Is weald really a single-syllable word, or is it just my Southern accent making me incapable of saying it in one?

Can you say bean in one? Or wealth? Or wield?

Today's word "echt" by the way is the most real "echt" genuinely Dutch word possible and that one you would sure not be able to pronounce.
It's a common word and one the checking-words to make sure if one is 'real'(echt) German or 'real' (echt) Dutch.
The ch sound was, during the German occupation, THE test to know if someone might be a German infiltrator (f.i. in the resistance movement).
The top word for this purpose was Scheveningen or
Schiermonnikoog.

Thanks to becoming very good friends with someone from Scheveningen, who told me about his town's usefulness in the war during which he was a child, I managed to master that delightful sound. It took a lot of patient correction from my friend though.

Can you say bean in one? Yep--silent a. Or wealth? Yep--silent a. Or wield? Nope--I have to pronounce both wield and weald as wee-uld. However, if weald has a short e sound, I can say weld as one syllable. [shrug]

All that and did not know who was 'les Boches'?

> 'les boches' = lethologica-amnesia. Now it's back.

> Jackie, your LD problem gave me a new bizarre one syllable word. Weld (and what the vache is mignonette?)

Weld:
1. European mignonette cultivated as a source of yellow dye; naturalized in North America.
2. United States abolitionist (1803-1895).
3. A metal joint formed by softening with heat and fusing or hammering together.

>I managed to master that delightful sound. It took a lot of patient correction from my friend though.
Then Latishya you are ready for infiltrator duties in the Lowlands.

It's a sweet smelling flowering annual.

Scheveningen is most famous as the traditional home of the Old Holland brand of oil paints. Though no longer made at the historical factory there, there are several new lines of synthetic pigments named after it. I use their Scheveningen Rood Licht (Light Red) in my paintings.

Scheveningen

One of the funnier scenes in Verhoeven's Soldaat van Oranje (Soldier of Orange) is when some young Dutch guys challenge a suspected German (who is also Dutch) with this famous shibboleth, and proceed not to be able to pronounce it properly also. I was able (after many tiny glasses of schnapps to pronounce the Danish version, rødgrød med flød /'ʁøðgʁøːˀð mɛð 'fløːðɛ/ (red (fruit) compote with cream) to my relatives' hilarity and mirth. (It demonstrates the Danish phonological phenomenon stød, also.)

Sounds like fun. It also makes me think of this gem from youtube.

Sorry I do this all in one post.I'm mostly sound asleep when you do the talking.

> Maven, ah, reseda lutea, growing in urban peripherial places and alongside railroad tracks.

>The Pook: Wow! who'd have thought the Scheveningse Old Dutch paint would make it all the way to Tasmania! It is super quality. I have some too. (I hope you will add a homepage or site to your profile.What and how would Tasmanians paint?).

> Latishiya: , the Danish video. We once did a ten days ' biketrip in Denmark with only a little pocket Polyglot. We had great fun with that. Though many words seemed related to ours, we were always fooled. we were great with the litte sentence : "jay ikke verstor". (I do not understand)
" jay" , we thought, meant "you", but no, it means "I".
"ikke" we thougth meant "I", but no, it means "no". Verstor is similar to our word for understand, but the point was always: who was to understand who?

At midday we once took a beer ( øl ) at a wayside Frankfurter
(pølser) - stand.
>> lunch. The word øl looks lik oil and we thougth it might add some fuel to the muscles.We hat to crawl our way up that hill.

> zjmejhzd, I hate to appear ignorant, but at last I'll ask : what do those little cubicles mean?
I tried to look it up but Google takes no ɛ for a question.

what do those little cubicles mean?

It's the IPA (link) transcription of the pronunciation of the Danish shibboleth.

It also makes me think of this gem from youtube.

Sad, but true. That is the funniest thing I've heard in weeks. I worked with a Norwegian for a while, and he would start to rant about Danish at the drop of a hat. Mind you, there are two official, competing versions of Norwegian, and kids have to make a decision sometime early in their schooling which one to go with: Bokmål 'Book Language' (aka Dano-Norwegian) and Nynorsk 'New Norse'.

>It's the IPA (link) transcription of the pronunciation of the Danish shibboleth

Aieaye! When I see that page I know I am and will stay ignorant.

Aieaye!

It's just like painting with sounds, Bran. Every profession has its terminology.

Jackie, it's really a good question. I had often entertained it whilst writing "The World, as Told to the Young Man" a work of some 77,000 words entirely of one syllable except for the footnotes

Webster's Collegiate is somewhat equivocal. Presumably the hyphen preceding the schwa signifies a syllable. Weald doesn't have it while world does though for the life of me both sound the same

If you'd like to read my book I'd be flattered; I am dalehileman@verizon.net

>a work of some 77,000 words entirely of one syllable

good gosh! that sounds like some thing for (or by) an eight year old.

-joe (it's not so hard) f.

For yes but by, I'm not so sure. Have you tried it, might be harder than you suppose

The follow-up youtube video has the two Danes briefly talking about Nynorsk.

How about wheeled?

The follow-up youtube video has the two Danes briefly talking about Nynorsk.

Yes, this one wasn't quite as funny as the first, but still some good glotto-humor.

[Edited down to size and for accuracy.]

A. found Danish difficult even in a second visit to København but had the rather prejudiced impression that it would be much easier for Dutch speakers. Cannot help but wonder if øl is more akin to 'ale'.

Still remember this: "Jeg talle kun lidt Dansk."

For you English speaker it is more akin. Dutch does not know the word ale, only the word bier. From ale to bier is a far jump.
From øl to olie (oil) is close.

I think the distances between English / Dutch and Dansk are about equal, but on other words. See, jeg and ik are close (for Dutch) but lidt and little are close for English . That is if :"Jeg talle kun lidt Dansk" means "I can speak only a little Danish"
Talle sits in our word vertellen. (to tell) (I did no check on this). I may have guessed this all wrong.

if øl is more akin to 'ale'.

They are cognate. From PIE root *alu- 'bitter, beer', cf. alum, German Alaun, Lation alumen.

How about wheeled? No. That has to be whee-uld. (And I'm not talking diphthong.) Are you asking because there are people who can say it in one syllable?

wheeled

I've always felt that words like fired or yield have one-and-a-half syllables, but perhaps it's just something special about approximant consonants (e.g., l, r). Nobody has trouble saying that words which end in a stop, like fight, or a fricative, like strives, are monosyllabic. (This is in Standard US English.) But as soon as you look at something like fire all certitude goes out the window.

Southerners may say it whee-uld, but the rest of the world probably has no trouble saying it wheel'd.

It's dialectic.

Is it not just a matter of speeding it up a bit?

In current theories of phonetics, the very concept of syllable structure is problematic. More references can be found in this article on ambisyllabicity in the language of the Rigveda (link). More can be found by googling ambisyllabicity. (Some languages even allow words that have a-syllabic words, along the lines of English shh or Mandarin sz 'four'.)

No matter how fast I say it, it's still two-syllabled! Numbers one, four, eight and ten often come out in two syllables, too, but they don't have to like wield/wheeled/weald does.

It would be interesting to see a graph of a soundtrack of different people speaking this word to see whether it really is one syllable.

It would be interesting to see a graph of a soundtrack of different people speaking this word to see whether it really is one syllable.

I don't really think that would solve the problem. I've spent some time looking at spectrograms of speech, and it's difficult to tell much from them. I'm not aware of how to determine syllabicity using them. If it were easy, phoneticians wouldn't be arguing or worrying about what constitutes a syllable.

Yes, that's the word I was trying to remember. My forgettery is working extra well today!

heh