Subject: Mutis mutandis

A Latin term used in English.
Mutis is also the plural of Muti, traditional Zulu medicine.
(Muti has a plural as per a dictionary). Curious since
Ayurveda and Unani, traditional Vedic and Muslim medicine
in India, don't have plurals. If Muti can mean a traditional
Zulu medication, that would explain why it has a plural.

Anyhow, how does an Anglophone decide how differently to
pronounce these two instances of Mutis?

On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 7:57:49 PM UTC-7, Dingbat wrote:
> Subject: Mutis mutandis
>
> A Latin term used in English.
....

The Latin phrase used in English is "mutatis mutandis".

--
Jerry Friedman

On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 9:18:09 AM UTC+5:30, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 7:57:49 PM UTC-7, Dingbat wrote:
> > Subject: Mutis mutandis
> >
> > A Latin term used in English.
> ...
>
> The Latin phrase used in English is "mutatis mutandis".
>
Sorry, I remembered it wrong. Anyhow, my question, is:
How do Anglophones, or some of them, avoid pronouncing
Latin <i> as [aI] where they don't in some other language?
For example, a lawyer named Belli involved in legal
proceedings stemming from the JFK assassination had the
last syllable of his name pronounced [laI], the same as in
Belie. It's an Italian name and Italian pronunciation rules are
the same as Latin for this name; Belly would be a lot
closer to the Italian pronunciation, albeit not identical.

On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:10:21 PM UTC-7, Dingbat wrote:
> On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 9:18:09 AM UTC+5:30, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 7:57:49 PM UTC-7, Dingbat wrote:
> > > Subject: Mutis mutandis
> > >
> > > A Latin term used in English.
> > ...
> >
> > The Latin phrase used in English is "mutatis mutandis".
> >
> Sorry, I remembered it wrong. Anyhow, my question, is:
> How do Anglophones, or some of them, avoid pronouncing
> Latin <i> as [aI] where they don't in some other language?
> For example, a lawyer named Belli involved in legal
> proceedings stemming from the JFK assassination had the
> last syllable of his name pronounced [laI], the same as in
> Belie.

(But with a different syllable stressed.)

> It's an Italian name and Italian pronunciation rules are
> the same as Latin for this name; Belly would be a lot
> closer to the Italian pronunciation, albeit not identical.

We avoid such mispronunciations by remembering what we were
told. The pronunciation of Melvin Belli's surname undoubtedly
surprised a lot of people. If I met another person with that surname,
I wouldn't be surprised if it was pronounced like "belly".

In the same way, I've known two Muellers who pronounced the first
syllable like "mew", but I can remember that the former FBI director
Robert Mueller pronounces it like "mull".

By the way, the late writer Lars Eighner, who used to post here, once
said he pronounced his surname differently from most other members
of his family, if I remember correctly.

--
Jerry Friedman

On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 10:21:39 AM UTC+5:30, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 9:10:21 PM UTC-7, Dingbat wrote:
> > On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 9:18:09 AM UTC+5:30, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> > > On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 7:57:49 PM UTC-7, Dingbat wrote:
> > > > Subject: Mutis mutandis
> > > >
> > > > A Latin term used in English.
> > > ...
> > >
> > > The Latin phrase used in English is "mutatis mutandis".
> > >
> > Sorry, I remembered it wrong. Anyhow, my question, is:
> > How do Anglophones, or some of them, avoid pronouncing
> > Latin <i> as [aI] where they don't in some other language?
> > For example, a lawyer named Belli involved in legal
> > proceedings stemming from the JFK assassination had the
> > last syllable of his name pronounced [laI], the same as in
> > Belie.
> (But with a different syllable stressed.)
> > It's an Italian name and Italian pronunciation rules are
> > the same as Latin for this name; Belly would be a lot
> > closer to the Italian pronunciation, albeit not identical.
> We avoid such mispronunciations by remembering what we were
> told. The pronunciation of Melvin Belli's surname undoubtedly
> surprised a lot of people. If I met another person with that surname,
> I wouldn't be surprised if it was pronounced like "belly".
>
> In the same way, I've known two Muellers who pronounced the first
> syllable like "mew", but I can remember that the former FBI director
> Robert Mueller pronounces it like "mull".
>
Pronouncing it Muler would make it closer, but not identical to German.
Some Anglophones monophthongize [ju], especially in Kewl, a
respelling of one meaning of Cool. Their Muler might sound German.
>
> By the way, the late writer Lars Eighner, who used to post here, once
> said he pronounced his surname differently from most other members
> of his family, if I remember correctly.
>
I read that he resigned to avoid getting fired for some specious reason,
and became a homeless scavenger. Poor fellow. One should not have
to resign in that circumstance; one should be able to make one's
persecutors resign. In German speaking places and in Yiddish, it's
presumably pronounced [aIgn@]. In America, it can be EYENER,
EGGNER and other variants mostly deviating from the original.
GH in Haight (Haight Ashbury) is silent by an English sound change
that made a guttural silent in that context in Britain's Englishes
other than Northumbrian.

In article <9a665d09-a657-4e08-bed5-07e7e7e281d2n@googlegroups.com>,
Jerry Friedman <jerry.friedman99@gmail.com> wrote:

>In the same way, I've known two Muellers who pronounced the first
>syllable like "mew", but I can remember that the former FBI director
>Robert Mueller pronounces it like "mull".

The pasta brand was always "mullers" in my hearing, although I don't
recall that they ever had radio or TV advertising. And the baseball
player Bill Mueller pronounces it "miller" -- as indeed did many
German-Americans.

The basic lesson here is that when a word from language A is
transposed into language B but contains phonemes from language A that
don't exist in language B, there's no guarantee that the results will
be consistent across speakers. (Note that the same issue is present
diachronically within English: the OE phoneme that we write as <gh>
turned into several different phonemes as it was lost on the way to
ModE. A similar thing happened in Finnish, to the same sound IIRC,
but written Finnish being a much more recent and synthetic standard
there are no orthographic traces.)

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wollman@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

On Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 1:11:00 AM UTC+5:30, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> In article <9a665d09-a657-4e08...@googlegroups.com>,
> Jerry Friedman <jerry.fr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >In the same way, I've known two Muellers who pronounced the first
> >syllable like "mew", but I can remember that the former FBI director
> >Robert Mueller pronounces it like "mull".
> The pasta brand was always "mullers" in my hearing, although I don't
> recall that they ever had radio or TV advertising. And the baseball
> player Bill Mueller pronounces it "miller" -- as indeed did many
> German-Americans.
>
The vowel before <ll> looks short because the l is doubled. Yet,
I found sound clips with German pronunciations that make the
vowel long. I don't see why they pronounce it as if spelled
Mueler. Miller is a less surprising pronunciation.
>
> The basic lesson here is that when a word from language A is
> transposed into language B but contains phonemes from language A that
> don't exist in language B, there's no guarantee that the results will
> be consistent across speakers. (Note that the same issue is present
> diachronically within English: the OE phoneme that we write as <gh>
> turned into several different phonemes as it was lost on the way to
> ModE. A similar thing happened in Finnish, to the same sound IIRC,
> but written Finnish being a much more recent and synthetic standard
> there are no orthographic traces.)