Why do Americans pronounce the word 'pasta' in such a strange way?

@ChipmunkErnie dad expected me to be the genius that I never turned out to be.

Bought a complete, 30 volume, encyclopedia americana set. With a full range of extra books like the complete works of Shakespeare, completely, works of Edgar Allan Poe, toastmasters hand book to humor and so forth.

He bought it in 1962, I was only three years old! 🤣

@DeWayfarer Didn't get our World Book until I was 8, but we had the 24-volume encyclopedia my grandfather wrote an article for before that.

@ChipmunkErnie I'm still a little POed my half brother keeped that set. I wrote notes in it for school.

@ChipmunkErnie I think many of the changes in pronounciation reflect basic language differences in the treatment of common syllables, or of ones common in one language but not the other.

E.g. "is", always phonetic in English, with a hard or soft 's', sounds like "ee" in French.

No reason why we should adopt then change words? Apart from the phonetics, they is equally no reason to change adoptees if they can fit our spoken language easily, other than to cope with a different alphabet - and even then the translation should respect its original. Indeed, especially so with proper nouns.

Hence nowadays we pronounce or even spell, many proper nouns more closely to their own language, taking differing alphabets into account. E.g. Mumbai (ex-Bombay), Beijing (ex-Peking), Kampuchea (ex-Cambodia).

My atlas (open since March at the Baltic Sea - Black Sea page, to help me understand the war in Ukraine) spells all capital names at least phonetically, but adds the Anglicised versions in lighter font in parentheses: "[b]MOSKVA[/b] (Moscow)", "WARSZAWA (Warsaw)", "KYYIV (Kiev)", BRUXELLES (Brussels)" and so on.

This also applies to some ordinary nouns. The formal spellings of the metric-based, ISO-SI units of length and volume end in "...tre", not "...er"; to reflect their French origins.

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I gave the close-to-home example of Gaelic and Celtic. You could not expect an English resident to address a letter to someone in Llanfairpwyllgwyngyll, to write "Thlanvairpwulthgwungulth" on the envelope, even though that is somewhere near it phonetically; well, as far as my Anglian linguistic skills allow! Let alone would we cod-Anglicise it to something like "Lanfairpulgwingil". :-)

("LlanfairPG", as it is often abbreviated, is the Anglesey town whose railway station name was famously extended to 50 or so letters long, in the 19C by the railway company for publicity. And a word to the wise... If you visit Wales, singing[i] Sospan Fach[/i] - Llanelli RFC's anthem - in English, is Just Not Done.)

@ArishMell Ah the good old days before someone in the media decided to replace "k" with "q" when transliterating from Arabic. I have books old enough to spell "Iraq" as "Irak", which makes more sense. And in the 1920s we were still using canon (can't type the accent over the "n") and not yet "canyon". And I remember the traditional transliterations from Chinese discussed in a college course often made no sense at all.

@ChipmunkErnie Well, those illustrate the point about translating from different alphabets, not just languages. Even the NW European alphabets differ slightly, as you show there.

I don't know who the "someone in the media" may have been but I have seen the Islamic Scriptures referred to about equally as both Q'ran and Koran, without question.

It must make translating art literature, especially poems and even more so, songs, extremely hard because you don't want to lose too much of the original sense, rhythms, colloquialisms, etc. Many non-Arabic Muslims learn Arabic so they can read the Prophet Mohammed's original, apparently quite lyrical, words. It's probably to avoid harming the works that so many of the best-known European art-songs and operas are rarely translated, but instead are performed in their own languages.

I recall a former merchant-seaman telling me you have to be very careful with trying your Spanish in South American ports, because a mis-pronounced letter can convert one or two innocent words into very non-innocent ones indeed.

The English used to adopt French-isms when they wanted to sound posh - [i]le bon mot[/i] was a common one. The French didn't seem to mind this affectation; but found it hilarious that no-through-roads in British housing-estates and the like were often sign-posted to mean that, with [i]cul-de-sac[/i]; which is apparently Rather Rude in its native country!

As for the fad for giving coffee drinks, cod-Italian names.... My brother-in-law tells of a relative who ordered a [i]latte [/i]in a cafe in Italy, and was baffled to find not a trace of coffee flavour in it.

@MorbidCynic How about vocalising the 'h' in the word 'herbs'? :)

@Thodsis ahh that I don’t think I do well. Now that I think about it… I don’t really hear it either.

@Thodsis [quote]How about vocalising the 'h' in the word 'herbs'[/quote]And wy not?

@asmalltoken The American way is what I’ve heard, with the "ah" sound.

@bijouxbroussard There's a kind of assumption in America that the long a is how it's supposed to be pronounced.
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@LordShadowfire I grew up in an Italian-American neighborhood and that [b]was[/b] how they pronounced it. My first experiences with the food (including dishes like ‘pasta fazool’) were in their restaurants and private homes.

@ChipmunkErnie
The Portuguese were early European explorers in the Americas. No doubt they used their own name - jaguar - for the animal in question. Nowadays everybody says 'jaguar' but It's probably a Portuguese spelling of the earlier Tupi word.

You've probably been in an American 'restaurant'? The word is French but it's used all over the world. 😊

@Really Yup, the Pope told the Portuguese they could have Brazil, but the Spanish got the rest of the New World.

@Really Dafuq you want us to call it? The dinner store? 😆

@Ingwe Looks right to me.

@Viper Just listen to how this guy makes an "A" sound

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@TheLordOfHell Because the Italians do. And they claim to have invented it. ;)

@Thodsis aah interesting

@Thodsis The Chinese claim to have invented it, the Italians claim Marco Polo brought it home to them.

@ChipmunkErnie I heard "uh". These were San Franciscan Italians, not New Yawkers.

@bijouxbroussard I didn't grow up with Bennies, so I missed out on that New Yawk thing.

@ChipmunkErnie So did I, but Alioto’s was the bomb.

@Thodsis Really? I didn't know that was a sound in Italian. Shows what I know.

@LordShadowfire The very first pronunciation is the only one I've ever heard.

@ChipmunkErnie As our ginger friend says, Brits say it the other way.

@MarmeeMarch🤣😂 I know a child, who to this day yells at me if I call spaghetti anything other then Pah-sketty. I enjoy it so much. She seems to think I'm incredibly dumb for never "remembering" how to say it right. Bless her.