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Jul. 31st, 2004 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vyvyanxWith regard to my previous golem/Gollum post:
The reason I asked was that I recently came across people (3 members of my roleplaying group) who thought golem and Gollum were pronounced the same way (or at least, with the same first vowel) and had always pronounced them like that. This possibility had never suggested itself to me before. Google revealed a large number of people confusing the spellings (and along the way I found this rather surreal FAQ!) but not much information about popular pronunciation.
My view on the "correct" pronunciation (or at least, an explanation of why the popular pronunciations hold sway is:)
English "golem" is from Hebrew [go:lem], which contains vowel qualities not exactly corresponding to English phonemes, at least of the accents people here are likely to use - the first [o:] is a pure, long mid-high back rounded vowel as in German Sohn, the second [e] is a short mid-high front unrounded vowel as (apparently) in German Deklination. The English spelling basically transliterates the Hebrew, but is generally pronounced in accordance with English spelling rules (such as they are!), using English phonemes - thus, a stressed vowel before a single consonant with a following vowel (golem) takes its "long" value i.e. [6U] in Received Pronunciation (the diphthong phoneme in "pole" or "go" or "phone"), while an unstressed vowel (golem) is reduced to the neutral schwa [6]. Thus most people pronounce the vowels of "golem" as they would the vowels of "totem" or "broken" (and the OED's phonemic transcription for the word agrees with me on this).
"Gollum" obviously comes from Tolkien's imagination, reflecting the noise the creature habitually made in its throat; however, the notes on pronunciation in Appendix E of LOTR suggest that it is to be read using normal English spelling-pronunciation mappings - for me, that implies a "short" stressed vowel (Gollum) before the doubled consonant, and a second unstressed vowel reduced to schwa (Gollum) as in "golem". So "Gollum" would rhyme (in terms of vowels) with "pollen" or "bottom".
My pseudo-poll seems to suggest most of you agree with me - at time of posting this, 26 people had given responses, of whom 22 either selected option 3 ([g6Ul6m] vs. [gOl6m]) or gave responses suggesting that at least the first vowels differed in approximately this way for them. Some people made a distinction in the second vowel, using spelling-pronunciation presumably (but it was the first vowel I was mainly interested in); some people felt the first vowel in "golem" was long, but not in exactly the same way as the vowel of "pole" - this is probably true, but is a subphonemic distinction (I don't think any varieties of English distinguish three grades of vowel-length phonemically!). 4 people selected 1 or 2 and thus pronounced the first vowels of both words in the same way.
Thus, although my pronunciation is at odds with that of most of my roleplaying group, it is in accord with most of my wider social group - which, er, at least reassures me I'm not going mad! It also reveals the existence of a significant minority who use a different pronunciation, which is interesting, and not something I'd suspected before.
The reason I asked was that I recently came across people (3 members of my roleplaying group) who thought golem and Gollum were pronounced the same way (or at least, with the same first vowel) and had always pronounced them like that. This possibility had never suggested itself to me before. Google revealed a large number of people confusing the spellings (and along the way I found this rather surreal FAQ!) but not much information about popular pronunciation.
My view on the "correct" pronunciation (or at least, an explanation of why the popular pronunciations hold sway is:)
English "golem" is from Hebrew [go:lem], which contains vowel qualities not exactly corresponding to English phonemes, at least of the accents people here are likely to use - the first [o:] is a pure, long mid-high back rounded vowel as in German Sohn, the second [e] is a short mid-high front unrounded vowel as (apparently) in German Deklination. The English spelling basically transliterates the Hebrew, but is generally pronounced in accordance with English spelling rules (such as they are!), using English phonemes - thus, a stressed vowel before a single consonant with a following vowel (golem) takes its "long" value i.e. [6U] in Received Pronunciation (the diphthong phoneme in "pole" or "go" or "phone"), while an unstressed vowel (golem) is reduced to the neutral schwa [6]. Thus most people pronounce the vowels of "golem" as they would the vowels of "totem" or "broken" (and the OED's phonemic transcription for the word agrees with me on this).
"Gollum" obviously comes from Tolkien's imagination, reflecting the noise the creature habitually made in its throat; however, the notes on pronunciation in Appendix E of LOTR suggest that it is to be read using normal English spelling-pronunciation mappings - for me, that implies a "short" stressed vowel (Gollum) before the doubled consonant, and a second unstressed vowel reduced to schwa (Gollum) as in "golem". So "Gollum" would rhyme (in terms of vowels) with "pollen" or "bottom".
My pseudo-poll seems to suggest most of you agree with me - at time of posting this, 26 people had given responses, of whom 22 either selected option 3 ([g6Ul6m] vs. [gOl6m]) or gave responses suggesting that at least the first vowels differed in approximately this way for them. Some people made a distinction in the second vowel, using spelling-pronunciation presumably (but it was the first vowel I was mainly interested in); some people felt the first vowel in "golem" was long, but not in exactly the same way as the vowel of "pole" - this is probably true, but is a subphonemic distinction (I don't think any varieties of English distinguish three grades of vowel-length phonemically!). 4 people selected 1 or 2 and thus pronounced the first vowels of both words in the same way.
Thus, although my pronunciation is at odds with that of most of my roleplaying group, it is in accord with most of my wider social group - which, er, at least reassures me I'm not going mad! It also reveals the existence of a significant minority who use a different pronunciation, which is interesting, and not something I'd suspected before.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 03:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 06:35 am (UTC)Just another case of the English language bending foreign words. The German pronunciation is a lot closer if not identical to the original one you describe (I still find it hard to put write down pronunciation).
no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 07:33 am (UTC)Most of my words with that vowel (phone,home) in I pronounce 6U (which is how I think RP does it), but with those followed by "l" I pronounce like "pot" (coal,shoal,pole) but labialized (which is I think what people call "Estuary"), to make it easy to get to the l, I guess.
The exception for golem, which I pronounce in the "RP" way is, I think, because I've leanrt it in recent years, probably amongst (largely) RP speakers.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 09:02 am (UTC)Is the distinction /6U/~/O/ (using /O/ for the "pot" vowel) neutralised before /l/ for you, then? I.e. would you pronounce the poll- in "pollen" exactly the same as "pole", or "moll" exactly as "mole"? Or do you have distinct phonemes, with one being an allophone of /6U/ (something like [Ow] perhaps) and one being an allophone of /O/ i.e. [O]?
no subject
Date: 2004-09-12 02:22 pm (UTC)