It Is Pronounced Tro-PAY Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

Working Title: It's pronounced Tro-PAY: From YKTTW

San Jose probably shouldn't be on there, as anyone within a 1,000 mile radius of the place would pronounce it correctly.

Scud East: Depends what you mean by "correctly". San Ho-ZAY is how Californian English-speakers say it, but it's only an approximation to the Spanish pronunciation. Living within 20 miles of San Jose most of my life, I've never heard it pronounced San JOES as described in the article, though my sister once heard one visitor telling another it was San JO-sie. So yeah, let's take it out.

Kizor: "Troups." How about you lot?

Scud East: That just raises the question of how you pronounce "ou".

Tabby: Okay, quick question for the Discworld fans out there: How did you pronounce Teatime's name the first time he corrected someone? Because the way he said it in the miniseries was nothing like what I got.

Katsuhagi: I was under the impression it was supposed to be said Tee-Ah Tie-Muh, though I may be mistaken.
Noaqiyeum: Can't say I've seen the miniseries yet, but I got tay-AH-tim-uh.
MorkaisChosen: I've always said "Tee-AH-ti-may", possibly due to learning some French before I read it.
Daelf: for me it's something like "Teh-ah-tim", if I transcribe correctly (note that I'm French, but read it in English first)

Red-Hatted Plumber: Thanks to whoever corrected me on the Saturday Night Live example.

MorkaisChosen: Any chance of someone adding correct pronunciations of the American real-world examples?

Scud East: The state of Arkansas is ARK-an-saw. The Arkansas River, after which it is named, is pronounced the same way in Arkansas. Upstream, in Kansas, it is pronounced Ar-KAN-zas. That state is pronounced KAN-zas, but the Kansas River, after which it is named, is pronounced KAW. though I may have gotten part of it wrong. As for the others, Detroit rhymes with quoit, and Texas with nexus. I'm deleting that example too—

For that matter, Texas is the result of settlers mispronouncing "tejas".

—for being misleading, as the name was written with an X in Spanish in the first place (representing the aspirate sound that would have been written as J in modern Spanish). The English-speaking settlers mispronounced the name based on its spelling; they didn't change the spelling.

Scud East: ...But when I see New Orleans listed as having a silent S, I know I'm out of my depth. I've heard it with two syllables and three, with the first or second syllable of "Orleans" emphasized, but always with the S pronounced. But I really couldn't say with confidence that it's universal. Have any of you heard "New Orleans" pronounced with a silent S?

Ryusui: I dunno who wrote this trope, but all my life it's been "Kai-roh", "Lee-ma" (except when referring to the beans), "A-thens" and "El Doh-rah-doh". Never seen "Minot" before, but I'd pronounce it "Mee-noh" myself. Are there really people who would mispronounce those names that badly? (And "Mc Kay" as "Mackie"? Good God.)

Dr Dedman: Dude, I didn't just drop those in for the heck of it. If you've lived in Illinois or Ohio (and I have, both) the towns are "Kay-row", "Lime-a" etc (Ohioans also pronounce Wooster a bit odd, kinda like "Wuh-sta). Mack-eye is how the name's said in Scotland, just about any linguistic or language book will bring that up (That's up there with British "Derby" in ones everyone writes about).

Vulpy: Incidentally, as someone who has an on-again, off-again love affair with Aztec mythology, I'll support the "official" pronunciation on this point:

Not to forget the Ixitxachitl. And no, you wouldn't get any two people to agree on how to pronounce that. The Monstrous Manual gives the "correct" pronunciation as "Ish-it-SHACH-eet-el".

I might pronounce each "i" as a long "i", though: "eesh-eet-sha-CHEE-tul", though I think the "-tl" is pronounced closer to "t'l", if you can make that sound. ;)

Revolos55: I'm with Scud East and Ryusui. I have never in my heard someone not pronounce the S in New Orleans, or mispronounce Cairo, Lima, Athens, or El Dorado. Never heard "Mackie" either, but names get butchered all the time, including mine, so... Unfortunately I have heard people pronounce the T when ordering merlot, so the Minot example doesn't surprise me. I vote to nix the first 5 I mentioned.

Dr Dedman: You must not get out much..

Furry Kef: I removed the following from the article:

[[indent:32:Another thing with Japanese pronunciation is the fact that there is no "accented syllable" the way that there is, say, English or Spanish (other than accenting the first syllable of every word). This troper is amused when people use Spanish-language convention (accenting next-to-last syllable if the word ends in a vowel) and pronounce Sakura "saKOOra", causing otakus to throw a hissy fit saying that it should be (vaguely) "SA Hkoora".]]

Actually, Japanese does have accented syllables, though it's denoted solely by pitch, not length or stress, and indeed it does rarely correspond to English or Spanish stress patterns. (For instance, Osaka is pronounced OH-sah-kah, not oh-SAH-kah. For that matter, the "o" should be twice as long as the other vowels, too, but that's a separate issue.) This pitch is also usually not on the first syllable, though it happens frequently enough.

Medinoc: Stone is "lap" in French ?????

Is there a particular sense of "stone" i was ignorant of? Because if it's in the same sense as "peter", it makes absolutely no sense to this French troper.

Mercy: Most of The Real World examples look as if they don't belong here. Isn't this trope about names being given a "different" pronunciation to make them sound posh? Most of the examples are simple mispronunciations or localisms. I vote for wholesale deletion. Any other thoughts?

Marlowe: Well, I've just made three Justifying Edit based on examples I know aren't wrong so much as regional differences, so that's not a good sign.

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