Caribbean

[Tante Shvester]

There was the Caribbean Day parade here in New York, and they were interviewing participants on the radio.  Now, I never know if I ought to pronounce it "Ca-RIB-ee-yan" or "Ca-rib-BEE-yan", so I was listening to hear how people from that area said it.  I heard a really interesting distinction.  A guy they were interviewing said something like, "This is a wonderful day for all the CaRIBeeyan people to come together as one, no matter what part of the CariBEEyan they come from."

So, I guess Ca-RIB-ee-yan is the people and Ca-rib-BEE-yan is the place.

[The Genuine]

Of the two, I pronounce it the way that sounds more like the Spanish origin.

[Jonathon]

Which way would that be?

I'm not aware of any distinction based on pronunciation, except that the phrase "pirates of the Caribbean" seems to always receive penultimate stress rather than antepenultimate.

[The Genuine]

Which way would that be?

The Spanish word for Carribean is Caribe, which has the major accent on the i, so I pronounce Carribean with the major accent on the i ("Ca-RIB-ee-yan").

Is that penultimate or antepenultimate?

[Jonathon]

The latter.

antepenultimate = before next to last

I wonder how the adjective form of caribe is accented in Spanish. Just because the stress is in one spot in the noun form doesn't mean it'll be in the same spot when you add an ending to the word.

[The Genuine]

The general rule is that if it ends in a vowel, the penultimate vowel gets the accent.  If it ends in a noun, the ultimate vowel gets the accent.  To that end, I am not aware of any difference between nouns and adjectives.

In Spanish, you wouldn't add the "an" to turn it into an adjective; rather, you'd say "del Caribe."

So I'm inclined to think that the accent should remain where the Spaniards would put it, despite the "an" the English tacked onto it, since the Spaniards would never add that "an."

[Jonathon]

I don't see the logic in that at all. When a word is borrowed from one language into another, it generally changes to fit the borrowing language's phonology, including stress. If the word takes an English suffix, then it's an English word and should not be beholden to the phonological rules of another language, especially if you're talking about the root word in one language and a derived form in another. It's apples and oranges in two different ways.

[Tante Shvester]

I'm not aware of any distinction based on pronunciation, except that the phrase "pirates of the Caribbean" seems to always receive penultimate stress rather than antepenultimate.

And I've always heard it the other way.  Maybe it's a regional thing, then.  That's why I paid close attention to they way the the locals there were saying it.

[Neutros the Radioactive Dragon]

I stress the "i" because that is the way Ricardo Montalban would say it.

"Smiles everyone, smiles!"

[The Genuine]

I stress the "i" because that is the way Ricardo Montalban would say it.

That's essentially the point I was trying to make.

[Annie Subjunctive]

Just off the top of my head (ear?), it sounds to me like caRIBbean is the British pronunciation, while CARibBEan is American. Is that true at all in the way the two dialects treat syllable stress, or is that just me?

And even though I find British pronunciations of foreign words horribly tacky-sounding, I think in this case the American-sounding stress is even worse. So I say caRIBbean, unless I'm talking about the Pirates.

[Jonathon]

I'm not aware of any distinction based on pronunciation, except that the phrase "pirates of the Caribbean" seems to always receive penultimate stress rather than antepenultimate.

And I've always heard it the other way.  Maybe it's a regional thing, then.  That's why I paid close attention to they way the the locals there were saying it.

I'm quite surprised to hear that. Also, it contradicts this note in the Wikipedia article on "Caribean." (Of course, there's no source for the claims made in the note, but they do match up with my experience.)

Just off the top of my head (ear?), it sounds to me like caRIBbean is the British pronunciation, while CARibBEan is American. Is that true at all in the way the two dialects treat syllable stress, or is that just me?

What makes you say that? I've always heard both pronunciations pretty interchangeably, so I have a hard time seeing why anyone would assume there's some sort of regional difference involved.

There are some differences in stress between British and American English, but I'm not sure exactly what they all are or how systematic they are.

[Tante Shvester]

I asked a few people around here, "Is it Pirates of the CaRIBean, or Pirates of the CaribBEEan?"

Four out of five went with the former.

[Jonathon]

That's a pretty small sample size.

[Porter]

If the pronunciations are really interchangeable, they might be picking the first one simply because they heard it first and it sounded right.

[Tante Shvester]

That's a pretty small sample size.

Not only that, three of the five people were myself, my son, and my husband.


I didn't claim that it was a valid, scientific survey.

And, anyway, it is the exact same sample size that the Trident people used when they asked dentists if they recommended sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.

[pooka]

I'm surprised no one has tried to argue that it only has 3 syllables.  Of course, my mother is not part of this conversation.  Nor is Billy Ocean.

[Noemon]

They could both be lurking, though.