On 6/12/06 14:35, in article
, "Des Higgins"
wrote:

snip

Correct though but with more of an 'o' sound at the start. My Italian
mother in law used to go mad at the way the English pronounce it OregAAAno
and say Pinokio and Michael Angelo. ;-)


And more labiatae: BAYsil instead of BAHsil is very American (bahs-ill-ikko
in Italian?)
Pronouncing A like AY in Hay is very Anglophone and especially in US.
In most Euro languages I know A is just Ahh unless you stick dots or funny
bits around it to change it.
In German you get Ay from an A with an umlaut (2 dots) and some of these
umlaut pronuncaitions seem to have gone into English but only in some words.

Your Oregano pronunciation has me guilty now. I would have said the US
or-egg-ano was wrong so live and learn.


I pronounced it the 'English' way until I acquired the mother in law! I
now have the reverse problem in that when I pronounce it Italian fashion in
shops, or here in the nursery, English people look at me as if I'm quite
mad. I need reverse brainwashing, or something!
I sometimes find myself in the interesting but confusing position of
pronouncing something the way mil did only for my brother's Italian wife to
tell me that mil had lived in England too long and one does NOT pronounce
whatever-it-is that way. I don't think it really matters very much at all
but oregano is such an Italian-food-associated herb that it's the one that
springs most easily to mind in terms of pronunciation. The thing I find
most disconcerting about American pronunciation is the use of 'erbs' for
'herbs'!
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/