pəˈrʊːdʒə?

I’ve just come back from a short trip to the Italian region of Umbria (pronounced ˈumbɾia in Italian but ˈʌmbriə in English), where I visited some very interesting towns: Spoleto, with its majestic cathedral of S. Maria Assunta; Deruta, known for its ceramics, which are exported worldwide; San Gemini, famous for its mineral waters; and Perugia, the capital city of the region.

On my way home yesterday, I started wondering how many pronunciations of Perugia are possible in RP. Well, apart from the very common pəˈruːdʒə, other variants include pɪˈruːdʒə, pe-, -ˈruːdʒiə, even pəˈruːdʒɑː (GenAm), according to EPD – even though that sounds quite odd to me!

But what about pəˈrʊːdʒə? This transcription is obviously wrong, although it’s what you find in both the Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation (2006, p.294) and the Oxford Dictionary of English (2006, 2^nd edition, p.1316). Take a look at these entries below:

Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation

Oxford Dictionary of English

Black or white ice?

Here we go again! I've spotted another howler in my English-Italian Italian-English 2010 Hazon Garzanti Dictionary (cf. my blog for the 20th of November).
Having to check the exact translation into Italian of the English compound black ice, I opened my dictionary and looked it up in there. Much to my surprise, I found that the phonemic transcription the authors offer for this expression is ˈblækaɪs. But this is obviously wrong! The correct stress pattern in English is ˌblæk ˈaɪs, with main stress on the final element, NOT on the initial one.

The expression black ice refers to ice in a thin layer on the surface of a road. While not truly black, it is virtually transparent, allowing black asphalt roadways to be seen through it.

The late stress on the compound noun highlights the fact that we are NOT talking about 'ice that is black' (I haven't seen any yet!), rather that black ice is just a particular type of ice that is to be found on the surface of roads in frosty weather - a topical issue in this part of the world, I would say.

The double stress on black ice is similar to the one you get in such words as black board or black bird:
1) a ˈblackboard is a particular board with a dark smooth surface, used in schools for writing on with chalk; a ˈblack ˈboard is just a board which is black.
2) a ˈblackbird is a common American and European bird, the male of which is completely black; a ˈblack ˈbird is just a bird that is black.

Does anyone in the English-speaking world pronounce black ice front-stressed? Please, let me know. I'm really curious!

Christmas in Tarquinia

Christmas is coming up soon and Tarquinia, the town I live in in Italy, is getting ready for the celebration of the coming of Christ. This year on Boxing Day, about 300 performers dressed in period costume will parade through its cobblestone streets, re-enacting the miraculous event. Tarquinia will then be transformed into a first century AD scene of little Bethlehem, with wooden benches, straw, wooden carriages, open-air markets of goods and livestock, antique inns and all the traditional accoutrements of a time past.

On the 6th of January, then, citizens dressed as the Magi accompanied by real camels will walk through the streets leading to the crib where the baby Jesus lays in swaddling clothes.

If you want to know more about the Tarquinia Live Crib, you can visit this website. Here you'll find a lot of pictures and a nice video of the past Christmas events organised by my brother in our fascinating Etruscan town.

The arrival of the festive season made me think of the origins and pronunciation of the term Christmas. According to my Oxford Dictionary of English (2005, 2nd edition), Christmas is derived from the Old English Crīstes mæsse, with mæsse probably coming from ecclesiastical Latin missa, from Latin miss- 'dismissed', from mittere, perhaps from the last words of the service Ite, missa est, 'Go, it is the dismissal'.
From a phonetic point of view, Christmas is obviously pronounced ˈkrɪsməs,ˈkrɪzməs (sometimes ˈkrɪstməs in very careful speech), with its suffix always reduced to a schwa. So from the Old English strong-vowelled mæsse we get a suffix -mas (meaning 'a holiday, a sacred day') which is characterised by the weak centralised ə. This is a tendency typical of all unstressed vowels in English when they passed from Old English to Modern English. As Cruttenden in his Gimson's Pronunciation of English (2008, p.66) put it,

"OE [=Old English] is sometimes called the period of full endings, e.g. stanas was realized as [ˈstɑːnɑs]; ME [=Middle English], the period of levelled endings (when vowels in endings were all levelled to [ə]), when stones was pronounced [ˈstɔːnəs]; and eModE [=early Modern English] onwards, the period of lost endings, when stones is [ˈstoːnz] or later [ˈstəʊnz]. The general tendency has been for all unaccented vowels to shorten (if long) and to gravitate towards the weak centralized vowels [ɪ] or [ə], or sometimes [ʊ], if not to disappear altogether. This fact accounts for the high frequency of occurrence of [ɪ] and [ə] in PresE [=Present-day English] and for the complete elision of many vowels in unaccented syllables in rapid colloquial speech, e.g. suppose [spəʊz], probably [prɒbblɪ]."

So Christmas is ˈkrɪsməs today, never *ˈkrɪsmæs (or *ˈkrɪsmas, as many EFL learners wrongly pronounce it). But what about the word Candlemas, the name of the Christian festival held on the 2nd of February to commemorate the purification of the Virgin Mary and the presentation of Christ in the Temple? Is it ˈkændlməs, on the pattern of ˈkrɪsməs, or ˈkændlmæs, with a strong-vowelled suffix? Well, LPD3 has both but it prioritises the pronunciation with -mæs. So does the ODP (2003), specifying though that ˈkændlməs is the established variant in General American. The Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation (2006) only acknowledges ˈkændlmæs, whereas the Cambridge EPD (2006) has both pronunciations but prioritises the one with the schwa.
And here's my question: why do we get two pronunciations for Candlemas and only one possible for Christmas when these words can both be analysed as STEM + -mas? I suppose one reason could be because Christmas is by far more common than Candlemas and so people have internalized the pronunciation with the weak-vowelled suffix. Candlemas, on the other hand, being less frequent in people's vocabulary or indeed non-existent in some individuals' mental lexicon, tends to be said the way it is spelt. So we (sometimes) get a spelling pronunciation in Candlemas but we keep the more "traditional" (and expected?) one in Christmas.

In English there are another four words (maybe more?) suffixed with -mas: Childermas, Hallowmas (or Hallowmass), Martinmas, and Michaelmas. (For more on the meanings of these terms, click here.) How are they pronounced? Are they like Christmas or like Candlemas? Well, I have to say I fluctuate between -məs and -mæs in all of them, except in Michaelmas which for me is always ˈmɪkəlməs. Is it the same for you?

To administer or not to administer?

Last week I attended an introductory lecture given by a colleague of mine on how best to do medical research in English. The lecture was part of a course entitled "English for Researchers in the Medical Profession" on which I co-teach with a couple of other lecturers.

Friday's talk, in particular, was about providing the students with the right keywords so they can retrieve information from databases such as PubMed and CINAHL as quickly and as accurately as possible. One of these words was the English verb to administer. My colleague claimed that this verb is different from to administrate and should not be confused with it. He insisted that the former is only used with the meaning of "giving someone a medicine or medical treatment", whereas the latter means "to manage or organise something".
But this can't be true! Don't you say, for example, "to administer justice"? Or "to administer the affairs of a company"? And what about "to administer a questionnaire"? Also, isn't administrate somewhat rarer than administer?

So, as always, I went and looked up both terms in my Oxford Dictionary of English (2005, 2nd edition edited by C.Soanes and A.Stevenson), and this is what I found:

As is evident from the above, the more common of the two terms is to administer and it CAN actually mean "to manage or be responsible for the running of a company, etc." To administrate, on the other hand, means the same as to administer (sense 1) and is first attested in English in the mid 16th century.

Not content with that, I then looked to administrate up in the Longman Exams Dictionary (2006) and I couldn't find it. The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (2010) doesn't include it either, nor does its online version, which, on the other hand, does include to administer. (Read here.)

If we check in the British National Corpus, we only get 1 occurrence for administrate and 538 occurrences for administer. In the Corpus of Contemporary American English, administrate comes up only 18 times, whereas to administer 1881.

I think there is enough evidence here to argue that EFL students at all levels should be made aware of the several meanings of the term to administer and that they shouldn't bother about its much rarer "synonym" to administrate.

Why should we teachers sometimes complicate things when they are not so complicated?

Pronunciations in Hazon Garzanti 2010

On consulting my English-Italian Italian-English 2010 Hazon Garzanti Dictionary, I've realized that most of the pronunciations the authors provide for English are either old-fashioned or not the established ones at the moment.

Here are 18 words. Notice first their pronunciation(s) in Hazon Garzanti 2010 (which we can shorten to GARZ 2010 for convenience) and then the ones provided by Professor Wells in his LPD 3:

applicable: GARZ 2010 ˈæplɪkəbl (for both BrE and AmE); LPD 3 əˈplɪkəbl̩ (BrE 85%; AmE 36%), ˈæplɪkəbl̩ (BrE 15%; AmE 64%).

Asia: GARZ 2010 BrE ˈeɪʃə, AmE ˈeɪʒə; LPD 3 ˈeɪʒə (BrE 64%; AmE 91%), ˈeɪʃə (BrE 36%, AmE 9%) - BrE, those born before 1942, ˈeɪʒə 32%, ˈeɪʃə 68%.

ate: GARZ 2010 BrE et, AmE eɪt; LPD 3 et (BrE 55%; AmE considered non-standard), eɪt (BrE 45%, with almost 70% of younger people preferring this pronunciation).

bedroom: GARZ 2010 ˈbedrʊm (for both BrE and AmE); LPD 3 ˈbedruːm (BrE 63%), ˈbedrʊm (BrE 37%).

controversy: GARZ 2010 ˈkɒntrəvɜːsɪ (for both BrE and AmE - notice the ɪ of old-fashioned RP); LPD 3 kənˈtrɒvəsi (BrE 60%), ˈkɒntrəvɜːsi (BrE 40%) - Among RP speakers the latter form perhaps still predominates, but in BrE in general the former is now clearly more widespread.

deity: GARZ 2010 ˈdiːɪtɪ (for both BrE and AmE - notice the ɪ again); LPD 3 ˈdeɪəti (BrE 80%), ˈdiːɪti (BrE 20%).

dissect: GARZ 2010 dɪsˈsekt (for both BrE and AmE - notice the quite improbable -sˈs-); LPD 3 daɪˈsekt (BrE 89% - born since 1981, 95%), dɪˈsekt (BrE 11%).

exquisite: GARZ 2010 ˈekskwɪzɪt (for BrE); LPD 3 ɪkˈskwɪzɪt (BrE 69%, with more than 85% of younger people preferring this pronunciation), ˈekskwɪzɪt (BrE 31%).

forehead: GARZ 2010 ˈfɒrɪd (for BrE); LPD 3 ˈfɔːhed (BrE 65%, with 80% of younger people preferring this pronunciation), ˈfɒrɪd (BrE 35%).

impious: GARZ 2010 ˈɪmpɪəs (for both BrE and AmE); LPD 3 (ˌ)ɪmˈpaɪəs (BrE 53%), ˈɪmpiəs (BrE 47%, born before 1942, 63%) - The traditional, irregular pronunciation has lost ground in favour of (ˌ)ɪmˈpaɪəs.

kilometre: GARZ 2010 ˈkɪləʊˌmiːtə (for BrE); LPD 3 kɪˈlɒmɪtə (BrE 63%), ˈkɪləˌmiːtə (BrE 37%).

-less: GARZ 2010 lɪs; LPD 3 ləs (BrE 74%), lɪs (BrE 26%).

longitude: GARZ 2010 ˈlɒndʒɪtjuːd (for BrE); LPD 3 ˈlɒŋɡɪtjuːd (BrE 85%), ˈlɒndʒɪtjuːd (BrE 15%).

often: GARZ 2010 ˈɒfn (the only pronunciation offered for BrE); LPD 3 ˈɒfn̩, ˈɒftn̩ (also with the now less common vowel ɔː).

poor: GARZ 2010 pʊə (the only pronunciation offered for BrE); LPD 3 pɔː (BrE 74%), pʊə (BrE 26%, born before 1942, 41%).

schism: GARZ 2010 ˈsɪzəm (the only pronunciation offered for BrE); LPD 3 ˈskɪzəm (BrE 71%), ˈsɪzəm (BrE 29% - maybe still common among the clergy).

year: GARZ 2010 jɜː (the only pronunciation offered for BrE); LPD 3 jɪə (BrE 80%), jɜː (BrE 20%).

zebra: GARZ 2010 ˈziːbrə (the only pronunciation offered for BrE); LPD 3 ˈzebrə (BrE 83%),ˈziːbrə (BrE 17%).

As is evident from the above, using the 2010 Hazon Garzanti Dictionary for checking how words are really pronounced in English today is NOT a good idea. Italian students of EFL may risk sounding fairly old-fashioned (especially the younger generation) and are therefore strongly advised to use LPD 3 or CPD or ODP for checking pronunciations, and Hazon Garzanti (or indeed any other good monolingual/bilingual dictionary) for the meanings of words.


Aside: It's interesting to note that in the introduction to their dictionary, the authors say that

[t]he 2010 edition is (...) the fruit of careful and constant monitoring of present day English and Italian (...).

Well, I've got the 1990 edition of the same dictionary and the words analysed above are all transcribed in exactly the same way!

...words, words, words yet again!

This week I've been thinking of other words which have come into Italian from English and, as ever, I would like to discuss their pronunciation(s) with you.

One of them is management. According to the Devoto-Oli 2011, the term management was first used in Italian in the 1970s. Its pronunciation? Well, every dictionary I have at home says it is pronounced - or should be pronounced - ˈmɛnedʒment, although I suppose most Italians today pronounce it maˈnadʒmɛnt. Canepàri's Dizionario di Pronuncia Italiana (DiPI) lists more variants, although all of them are front-stressed:ˈmanadʒment, ˈmɛ-, -ne-, -ni-.
What about the term performance? Well, again all my dictionaries say it is pronounced perˈfɔrmans, but I think this is wrong: most Italians nowadays say ˈpɛrforman(t)s. The DiPI has perˈfɔrmans as the standard pronunciation and regards ˈpɛrformans or even pɛrforˈmans as variants which should be avoided by Italian native speakers because they are slipshod speech.
One last word: decoder. All my dictionaries (including the DiPI) say this is deˈkɔder, although I've heard many newsreaders on TV pronounce it deˈkodɛr, which, I suppose, is a rather recent pronunciation.

As you can see from the above, dictionaries in Italy are still very prescriptive, telling you HOW YOU SHOULD PRONOUNCE a word rather than how words ARE REALLY PRONOUNCED by native speakers. This (imho) rather negative approach to language is also evident in the pronunciation dictionary from RAI, Radiotelevisione Italiana, entitled Dizionario italiano multimediale e multilingue d'Ortografia e di Pronunzia, or DOP for short. Why is it that words like the ones we've just discussed are not included in it? Is it because they are English words and therefore should not be part of an Italian dictionary? Well, if they are used in Italian, it means they ARE Italian words, too, don't you think?

On Monday 19th July 2010, Professor Wells, on his excellent and fascinating phonetic blog, discussed the use of phonetic symbols in the DOP and also partly criticised its strongly normative nature. You can read what he said here.
On that occasion I joined in the discussion too, as I was really annoyed by the opinions expressed by one of the authors of the DOP, Tommaso Francesco Borri, about the fact that it is NOT a prescriptive pronunciation dictionary - which IT IS! Back then, I also criticised the transcription system which the authors had devised in order to avoid the complicated symbols found in IPA. You can read my comments here.

Mr. Borri's assertion that the DOP is not a prescriptive dictionary can easily be tested. Just look up the words borsa, Borsa (bag; stock exchange) and zucchero (sugar), and check out their pronunciation. The DOP only gives ˈborsa for the former and ˈtsukkero for the latter. But almost every native speaker of Italian is aware of the fact that these are NOT THE ONLY pronunciations which people use in Italy. I don't say ˈborsa for example (which to me sounds very posh or old-fashioned); let alone ˈtsukkero. While these are the traditional pronunciations, many Italians today increasingly prefer ˈbortsa (or ˈbordza?) for borsa, Borsa and ˈdzukkero for zucchero.
In his DiPI, Canepàri only gives ˈborsa, but acknowledges both ˈtsukkero and ˈdzukkero. Indeed, ˈdzukkero is what he prioritizes, stating that this is the pronunciation which is now most common both in Tuscany and in "Received Tuscan".

Other words with a similar alternation and in which ˈdz- or ˈ-dz- are becoming more and more prevalent are: avanzare (to advance), zuppa (soup), zampa (paw), zappa (hoe), zucca (pumpkin), zio (uncle), zitto (silent), zoppo (lame).

For more on the pronunciation(s) of 's' and 'z', read Canepàri's introduction to DiPI, pp.71-76.