saying "umlaut"

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:18 PM -0400 10/9/09, Herb Stahlke wrote:
>I think I learned the word in high school in German class, and it's
>always been /'UmlaUt/ for me.  I'm not sure I've ever heard Julia's
>pronunciation.

My suggestion earlier was ['Umlaut], beginning
with the vowel in "book" (short, but rounded).
[^m] for the first syllable would sound odd to me
too; [umlaut] would sound a bit hyper-Teutonic
but not too remarkable.  Beats me if I can tell
the difference between my proffered [au]
diphthong in the unstressed syllable and Herb's
[aU].

LH

>
>On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 7:48 PM, Julia Achenbach
><julia.achenbach at uni-oldenburg.de> wrote:
>>  ---------------------- Information from the
>>mail header -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Julia Achenbach <julia.achenbach at UNI-OLDENBURG.DE>
>>  Subject:      Re: saying "umlaut"
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  Shouldn't it be something like this:
>>  'Ê mlaÊ t ???
>>
>>  The letter "u" is short, similar to the way "u" is pronounced in "gun",
>>  the so ~oom seems just a little bit weird to me.
>>
>>>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>>  -----------------------
>>>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>>  Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
>>>>  Subject:      saying "umlaut"
>>>>
>>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>  Interestly "umlaut" has multiple pronunciations.
>>>>
>>>>  At forvo.com, enter "umlaut", click on the resulting first word (not
>>>>  arrow), see three pronunciations:
>>>>
>>>>  1  ~oomlout (where ~oo is as in "good" ~ou as in "out", spoken by topquark
>>>>  2. ~oomlou' (where "t" is dropped or glottalized) spoken by threb
>>>>  3. ~oomllaat  (stress second syl, with ~aa as in "Saab", spoken by Olbill.
>>>>
>>>>  thefreedictionary.com has
>>>>  1. USA = ~uemlout (where ~ue is as in "true")
>>>>  2. UK = ~uemllout (stress second syllable)
>>>>
>>>>  m-w.com has two pronunciations
>>>>  1. firstly  ~oomlout
>>>>  2. secondly  ~uemlout
>>>>  (but the phonetic notation is in reverse order.  So which is really first
>>>>  or second?)
>>>>
>>>>  It's pretty rare in English to have a word start with ~oo.  Of the top 5k
>>>>  most popular words, none do.
>>>>
>>>>  Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
>>>>  see truespel.com phonetic spelling
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>>
>>
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