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Maybe I'm nuts and no one else cares, but I just wanted to disagree with a point in OSC's review of Alice in Wonderland.
I agree that the creators of the film weren't overly concerned about being true to the source material. However, in the case of the pronunciation of the word "gyre," I think he is wrong. In the preface to the 1896 edition, Mr. Carroll instructs us to "make the 'g' hard in 'gyre' and 'gimble'..." Maybe it was accidental, but they did get that right.
Posts: 5 | Registered: Sep 2007
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I can see why Card and others think the soft G is right--Carrol set himself up for it when he gave the definition as being related to the word gyroscope, so it's an understandable mistake. It's only obvious from outside writings, not anything in the text of the story.
quote:Pronounce "slithy" as if it were the two words, "sly, thee": make the "g" hard in "gyre" and "gimble": and pronounce "rath" to rhyme with "bath."
The "i" in "slithy" is long, as in "writhe"; and "toves" is pronounced so as to rhyme with "groves." Again, the first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the "o" in "borrow." I have heard people try to give it the sound of the "o" in "worry." Such is Human Perversity.
The one that everyone gets wrong, because it's never stated explicity, is that "wabe" and "outgrabe" are pronounced to rhyme with "maybe."
Otherwise, the explanation Humpty Dumpty gives doesn't make as much sense.
Posts: 1894 | Registered: Aug 2000
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It still does! "wabe" and "outgrabe" rhyme with "babe", not "baby"! Your pronunciation of them is heresy! Off with your head!
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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gyre |jīr| verb [ intrans. ] poetic/literary whirl; gyrate : a swarm of ghosts gyred around him. noun a spiral; a vortex. • Geography a circular pattern of currents in an ocean basin : the central North Pacific gyre. ORIGIN late Middle English (in the sense [whirl (someone or something) around)] : from late Latin gyrare, from Latin gyrus ‘a ring,’ from Greek guros. The noun is from Latin gyrus.
The word's history indicates a |g| sound rather than |j| as indicated in the pronunciation guide, however there are many pronunciations which have shifted according to popular use over the years. Many poems of that age rhyme words which are no longer rhymes according to common pronunciations. It happens- nobody is right or wrong. Now if you were pronouncing the word to some specific purpose, like reading the text aloud, you might decide to revert to the then current pronunciation in order to maintain the rhyme, similar to the way in which recitations of Chaucer are best delivered with an approximation of a middle English pronunciation. In fact, Shakespeare suffers from a similar problem today, in that British pronunciation is considered "proper" for Shakespeare, but British English pronunciation has drifted noticeably *further* from that of Shakespeare than American English has, in general, meaning Shakespeare generally rhymes better in American English than British.
Go tell that to them, though. I don't know how many students I've had who have been taught the idiotic belief that there exists a "proper" or "pristine" form of English- not that I can blame them, as speakers of a minority language with a lack of deep knowledge of the features of different forms of English, or of any language with more than a handful of distinct dialects.
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