Author Topic: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)  (Read 16660 times)

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Offline tooki

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #25 on: December 20, 2022, 06:24:17 pm »
Solder is from the Latin "solidus" mostly referring to a specific coin, or something "solid" or make something solid,  I won't discuss the verB
Nope, we got it from French souder, as already explained twice in this thread before now.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #26 on: December 20, 2022, 06:25:57 pm »
Before tooki chimes in, a quick tldr "in a nutshell", if I remember the earlier discussions right, American English [sodder] is closer to the French origin "souder", without the L sound. This is not surprising; American English has evolved different paths from British English, after it got "frozen" some hundreds of years ago. The idea that current British English is somehow more "original" than current American English, is logically weird.
You summed it up very well. Thank you for saving me the time!  ;D ;D
 

Online IanB

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #27 on: December 20, 2022, 06:41:37 pm »
Solder is from the Latin "solidus" mostly referring to a specific coin, or something "solid" or make something solid,  I won't discuss the verB
Nope, we got it from French souder, as already explained twice in this thread before now.

If the French can drop the L from the Latin origin, then the English can put it back again. It works both ways.

Quote
Etymology. From Old French solder, inherited from Latin solidāre, present active infinitive of solidō.
 
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Offline ebastler

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #28 on: December 20, 2022, 06:50:39 pm »
Thank you all for the clarification/confirmation of the American pronounciation!

As a mildly off-topic addition, the German word for solder does not go back to Latin, but comes from a different Germanic origin. "Löten" (verb) or "Lot" (noun), which has found its way into English as "lead" (the metal).
 
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Offline EPAIII

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #29 on: December 20, 2022, 09:41:06 pm »
In a word, NO. That is pronounced no.



Do similar words like bolder, colder, folder get the same treatment?
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Offline Gyro

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #30 on: December 20, 2022, 09:42:54 pm »
Yes.  And even if it were spelled (spellt?) "Sottering iron" we would still pronounce it as "soddering iron" :)

Unless it's a cheap Chinese knockoff, then it's a sodding iron in all pronounciations!
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Offline pdenisowski

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #31 on: December 20, 2022, 09:49:02 pm »
As a mildly off-topic addition, the German word for solder does not go back to Latin, but comes from a different Germanic origin. "Löten" (verb) or "Lot" (noun), which has found its way into English as "lead" (the metal).

My copy of Duden's Herkunftswörterbuch agrees:  "Lot" is from middle high German "lōt / lœten" (related to Dutch "lood" or English "lead").  It even claims that this word is either related to middle Irish "lūaide" or was borrowed from it (!)

Interestingly, the German verb "loten" is derived from Lot in the same way that the English verb "to plumb" is derived from Latin plumbum (that is, the process of determining a vertical distance by means of a heavy / lead weight on the end of a string).
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Offline TimFox

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #32 on: December 20, 2022, 09:55:35 pm »
As an exercise for the interested reader, research (or Google) the etymology of the pronunciation and spelling of the English military rank "colonel", which originates in French.
 

Online Circlotron

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #33 on: December 20, 2022, 09:56:00 pm »
To my Australian ears many in the US pronounce o as ah. Soder becomes sah-dr.
 

Online Circlotron

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #34 on: December 20, 2022, 10:01:28 pm »
The "sodder" pronunciation is actually older.
The “sodder” pronunciation is actually odder.  :P
 
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Offline pdenisowski

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #35 on: December 20, 2022, 10:01:55 pm »
A few YouTubers who pronounce it wrong are not evidence of widespread change in usage.

Agree completely. But it very well could be the cause of a widespread change in usage. 

If big name, high-follower-count YouTubers like Veritasium, Mark Rober, Dave Jones :), etc. suddenly started pronouncing it "soll-der," I think you might start to see that pronunciation being used by other people as well.   (This would be a really interesting thesis / dissertation topic, by the way .... )

Change in usage happens more quickly than some might think.  I'm not that old, but I've seen many changes in English and German usage during my own lifetime, and I have to believe that the Internet, and in particular YouTube, are accelerating the rate of change in language.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2022, 10:03:39 pm by pdenisowski »
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Offline aeberbach

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #36 on: December 20, 2022, 10:03:41 pm »
We're just as likely to all start pronouncing it "weld" based on the AliExpress usage...
Software guy studying B.Eng.
 
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Online Circlotron

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #37 on: December 20, 2022, 10:14:53 pm »
This is very similar to what happened with "salmon" except that nobody pronounces the L in that one.
There is a Hebrew given name Salmon where the L is pronounced. I wonder how one of those people would pronounce so(l)der.
 

Online IanB

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #38 on: December 20, 2022, 10:16:47 pm »
Do similar words like bolder, colder, folder get the same treatment?

No, but there are many words that do get a silent "L", for example: salmon, almond, would, yolk, half, folk, palm, could, psalm, calve, walk, ...
 
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Online themadhippy

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #39 on: December 20, 2022, 11:05:28 pm »
Quote
, but there are many words that do get a silent "L", for example: salmon, almond, would, yolk, half, folk, palm, could, psalm, calve, walk, ..
silent maybe,but in english english the  L affects how the word is pronounced.
 

Online IanB

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #40 on: December 20, 2022, 11:23:17 pm »
"Sod" in American usage refers only to grassy lawns.

Here are some ways to use the word "sod" in British English:

"Sodding hell!"
"This sodding iron doesn't work!"
"Well sod it, I'm going home!"
 

Offline jpanhalt

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #41 on: December 21, 2022, 12:25:44 am »
I was wondering along a similar lines or debates on how to pronounce "LED."   Is it "L," "E," "D," or something that resembles the word "lead?"  Maybe uneducated Brits pronounce "IC" is "ick."
 

Offline Bud

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #42 on: December 21, 2022, 12:35:59 am »
Change in usage happens more quickly than some might think.  I'm not that old, but I've seen many changes in English and German usage during my own lifetime, and I have to believe that the Internet, and in particular YouTube, are accelerating the rate of change in language.

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Offline Sal Ammoniac

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #43 on: December 21, 2022, 12:36:25 am »
Here in the US (Silicon Valley) it's almost always pronounced "L E D" and rarely "lead".
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Online SiliconWizard

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #44 on: December 21, 2022, 12:56:06 am »
Yeah uh. Some people also pronounce ARM "A R M" while others pronounce "arm". I tend to be in the first category although I've heard it pronounced "arm" so often that I'll sometimes use it too. But I find it kinda silly.
 

Online IanB

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #45 on: December 21, 2022, 01:01:52 am »
Ever since ARM was first founded in the UK I've heard it pronounced "arm". I have never heard anyone say "A.R.M.". Make of that what you will.
 
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Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #46 on: December 21, 2022, 01:13:57 am »
Since I deal with US colleagues a lot on the job (but rarely discussing electronics), I am curious: In the common US pronounciation, is the 'L' suppressed in all forms of the word? E.g. would you say "soddering iron" too?

Yes.  That is the normal American pronunciation.

The only reason I asked my question was to inquire about whether the L pronunciation is starting to pop up in America.  Apparently so, and the obvious reason is spelling pronunciation (that is, people want to pronounce the word the way it is spelled) together with YouTube suddenly enabling us to hear the word pronounced by people from elsewhere (many of them outside the USA).
I imagine that immigration may have something to do with it - I say the "L" simply because it sounds better to me as it is closer to the pronunciation in Portuguese ("solda" or [s′ɔwdә] or closer to "saul-duh")

@jpanhalt, sorry to say but I voted last election and pronounce the "L" :-DD

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Online Zero999

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #47 on: December 21, 2022, 01:16:48 am »
Do similar words like bolder, colder, folder get the same treatment?

No, but there are many words that do get a silent "L", for example: salmon, almond, would, yolk, half, folk, palm, could, psalm, calve, walk, ...
Even those words don't have universally silent Ls in all dialects.

I pronounce the L in almond. I say ol-mond, but I've also heard all-mond and al-mond. My mother who's from Cheshire pronounces the L in yolk and folk.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #48 on: December 21, 2022, 01:34:57 am »
We're just as likely to all start pronouncing it "weld" based on the AliExpress usage...

I think that's just due to translation software. I don't speak Chinese but I'm guessing they must typically use the same word for solder and weld, it definitely looks a bit odd though.
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Do *you* pronounce the L in SOLDER ? (In the USA?)
« Reply #49 on: December 21, 2022, 01:38:10 am »
We're just as likely to all start pronouncing it "weld" based on the AliExpress usage...

I think that's just due to translation software. I don't speak Chinese but I'm guessing they must typically use the same word for solder and weld, it definitely looks a bit odd though.
Portuguese also uses the same word for both.
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