.