Saturday, October 10, 2009

Put... down... the almond!

Photo by Powerpig.



(... By the way, how the heck did "almond" come to be pronounced "armand"?)

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

(... By the way, how the heck did "almond" come to be pronounced "armand"?)


Must be the Lancashire accent :-)
WE speak proper, like!

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I've checked two online dictionaries, and they pronounce it like that. Or at least that's my attempt at spelling how it's pronounced.

Bruce said...

Here in California, we grow the things. I can tell you they taste better when you pick them off the tree yourself, shell and blanch them, and Mom roasts them in the oven. There are two pronunciations I hear in use.

The general one is something like this commercial for Blue Diamond Almonds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLzs37VfRqE

But most people don't sound out the L as much. More like this commercial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4gDIVIDOL8

Then there is a small percentage of people who use a short, hard A sound at the beginning, like in the word attitude. It comes out ammunds when these people say it. I don't hear this pronunciation very often. Usually these people are rural: farmers, hicks, hillbillies, whatever you want to call them. I hope none of them are almond growers, but you never can tell...

:-)

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yeah, the commercial makes more sense to me, you can hear the L.
All I'd heard before were with the L fully silent.
(You'd think I'd heard the word many times, but I lived for nearly forty years in Denmark, so no.) (In Danish it's "mandel" with the D silent.)

Anonymous said...

(... By the way, how the heck did "almond" come to be pronounced "armand"?)

It never did. There's no "r" in there for one thing.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

OK, let's spell it ah-mand then.

steve nash said...

I'd probably try "awe-mund" or "awe-mind" but said quickly.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

"Awe-mund", yes, much better than mind.

I guess my ideas in phonetic spelling are mixed up with Danish.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

... Of course I meant "better than mine". See what I mean? In Danish a D after an N is normally silent. (Let's conveniently overlook that I was not supposed to write phonetically here...)

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Phonetically, that's how it's pronounced in French (written "amande").
A lot of kinship between these two languages.

"There's no "r" in there for one thing."
Queneau would disagree, considering the British accent. (Don't ask me WHICH one, tous ces Anglais parlent pareil pour moi, sacrebleu!)

"(Let's conveniently overlook that I was not supposed to write phonetically here...)"
You're right: that DOES sound much more convenient. :o)

"Um... Little girl? Don't touch the squirrel's nuts, you'll make him mad." - Willie Wonka