The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread

[Linguoboy]

I've heard fronting but not centralising.

[Zaarin]

Has anyone here heard centralization of /oʊ/ in the Upper Midwest? I notice that my daughter frequently has [əʊ] for it when most people at least close to my age or older here have some sort of allophony between [o] and [oʊ] (e.g. I have [o] except before vowels and sometimes finally, where then I have [oʊ] or even [ou]) with little centralization, even if they frequently centralize /uː/.

I'm not Midwestern, but I have [əʊ] (reduced to, I believe, [ɔ] before a liquid, which is distinct from my THOUGHT vowel which is [ɒ]). My dialect is eclectic (parents from Upstate New York, grew up all over around people from all over) and I'm in my upper 20s. /uː/ is consequently my backmost and most rounded vowel (/ʊ/ is centralized and barely rounded, /ɒ/ is only somewhat rounded).

[bbbosborne]

how do you pronounce mhm?

[mèþru]

[ə̃.h̆ʱə̃] ? I am not sure how to transcript the <m>. Neither a nasalised vowel nor a syllabic nasal seem right.

[Zaarin]

Something like [ʔə̃ˈhm̩]. What Mèþru posted is closer to what I have for uh-uh [ˈə̃ʔə̃(ʔ)] or uh-huh [ˈə̃ˀhə].

[Linguoboy]

[m̩ˈm̥m̩] seems about right for me. (Glottal stops before either syllable are optional.)

[Travis B.]

[m̩ˈm̥m̩] seems about right for me. (Glottal stops before either syllable are optional.)

I seem to have roughly the same pronunciation myself.

[mèþru]

I think syllabic nasals might work better, but it isn't really labial as much as rounded. The second syllable starts with aspiration that becomes breathy voiced and then regularly voiced. My uh-uh and uh-huh are not nasalised.

[Zaarin]

I think syllabic nasals might work better, but it isn't really labial as much as rounded.

Interesting. Mine is completely and conspicuously flat.

The second syllable starts with aspiration that becomes breathy voiced and then regularly voiced. My uh-uh and uh-huh are not nasalised.

Uh-uh is distinctly nasalized and distinctly glottalized for me; uh-huh is faintly glottalized and ambiguously nasalized: I suspect that the nasalized vowel may be in free variation with a non-nasalized vowel--or perhaps even simply glottalized/creaky voiced and not nasalized at all.

[Tropylium]

I'd say a specific melody is the most salient part of mhm, roughly long low-mid in the first syllable, high falling on the second.

[mèþru]

Agreed

[Kuchigakatai]

Yesterday I was with my girlfriend and we were looking at some bonsai when I pointed out that in English bonsai are called "bonsai" using a Japanese word. When she heard me say [ˈbɑnsaɪ], she said that in Japanese people say [boɴsai] with the pitch accent LLHL (low-low-high-low on the four morae) (EDIT: she's corrected me now, as she said it was LLHH, not LLHL). I thought that was interesting because that makes it sound as if there's word-final stress (bon-SAI) to an English-accustomed ear, but then a man that happened to be next to us said, correcting me, "in English we say [boʊnˈzaɪ]".

I thought that was intriguing and didn't say anything further, and yes, dictionary.com does have a variety of pronunciations: [bɑnˈsaɪ bɑnˈzaɪ boʊnˈsaɪ boʊnˈzaɪ ˈbɑnsaɪ ˈbɑnzai]. How do you guys pronounce it? Which pronunciations do you think are more common, and where?

[Pabappa]

"banzai" being a separate word certainly helps popularize the /z/ pronunciations. I say it with s, so /bOnsai/, with O being merged with Q in my dialect.

[Vijay]

I have only ever heard your pronunciation, Ser. (I've never heard anyone talking about this in Japanese, or heard Japanese people talking about it).

[Zaarin]

I say [bɑnˈzaɪ], with /ɑ/ and /z/ and word-final stress. I have never heard /ou/ in bonsai, but I've heard both /s/ and /z/ and initial and final stress.

[Vijay]

Bonzai?

[Zaarin]

Bonzai?

Oops, yeah, I meant bonsai, not Buckaroo Bonzai (what little knowledge of baseball I have comes from DS9 :p ). I've pondered getting into bonsai, but I live in a bad climate for it.

[Nortaneous]

I've only ever heard /"bAnsaj/. Foreign /o/ is usually borrowed as English /Q/, which of course merged in AmE with /A/.

[mèþru]

[bɑnˈsaɪ]
I never actually hear the word ever though
We have the cot-caught merger where I live

[Travis B.]

I pronounce bonsai as [pãːnˈdza(ː)e̯], i.e. /bɑnˈzaɪ/.