/zUmzUm/

[Jewls2u]

>>>> And what he says is clearly /zUmzUm/, not /zmzm/.  The only reason the
vocal >groups pronunciation interests me is that because of it pronunciation
is consistent in the ad.  Given money and care taken over such ads, I doubt
that this is an accident.<<<<<<

Having done some ad work (nothing as slick as a Mazda ad) I would have to
say the producers had the boy say ZumZum because it's catchy and sticks with
you better than Zoom Zoom.  Also, the ad is selling the idea that driving a
Mazda will make you feel like a kid again, and kids are notorious for
manipulating language to increase their "coolness quotient"...so driving a
Mazda makes you a cool kid. Now the ad that I don't get is Outback
Steakhouse. Their catch phrase is "No rules, just right"...so what, they eat
on the floor with their hands?

Julienne

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Herb Stahlke
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 5:11 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: /zUmzUm/


I didn't make myself clear.  It's not the backup group whose pronunciation
I'm interested in but the American boy.  And what he says is clearly
/zUmzUm/, not /zmzm/.  The only reason the vocal groups pronunciation
interests me is that because of it pronunciation is consistent in the ad.
Given money and care taken over such ads, I doubt that this is an accident.

Herb

<<< lynnem at COGS.SUSX.AC.UK  8/24  1:08p >>>
--On Friday, August 24, 2001 11:57 am -0500 Herb Stahlke
<hstahlke at GW.BSU.EDU> wrote:

>
> There's a Mazda ad on TV currently in which a formally dressed young boy
> says /zUmzUm/ as a Mazda goes zooming by.  In the background, a male
> vocal group that does not sound like an American dialect (a colleague
> thinks it's Ladysmith),.... Since "zoom" is imitative
> and comes into the language long after the partial laxing of /u/ in Early
> Modern English, where is /zUm/ coming from?  How widespread is it?  Does
> it have a lax vowel in this ad because it's reduplicated?  Why did the
> producers choose the lax vowel consistently?

Well, if the singers _are_ Ladysmith Black Mambazo or another (South)
African vocal group, then why should we think that they should be limited
by the etymology of the word, or by the phonological patterns of English?

I've not seen the ad, but is it possible that it's /zmzm/ instead, with
syllabified /m/ (can't do the diacritic on e-mail) rather than a real
vowel?  That is, since it's sung, couldn't it just be humming with z's at
the beginning of each syllable?  That's how I'd imagine it...

Lynne


M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320