Bouy pronounciation?

[niknak]

In the US it is boo-ee,in the UK it is boy-anyone able to tell me why??!

Hugs to all

Niknak

[gen2]

We created the language, so what we say goes.  Over there they just vandalise our words and do what they want with them.  Just look at all those PH words replaced by F; and those OUR endings replaced by OR, all those ISE endings replaced by IZE.  They can't even manage the dipthong in foetus, oestrogen or aestivate.  It comes as no surprise that they cannot manage to pronounce buoy correctly.

[jno]

I'm not sure all of them do, it may be a regional pronunciation.

The spellings of or instead of our were I think deliberately introduced by Noah Webster in his dictionary - but after all we already write humorous and glamorous and coloration not humourous etc, so the Americans are just being more logical than Brits. As for diphthongs (which, ahem, Americans often spell correctly), those are sounds not spellings - the sort of sound in the word sound itself (which sort of goes from ah to oo); in words like fetus they've just ditched letters they don't say. Likewise with buoy they say it exactly how they spell it. The ize endings they got from British English, it's the British who changed - and only recently; The Times dropped izes only about five years ago.

Incidentally, when I'm trying to remember how to spell buoy, it's very handy to remember the American pronunciation.

[IndieSinger]

Not entirely sure whether the above post is any help whatsoever (gen2 - it's often not a case of vandalism, rather language mutation. The ~ise, ~ize endings you mention, for example, largely boil down to whether the language adopted the Latin form or the Greek form - both are perfectly valid. Furthermore, "their" vocabulary like fall (for "autumn") and "their" spelling of aluminium (as "aluminum") were the British English forms. The British corrupted them, not the Americans.)

With regards to the original question, I think it depends on whose Old French literature you consult. Some present the word as boye, some as boyee. We also owe a lot of nautical terms (yacht, cruise, deck, skipper) to the Dutch from their "Golden Age". They sailed to America at this time (during the 17th Century) and their word is boei, which, although pronounced similar to boy, certainly looks like it should have a oo-ee quality to it - to English speakers at least!

[jno]

a PS to my last post: actually, some Brits do write colouration; my Oxford dictionary gives it as the secondary spelling.

[IndieSinger]

Cross postings with jno - when I mentioned "the above post" I was, of course, referring to gen2's presumptions.

Also forgot to say two things:

1/ The pronunciation as something like bwoy is common in both dialects; and

2/ Thanks for the hugs :)

[jno]

oh hello IndieSinger - you were talking about gen2's post or mine? Anyway, good point about the Dutch derivations; quite a lot of Dutch immigrants to New Amsterdam as was. But I've mostly heard boo-ey on the west coast and Alaska, as I recall.

[jno]

arrrr, crossed again. Okay, I'll stop now before niknak gets utterly confused.

[THECORBYLOON]

jno you say the Americans pronounce "buoy" exactly as they spell it but the pronunciation I hear Americans use is "boowee" which doesn't resemble the spelling.

[jno]

TLC, I've heard it as a sort of boo-oy sound, as well as the quicker booey; but I haven't been scientific about noting all uses of it - I'm an astronaut, not an etymologist. Someone somewhere has, though, no doubt.

[Peter Pedant]

yeah its been boo-ee for at least thirty years.

Buoy for boy, we were told in skool that it was just another word in English that is spelt differently, and we had to get on and learn it.

Gen2 is wrong in almost every detail- a language mutates most rapidly at its point of origin. This means that American English, texan german or patagonian welsh - or french canadian, will be more uniform, have more archaisms and older pronounciation

The New England accent is meant to be the english accent of the 1680s but I am not sure about that .

[Peter Pedant]

gen's foetus is an interesting example

is it from the Greek pheeo for instance or from Latin ?

If it is from greek, then it should be phoetus, and if it is from Latin then it should be fetus.

and the answer is....Latin - it should be fetus

This was agreed aroudn ten years ago and the English reluctantly agreed to start using fetus. But language mutates very slowly in the periperies -where did  I hear that ? - and so foetus as a spelling persists in English publications in outlying areas.

[THECORBYLOON]

It's interesting to note that whereas most British folk would write "SULPHUR," the official spelling is "SULFUR."  

[jno]

who exactly has decided these 'official' spellings of sulfur and fetus? There is no English language authority like the Academie Francaise that has any power to decide what the language is; individual scientific bodies may agree on some spelling but if other people disagree, they don't have to go along with it.

[Gef]

Sulfur is the official spelling according to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). In Scottish schools we still spell it sulphur.

By the way, what about fosforous???

[Peter Pedant]

a group of pointy headed librarians thought of the standard spellings.

so searching an computer index for sulfur is much more efficient that a free text search for

 " 'sulphur' AND 'sulfur' "

In medical sciences, searching  MESH headings (Medical Educational Scientific heading) is much more efficient than a free text search - quicker and you get more hits.

[niknak]

 Hiya all and many thankyou's for an interesting debate on my question.I am still curious as there is no obvious answer but some very well put points of view.I did read a book about how British pronounciations of the late 17/early 18th centuries taken to the USA have remained closer to their origin than in the UK.I wondered if this is an example.I asked the original question after watching a programme on catching Alaskan King Crabs in the Barents Sea.

[HAnn521]

If you're still interested in knowing the differences in pronunciation...

How about an actual American point-of-view? I live in the southern region of the U.S. and I have always heard bouy pronounced "boo-ee"... I don't find it all that strange, many words spelling differs from the pronunciation...

and this word could very well be pronounced differently in the northern states, their dialect is very different than than ours, even in the same country.

[Dom Tuk]

gen2, its not just the americans who have vandalised words to use your term. The British have done that with languages from the colonies and introduced them in English culture completely vandalised. I am sure you are aware of most of the hindi/urdu/indian words that are now part of the english language. they bear no resemblance to the original word. Take juggernaut for example.

[jno]

just for the record, words are seldom 'vandalised' in the sense of deliberately mucked about with. Meanings change, sometimes through misunderstanding, sometimes through metaphor (like juggernaut). The original Vandals, for instance - the tribe who gave their name to Andalusia (formerly Vandalusia) - would be baffled by all this.