Dear Expert

[rivka]

I haven't any idea.

[BlackBlade]

Neither do I. Whenever I pronounce Descartes name properly *everybody* looks at me like I'm insane.

[Jonathon]

How do you pronounce it?

[Brinestone]

Goethe is somewhat between "Guh-tuh" and "Gooh-tuh," the "oo" being the sound in "look."

[Jonathon]

I'd say it's a little more like "GUR-tuh," but without the R, as if you were British.

[Dobie]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbYBlzOHxiE

[Brinestone]

I'd say it's a little more like "GUR-tuh," but without the R, as if you were British.

Yeah, that's a better explanation of how to make the sound.

[Brinestone]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbYBlzOHxiE

*thwack*

[pooka]

The anecdote I'm going off is that the two great german authors are Goethe and Shakespeare.  Though since we know Shakespeare will eventually be adopted by the Klingons as well, I don't suppose I can fault the Germans for that.  

I imagine my brother in law would counter than in German authors are meansured by their ideas and not how good they sound.  

I can't remember who said the first thing anymore, it was like 25 years ago and might have been my german teacher or either of my English teachers that I read Faust with.  

It also might have been the guy who taught AP European history.  It's weird that I liked history so much in high school but never took it in college.  But that's probably because I got into Linguistics.

[pooka]

Pooka is not entirely insane, this time:
http://aurora.wells.edu/~klarson/papers/facclub1.htm

I guess some interesting things happened academically in order for German Nationalism to coexist with the reality that Shakespeare is awesome, i.e.  Make Shakespeare a part of the German nation.

It's likelier the quote I heard was something along the lines that Goethe, Schiller and Shakespeare are the trimvirate of German classical literature.

[rivka]

I'd say it's a little more like "GUR-tuh," but without the R, as if you were British.

Yes, that's how my mom (who is semi-fluent in German) taught me to say it.

I was commenting on the fact that I can't read [ˈɡøːtə]. I can say Goethe. Most Americans can't though.

[BlackBlade]

How do you pronounce it?

Descartes:

Deh-Cau-r-ght but I swallow the r.

[Jonathon]

I'm not sure what you mean by "swallow," and I'm not seeing how that's that different from the correct pronunciation. But I'd probably have to hear you say it. I'd say it's just "day-CART."

[BlackBlade]

I'm not sure what you mean by "swallow," and I'm not seeing how that's that different from the correct pronunciation. But I'd probably have to hear you say it. I'd say it's just "day-CART."

The r stays in my throat as opposed to coming up into my mouth. I meant more your average person looks at me like I'm crazy. I would expect somebody like you and Ruth to know these sorts of things.

[BlackBlade]

Quick question. Does the word kind come from the German "kinder" so in essence child like?

[Dobie]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDrET0YjZFY

[Jonathon]

I'm not sure what you mean by "swallow," and I'm not seeing how that's that different from the correct pronunciation. But I'd probably have to hear you say it. I'd say it's just "day-CART."

The r stays in my throat as opposed to coming up into my mouth. I meant more your average person looks at me like I'm crazy. I would expect somebody like you and Ruth to know these sorts of things.

Don't take this the wrong way, but most laypeople are pretty bad at describing what's going on in their mouths when they make sounds. It's something we do so automatically that it's hard to figure out what we're doing, even when you stop and think about it. It generally takes some specific training in phonetics to get a good grasp on it.

This is all a long-winded way of saying that I doubt you're actually making an /r/ sound in your throat. Very few languages have sounds that are actually produced in the throat. Even languages like German, which is often considered very throaty or guttural, produces all of its sounds in the mouth, though some are made with the back of the tongue against the uvula.

You may be doing something strange and interesting with the /r/ in "Descartes," but I'd wager that it's not being made in your throat.

[BlackBlade]

Well that's the second time I've been called an idiot today. These things usually come in threes, so I wonder when it's coming.

Sorry if I'm reacting a bit strongly, I was already wincing from a comment somebody else made just minutes ago.

[Jonathon]

Quick question. Does the word kind come from the German "kinder" so in essence child like?

Short answer: no. Long answer: They might be related, but I'm not sure. Kind comes from the same root that gives us kin and, via French, Latin, and Greek, a whole host of words like genus, gene, gentle, general, and genius. They all go back to a Proto-Indo-European word meaning "to beget" or "to produce".

With kind, the sense developed something along these lines:

natural, native
belonging to one by birth
of good birth
having good qualities
having a gentle or nice nature

From what I can tell, the German Kind is related, meaning it descends from the same root, not that it was borrowed from English or that it was a source of borrowing into English. The etymology there is a little more straightforward; the Proto-Indo-European root means "to beget", and in a sense the German Kind means "one who is begotten".

[Jonathon]

Well that's the second time I've been called an idiot today. These things usually come in threes, so I wonder when it's coming.

Sorry if I'm reacting a bit strongly, I was already wincing from a comment somebody else made just minutes ago.

 

Sorry, Taylor. I should've known how that would sound. For the record, I absolutely do not think you're an idiot. I'm just saying that studying linguistics has taught me to be skeptical of people's intuitions about their own speech and usage. I don't know if there's a good way to say that doesn't sound at least a little like "You suck at thinking about language."

But I'm probably just sticking my foot further in my mouth rather than pulling it out.

[rivka]

I'd say it's just "day-CART."

And thus all the jokes about "putting Descartes before the horse".

[BlackBlade]

Heh. I'll survive, I understood what you were saying. While I do think I know what my own mouth is doing, I know that linguistics has a much more consistent and effective vocabulary set for describing exactly what is happening. I couldn't really do a better job describing it because I was practicing R sounds out loud and people were wondering what on earth I was up to.

I guess Descartes makes me look insane in more ways than one.

[Marianne Dashwood]

If you want to pronounce Descartes the French way, you can practice the R with something like this. If you want to use the usual Anglicized pronunciation, day-CART is just fine.

[Jonathon]

Heh. I'll survive, I understood what you were saying. While I do think I know what my own mouth is doing, I know that linguistics has a much more consistent and effective vocabulary set for describing exactly what is happening. I couldn't really do a better job describing it because I was practicing R sounds out loud and people were wondering what on earth I was up to.

I guess Descartes makes me look insane in more ways than one.

 

That's a pretty common phenomenon in linguistics classes. It's pretty funny to hear a whole class full of people start making weird noises under their breath.

[pooka]

Eh, I didn't know about my alveolar ridge until I took linguistics.