How do you say "Otto"

[La Niña]

Nick, if you feel it's ridiculous, nobody's forcing you to read it and post in it. Obviously, for some of us, this discussion is interesting and entertaining.

And Mario couldn't settle anything. The discussion isn't about Mario, or even about Otto, at this point.

But of course you knew that, the thread being so ridiculous and all.

Edited January 16, 2003 by La Niña (log)

[Fat Guy]

I believe the thread is ridiculous, valuable, on-topic, annoying, important, and far from over.

[Stone]

Nothing is over until we say it is.

[La Niña]

And I aint' even a fat lady!

[SobaAddict70]

I believe the thread is ridiculous, valuable, on-topic, annoying, important, and far from over.

Sort of like knowing how to spell "Filipino", eh?

SA

[jaybee]

My comments abou the substance of this thread were made in the context of the decision to erase off-topic chat in order to encourage relevant chat about food which, it was claimed, was being diluted by OTC.

[Stone]

I guess a little dilution ain't such a bad thing. Goes to show some folks here (not necessarily you) that, in fact, that administrators are not going to operate the site with a heavy hand or a hardened heart.

[Fat Guy]

I'd like to say for the record that I believe myself to be possessed an extremely well-hardened heart. That Pharoah dude, he had nothing on me. I just happen to think that a discussion of the proper pronunciation of names of restaurants and names of foods is totally in line with the core function of a food site. I even think it's interesting, although of course I've been right about this over the course of a few threads so for me the interest derives mostly from watching everybody slowly catch up.

[Jinmyo]

I guess a little dilution ain't such a bad thing.  Goes to show some folks here (not necessarily you) that, in fact, that administrators are not going to operate the site with a heavy hand or a hardened heart.

Riiiiiiight.

[Ron Johnson]

This thread is ridiculous and sublime, so it is showing a great range.

I do think a linguistic expert is required at this point. Apparently, Nina has one, so if she would just submit a full CR 26.02 disclosure we can prepare for cross examination.

[Rachel Perlow]

I think I finally got what Nina was talking about when she said we (Americans) don't have the same O sound. The long O in Otto is actually a short hard O (I'm sure I'm recalling the name of this sound wrong; college linguistics was about 12 years ago ). What this means is this: The long O in toe, tow, hoe, etc., has a little bit of a W sound to it at the end of the vowel. Try to say these words slow and you'll hear what I'm saying, that brief moment when your lips purse & release slightly as if about to pronounce the W sound. Instead, the O sound in Otto is the beginning of the long O sound, but without the W sound at the finish. Here's the website for The International Phonetic Association, which has charts of the phonetic alphabet, if you are interested in learning more.

Edited January 16, 2003 by RPerlow (log)

[GordonCooks]

This will hopefully help us with some of the idosyncracies of Latin Indo-European languages.

This sound byte is from

Enrico De Nicola 3rd

Naples Native

New Dean of Italian studies at Brown University

Former UN Italian Cultural Attache and translator

Accademia della Crusca

Edited January 16, 2003 by GordonCooks (log)

[Ron Johnson]

Rachel, now that makes sense to me. Thank you.

[La Niña]

Rachel, that's really helpful, thanks. But also let's not forget that the two o's in Otto are not identical. The first one is shorter than the second one. The second one comes closer to closing toward that w thing that you mentioned, but still doesn't get there like a long English o. In other words (and I should have said this earlier), the o's in Otto are not dipthongs like the English long o.

Edited January 16, 2003 by La Niña (log)

[La Niña]

Gordon, that is unbelievably funny.

[Wilfrid]

Cabby, you might have trouble calling your restaurant Huit. It's too similar to Huiters.

[Liza]

Plus, so many people would come in quoting Woody Allen in "Love and Death".

[cabrales]

Cabby, you might have trouble calling your restaurant Huit.  It's too similar to Huiters.  

Wilfrid -- You suggest an interesting question about the extent to which the protections a restaurant has over its name address pronounciation similarities when another restaurant has a differently-spelled name that sounds similar. Would "huit" (French pronounciation) have problems if an existing restaurant were called "wheat", for example?

Edited January 16, 2003 by cabrales (log)

[Wilfrid]

I'm glad you asked.

Steven?

[Stone]

Gordon -- does that mean that all this time those guys on Sopranos who said "gabagoo" were actually saying capicola?

[Rachel Perlow]

Someone had to ask...

From the New York Post review of Otto:

"Our first inclination was to call it eight pigs," says Mario Batali, but no one could pronounce the Italian word for pigs.

What is the "Italian word for pigs" and how do you pronounce it?

[La Niña]

Pig is porco. Plural is porci, pronounced por-chee (with an Italian r, and the last vowel is not as long as as the American ee-sounding vowel - use the w example that Rachel came up with before, but substitute a y).

Imagine how many people would have said por-see or por-kee or por-sigh or porch-eye or pork-eye.

Edited January 16, 2003 by La Niña (log)

[cabrales]

Plural is porci,  pronounced por-chee.

"Porci" wouldn't necessarily be hard to pronounce for people who can draw the analogy to the pronounciation of porcini.

[La Niña]

And for people who can't?

And you know how many times I've heard people say "por-see-nee?"

Edited January 16, 2003 by La Niña (log)

[Charles Smith]

And you know how many times I've heard people say "por-see-nee?"

It's hard enough convincing people that swiss chard and artic char are different.