Not a word that comes up in conversation. Mostly, it's a word I've read. And probably occasionally heard on the news, but not often, as I usually only listen to local news, and live nowhere near a coast.
Very good, I agree, and I hope I wasn't rude—especially how I have trouble with reading and pronunciation. Just slightly off-topic: Bill Poser is undoubtedly familiar with the place-name Tsawwassen, the name of a seaside town in British Columbia where ferries depart and land on the way between Vancouver and Victoria.
The initial "ts" of this Salishan name stressed on the second syllable is pronounced locally as [t], not [s] as one would expect from English speakers, let alone [ts] which the spelling suggests. Query: does the "ts" represent yet another sound or sequence?
Johanne D: Gbagbo : the "gb" letter sequence does not represent a sequence of two separate consonant sounds easy to pronounce in French but a single sound co-articulated g and b, pronounced at the same time , which is much more difficult to produce without training.
Hmm, I would tend to expect that omitting the "t" would be a prestige marker. In other words, my instinct is the exact opposite of Bill Poser's. I would expect a naive reading to produce the initial "t", and only someone with a more sophisticated knowledge of English convention would know to drop it. On the other hand, I can't entirely dismiss Bill's argument about bilingual pedantry especially since I suffer from a bit of that myself , and it could be that pronouncing the "t" will end up being both a high and low marker.
As for me, living on the US Pacific coast, I find both pronunciations unremarkable, and can't identify any personal preference. I seem to use either, interchangeably. I think 'sunami' would make the emphasis far less intuitive, though. I'd argue that 'tsunami' earns its distinctive spelling even if the t isn't universally voiced. Mntnr: Not to worry, I didn't think you were being rude at all.
Your point and your question were perfectly valid. Hmm, both the online American Heritage 4th ed. Neither offers a plain "s" as an alternative. However, my older Webster's New Collegiate c. Isn't this really the same sort of garbage word-rage rant that this site tends to come down on?
I checked twice to see if this was an April Fools post that dropped 20 days early. We borrowed a word that was originally spelled in a scholarly way and stuck with the weird spelling. Big Whoop. For me [tsunami] is the citation form and [sunami] the conversational form, just as I usually pronounce "asked" as [ast] rather than [askt].
I would object to any proposal to respell "tsunami" as "sunami" just as I would object to any proposal to respell "asked" as "assed". My dictionary has "tsoo-na-me" which is what I say, and I don't find the spelling odd at all. It's a conventional spelling for transliterated Japanese not so different from sashimi, edamame, wasabi, etc.
And there's a big difference between sounds that aren't native to English but are easy to say, like "ts," sounds that a native English speaker can't pronounce without difficulty, like "gb," and sounds that simply don't exist in English and can't even be perceived without special training, like the sound signified by "f" in Fujiyama.
It's odd that we don't have "ts" or "dz" in English, given that we have "ch" and "j. Although this affricate is not hard for English-speakers even initially like "let's" in very rapid speech, or a phrase like "[I]t's all gone" , I confess that I have literally never heard it used in this word.
Likewise I fail to see how someone could be unsure of their pronunciation of what would entail consecutive manners of articulation, i. I rather agree with Aaron Toivo that it is a non-issue; its odd form and low-frequency makes it much easier to remember, apart from marking it as an obvious borrowing, which can retain native spelling with impunity anyway. It's certainly not a good example of why English spelling is difficult.
What Chandra should really be focusing on is not intelligent adults who are confused by exceptions, but university graduates who haven't written or read enough to internalize the use of homophonous there, their, and they're. Mark: I think this is different from the sort of prescriptivist poppycock this site regularly disparages.
Bill isn't complaining because people aren't following "the rules"—he's complaining about the rules! That said, I think the various dictionary citations posted in this thread, all of which either allow or in a couple of cases require the "t" to be pronounced, shows that Bill was probably wrong about what the rules actually are, which is typical of prescriptivist nonsense rants.
But since he was complaining about those non-rules, I expect he's happy to find he's wrong—something no rabid prescriptivist threatening violence on those who break his non-rules is ever happy to hear. Leonardo Boiko the Portuguese term is definitely more interesting to me, and more logical than what we've got in English, but you can see it still fails to distinguish between an earthquake under the ocean, and the resulting wave.
I trust you and the rest of the LLers will help me spread my English coinage okay, I admit I'm probably not the first , and coin similar ones for all other languages. Bill Poser wrote: "Sure, some English speakers pronounce initial [ts]. What struck me as overbroad in your initial statement was the unequivocal claim that "in English the word is pronounced [sunami]. I also don't fully understand the verb phrase "become a natural part of the English sound system".
What does this mean? Does a foreign sound necessarily become a natural part of the English sound system by virtue of appearing in some loanwords? Has initial [shm] become a natural part of the English sound system because of its appearance in a number of loanwords from Yiddish shmuck, shmear? Is it not possible for [tsunami] to exist in some native speakers' English without initial [ts] becoming a natural part of the English sound system?
It is true, of course, that I and the many others who self-report [tsunami] are also self-selected to be people with some knowledge of languages since we are here reading language log. Please disregard the last paragraph of the above; it is cut-and-paste drool that should have been deleted before submission. I mentioned this post and thread to my son, including carla's comment and my reply both of us grew up in NYC and pronounce the "ts".
His immediate reaction: "Growing up in New York, you don't need this kind of tsuris [Yiddish for 'trouble']. Right on target!
New York English, even of non-Jews, contains a noticeable amount of Yiddish, in which initial [ts] is common. I grew up in Victoria, and what I remember is about equal distribution of people saying Tawwassen and Sawwassen.
Maybe it was just my ear, but I can't ever remember anyone pronouncing both sounds as ts. I remember the Great Alaskan Quake and tsunami of , although I was very young. As a small child in a California fishing family, I watched the excitement: midnight phone calls, followed by a rush to secure the boat against the oncoming disaster. I am pretty sure that I learned both words, "tidal wave" and "tsunami" at that time, the former being the term I heard at home, the latter on television.
I've always thought the beginning "t" of "tsunami" was pronounced, although now I wonder whether I would have noticed that not everyone did so. Today, for the first time, I think I understand why they were called tidal waves: not for any belief that they were caused by tides, but because they behave something like tides, coming in wave after wave.
What amuses me is the widespread use of the phrase "tsunami wave" — i. I've never been sure why tsunami replaced "tidal wave", I think it was affectation — tsunami sounds moe exotic and educated than tidal wave.
It's true that the pehnomenon in question has nothing to do with tides, but then it has nothing to do with harbours either. In one piece today I saw "tsunami", "tsunami wave" and "tidal surge".
I can't wait for "tidal tsunami wave". Somewhat related, I saw this comment on a website about proposed GOP budget cuts for the Pacific tsunami warning center: "Great idea GOP tsunamis are rare so much so I do not think there is a word for them in Japanese. Let us start spelling and pronouncing "very" as "fery". No more Norman elitism for me! Don't see any reason to try to make the "v" sound in such an unnatural position as word initial. What am I, French? Chandra: So please, from your vantage point as a well-educated, linguistically-capable individual, don't make the assumption that these kinds of things are "non-issues".
Sorry to split hairs here a bit, but I did say " generally " a non-issue. I was quite aware that exceptions existed, and so I used hedging words in my post such as "probably", "normally", and "generally", with the intent to signal that I was not claiming to describe everyone everywhere.
I still feel that what I said is generally — as opposed to universally — true. Whereas learning to write is a rote memory task for most words in any case, and the challenges here are a much greater than just the oddball words and b mostly unaddressable in a spelling reform without sacrificing cross-dialect readability.
Can't comment on this "insane" spelling — I've got neumonia and I'm late for my sychology class. No, wait, those are insane too.
Josh, when I was a kid, people said Tawwassen, and I still do, but now it seems that most people say Sawwassen or [ts]awwassen. I've no idea how it's supposed to be pronounced in Halkomelem. I had never heard the word pronounced or knew its meaning until I visited Hawaii in and saw the instructions in the telephone book on what to do if there was a possible tsunami. So I guess I always thought the word should be pronounced with an initial TS.
I have no idea which is correct, but one is more elevated. I hardly think such a figure justifies your assertion that the challenges of English spelling are "generally a non-issue".
When you talk about words that "we already know how to spell", you are assuming the common misconception that the "we" you are referring to encompasses the majority of the population, when in fact it refers to a relatively small, elite percentage. Furthermore, it is not simply a matter of a few "oddball words".
English spelling is well-known to be significantly more idiosyncratic, and contain significantly more exceptions, than most if not all Indo-European languages. Asserting that it shouldn't be hard to formulate yet another rule indicates to me that you have very little understanding of the very real, very daunting struggle that so many people face when trying to learn to write in this language.
I am not advocating spelling reform, mainly because I think such an effort would be futile. But it would be nice to see wider recognition in our society of just how difficult a struggle this is for such a large percentage of the population. I was 14 years old when the tsunami happened the Indian Ocean, so I was definitely old enough to already know the word and then hear it many times as I watched the news.
Today a professor pronounced the "t" during a class discussion, though, and it sounded really strange to me. Now I come here and read all the comments saying that the "t" is completely normal for many English speakers. How strange. I pronounce it "tidal wave," always, for two reasons. The first is that "tidal wave" is the native English term for the phenomenon, and I have a certain fondness for it on that basis.
The second reason is that the usual objection to it as "inaccurate" is baseless. I remember being pedantically instructed by my third grade teacher that we should use the word "tsunami" instead of "tidal wave" and reading the same thing in a science magazine for kids a year or so later.
However, I intuitively recognized this as the etymological fallacy even when I was nine, and I refused to give up "tidal wave. It's quite remarkable to see, the way the tide goes way, way out, before the wall of water smashes against the shore. A "tidal wave" does have nothing to do with the lunar or solar tide. But that's not the only meaning of the word "tide"; it can refer to other risings and lowerings of water levels, reminiscent of gravitational tides.
I've even come across it used to refer to gradual changes in water level in inland bodies, for reasons that have nothing to do with the moon. Such usages are certainly less common, but that's hardly a surprise. The lunar tide goes in and out twice a day along every seacoast on Earth; other similar-looking movements are less common, and so they are less discussed.
But they are, linguistically speaking, "tides" nonetheless. March 12, am. I've always pronounced the "t" in "tsunami. It's fun to say. The first wave may not be the largest, and often it is the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or even later waves that are the biggest. After one wave inundates, or floods inland, it recedes seaward often as far as a person can see so the seafloor is exposed. The next wave then rushes ashore within minutes and carries with it many floating debris that were destroyed by previous waves.
When waves enter harbors, very strong and dangerous water currents are generated that can easily break ship moorings, and bores that travel far inland can be formed when tsunamis enter rivers or other waterway channels. Current Warnings Most Recent Tsunami. Also Tsunami Sources Icosohedron Globe. Are you really so surprised that English speakers would want to borrow a Japanese word?
Personally, I think it's kinda cool-- but some might argue otherwise. Another memorable Japanese word that English speakers have corrupted is Kay-Ri-o-kee Karaoke --have you heard people say that one? Using a foreign word offers a certain "Je ne sais quoi" boooooooooo that is all the more appealing when when others actually understand what you're talking about. If you went around quoting Caesar in Latin, someone would probably punch you. You wanna hear something funny? Japanese borrow?
However, those two characters together mean 'toilet paper' shou zhi in Chinese. Don't be too hard on Westerners for poor Japanese pronunciation. The human tongue is a creature of habit, and while the 'ts' sound is one that English speakers can easily reproduce, flattening it out into an 's' is easier the same reason people say 'liddle' not 'little', and 'ouda' not 'out of' Ray2 Feb A tsunami is a seismic sea wave, not a tidal wave.
I wince every time I hear someone refer to the recent disaster and mention tidal waves. Please remember that tides are caused by the gravitational effect that the Moon and to a lesser extent the Sun have on the Earth. TIdal waves occur daily and have nothing whatsoever to do with earthquakes. A tsunami, however, is the result of the displacement of water following a seismic event.
We don't pronounce "tsar" with distinct sounds for the t and s I think it's as simple as that. CQ Feb I was indeed trying to imitate the way most English speakers say Karaoke--sorry if that wasn't clear. The whole argument over the 'correct pronunciation' can start to get pretty weak. I'm curious--does anyone here speak a language that tends NOT to borrow foreign words, and instead imagines new 'native' words for new things?
Or is the world simply moving too fast for this to be practical? It's just fine to import words into the English language, as long as they are modified to be compatible with our basic spelling and pronunciation conventions.
Even though "tidal wave" connotes, in the mind of the average English speaking person, nothing more than a huge wave without regard to the technicality of how it may have been produced , nevertheless I can see the value of being able to differentiate between waves produced by tidal forces and those produced by seismic activity. And that is the way it should be. The consonantal blend "ts", appearing at the beginning of a word, is not native to the English tongue.
The spelling of this word should be "sunami". Another example is "Sri Lanka". When that country's name was changed from the perfectly fine "Ceylon", English ought not to have been affected. Do we call the country whose capital is Berlin, "Deutschland"? Of course not. We call it Germany.
They say "Die Vereinigte Staaten". And somehow we manage not to take offense at that. And when the Japanese, upon importing the English word "computer", chose to say "konpyuutaa" do we get all bent out of shape?
So why the hell is it we think that we have to accomodate to alien pronunciations? This question was asked in KBC in India a game show.. Thanks for telling me the answer.. Sonia1 Jun Steve1 Jun Actually, susan, me, a tidal wave IS a tsunami, at least one of the definitions.
It may be a misnomer, but that is the definition. Yes, a tidal wave may have nothing to do with tides. Ghetto Nov Tidal wave is a common name for the occurrence, however this traditional usage is considered incorrect by oceanographers and other scientists since no tides are involved.
Although the term "tidal wave" was formerly more popular with the general public, news media reporting of the Indian Ocean earthquake used the term "tsunami" almost exclusively, as a result of which "tsunami" is now much better known than it was before. The reason it is spelled "Tsunami" is because you are actualy prenouncing the letter "T" yet it is still silent becausw you don't recongnize it. Also, English phonotactics doesn't allow a "ts" sound at the beginning of a syllable, whereas Japanese does.
When the word was adopted into English, the initial "t" was dropped to fit English phonology. This is the same reason we don't pronounce the "p" in psychology: English syllables can't start with "ps".
I understand your point of view. However, that is just a part of language. This makes it difficult to pronounce. English, along with all languages include words that are not of their origin. English US used words from many othre languags as common as their own such as French words. Many Japanese pronounce English words they commonly use incorrectly as well. I've seen commerical products for exampe use "clover" instead of "lover", I hear songs use English words in all sorts of incorrect ways.
I am not one to personally complain that this is a a great injustice. I listen to music in 7 different languages, and there is not a day I don't enjoy Japanese entertainment their native language.
I simply see this as a basic problem when introducing another language into your own. It is not unheard of to intergate words into your own pronouncation. All languages do it, and in this case, so do the Japanese.
Although I can understand your point of view to some extent, I tend to disagree that this is a real problem. This is a basic language issue, not with English, but all languages. When one language borrows a word from another language, it is common to modify the pronoucation. Further, all languages are countinual evolving. This same complaint may be made against the Japanese use English and other languages.
I am not one to actually make this complaint, as I am against this type of thinking and understand the issue at hand. Further, I love the Japanese language and culture - I also work in Japan 4 months a year. I listen to music from 7 different countries. I enjoy Japanese entertainment everyday. However, to make my argument, I have seen Japanese use "clover" instead of "lover", they've also modified the pronouncation of words they've borrowed or mispronounce them.
This is an global issue, it would be great if we all spoke every language in the world like native speakers, it would make my travels much easier. Tsukamoto Feb In this context, COMMUTER actually refers to the state of being a season ticket holder, not a traveller, the person concerned having commuted their daily return tickets for a season.
I see no reason why somebody could not be a commuter purely by virtue of using a car park or going to a cricket match, as long as they had a season ticket. MPR Mar For the record, "typhoon" did not enter the English language from Japanese.
Most etymologists agree that its current meaning comes from Cantonese "toi fung". The word itself probably originally entered English via an Indian language most likely Hindi , which used the word "tufan", borrowed from Arabic, meaning a strong, violent storm.
The Arabic word was borrowed from the ancient Greek word "typhon", meaning "whirlwind", after the Titan who controlled the winds. This is yet another rather tortuous example of how loan words are accommodated into other language sby changes in the pronunciation. Loan words which retain their "original" pronunciation are by far the exception rather than the rule.
To press the point further, even words that have entered English relatively recently from Japanese - for example, "sake", "kamikaze", "Kyoto", "Tokyo", "manga", "karaoke", "bonsai" - are all pronounced differently in their original tongue. Percivale Mar There are numerous reasons why words are mispronounced when the Japanese borrow them from English.
The Japanese language pronounces their 5 vowels only one way. When you see an A it is always pronounced AH. All of the consonants except final n must be followed by a vowel. Therefore when they see a word, for instance, "mac", they will pronounce it mah-koo very short and clipped.
In addition, their language does not have an L, so they do the best they can to get close to the sound, and it comes out sort of like an R. There is also no TH, so they substitute closely with an S. Their R is pronounced somewhat like the L in English. They do not have diphthongs, so they always break vowels apart into two syllables. These are the major problems the Japanese have in pronouncing English words.
There are also other minor reasons for mispronunciation. So when they attempt to pronounce MacDonald only 3 syllables in English it comes out as 6 syllables in Japanese because they add the needed vowels at the ends of each consonant. While the Japanese language may seem short of sounds, the English language is oversupplied with variants in vowels, not to mention the multitude of diphthongs and ways to pronounce many words that look alike.
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