Re: rare vs. well-done
- From: Oleg Lego <rat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:56:14 -0600
The Daniel al-Autistiqui entity posted thusly:
On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 16:38:03 -0600, Oleg Lego <rat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
The Pat Durkin entity posted thusly:You see, what I understand is that "culinary" has traditionally been
I waver between "cull" (as in hull), "cool", and "kyool", in addition to
the "pull" vowel that you mention. I don't think that I worry about a
uniform pronunciation. However, if I were to be at a cocktail party,
chatting with a lot of food fanciers, I might listen carefully to their
pronunciation and speak in their dialect. I wouldn't want the food
snobs to interrupt my discussions by telling me "In France they say it
_this_ way."
"cull" for me, and I won't change for anyone, food snobs or otherwise,
and would dig my heels in even further at any suggestion that I should
pronounce it as the French do.
pronounced ['kju:l@,nEri:] (['kju:lI,nEri:]? -- I'm experiencing some
confusion over unstressed [@] and [I] right now), but these days more
and more people are saying ['kVl] for the first syllable, as if the
word were spelled "cullinary". I have even read about people who
start the word exactly like "cool", with no intervening [j].
I have always known it as "cull"-inary, and it has seemed to me that
"cool"-inary (or "kjul"-inary) is the upstart, new-cool way to say it.
I think I have only heard (or noticed) this "oo" pronunciation in the
past 5-10 years or so.
Hmm, maybe my temptation to use [U] is because of the obvious
connection with "cook(ing)".
Same thing with "herbs ('erbs)".
"Herbs" (herbs) , it is. Otherwise, how would I convey the idea of
"herb and garlic " sauce without seeming to speak of city-raised
garlic?
I say ['@rb] (herb) and ['@rb@l] (herbal), though I learned to give
"herbivore" an audible "h". As for your comment about "city-raised
garlic", perhaps you could try and practice the insertion of a glottal
stop, thus emphasizing the "and" and making it unlikely to sound like
"urban"?
I'd rather stick with an audible "h", thanks, as that's the way I
learned the word at mother's knee. For a while, I tried to use 'erb,
but without much success, and I am FAR more comfortable with my native
pronunciation.
And this brings us to "cumin". In this connection, recall the old
rule that an intervocalic consonant sound that is preceded by a
stressed vowel is not usually spelled with a single letter unless the
vowel is long. In practice, this rule has many exceptions for words
with "a", "e", "i", and "o"; but for the vowel "u" it is almost
entirely reliable, although there are a few exceptional words like
"study" that use [V]. "Cumin" has traditionally been an exception as
well, because people pronounced it "cummin" (or "coming" without the
final "g"). However, many people now say "coomin" or "cue-min", and
for them it is regular.
I have always said "coomin", and will not change that, either.
It is interesting to note that, as "cumin" is
becoming regular, "culinary" is joining the class of exceptions. Now
that I think about it, I probably would have settled on the
"CULL-inary" (first syllable rhyming with "dull") pronunciation if it
were not for my self-consciousness of the near-regularity of "long <u>
before single consonant + vowel".
.
- References:
- rare vs. well-done
- From: Daniel al-Autistiqui
- Re: rare vs. well-done
- From: Pat Durkin
- Re: rare vs. well-done
- From: Oleg Lego
- Re: rare vs. well-done
- From: Daniel al-Autistiqui
- rare vs. well-done
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