Kudos to Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos for becoming, according to Forbes magazine, the world’s third richest person.

The pronunciation of his family name, which comes from his Cuban stepfather, is not straightforward for English speakers, on either side of the Atlantic. Here’s how he says it himself:

In the first syllable of Bezos he uses his FACE vowel, as in baby and basic, and in the second syllable he uses his GOAT vowel, as in zodiac and Amazonian. (The American GOAT vowel is often transcribed as /oʊ/, but like many Americans Mr Bezos pronounces it with quite a ‘fronted’ vowel.)

Americans commonly pronounce the ending -os with the GOAT vowel, in words like cosmos, Carlos and Barbados. And they’re consistent in choosing this vowel for Bezos. However they’re not so sure about the e in the first syllable – most use FACE, as Mr Bezos himself does, but others use FLEECE (as in Zambezi) or DRESS (as in embezzle):

Brits, on the other hand, practically never use their GOAT vowel in the ending -os. In words like cosmos, Carlos and Barbados, they use their short LOT vowel (usually transcribed /ɒ/), as in boss and across. Unsurprisingly, some of them use this vowel in Bezos too:

But Bezos is a rare name, quite unknown to most Brits until they heard Americans talking about the founder of Amazon. And so, very unusually, some Brits copy the American pronunciation and pronounce this particular -os with their GOAT vowel:

Kudos, used as expression of congratulations or respect, comes like cosmos from Ancient Greek, where it meant ‘glory’. As expected, Brits pronounce the -os of kudos like the -os of cosmos, with their LOT vowel:

(Brits typically pronounce the first syllable like queue.)

But something odd has happened to this word in American English. For many Americans, kudos doesn’t follow the pattern of cosmos, Carlos, Barbados and Bezos. Rather, it’s been reanalysed as a plural, perhaps by analogy with congratulations. This means that the final s is pronounced as a z, as in photos and commandos:

The plural use of kudos is illustrated by these phrases:

 

 

And it can even be heard turned into a countable singular, without the ‘plural’ -s ending:

Not all Americans treat kudos as a plural. Some give it the same final s as cosmos and Bezos:

But it can still be treated as a countable singular, with an indefinite article:

whereas kudos is uncountable in British English, roughly equivalent to ‘respect’. In the US it’s even possible to hear kudos used as a countable singular, but pronounced with a final z like a plural:

 

The name Erdoğan raises several questions for speakers of English. One concerns the unfamiliar Turkish letter ğ; this is readily converted into English w. But the vowels are more problematic. Here I’ll discuss the stressed initial vowel.

In most languages, the spelling er corresponds, logically enough, to some kind of ‘e’ vowel followed by some kind of ‘r’ consonant. In Turkish, the vowel is a relatively open ɛ (leaning towards æ for some speakers):

The nearest English equivalent would be the pronunciation of the word air (ɛr in America, ɛː in southern Britain).

But in English words, the spelling er before a consonant is generally pronounced as the NURSE vowel: a long schwa əː in southern Britain, and an r-coloured vowel ə˞ in America. There are hundreds of examples, eg:

herd, verdict, term, perfect, person, service, alert, advert, commercial, convert, university, observe, reverse, Sherlock, Mersey, Germany

If a foreign name is only rarely used, its pronunciation may vary considerably. But if it becomes frequently used, a consensus generally emerges. For example, English speakers generally opt for their ‘air’ = SQUARE pronunciation in Camembert, their ‘er’ = NURSE pronunciation in Lucerne.

The weekend’s events have put Turkey’s president on everyone’s lips. So what are we hearing on British TV?

Occasionally we get the ‘air’ = SQUARE pronunciation:

But the herd’s majority verdict seems to be the ‘er’ = NURSE version:

This choice, between a generally more accurate SQUARE type pronunciation and a more English NURSE type pronunciation, arises with various foreign names, including Merkel and Berlusconi.

Further notes

Regarding the final vowel of Erdoğan, the most accurate English choice would be the PALM vowel, as in Botswana. This is the option chosen by Americans. Although some Brits use PALM, we can hear in the clips above that their majority choice is the TRAP vowel. This difference between American PALM and British TRAP often arises in foreign names, eg Ghandi, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Milan.

However, the British choice of TRAP in Erdoğan is rather unusual, in that English words containing a after the sound w are generally pronounced with the vowel of LOT. Examples:

want, wand, watch, wash, wasp, wallet, waffle, swan, swallow, swap, quantity, qualification, squad, squash, squander, Watson, Wanda, Obi-Wan

Perhaps that exotic letter ğ somehow interferes with the influence of the w on the following a.

(The w generalization is blocked if the following sound is ‘velar’, k, g or ŋ, in which case the vowel of TRAP is used: wax, wag, quack, swagger, wangle, Swank, etc. There’s a small number of other exceptions, such as the onomatopoeic word wham and the name David Walliams.)

There can’t be many words which have gone from non-existence to omnipresence as quickly as Brexit.

People are divided not only on how they feel about Britain’s departure from the EU, but also on how they pronounce this word. Brits generally pronounce the x as /ks/:

but many Americans pronounce it /gz/:

This difference reflects the two pronunciations of the word exit (both noun and verb) which predominate on either side of the Atlantic. We can see the difference in a preference poll which John Wells took some years back for his Longman Pronunciation Dictionary:It’s my impression that the UK-US divergence has if anything become more marked. Certainly we can find American dictionaries which prioritize /gz/, eg Merriam-Webster:and British dictionaries which list only /ks/, eg Macmillan:Here anyway are some Brits with /ks/:

and some Americans with /gz/:

The /ks/ pronunciation is consistent with a generalization in English regarding ex- and stress: if the e is more strongly stressed than the following vowel we get /ks/, if the reverse we get /gz/. Common examples of /ks/ after stress are:

é/ks/ercise, dyslé/ks/ia, flé/ks/ible, hé/ks/agon, lé/ks/icon, sé/ks/y, É/ks/eter, Mé/ks/ico, Té/ks/as

And examples of /gz/ before stress are:

e/gz/áct, e/gz/ággerate, e/gz/ámple, e/gz/écutive, e/gz/háust, e/gz/híbit, e/gz/íst, e/gz/ótic, Ale/gz/ánder

(The /gz/ pronunciations can survive even when a more strongly stressed suffix is added, eg e/gz/ist-éntial.)

So pronouncing éxit and Bréxit with /gz/ goes against the stress generalization. Perhaps it’s an American declaration of independence.

Further notes

Other exceptions to the stress generalization are those words written with exc. These are pronounced with /ks/ regardless of stress, eg éxcellent, excéption.

Every weekday I tweet (via @CUBEwords) a topical word from the day’s news, with phonetic transcriptions from the CUBE dictionary. This week I was about to tweet Euroscepticism when I hesitated, unsure about the location of the word’s main stress.

My first instinct was to put it on Euro-, making EUroscepticism. I checked Oxford Dictionaries (not many other dictionaries contain it), and was reassured to find that its transcription agreed with me:However, Oxford’s accompanying audio clip puts the main stress on -scepticism, making EuroSCEPticism (there’s also a secondary stress on the first syllable):

The site Forvo.com, where users contribute their own pronunciations, has two recordings of the word, one by a Scot and one by an American, and they both give the main stress to -scepticism:

Now my confidence was shaken, so I consulted my Facebook friends, who unanimously agreed that the main stress is on -scepticism, not Euro-. I also asked them about a similar word with the same number of syllables, Eurocommunism; they were more willing to give this word early stress: EUrocommunism. By contrast, Oxford Dictionaries gives this word late stress: EuroCOmmunism!

Many English words have a first part which, like Euro-, comes originally from Greek, eg aero-, astro-, bio-, geo-, hypno-, meno-, micro-, neo-, neuro-, photo-, psycho-, techno-. The stressing of such words is complex but not random.

If the second part of the word (the ‘head’) is just one syllable, then the word generally has initial stress: MEnopause, NEonate, PHOtograph, PSYchopath, etc. But if the head has more than one syllable, the stress depends more on the meaning category to which the word belongs.

For instance, words for scholarly/technical disciplines/practices are generally late-stressed: bioCHEmistry, hypnoTHErapy, microecoNOmics, psychoPHYsics. The same applies to substances, like hydroCORtisone, and diseases, like microCEphaly. As expected, biotechNOlogy is late-stressed but, if the head is abbreviated to one syllable, it becomes early-stressed: BIotech.

In words where the head noun is not scholarly but common and ‘everyday’, the stress is generally early. Most such words are relatively recent coinages: BIofuel, Ecowarrior, EUrovision, LIposuction, MIcrobrewery, PHOtocopier, PSYchokiller, etc. Many have one-syllable heads and so would be early-stressed anyway: Astroturf, GAstropub, MIcrochip, MOnorail, PHOtoshop, etc.

I suspect that Euroscepticism and Eurocommunism are somewhat indeterminate because they’re torn between the late stress of the more scholarly, technical words and the early stress of the recent, more everyday coinages. It may also be that English speakers would rather not have the main stress six syllables from the end of a word.

Further notes

If Eurocommunism is more likely to be early-stressed than Euroscepticism, the explanation may be related to a distinction between what have been termed ‘ascriptive’ and ‘associative’ meanings. In early-stressed words, the first part often ascribes a property to the head noun: a microbrewery is small, a monorail is unitary, a biofuel is a fuel which is (or was) alive. This is rarely the case with the late-stressed words: microeconomics is not itself a tiny science, biochemistry is chemistry applied to living things, psychophysics deals with the relation between physical and mental phenomena. Eurocommunism is somewhat more ascriptive, referring to communism which is European. Euroscepticism is more associative, referring to scepticism about (the union of) Europe.

Of course, the stress on all the words discussed above can be shifted due to context, emphasis, etc. In this post I’m discussing the default stress patterns which are used in isolation.

The non-natives I work with sometimes use the plural trainings in their English. On the web it’s not hard to find this form being used in various languages:

Su partner global en Trainings de Management
Les trainings sont données dans plusieurs locaux a Paris centre
I trainings hanno l’obiettivo di condividere conoscenze
Trainings für Teamentwicklung und Kommunikation

But for most native speakers of English, training is an uncountable noun. The Cambridge online dictionary defines it as ‘the process of learning the skills you need to do a particular job or activity’ (my emphasis). This makes it less likely to be used as a plural.

For a countable unit of training, English prefers such compound nouns as training course, training day or training session:

So the phrase a little training, used by a native speaker, would mean ‘some training’ and not ‘a small-scale training course/session’.

Further notes

Actually, there are quite a lot of instances on the web of trainings used by natives. The majority seem to be from those who offer such ‘trainings’ professionally; a substantial proportion are in the area of ‘new age’ practice/therapy. Among the general population, however, I think it’s fair to say that training is uncountable.