Smaug

latet wrote:
>>"Smog" and "Smawg" in American English are quite distinct. "Smog" has a
>>more open sound.
>
>
> It seems like there are 2 possible pronunciation variants
> of the word "smog" in AmE. At least, that's what my Longman
> Dictionary says. Some people wil rhyme it with "dog",
> some other with "grog".
>
> If someone could tell us which version is used in which
> parts of the US, I'd be very happy,
> though it's getting quite OT

"Smog" rhymes with "grog" everywhere I've lived. I grew up in the
Northeast, and I now live in California. I've never lived anyplace where
"smog" rhymed with "dog", although it occurs to me that it might have
for a high school friend who had a very thick Texan accent. Of course,
he would have pronounced neither word the same way I did. twang, twang.

-- Chris Csernica
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Emerald wrote:

> Does this mean that in your pronunciation grog = grahg (long A as in
> adios)?

Yup.

I'm asking because in many parts of the US the "og" sound is quite
> the same for grog, dog, log, nog, smog, etc. Perhaps not the northeast --
> at least not most of New York, New Jersey, even Philly etc., where one hears
> "grahg" and "dwog", more or less.

Wow, you're good! You're spot on. I grew up in New Jersey, and that's
exactly the pronunciation.

-- Chris Csernica
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latet wrote:
>> "Smog" and "Smawg" in American English are quite distinct. "Smog"
>> has a more open sound.
>
> It seems like there are 2 possible pronunciation variants
> of the word "smog" in AmE. At least, that's what my Longman
> Dictionary says. Some people wil rhyme it with "dog",
> some other with "grog".
>
> If someone could tell us which version is used in which
> parts of the US, I'd be very happy,
> though it's getting quite OT

No more so than all that scandinavian nonsense.

--
Kristian Damm Jensen damm (at) ofir (dot) dk
"Let's have no fighting, please. This is, after all, a council of war."
-- Terry Pratchett
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"The Sidhekin"
<Sidhekin RemoveThis @remove-spam-and-and-and-remove.allverden.nospam.invalid> wrote

 > "Smaug" is not an Elven word -- it has its roots in Old English.
 > (And is quite recognizable to modern Weejuns, BTW.)

What is the Old English root?

And does the -au- diphthong ever occur in Old English? I don't recall
ever seeing it, but I only got a teeny bit of Old English in undergrad,
and that was many moons ago. IIRC in Middle English -au- is more or less
the same as it would be in Latin or Elvish, rhyming with Modern English
"loud" - would it be different in Old English? I thought the
pronunciation of -au- as is "dawg" would be a post-vowel-shift
development.

--
Bruce Tucker
disintegration RemoveThis @mindspring.com<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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In article <20192-1079256927.DeleteThis@host102-ursus.spray.net.pl>,
"latet" <latet.DeleteThis@wwwrrrrrrr.pl> wrote:

> > "Smog" and "Smawg" in American English are quite distinct. "Smog" has a
> > more open sound.
>
> It seems like there are 2 possible pronunciation variants
> of the word "smog" in AmE. At least, that's what my Longman
> Dictionary says. Some people wil rhyme it with "dog",
> some other with "grog".
>
> If someone could tell us which version is used in which
> parts of the US, I'd be very happy,
> though it's getting quite OT
>
> Thanks,
>
> latet
>
>

Well, there's an entire section of the FAQ of the newsgroup
alt.usage.english dedicated to the American English pronunciation of the
word "dog"; it reads as follows:

[begin quoted material]

How do Americans pronounce "dog"?
---------------------------------

Those who round their lips when they say it would probably
transcribe it /dOg/; those who don't round their lips, /dAg/.

Very few people in North America distinguish all three vowels
/A/, /A./, and /O/. Speakers in Eastern and Southern U.S. merge
/A./ and /A/, so that "bother" and "father" rhyme. Speakers in
Western U.S. and in Canada merge /A./ and /O/, so that "cot" and
"caught", "Don" and "Dawn" are pronounced alike. Some speakers
merge all three vowels. The Oxford Companion to the English
Language says: "The merger of vowels in _tot_ and _taught_ begins
in a narrow band in central Pennsylvania and spreads north and
south to influence the West, where the merger is universal. [...]
In New England, where the merger is beginning to occur, speakers
select the first vowel; in the Midland and West, the second vowel
is used for both." Although /A./ is seldom used to transcribe
American pronunciation, the vowel transcribed /O/ may sound like
/A./ to non-American speakers, or it may sound like /O/.

There is a further complication with "dog": U.S. dictionaries
give the pronunciations /dOg/, /dAg/ in that order (and similarly
with some other words ending in "-og", although which ones varies
from dictionary to dictionary). "Dawg", the name of the family dog
in the comic strip "Hi and Lois", may be intended to convey the
pronunciation /dOg/ to (or from) people who usually pronounce the
word /dAg/; or it may be intended as how a child in a community
where /A./ and /O/ are merged might misspell "dog".

[end quoted material]

For those of you who don't know the ASCII representations of the
International Phonetic Alphabet, /A/ is the vowel heard in "father" in
both the U.S. and Britain. /A./ is a sound usually only heard in
(Received) British pronunciation of words like "hot" and "cot" (think of
Captain Picard saying, "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot."). /O/ is the vowel heard
in "all" and in "court", and the first part of the vowel diphthong heard
in "oil".

This is way OT now!

Jon
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I got lost somewhere along the way here. The closest thing I read in this
thread to a definitive answer was refuted as applying only to Elvish. I
_really_ wanted to know the answer to this one myself.

I always pronounced it "smAWEg" (as in Fox News saying "shock and AWE"), but
when I went to see ROTK, there was an advertisement for the video game The
Hobbit in which the voiceover guy pronounced it "smOUg" (as in "OUch").

I suppose once a consensus is reached it should go in the FAQ.

Scott
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> Well, there's an entire section of the FAQ of the newsgroup
> alt.usage.english dedicated to the American English pronunciation of the
> word "dog"; it reads as follows:

*Very* interesting! Could you please give me a link to that FAQ?

Thanks!

latet
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"scott" <scott RemoveThis @scott.com> wrote

> I got lost somewhere along the way here. The closest thing I read in
this
> thread to a definitive answer was refuted as applying only to Elvish.
I
> _really_ wanted to know the answer to this one myself.

I agree. I am still curious myself. I'm still interested in seeing if
there's an Old English equivalent or root. As I said yesterday, if it
were a Middle English word, I *think* it would be pronounced, as Scott
said, "Smoug" (as in "ouch"), but I'm not 100% sure of that either. And
of course OE and ME vowels are not identical, but I don't know if OE had
the -au- combination at all. And if Tolkien's "low philological jest"
did, in fact, refer to the Polish word (but did he include *any* Slavic
roots anywhere in any other northern Middle-earth languages?) should we
assume it's pronounced that way?

Enquiring minds want to know! Linguists, front and center!

--
Bruce Tucker
disintegration RemoveThis @mindspring.com
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Latet wrote:
>
> Names like: Boromir, Faromir sounds *very* Slavic to me
> (due to the "-mir" ending). "Mir" is a Slavic word for "peace",
> and we have some old names with the "-mir" ending
> (Vladimir, Dobromir, etc).
>
> Boromir sounds like it might have been derived from
> two Slavic words: "bor" (=forest) and "mir" (=peace),
> so the name could have been explained as:
> "the one who keeps peace in the woods".
> Very nice, but only my wishful thinking
>
There is actually a contemporary Bulgarian name "Borimir" (I
personally know one). In Bulgarian it means "Fight for peace" (intended
meaning), although, in all honesty, it could mean "Fight the peace" too.
"Bori" is the imperative form of the the verb "to fight", "to wrestle".
"Bor" by itself means "pine" in Bulgarian, so Boromir (if Bulgarian)
could be translated as "the pine peace".
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"Bruce Tucker" <disintegration RemoveThis @mindspring.com> writes:

 > "The Sidhekin" wrote
 >
  > > "Smaug" is not an Elven word -- it has its roots in Old English.
  > > (And is quite recognizable to modern Weejuns, BTW.)
 >
 > What is the Old English root?

I misremembered -- sorry. "Smaug" has even older roots: from
"primitive Germanic". Shame on me for trusting my memory too much.
Sheesh, it is even in the index: "Smaug [...] origin of name 31".

"The dragon bears a name -- a pseudonym -- the past tense of the
primitive Germanic verb _Smugan_, to squeeze through a hole: a low
philological jest."
-- JRRT, _Letters_, #25

Since he calls it a "primitive Germanic" form, I might suppose this
verb did _not_ exist in Old English. But what do we make of "Sméagol"
and "Smial"? Are they then derived from a related Old English noun?

(The modern Norwegian form of this verb is "smyge". It has acquired
some additional meanings, but basically still retains the original.)


 > And does the -au- diphthong ever occur in Old English? I don't recall
 > ever seeing it, but I only got a teeny bit of Old English in undergrad,
 > and that was many moons ago.

Since "Smaug" is not Old English, you could be right. I don't
recall. Certainly -áw- occurs. I reckon it is simply a matter of
orthography. I could be wrong.

 > IIRC in Middle English -au- is more or less the same as it would be
 > in Latin or Elvish, rhyming with Modern English "loud" - would it be
 > different in Old English? I thought the pronunciation of -au- as is
 > "dawg" would be a post-vowel-shift development.

No matter how late the development, Tolkien did not intend for the
readers to use the old pronunciation of his reintroduced words: He
updated them to modern form. Most of these reintroductions were
"peculiar local hobbit-words", and on these he notes:

"They have been given the forms that lost English words might well
have had, if they had come down to our day."
-- JRRT, _LotR_, Appendix F

He goes on to note that *mathom < máthm and *smial < smygel, as well
*Sméagol < smygel. So, while the verb "smugan" may not have continued
into "ancient English", there _seems_ to be a related noun "smygel".
And clearly his intention was that these words should be as if they
had come down to our day -- or, in the case of Sméagol and Déagol, at
least to some day five or six centuries ago.


-SK-
--
perl -e 'print "Just another Perl ${\(trickster and hacker)},";'

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On 16 Mar 2004 18:16:19 +0100, The Sidhekin
<Sidhekin RemoveThis @remove-spam-and-and-and-remove.allverden.nospam.invalid>
wrote:

 > Since he calls it a "primitive Germanic" form, I might suppose this
 >verb did _not_ exist in Old English. But what do we make of "Sméagol"
 >and "Smial"? Are they then derived from a related Old English noun?

Do OE verbs count? (sméagan)

the softrat
"LotR: Eleven Oscars! Right up there with _Titanic_!"
mailto:softrat@pobox.com
--
"Never eat anything at one sitting that you can't lift." -- Miss
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the softrat <softrat.TakeThisOut@pobox.com> writes:

> On 16 Mar 2004 18:16:19 +0100, The Sidhekin wrote:
>
> > Since he calls it a "primitive Germanic" form, I might suppose this
> >verb did _not_ exist in Old English. But what do we make of "Sméagol"
> >and "Smial"? Are they then derived from a related Old English noun?
>
> Do OE verbs count? (sméagan)

Ah, so there was one. Thanks.


-SK-
--
perl -e 'print "Just another Perl ${\(trickster and hacker)},";'

The Sidhekin *proves* Sidhe did it!
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"J.G. Ballard" <jgballar-keinspam RemoveThis @yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<jgballar-keinspam-13B0B3.20250615032004 RemoveThis @netnews.comcast.net>...

> /O/ is the vowel heard
> in "all" and in "court", and the first part of the vowel diphthong heard
> in "oil".

I don't know how to break this to you, but in most American English
dialects I've heard "court" and "all" don't share a vowel sound.

> This is way OT now!

What, philology in a Tolkien group is OT?

-- Chris Csernica
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