How would you pronounce Dahlia?

[Whatsinagirlsname]

I love this as a girl's name, but in pronunciation I prefer "Dar Lee uh" to "Day Lee uh". Do you think this would cause too much confusion?

surely they know you don't actually write it down with an R?

You do when writing a pronunciation of something that sounds like car/far/bar/tar etc in your accent.

But the addition of an R that isn't meant to be pronounced is confusing for many of us

So, bawl and ball sound the same in my accent. Doll doesn't quite rhyme with ball, but, what I actually said was doll and ball for example sound a lot closer than ball and pal. Not that they are exactly the same sound.

So I'll try again ; Dahlia, unless pronounced daylia, rhymes more with ball-ee-a than pal-ee-a in a SE English accent. In an Irish accent it would be the other way round.

If you want to have it pronounced universally with an R sound then make up a new name with an R in it.
While some people may pronounce/hear Day and Dar the same, a load of people won't and your child will be driven mad (and maybe you too) with her name being pronounced without an R.

To answer your question on pronunciation - for me the pronunciation is the same as the flower - Day-lee-ah

Fullmoons

But the addition of an R that isn't meant to be pronounced is confusing for many of us

But apparently you should just know that the addition of the r actually means something completely different than an r sound 😂.

Never mind that half of the British isles wouldn't naturally know that an r means... no r.

This alone would only be a bit amusing to me, except that people took the hump that anyone questioned it 🤦. You MUST be making it up. Everyone knows an r means no r. Um... They really don't. Where I'm from we all pronounce rs. Regardless of class etc. It wouldn't occur to most people there that the dar sound is anything but darrr. It's really odd that people cannot wrap their heads round that.

It's fine to have a discussion about different pronunciations and I quite enjoy it, but it's another thing altogether when people say "you MUST know" when some people clearly don't. I assume all the people saying that have SE English accents as well.

I can't imagine how this thread would have gone if I'd said "how would you pronounce the name Tiger? Taidgh-er or t-aoi-ger?" and then acted incredulous when non Irish speakers didn't know what I was on about 😂😂😂.

I think, based on these types of threads, the best thing to do when you see a "phonetic" pronunciation that doesn't make sense to you, is to assume that the poster is writing in a different accent to yours.

eg. in another thread, someone wrote that Maisie and Maisay sound the same to them, while they sound pretty different to me. I just assumed they must have a different accent to me. Based on accents I've heard on TV, probably a Scottish one.

These kind of threads that keep cropping up make me wonder if we in England hear more Scottish and N. Irish accents on TV than vice versa, making us more familiar with them and more aware of accent differences. Which is surprising, because I always thought the London-focus of the media in the UK would make it the other way round, and there is a stereotype (probably true in other respects) that English people are oblivious to the other countries in the UK.

Dahlia, unless pronounced daylia, rhymes more with ball-ee-a than pal-ee-a in a SE English accent

Hahah, you're gonna hate me, but for me (SE England) it rhymes more with how I say pal than with how I say ball. However, I have an Essex-type SE accent. In a formal RP accent (like the Queen's accent), it would definitely be more like ball.

I think most people do assume what you do ivy. Most people got what the op meant, including me (Irish). But some didn't and asked for clarification, which is really fair enough. Can't people ask? I wouldn't take the hump I you couldn't pronounce Aoife and asked for clarification.

Then others (English) said "I don't see how there is any difference between dar and dah", suggesting that despite all the Irish and Scottish accents they hear in the media, at least some English people also can't imagine accents other than their own, even after it's been discussed on the thread, or "I hate these disengenuous comments asking where the r came from. You all MUST know what she means".

These kind of threads that keep cropping up make me wonder if we in England hear more Scottish and N. Irish accents on TV than vice versa

No, we hear plenty of English accents, don't worry.

It has been explained why it's confusing to a rhotic speaker. I do think there is a difference when it's a consonant as well, as there's a bit more variation in the pronunciation of vowels.

I know what a Liverpool accent (for example) sounds like, and I can recognise it when I hear it. However, I don't consciously think about the mechanics of the accent and what specific features cause it to sound different to my accent. I don't pre-empt a Liverpudlian writing down a word with added consonants, or try to read a thread in a Liverpool accent instead of my own. I'm amazed some posters don't seem to get that.

Day-lia or Dar-lia

These kind of threads that keep cropping up make me wonder if we in England hear more Scottish and N. Irish accents on TV than vice versa, making us more familiar with them and more aware of accent differences.

Seems unlikely! There's obviously a lot of American accents on tv and in films though - and American accents are almost always rhotic.

I don't pre-empt a Liverpudlian writing down a word with added consonants, or try to read a thread in a Liverpool accent instead of my own. I'm amazed some posters don't seem to get that.

I do get that it's probably not something most people would think about until something like this thread crops up. They do seem to crop up on MN a lot though! I probably think about these things a lot more than your average person as I'm a linguist. It just always surprises me how indignant people can be about perfectly correct ways of pronouncing things in an accent other than their own.

@Sakura7 Fair enough, I genuinely do think about these things, but I get that I'm weird like that and definitely in the minority (I find accents/language interesting generally, so that's probably why).

It would make sense if each of us, when writing phonetically in comments, also wrote where we're from/what our accent is. Even then, I'm not sure it would stem the inevitable tide of "why do you put an R there if you don't pronounce the R"/ "why don't you realise that the R shouldn't be pronounced". Some things on Mumsnet are eternal, and this argument seems to be one of them.

I got told off my a posh old lady for calling the flowers Darlias not Daylias so the latter may well be correct but definitely open for confusion!

No, I don't think you're weird or in the minority IV. Most people got what the op meant, including Irish people like me. But some didn't and asked for clarification which pissed some RP English speakers right off for some reason.

You do when writing a pronunciation of something that sounds like car/far/bar/tar etc in your accent.

That's because they are actually spelt like that

Just like adding an E to the word man makes it mane - you don't pronounce the E but it changes the preceding vowel sound. No becomes nor. Co becomes cor. Adding an R to Da makes it a decidedly long-sounding vowel

Im pretty sure no one is taught this in school.

Just like adding an E to the word man makes it mane - you don't pronounce the E but it changes the preceding vowel sound.

Yes, this is a general rule. Foreign learners of English learn this rule, regardless of accent!

Adding an R to Da makes it a decidedly long-sounding vowel

No, it doesn't necessarily nor is it taught to English learners!

Daylia like the flower.

@Drogosnextwife That's a shame. The "magic e" was one of the few English language-related things we were taught in primary school. I'm in southern England, so it was definitely taught in some schools here, at least.

We weren't taught about the letter R in different accents, but maybe we should have been.

@Fullmoons it does in many non-rhotic accents, which is what I was responding to (someone asked). I know it doesn't do that in most accents. I'm not sure where that bit about it being taught in schools or not has come from, tbh, as it wasn't something I mentioned at all.

IV

I think drogo meant that the E thing is taught but the r thing is not.

The r thing is not taught because it is not a universal rule in the English language, even in England . If we had to teach children all the various pronunciations for the whole country and beyond, then it would take a very long time.

Ah right. I was trying to find a parallel to help explain silent letters and thought the silent e thing worked well. I wasn't suggesting any of it is taught in schools or anywhere else. Sorry if I confused you at all, Drogo.

I was joking about the R thing, Fatkins. Although, now we're on to the subject of schools, I do think it would do Brits good if English language was taught more thoroughly here.

You're not wrong! English is not taught as well as it could be here, based on what I'm told by my English husband and his family. It is such a shame. My English teachers were all excellent, but I think that could be down to luck and the fact that some of my education was at a private school with teeny class sizes, rather than that English teaching is generally better in Ireland.

Bugger me, 7 pages????
Quite obviously DAY LEE A

Job done 😁