Subject: Bird name pronunciation (long but good)
Date: Sep 21 21:20:56 1998
From: Jerry and Sandy Converse - sanjer at televar.com


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This post came about becuase someone asked how to pronounce Sabine's as
in SABINE'S GULL.
I thought it might be of interest to those of us who are linguistically
challenged. ;-)

Jerry Converse
Grand Coulee, WA

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From: skua at webtv.net (Steve Abbott)
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 12:24:32 -0700 (PDT)
To: calbird at kiwi.net
Subject: <CALBIRD> Fwd: "Sabine" -- more than you wanted to know....
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Calbirders,

I received this in response to my recent query...thought it may interest
a few of you. Thank you to many who responded. As far as the
classification goes...the jury's still out, although it seems that
recent study has it leaning toward Larus...

Enjoy this (somewhat long) discussion on pronunciation. Those with less
patience can scroll to the end where there is a list of bird name
pronunciations.

-------------------------
Steve Abbott
Citrus Heights, CA
-------------------------
skua at webtv.net
-------------------------


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From: "Dave Mellinger" <dave at mbari.org>
Subject: "Sabine" -- more than you wanted to know....
Reply-to: dave at mbari.org

The short story: "Sabine" rhymes with cabin.

The long story: The curator of the Cornell Vertebrate Collections, Kevin
McGowan, wrote the text below for a local birding publication a couple of
years ago. Dr. McGowan's so knowledgeable about birds that I trust him on
this. (He can also be pretty tongue-in-cheek, like when he's ribbing a
British friend....) He says "Sabine" rhymes with cabin, and I've also
heard this from other knowledgeable sources, so that's how I pronounce it
now.

Dave Mellinger
dave at mbari.org



Dr. Language Person's Guide to Bird Name Pronunciations
by Kevin McGowan (with apologies to Dave Barry)


You say PLUH-ver and I say PLO-ver,
You say pro-THON-a-tery and I say pro-theh-NO-tery,...

If you spend time birding with other people (and you should), you will find
that not everyone agrees on how to pronounce certain bird names. The
differences can be as obvious as a southern drawl adding a few more
syllables than seems necessary, or they can be as arbitrary (and entrenched)
as the to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to debate of the old song. (My old doctoral advisor
tells the story of how in his first year in Florida from the north he was
mystified by the report from another birder of seeing a puh-ray-uh-ree. He
spent the next hour looking for this exotic sounding bird, but could only
find the common Prairie Warblers.) But even if you get past the disparate
accents and regional dialect problems, still you hear many different
versions of common birds. Is it "pa-RU-la" or "PAR-u-la"? Is it
"PIE-le-at-ed" or PILL-e-at-ed"?

If you're a beginning birder, you might be afraid of embarrassing yourself
in front of other, more experienced birders by choosing the wrong
pronunciation. Well you should be; we birders are a pretty snotty lot,
never afraid to snigger at a novice's mistakes. No, that's not true.
Actually, we're very nice and helpful. But, never fear, Dr. Language Person
is here to set you straight about these nagging doubts. I will give you the
definitive pronunciations of the most commonly mispronounced birds, as well
as some others that you never thought about mispronouncing, just to make you
self-conscious so that you'll make more mistakes, HAH-HAH! No, wait. In
keeping with the scholarly tone of this fine publication, I will give you
the information as I see it, and then you can make your own decisions.

First, English is slippery language. In fact, all language is slippery. No
accepted absolute standards exist, in contrast to official measurement
standards, like meters. So you have to rely on either (is that I-ther or EE
-ther?) some authority or on common use. Without a widely accepted
authority, all language drifts and people begin to subtly change the way
they pronounce things. Languages, like populations of organisms, change and
evolve over time.

English is perhaps more confusing than most languages, because it has a
history of change (based largely on the number of different invaders that
conquered Britain throughout the millennia) and freely borrows words and
pronunciations from other languages. "Original" or Old English is a mostly
Germanic language that came to Britain with the Saxon (and other) invaders
that drove the Celts pretty much out of England around 450 AD. When the
French-speaking Normans invaded in 1066, they added a heavy Latin influence to
the language, as well as a (still existent) snobbishness for French words and
pronunciation and a disdain for "vulgar" four-letter Anglo-Saxon words. In
the 15th century, England embraced the Renaissance along with the newly
invented mechanical printing technique, adding some standardization to the
language The fairly rigid ideas and temperaments of the 18th century led to
more standardization and eventually the language we now speak. Grammar,
inflection, case, and conjugation changed with these influences, with the
result that pronunciation shifted dramatically as well. After the 1700's
another major change in the language was the result of the large number of
English speakers in the Americas. Americans created some novel pronunciations
and preserved some that became archaic in Britain. We just don't pronounce
things the same way. In fact, we don't share all of our vowel and consonant
sounds anymore. We'll stick with American here, because, well, we're in
America. Also, who wants to talk like someone who thinks Leicester is
pronounced "Lester"? (Here in America we try to use more than 2/3 of the
letters in each word.)

Because languages change over time, even in the face of authority, the
adherence to a "correct" standard is difficult, and some would say
unnecessary. As a point of reference, one thinks to look in a dictionary
for the "correct" pronunciation. But dictionaries seem to have two,
divergent, aims: providing a standard, and documenting the evolving
standards. Some dictionaries seem to be most interested in adding new
words and documenting the gradually accepted changes in pronunciation and
meaning. Others try more to provide a standard and only grudgingly add
words as they become too firmly entrenched in the common lexicon to be
denied. My own personal favorite dictionary is the "Standard College
Dictionary" of Harcourt, Brace & World, which seems to follow the latter
idea. The following is their statement of policy: "A pronunciation is
correct when it is normally and unaffectedly used by cultivated people.
Strictly, any pronunciation is correct when it serves the purposes of
communication and does not call unfavorable attention to the speaker...
When two or more pronunciations are indicated for a word, the one that the
editors believe most frequent in the northern and western sections of the
United States is listed first, but other pronunciations are equally
reputable. (The dictionary does not list socially substandard
pronunciations, no matter how common they may be.)" "Pronunciations," by
James B. McMillan, Standard College Dictionary, Harcourt, Brace & World.

It sounds snobby enough to be satisfying.

So what often happens is that you go to a dictionary to find out if it's
PLUH-ver or PLO-ver and you find BOTH of them. The one listed first is not
the "preferred" one, but rather as admitted by this dictionary, the most
frequent one (with a heavy regional bias). So whom do you believe? Trust
Dr. Language Person, I'll set you straight. First, just be glad that the
one you say is there. If you pronounced it PLEE-ver, plo-VER, or
BAR-king-Duk, well then you're just hopeless. Below are the most common
North American bird names that receive different pronunciations. I give
the Harcourt, Brace & World pronunciations when available, otherwise I make
them up. No, I mean I exhaustively searched for other authoritative
sources, such as The Random House Dictionary (Unabridged), Webster's
International Dictionary (Unabridged), and "The Audubon Society
Encyclopedia of North American Birds" by John K. Terres. Terres does not
talk about where he got his pronunciations, so I treat them with a little
skepticism.

Note, pronunciation is difficult to express via the Internet where all the
neat characters (like upside down e's) aren't available. I have tried to
express long vowels by either doubling them (ee), adding a terminal e (o_e,
_ie), or adding a terminal y (ay); short vowels either do not have these
additions, or have an h associated with them. ALL CAPS indicates the
strongest accented syllable, while a Single capital letter indicates a
secondarily accented syllable. If multiple pronunciations are listed,
that's because both are "reputable." Therefore you can use either one and
feel okay. If someone tries to correct you when you use one of the listed
pronunciations, you can give them that haughty, look-down-your-nose
expression (add a touch of a pitying look for best effect), make a short
laugh, and then tell them that despite their pretensions you as an informed
birder in fact know more than they do. Cite Dr. Language Person as your
source, and watch them cringe in abject apology and obsequious acceptance of
your vastly superior intellect (or not). If your favorite pronunciation is
not there, well, you'd better learn something and change, or we'll be
laughing behind your back constantly.


BECARD (as in Rose-throated Becard) - BEK-ard. I admit right at the start
that I say be-KARD, but I'll try to mend my ways from here on.
BEWICK'S (as in Wren and Swan) - BYEW-iks. Like the car, not the Bugs
Bunny sound.
BUDGERIGAR - BUJ-e-ree-Gar (remember BUJ-e as the short name). Where I come
from, we just called them parakeets.
CALLIOPE (Hummingbird) - keh-LIE-eh-pee; KAL-ee-ope. Despite its being
accepted by the dictionaries, I have almost never heard the second version,
so avoid it unless you want to attract attention to yourself.
CORDILLERAN (Flycatcher) - Kor-dil-YAR-ehn, kor-DILL-er-ehn. Since it
comes from the Spanish, I recommend staying with the Y sound of the
double l.
GOSHAWK - GOS-hok. From goose-hawk; separate the s from the h and say
"Gosh, I saw a Gos-hawk."
GUILLEMOT - GIL-eh-mott. This is English from the French; avoid the urge to
do a Spanish double l "y" sound, and keep that terminal "t" on there, it's
not THAT French.
GYRFALCON - JUHR-Fal-kehn. From gir[vulture]-falcon. An easy way to
remember juhr not jeer is that an old alternative, but now unaccepted, way
to spell it is Gerfalcon.
HARLEQUIN (Duck) - HAHR-leh-kwin, -kin. Add that w sound at your own
discretion.
JABIRU - JAB-eh-roo. (Tupi Indian, via the Portuguese)
JACANA - Zha-seh-NAH. (Tupi Indian name) I can almost guarantee you that you
will be corrected on the pronunciation of this name, no matter HOW you
pronounce it. I don't think I have EVER heard anyone pronounce it
"correctly" as the dictionary lists it. Terres gives four pronunciations,
two as "many American ornithologists" do it: jah-KON-ah, Yah-sah-NAH; and
two dictionary pronunciations: Zha-sah-NAH, JAK-ah-nah. Then he proceeds
to pronounce the family jah-CAN-ih-dee.
JAEGER - YAY-gehr, JAY-gehr. Stay with the first pronunciation; think
Swedish, even though it's German.
MURRE (Common or Thick-billed) - muhr. NOT myuhr, he was the Sierra Club guy.
PARULA - PAR-you-lah. From the diminutive form of Parus, meaning little
titmouse, even though it's a warbler. I couldn't find a listing for the
way I usually say it, pah-RU-la, so I guess I'll have to change the way
I say this one too (hah!).
PHALAROPE - FAL-eh-rope. NOT BAR-king-Duk.
PHAINOPEPLA - fay-no-PEHP-lah. No PEEPing!
PILEATED (Woodpecker) - PIE-lee-ay-tid, PILL-ee-ay-tid (having a pileus or
cap). This and the next two are commonly pronounced as the two alternate
versions listed from the dictionary. If it bothers you when people say it
differently than you do, lighten up. They're just birds, for goodness
sakes, and THEY don't care what you call them.
PLOVER - PLUHV-er, PLOV-er. The uh's are first, although the second is a
more American, less British version.
PROTHONOTARY (Warbler) - pro-THON-eh-Ter-ee, Pro-theh-NO-the-ree.
SABINE'S (Gull) - Named for Sir Edward Sabine, we would have to know how he
pronounced it, which might have nothing to do with any other pronunciation
of the word. My dictionary lists s-a-b-i-n-e as being pronounced
variously: SAB-in (a shrub), SAY-bine (the Italian people, you know, the
famous rape painting), seh-BEEN (a river in Texas). Terres and Websters
give the gull SAB-in, so SAB-in it is.
VAUX'S (Swift) - Here again we have a bird named for a person, this time
William S. Vaux, and we need to know how he pronounced it. Those of you
with training in French probably, and understandably, think you pronounce
it as would the French - "vo" with a silent x. But you are WRONG (and
probably pretentious too). Terres and Websters lists it as "vauks." I
talked to someone once who knew some relative of William Vaux and said that
they pronounced it "vauks."

There you have it, the final word on pronunciation of all the birds you
always wondered about. If you have others that you are nervous about, or
feel like you're pretty creative with, keep them to yourself. Next month,
it's how to pronounce the Latin names! (It's easy; all the Romans are
dead, so pronounce them any way you feel like! Maybe even BAR-king-Duk!)

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