Talk:List of shibboleths

Oconomowoc, Wisconsin

A place name that or outsiders is extremely hard to correctly pronounce on the first try, and is therefore a sort of shibboleth in Southeastern Wisconsin. Should it be added? Rebelray384 (talk) 18:57, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Mamluks

Page 186 of A History of the Arabs in the Sudan, the author discusses the use of dak.ik. to help the slaughter of Bedouin by the Mamluks. Not sure what it means or what 'ayn is supposed to sound like, though. -LlywelynII (talk) 11:21, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Shibboleths vs. Regionalisms

A shibboleth must be difficult for the nearly uninimitable by non-native speakers and nearly ubiquitous among natives. The 'Detroit Possesive S' (removed, see Inland Northern American English) is an subtle, easily imitated idiosyncrasy of some urban Germanic and Eastern European speakers in Michigan and Western New York. A shibboleth should actually belie the speaker's origin. Mere characteristics of a dialect belong in that dialect's page. C alan zoppa (talk) 01:12, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Schild & Vriend

At end of the section about "Schild en Vriend" the following sentence appears: The combination of the 's and the g in Gilden would create a gr-facto /sx/ A google search for 'gr-facto' shows little more than this article. Shouldn't it be 'de-facto'? As a native flemish speaker, I can confirm that "Des gilden" or "'s Gilden" will indeed produce the flemish pronounciation of 'sch'. 213.246.227.244 (talk) 04:22, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I changed the "please clarify" tagged wordts in what I think are the coorect English terms according to Dutch_phonology#Consonants KoenNoens (talk) 15:15, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Dutch - German

Whoever wrote this, seems to have never been to the Netherlands or Germany, for neither in the Netherlands nor in Germany all people are blond and blue-eyed - in fact, only very few are. KarlRagnarsson (talk) 21:27, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Removed fundukh part, it needs third-party reference. Zondi 07:48, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

---

In my experience, people who live in Houston, Texas actually pronounce the first syllable like "you". I only know a couple though, so I guess I won't change it just based on that. Tokataro 11:43, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Miami, Oklahoma

Would it be okay to add Miami, Oklahoma, to the list of place name shibboleths? It's pronounced "My-am-uh", as compared to Florida's "My-am-ee", and outsiders often ask me about how to get to "My-am-ee", meaning the OK city. Thanks! Trvsdrlng 01:32, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Newark, DE vs Newark NJ

These two cities with the same name have very different pronounciations. See the article on Newark, Delaware here. 71.166.249.250 13:27, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Shibboleths in Fiction: "unionized"

Since we have established that Asimov was wrong, that chemists use the term "nonionized" or "nonionic" or "deionized", can we really consider this a real Shibboleth? Maybe it should be deleted? Plus, since it was in a nonfiction essay, it isn't really a Shibboleth in Fiction, so doesn't go under that heading anyway.Mmyers1976 (talk)

English Shibboleths

After having spent some time in New Zealand, I've learned that, in fact, either the opposite of the sentence 'Similarly, Australians have the perception that NZers pronounce "six" as Australians pronounce "sex".' is true, or both are true, because New Zealanders say that Australians are the ones who pronounce 'six' (6) as 'sex', so I'm deleting that line until someone else can clear it up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.102.85.53 (talk) 04:51, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Place names- ordering the list

Just an idea, but wouldn't it be neater and easier to read if the place name list was ordered by country, rather than alphabetical order?

I've just been looking through it, and it's very difficult to pick out where each place is. What do you think? KillerKat 18:15, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Additions I made

Statue of Pier Gerlofs Donia, the last "King of all Frisians" known for his legendary strenght and size and the invention of a famous shibboleth

Frisian - Dutch

• Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis; wa't dat net sizze kin, is gjin oprjochte Fries (example^ⓘ) means "Butter, rye bread and green cheese, who cannot say that is not a genuine Frisian" was used by the Frisian Pier Gerlofs Donia during a Frisian rebellion war (1515-1523). Ships whose crew could not pronounce this properly were usually plundered and soldiers who could not where beheaded by Donia himself.

Above is what I made of the original section aswell as the image of the phrases inventor Greate Pier. Just to inform y'all. -The Bold Guy- (talk) 10:05, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

"Hey, Jimmy"

["Hey, Jimmy"] is very difficult for Spanish-speakers to pronounce, as they lack the /h/ and /d͡ʒ/ sounds.

This is nonsense. Most Spanish speakers have no problem with pronouncing, for example, "llantas giran".

SaulPerdomo (talk) 19:44, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The Wire

The reference to "The Wire" concerning NYC gangsters lack of familiarity isn't really a shibboleth. It concerns a lack of familiarity with local culture rather than the inability to pronounce particular sounds. I'm not going to edit the article, but I thought I would bring it to the attention of those who maintain it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.243.131 (talk) 01:00, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Irish

"How now brown cow" can be used to identify Irish accents, it comes out as "Hai nai brine cai" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.156.252.181 (talk) 13:28, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Portishead

Any objections to add this? Most people outside the Bristol (UK) area would *definitely* pronounce the name on the first syllable (just as the accordingly-named band is pronounced in the media). This really makes a good shibboleth candidate methinks. -andy 92.229.185.19 (talk) 22:48, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

iron

What about "iron"? For foreigners, this is most certainly pronounced "i-r@n". But actually, it must be pronounced like "I earn" (this is how the students learn it at primary school :)) Does this qualify for a shibboleth, and if so, where would you suggest to put it in the article? -andy 92.229.185.19 (talk) 22:52, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

We shouldn't just think of examples that could be used as shibboleths but actual documented examples of their use as shibboleth. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:44, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Norfolk, Nebraska

Norfolk, Nebraska is pronounced Nor-fork by the locals and by media in Nebraska, but is often pronounced Nor-folk by outsiders. Would add to list, but can't find good source for it. DandyDan2007 (talk) 22:13, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

...and elsewhere in the world the name is pronounced Nor-f'k (as in England, and as in the street I live in in New Zealand!) Grutness...wha? 23:12, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Barcelona

Is it worth mentioning the common English attempt at pronouncing Barcelona "correctly" as "Barthelona" - a (Spanish/Castillian) pronunciation which (Catalan) people from Barcelona don't normally use? Grutness...wha? 00:51, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

local names in NYS

To the editor(s) of this page: This is my first Wikipedia post, so please bear with me and I hope I do not offend anyone or do anything wrong. Included here are a few local pronounceations for your use (or non-use as you see fit).

In NYS, there are the following distinct pronunciations for local speakers:

Claverack, town in Columbia County, is pronounced Clawv rick with 2 syllables not Clav er ack

Valatie, town in Columbia County, is Val a (long a) sha not Val a tie

For both towns, it is reputed locally to be because the towns are based on old Dutch names, not English names.

Olean in Cattaraugus County is O lee an not O lean like the sympathetic cooking oil with that name.

Chili, a town outside of Rochester (and all Rochester references such as Chili Ave) is pronounced Chi li not Chill ee

In Greene County, Coxsackie is pronounced Cook sock ee, again as a Dutch root. I do not know the official pronunciation of the virus of the same name (if there is in fact a official pronunciation).

Coffee is also a distinguishing word in NY. "Upstate" pronounces it Caw (like law) fee but lower Hudson River Valley extend the "aw" sound like in the word "caught". Hudson River Valley is more of a Boston "a" sound to it.

Greenwich, in the Saratoga area, is pronounced Gren ich, not green wich.

Coeymans, just south of Albany is pronounced "Quee mins"

I can't tell you the exact differences, but there is a geographic difference between "standing on line" and "standing in line". Upstate NY uses "in" to the extent I have heard it while NYC uses "on".

Speaking of NYC and upstate, they differ significantly depending on where you are from. People from NYC refer almost everything north of NYC as "upstate" but people who live "upstate" tend to think of upstate starting somewhere around Dutchess and Orange Counties. Therefore someone living in Yonkers or anywhere in Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam counties are "upstate" to those from NYC and "downstate" for people living north and west of Orange County. There is no clear distiguishing line.

My father is from Vermont. This was distinguishable by certain words. Creek was "crick" Roof and hoof had oo where the oo was different. Some one would have to phone me on this to get the correct pronunciation. I don't know of any other work with quite the same sound. It sort of the like "u" in Luftwaffe, I think.

Outside of the world of pronunciation, the differences between "pop" and "soda" can tell if you are a local or not. For example, western NY is in the "pop" camp while eastern NY uses "soda".

Food can be a tremendous sibboleth. Nationwide, people eat "Buffalo Wings" while people in western New York (where they came from) just eat "wings". People in western New York also eat "Beef of Weck" which is sort of a pot-roast sandwich on a hard roll with caraway seeds and salt on top. Knowing what one is would identify you as being from the Buffalo area.

If anyone would like to convert the pronunciation of the names into the proper symbols, you can email me at wikipedia at morris associates dot us (not dot com)and remove all of the spaces. Send me a phone number and I will call you to give you the correct pronunciations.

I hope I did this right. If not, I apologize in advance.

Morris14779 (talk) 15:12, 20 July 2009 (UTC) Pat M.

In Lebanon, during the Civil War

(so did I read at that time in a newspaper...), Arafat's partisans were obliged by their adversaries (Phalangist militians, if I remember well...) to pronounce the word tomatisha (= "tomato"), and were dispatched if they said tomatisa(curious use of a shibbolet in the word's own fatherland...). Can somebody confirm it ?

In a more agreable domain, let it be known by the numerous english spoken tourists who swarm on our Haute-Savoie snowy slopes that the natives dont pronounce the end of the words ending with "-az". So you must not say, for exemple : "Avoriaz" , but "Avor' " (which means "worth nothing" , speaking of those steep, avalanche-ridden, cow's leg breaking meadows) if you want to shun the queues etc...Hoping to hear you on the snow next winter, truly yours Arapaima (talk) 17:32, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Reply: the Kataeb did in fact use this shibboleth during the 75-76 war but the word tomato is pronouced 'banadoora' by lebanese while palestinians pronounce it 'bandoora' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.135.207.217 (talk) 18:56, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Removed one - not a shibboleth?

I've removed the following from the list fo shibboleths -

• Bartlett and MacDonald are captured near the end of the classic 1963 movie "The Great Escape" by a German officer who wishes them "Good luck." The response "Thank you" identifies them as native English speakers.

IMO, that isn't a shibboleth - it's just absent-mindedly responding in English rather than German. Shibboleths are generally the use of the wrong word, phrase, or pronunciation - not the use of the wrong language. Grutness...wha? 05:29, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

No.

Louisville, Kentucky, US: Most people not from the Louisville area pronounce its name "Loois-ville,"

This article is filled with such utter crap, I just picked a random one and it was wrong. NO ONE in the United States says "LOO-ISS-VILL." And definitely not "most people." If you don't know what you're talking about, go away. 128.211.198.168 (talk) 19:52, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

simplifying

I made many changes like

[[Albany, Georgia|Albany]], [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] → [[Albany, Georgia]]

on the theory that the item of interest is Albany, not Georgia. I also removed "United States" or "U.S." from several entries under the U.S. heading. —Tamfang (talk) 00:29, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

English

I suggest that probably 90% of the section called [English shibboleths...] should be removed as (a) a lot of it doesn't really meet the definition of shibboleth and (b) it's all unreferenced. I propose to start doing so shortly unless there is strong disagreement here. Cheers, Lindsay^Hi 08:37, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

It's been marked since November and nobody's made a move on it. I'd say go for it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 08:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

• It would be more productive to add references for these items. Picking a random example, a quick search for sources indicates that the "fish and chips" distinction between Australian and NZ English is well documented in scholarly sources. I shall add a reference for this case now. Any other disputed cases should be discussed here in detail before removal per our editing policy. Colonel Warden (talk) 09:04, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Catalan - Spanish

The Catalan sentence Setze jutges d'un jutjat mengen fetge d'un penjat [ˈsɛdzə ˈʑudʑəz ðuɲ ʑudˈʑat ˈmeɲʑəɱ ˈfedʑə ðum pəɲˈʑat] ('Sixteen judges of a court eat the liver of a hanged man') was used by the defenders of Barcelona to distinguish the besieging ethnic Spanish [2] (native Castilian speakers) during the War of Spanish Succession (1701–1714). The same device is also mentioned as having been used much earlier, by the 14th century Almogàver mercenaries of the Catalan Company, active in Greece, to distinguish Turks [3] from Catalans. These other groups found it difficult to pronounce the /z/, /ʑ/ and /dʑ/ sounds, so that a Spanish speaker would have pronounced the frase something between [ˈsetsa ˈtʃutʃas dun tʃutˈtʃat ˈmentʃan ˈfetʃa dun penˈtʃat] or [ˈsetsa ˈjutjas dun jutˈjat ˈmenjan ˈfetja dun penˈtjat] Oral tradition has added several different endings to the sentence.

Removed: Both exemples with the popular Catalan tongue-twister are not shibboleths: during War of Spanish Succession (1701–1714), in the assault to Barcelona in 1714 there were in both sides attacking and defending Barcelona catalan speakers, among other languages ("ethnic Spanish"???), the tongue-twister was used as just as the password by Archduke Charles defendant troops. In the second case although common language among Almogàver mercenaries was Catalan or Aragonese, it was old Catalan (which is not the case of the tongue-twister),and there were among its members also of Turkish origin what makes no sense the use of the tongue-twister as a shibboleth. --Panarobledo (talk) 15:31, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Enturbulation

Is 'enturbulate' actually used to tell Scientologists from non-Scientologists, or is it just a word that's rarely used by non-Scientologists? I don't think the latter alone qualifies it for shibbolethness. --scgtrp (talk) 11:18, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Northern Irish alphabet

The article mentions the varying pronunciation of H between Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants, but does not mention the similar variance in how the letter A is pronounced: it's roughly /eɪ/ by most Protestants (the standard English pronunciation) but /ɑː/ by most Catholics. I'm hesitant to just go ahead and add this to the article, though, as it's based on personal experience growing up in Belfast (as a child of a mixed marriage, so it was something I was acutely aware of) rather than properly cited - the best I can find in a minute or two's searching is [1], which is, um, well, a bit American in its origins ...

This really is a shibboleth, incidentally; it wasn't unheard of for people to demand that you say the alphabet in order to work out which denomination you belonged to. While people could fake the "other" forms, the alphabet is ingrained from an early enough age that they generally didn't under pressure, and in any case you normally can't tell Catholics and Protestants apart by sight so you wouldn't know whether to fake or not. Colin Watson (talk) 12:52, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

"Los Feliz" in Los Angeles, USA

This is a well-known shibboleth for distinguishing LA (or at least SoCal) natives from non-natives; it is a well-known major street, but it is pronounced locally as "Los FEE-less" (effectively swapping the vowel sounds and accent in the Spanish word, which would be "feh-LEES"). It should be easy to find a cite for it, but I'm not sure how one determines the IPA characters for the sounds in order to include it in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.23.68.6 (talk) 20:41, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

I grew up a few miles from Hershey, which is also the home of the H.B. Reese company. Growing up, everyone referred to that company's most famous product exactly the way the company itself did in all of its advertising, as "Reese's Peanut Butter Cups," pronouncing the name "REE-SIZ." Years later, when I was working in Hershey-area tourism, I noted that many people from New York and New Jersey called them simply "REE-SEE Cups." Even later, when I moved to Georgia, I found that that pronunciation was common there too. I've since moved back to the Hershey area; just a few weeks ago I was at Hersheypark and heard an employee at an ice cream stand ask a customer if he wanted "Reesee Peesees" as a mix-in. She seemed to know that the words were supposed to rhyme, but "Reesee" had apparently been so ingrained in her that rather than change that she adapted the common noun "pieces" to match. Also... In central PA there is a supermarket chain called Weis Markets. Their broadcast ads clearly pronounce the name exactly like the adjective "wise." But even locals who have heard those ads throughout their lives frequently pronounce the name to rhyme with "ice" or "peace." PurpleChez (talk) 13:13, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Inglorious Bastards

The finger counting is mentioned twice in the article, one entry could go. The first time it (correctly?) identifies a British officer holding up the wrong three fingers in the film specific entry, in the second, finger specific, entry he's identified as American. Could use a tidy up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.49.138.54 (talk) 15:37, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

"Streichholzschächtelchen" and the West Flemish "ch" or /x/ distinction are also in the article twice, once under the Non-English section, and once under the Humorous shibboleths section. Ndanielm (talk) 04:18, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

...and ironically you have failed the shibboleth inherent in the spelling of the movie's title: it's spelled "Inglorious Basterds". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.88.34.191 (talk) 00:03, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Knitting

The German way of Knitting is different to the dutch and Engish way. Can this be considered as a shibboleth? Confer http://www.arte.tv/de/705958,CmC=705966.html A story from the show Karambolage (Arte) 195.49.224.20 (talk) 12:49, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Maori place names starting with Wh-

Some Maori place names in New Zealand that start with Wh- are pronounced as if they were written with an f-. For example, Whakatane is pronounced fa-ka-ta-ne, while Whangarei is pronounced fa-nga-rei. But I believe other Maori place names beginning in Wh- are pronounced as native English speakers might expect. Is there any reliable information about them that could be included here? 169.199.121.2 (talk) 20:15, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Rainier

There are several places with "Rainier" in the name: Mt. Rainier (the mountain, national park, and related locales) in Washington; Mt. Rainier, Maryland; Rainier, Washington; and Rainier, Oregon. There are at least two pronunciations of the word: one in which the first vowel is a long "a" and the first syllable receives at least secondary stress: ray-neer; the other, in which the first syllable is schwaed and receives only minimal stress: ruh-NEER. (As a joke, some might have included a third pronunciation, with three syllables, like the comparative adjective of rainy.) The first one seems to be the most common when locals refer to the town in Oregon; I would assume the same is true for the town in Washington. I'm not sure how the name is most commonly pronounced when it follows "Mount," however. Would any of these make suitable examples of shibboleths?

(As an aside, in advertisements for Rainier Beer that used to be commonly broadcast on TV in the Pacific Northwest, the first pronunciation was always used.) 169.199.121.2 (talk) 20:40, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Italian/Sicilian–French: ciciri

The explanation given is strange. In 12th century French, ciciri should have been pronounced easily. Old French r was identical to Italian, and French chi was the same as Italian ci. Ratzd'mishukribo (talk) 21:05, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Nuclear

I suspect the bit on the British using the pronunciation of "nuclear" as a way to identify an idiot is unfactual and just a slap at GW Bush. Can anyone confirm this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.95.126.178 (talk) 13:45, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Swedish sj-sound

I see no mention of Sj-sound. I have no references, but I have been told that it is used in all Swedish military passwords. It's incredibly difficult for a non-native speaker to learn to pronounce correctly. Even other Scandinavians can't pronounce it correctly. Taxlady (talk) 14:56, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

There is a town near to mine in Scotland called "Kilncadzow" and an area called "Dalziel". Whilst the latter may be known popularly as "DL", the former is known as "Kill Caigy" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.95.144 (talk) 21:08, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

California

Long Beach: People in Southern California emphasize "Long" whereas some people outside of the area or state may (as far as I know) emphasize "Beach".

Huntington Beach: People in Huntington Beach typically drop the "g" whereas some people outside of the area may pronounce the "g". Dan (talk) 16:31, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

US-101: No one would ever say "I-101" or Interstate 101 regardless of where you are from, since it is not an Interstate highway, but a US highway, so maybe an out of towner would say "US-101". Me personally, I'm from the Northeast, so it's 101, or Route 101 (there's a shibboleth in there too, plus an accent since it may be pronounce "rout","root", even "rut" depending on where you are from.) 98.116.24.128 (talk) 01:48, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Asimov's Treasury of Humor

I see that Asimov wrote "e/h" as the answer to the Physicist's question "What's new?" But shouldn't it say "E/h" since ν(Nu) = E/h where E = Energy while e = elementary charge? --82.83.67.154 (talk) 03:05, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Huachuca

We could tell you weren't from around here (Tucson, AZ) if you mispronounced the above word for mountains, a town, and an Army base. It looks like hoo-a-choc-a or hoo-a-chuck-a. It is normally pronounced "(h)wie-choo-ka" (with or without the unvoiced h). It is a Pima Indian place name, so trying to pronounce it in Spanish doesn't work, either. BigMac31 (talk) 20:03, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

criteria

I think most of the examples here are not shibboleths. That a particular place pronounces a word (or their own town) in a particular manner does not mean its a shibboleth. The shibboleth requires it to be used as a filtering mechanism doesnt it? I propose trimming the entries that do not indicate they are used for identifying those who do not belong to a particular group. Gaijin42 (talk) 22:23, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree. This is just a "list of words with different pronunciations", with very few of the entries referenced, and far fewer of the references actually supporting the claim that the entry is indeed a shibboleth. I'll go through the geographic pronunciations and remove all unreferenced ones. I have to disagree with User:TheRedPenOfDoom, though, who repeatedly removed the city of Regina although it at least has some reliable sources for the uncommon pronunciation that even say the pronunciation distinguishes citizens of the United States from Canadians. That's a far cry above the rest of the entries, and I don't really see much of a reason to single out that entry for removal. Huon (talk) 23:40, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

If a place has an idiosyncratic pronunciation of its name, and an outsider fails to use the local pronunciation in the hearing of a local, then it is ipso facto a filtering mechanism.If we were to be very strict about definitions, I suppose we would only permit instances where the correct pronunciation is impossible for the outsider to master, and he is immediately taken out and slain when this is proved, but the shibboleth article itself takes a more expansive view of the definition, especially for American English. Jpbrenna (talk) 03:17, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Scheveningen

Part of this article reads "(see also Scheveningen, later in this section)" - but there's no further reference to it. And I think there should be, under a new heading "Dutch-German", for this is one of the classic wartime shibboleths. German agents masquerading as members of the Dutch resistance in World War II were easily unmasked when made to say "Scheveningse schelvis" (haddock from Scheveningen), which contains three Dutch sounds (two of them twice) that German-speakers are notoriously unable to pronounce correctly: "sch" (in which the "s" and "ch" are sounded separately, unlike in German), "v" (which is partly voiced, unlike in German), and the hard English-sounding "l" (which Germans generally pronounce soft, as in French). If the Dutch had added "met uien en eieren" ("with onions and eggs") they'd have had a cast-iron shibboleth, for the diphthongs "ui" and "ei" are almost invariably mispronounced by German-speakers, who also tend to forget that the final "n" in these words is silent in everyday Dutch speech (again, unlike in German). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.127.210.95 (talk) 16:08, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Nevada's First Syllable?

Can anyone confirm that the state of Nevada (or, indeed, the other places bearing that spelling) use "ih" /nɪˈvædə/ instead of "uh" (schwa) /nəˈvædə/ in the first syllable? I just got done listening to a lot of versions on a newscast, and some have definite schwas and the others I can't really tell. I tend to hear an unstressed "ih" sound in some other words, so I can generally make out a distinction between two types of unstressed sounds, but not here. And "ih" is an odd sound for the letter E, so I'd like confirmation from some other source, preferably one actually schooled in linguistics if possible. Kilyle (talk) 09:00, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't know about Nevada, but [ɪ] isn't so weird for short unstressed e in English, or is it different in American English? I was schooled in British English, and I learnt to pronounce "wanted" as ['wɔntɪd], "the dotted line" as [ðə 'dʌtɪd łain] etc. Even the article "the" as [ðɪ] before a vowel. OTOH, since the name Nevada looks Spanish, maybe it ought to be pronounced [nɛ'vɑːda] ;-) Tonymec (talk) 03:01, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Metro Detroit Place Names

Metro Detroit has several place names similar to the Tchoupitoulas Street example on the main article, such as Schoenherr Road, Dequindre Road, Gratiot Avenue, and Ypsilanti. These are commonly mispronounced by non-locals. Derek (talk) 23:38, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Norwegian pronunciation of "snow"

Many years ago there was a great single frame newspaper comic making fun of the discussion whether "snow" in Norwegian should be written/pronounced "sne" or "snø". It was illustrated by two persons in each others' face shouting angrily, the air filled with "e"s and "ø"s mimicking snowflakes. I can't find it now, but with a bit of context it might be a good addition to this page. l0b0 (talk) 01:35, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Your cartoon was probably making fun of the Norwegian language conflict. There are several different norms of the contemporary Norwegian language, of which two are official, but even the unofficial ones still have their defensors. Let's introduce the main ones, from most to least "Danish-like":

• Riksmål (literally "Kingdom language" or "state language"), unofficial, leans most toward Danish. In this language variety the word for snow is snø or alternately sne.
• Bokmål (literally "book language"), official, still leans somewhat toward Danish, but less so than Riksmål. In this language variety the word for snow is snø.
• Nynorsk (literally "new Norwegian"), official, leans a little more toward the dialects of southwestern Norway than does Bokmål. In this language variety the word for snow is also snø.
• Høgnorsk (literally "High Norwegian"), unofficial, based on Landsmål and pre-1938 Nynorsk.
• Landsmål (literally "country language"), unofficial, the name of Nynorsk until 1929; today, used for a variety of Nynorsk without any of the reforms it underwent since 1929 to bring it closer to Bokmål.

I don't know the word for snow in the latter two. When the "Norwegian language" is mentioned without qualification by non-Norwegian non-linguists, what they mean is usually Bokmål. — Tonymec (talk) 23:39, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Source for the "Detroit" pronunciation?

The claim about the pronunciation of Detroit needs a source, in my opinion. In my experience as a resident, I have only ever heard it pronounced /ˈdi.trɔɪt/ by some AAVE speakers and some white Southerners. The vast majority of non-black residents here pronounce it /dɪ.ˈtrɔɪt/, with word final stress. Honestly, I'd argue most AAVE speakers here say it that way, due to its prevalence in news and music and such. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:B2F0:1800:3829:344D:A753:BA06 (talk) 06:03, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Cairo, Georgia

Not sure where to put this, but the city of Cairo in [Georgia] is pronounced like KAY-row, not KY-roh like the Cairo [in Egypt].

New Zealand Shibboleths

In New Zealand a number of place names could be considered shibboleths regarding race relations.

Places on the list like Te Puke and Waiwera are pronounced differently depending on how accepting one is of Maori pronunciation. Older pronunciations are typically the anglicised version of the word, with newer pronunciations more closely aligning with the Maori pronunciation. The most notable may be Paraparaumu which has the correct pronunciation on its wikipedia page, but that older generations and white people often call "parapram" (para as in paranormal, and pram as in a baby stroller). 130.195.253.36 (talk) 22:16, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

sacramento

dont have a source at the moment, but the city for the city in california. anyone local will call it sac-ra-meno with no T sound, but non locals will actually pronounce the T. where a local will only have 3 syllables, non locals will have 4 because they say men-to instead of meno. Holydiver82 (talk) 22:34, 29 February 2024 (UTC)