[Ads-l] Heard on a re-run of The Office

[Laurence Horn]

Well, it’s true that the fall-con version is particularly British; the OED gives only /fOlk at n/ and /fOk at n/ as pronunciation options, while AHD gives /faelk at n/ as first, followed by /fOlk at n/.  But I’ve heard both of the latter on this side of the pond.

LH

> On Mar 5, 2018, at 11:27 AM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> I think we covered this before: Greenstreet was English, Lorre was German,
> both playing foreigners when talking about the fall-con.
> 
> On Mar 5, 2018 11:08 AM, "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> 
>>> On Mar 5, 2018, at 7:45 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> As I may have mentioned long ago, the only pronunciation I've ever used
>>> semi-rhymes with "scalpin.'"
>>> 
>>> JL
>> 
>> I’m pretty sure I use the fall-kin pronunciation if I’m reciting the
>> second line of Yeats’s Second Coming or the title of the Hammett/Bogart
>> quarry from Malta (maybe because of the assonance in the latter case; ditto
>> if I ever came across a bar called the Salty Falcon). But, as mentioned,
>> never for the Atlanta NFL franchise.  Otherwise I don’t have much occasion
>> to refer to the actual birds.
>> 
>> LH
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 2:49 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> In the Army, there was an  NCO named "Forkner." Since he was from behind
>>>> the Cotton Curtain, he pronounced his name as approx. [fOUkn@]. I've
>> spent
>>>> the last 55 years or so wondering whether this spelling might not be an
>>>> attempt at a rendering of _Falconer_ or _Faulkner_ or some such by a
>>>> semi-literate ancestor.
>>>> 
>>>> On Sun, Mar 4, 2018 at 8:23 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> I’ve heard both pronunciations, although increasingly the one that
>> rhymes
>>>>> with the first two syllables of “balcony”.  But when sportscasters
>> refer
>>>> to
>>>>> the football team based in Atlanta, they seem to always call them the
>>>>> fal.cons /'fael k at nz/ rather than the fall.cons.  Wonder if there are
>>>>> kids growing up who have them as separate lexical items (despite the
>> clue
>>>>> from the team logo).
>>>>> 
>>>>> LH
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Mar 4, 2018, at 4:13 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> _falcon_ pronounced by Rainn Wilson as the obsolescent "fall.con,"
>>>>> instead
>>>>>> of as the far more common "fal.con."
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I'm not alone!
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> There's a discussion on WordReference:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/pronunciation-falcon.1660038/
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> -Wilson
>>>>>> -----
>>>>>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
>> to
>>>>>> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>>>>>> -Mark Twain
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>> 
>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> -Wilson
>>>> -----
>>>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
>>>> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>>>> -Mark Twain
>>>> 
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
>> truth."
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org