Ah-ee-da vs Ay-da

He thought it meant that "Moulin Rouge" was pronounced "success".

Karen E.

Kind of like the old commercial for antacids, that used to say, "How do you spell relief? R-O-L-A-I-D-S" I think that one got pulled from TV, though.

-- Carey (going back to the shadows....)

He read it to say that the words "moulin rouge" were pronounced "success"....

-- Jenn Ridley : snipped-for-privacy@chartermi.net WIP: Water Lilies, Rose Trio, Emperor's Coat II, Carousel Most recently Finished: Romance, Halloween Circle, Always be a Wildflower Stitching log:

On Thu, 05 May 2005 16:31:30 -0500, "Karen E." e

which pretty well sums up the english language from my point of view. silent letters drive me mad and words spelled the same , pronounced the same but with different meanings. and all those words with sound the same but spell according to their meaning and the words that spell and pronounce the same but mean totally different things. Sum shore stump me. ruby

Hmmm.. I was always taught that when two vowels are together, it makes the first one "long" - phonetically. Hence, Aida is long A because of the I after it. And Maid would be long A because of the I after it. Kim

Of course, that's an English pronunciation rule. If Aida isn't an English word then the rule wouldn't apply. There is also a vast wealth of words in English which do no follow its pronunciation rules.

Karen Eichorst (long "i", not "e" because it's German)

Your reasoning would have been right , IF AIDA was an English word , but it isn`t ,, it is an Italian name [= Leader] , Thus trhe pronounciation should Follow Italian traditions. Remember Beigin which we Used to call Pekin ... mirjam

Someone else mentioned that it's an Italian word. However, it could just as easily be a made-up English/American word, since nobody really knows it's origin. Aid being an "aid" to the stitcher, and "uh" just for the heck of it and to make it sound clever.

We are assuming, by claiming it's Italian origins, that whoever named it was thinking of the opera. It could just as easily be from something/somewhere else. We've added lots of new words to our vocabularly since the rise of the Internet and computing in general. So this word "aida" could simply have been a made-up one. No one seems to know, although the myths/legends of it's origins continue to grow. A hundred years ago it was known as java cloth. So why the change and when did it come about? Absolutely no one really knows or has been able to track it down.

Dianne

No one who isn't privy to the actual events could exclude that possibility, but I would disagree that it could "just as easily" be something else. If Aida were a really obscure name, the coincidence of an identical made up word wouldn't be as remarkable. Given that it is/was a popular Verdi opera that is among the few operas even non-opera fans could probably identify, I think the odds of it being a made up work that just coincidentally happened to be the same are much lower. I mean, it's not quite as bad is calling the fabric "Jane" and pronouncing it "Jay-nee" under the theory that it's a made up word and has nothing to do with the name, but it's still a stretch ;-)

Best wishes, Ericka

Well, okay. We can split hairs. :-)

I'll bet you I could ask the next 50 people I meet - at random - and they wouldn't have a clue about the opera. Nor how to pronounce the word after seeing it in print. I think most people would say ay-duh.

I'll give you that. However, Madison Avenue is always playing around with us. For instance, Charles Crafts has on their site stating that there's no right or wrong side because it's an evenweave. There's two problems with that sentence. First, the entire concept. Second, the word even weave is two words. So even the "masters" get it wrong and are prone to misinformation.

The first three letters spell "aid" to most English speakers, I would think. As in maid. And also notice that the cloth isn't always spelled with a capital "A". Now THAT might make me think it's a proper name if it was ALWAYS capitalized. Then, I'd give up the ghost, maybe. :-)

Dianne

I gotta start watching my "it's," "its" :-) Dianne

Except that when properly written, Aida has two dots over the A, indicating it is a separate syllable, just like No-el (with two dots over the E).

Different era. When the fabric was named, a lot of people listened to opera on the radio, and thus would have thought A-i-da immediately.

Come back in 200 years, and see how many people correctly pronounce Jay Leno (versus Lean-o).

Ahhh, but what if you asked 50 people who named a product "Aida" however many years ago? ;-)

Absolutely. Not only could the manufacturers easily get it wrong (defining "wrong" as different from how the first person who attached the name to the fabric pronounced it), but now that there's so much variation, they're not going to be caught dead telling a significant proportion of their customers that they're wrong ;-)

Best wishes, Ericka

I wasn't claiming that is the correct way to pronounce it, just that is how it's pronounced phonetically (since my first claim was that I always think of it as pronounced long A -da because I was taught to read phonetically. Kind of like when I see the word I can't spell for little appetizers, I initially think "hors de-vores" because of how it's spelled phonetically. LOL (spell check was of NO help on that word!) Kim

Horsey Doovers?

That's why you have me.

hors d'ouevres

Thank you Kim .... To read this with my first Cofffee that you pronounce those little bits as "Horses that Devour" ,, really made my day ... For the multy linguistics amongst us here , this is a wonderful discussion, most readers here , Can`t even pronounce my City`s name Haifa Properly , amongst other reasons because English hasn`t got the letter Het or Khet Or Chet which should be pronounced like the J in Spanish Jose . I spell my name in the Dutch spelling , but English readers wonder how to say it...As to Aida cloth , i first saw it in a Dutch mag , Ariadne, Since i knew that the publisher , My praternal Great uncle, pronounced that as Ar- iadne. For Hebrew speakers , the way many Biblical Names are pronounced , borders between unrecognizing it to giigling about it . Yitzhak is called so because Sara being told , she will be a mother in her late age Said that`KOL HaShomeaa YITZHAK `, every one who will hear it will Laugh =Yitzhak being the future form of the root Tzahak Laugh .... i don`t see this in IZak or any of the other immitating names ,,, etc... yes i learned to read phoneticly as well ,,,, and it helps ,, this way i can read some other Germanic languages and understand them . mirjam

Ah-ha - I've never seen it properly written! LOL Kim

That was Zweigart's official story for a long time, Dianne. And if you look at the DMC packages of Aida, it's printed Aïda, which is what makes it ah-ee-dah or ah-ee-duh. Darla Sacred cows make great hamburgers. Picture Trail Gallery: