Do you call it falcon’? Or fall-con’ just like baseball?
What do native speakers think about this?
Both pronunciations are correct. English Dictionary does not.
On
first time I have heard ‘falcon’
in two different American movies. BrE /flkn/ ; NAmE /flkn/ If I have known of it only (the Maltese Falcon/The Millennium Falcon, both American movies) I have never heard this form in anything recent.
Why am
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I being made fun of in your country if I call it Fall-con, or is it still pronounced that way?
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Are there any particular connotations attached to the “Fall-con” pronunciation? Does that sound too highbrow?
Should we even use ‘fawcon’ (ff(l)k(n))?
When the word falcon first appeared in Middle English, it was spelt as faucon faucoun. Is l really the Latin language? We have a simple, but very nice word, pronounced deucon. Faucon is still the word in modern French, and it’s not pronounced in english.
The OED offers two pronunciations, the traditional RP pronunciations: (roughly “fawlken” for those who haven’t bothered to learn the IPA) and /fk()n/ (“fawken”).
The OED’s entry hasn’t been “fully” updated since it was written in the 18th century, and more recent British dictionaries offer various pronunciations: Oxford
- Living Dictionaries (BrE version) has /flk()n/ and /f(l)k()n/ (shorthand for the two variants given in the OED) Collins has /flkn, and /flKhn/
Even though all of the words are spoken and heard, this doesn’t mean everyone is equally able to hear. At least in Britain though, it’s not entirely unknown for many people to make fun of other people’s pronunciations (or make little secret judgements about them) if they are unfamiliar with them or if they think they sound too “posh” or too “common” or
too northern or too southern.
In my native American, ‘falcon’ is pronounced “falcon falcon” I was born before war and that was how I had always heard it pronounced too, until Ford Motors introduced the Falcon, which Ford ads pronounced “falcon falcon”. Chevrolet introduced a car spelled ‘Vega’ which Chevrolet ads called ‘VEE-g'(u)h’ (hhe/she cranked after a Chevrolet engine) and was soon to change it to ‘Vega’. What about Detroit?
Why was Ford’s first pronunciation more interesting then vandalism (on twitter)?
Are reasonable people to let all sorts of ignorant people pretend that real people do everything? Also so many turkeys become instant experts with facts and uses they mislearned only shortly before.
Who are the most informed of the world?
Is a schwa the 2nd and 4th syllables vowel sound? My computer does not type schwas
as in wikipedia. It can not get some.
In the UK, it is nominally fall-con, but in practice that means that people with non-RP (received pronunciation) dialects pronounce it in their corresponding versions–flkn in the North of England, falkn in the Southwest, etc. Dictionaries list only one pronunciation for British English, and in the past other dialects were essentially considered “wrong”. What are modern pronunciations?
If I am speaking English or other spoken languages, then how I pronounce and pronounce non-English words is what I already know and much more common for others. Often used in English speaking countries like Germany, Germany and Japan, F-15 Falkn is widely used; however, that does not mean that it is a true flkn. Does the UK have too much freedom with vowels which are commonly found in the USA and other countries?
(Consonants are a different story; many regional variations, like London’s // /f/ and Newcastle’s /t/ //, are still often looked down upon)
No one will bat an eye if you refer to the bird with either pronunciation, but the Ford automobile is never. “FALL-CON.” (US)
— One word (sic): What is the United States?
