It's "sodder", not "soLder", damnit! (for us USAians)

[themadhippy]

We "septics" have more than our share of evil historical deeds to account for

Pah yer mere amateurs ,us brits were getting upto that sorta shite long before america was a glint in a puritans eye,although  you do seem rather eager to make up for lost time.

[Analog Kid]

We "septics" have more than our share of evil historical deeds to account for

Pah yer mere amateurs ,us brits were getting upto that sorta shite long before america was a glint in a puritans eye,although  you do seem rather eager to make up for lost time.

Well, whod'ya think we learned from?

You and the French and the Dutch and the Belgians and the Spaniards and ...

[temperance]

Who learned from who?

Eugenics: pseudo science invented in the UK, practiced in the US long before WWII by means of castration without anesthetics, formed the basis for the Nuremberg laws implemented by the Nazis to engineer racial purity on an industrial scale.

But we have made some improvements. Our prime ministers is now tweeting messages expressing compassion when a bus has crashed for example.

[golden_labels]

Three pages filled with attempts to rationalize one or another pronunciation, or to prove OP wrong. Nobody asking the meta question: does this debate make any sense?

Languages have no “correct” version. They may have commonly used forms. Linguists research these forms and may provide summaries. But “common” is not the same as “correct,” and the summaries apply to subsets of speakers, not reveal any global or timeless truth. So what is even discussed here?

A single person pronounces it with a non-silent ‘L’? We may call it a mistake. Enough people do it that way to make evoke that emotional reaction in OP? It’s just a less common pronunciation. As “valid” or “correct” as any other. For some speakers it may actually be preferred to the other form, if it’s consistent with how English sounds in their group. What if it’s a mistake? I make many of these myself. Just read this post. My choice is to reduce errors. Both for communication clarity and for aesthetic reasons. My writing is heavy and dull enough — no need to make it worse. But it is no more than a personal choice. It’s not a moral sin to make a mistake, it’s not a crime, and the mistake (as the event itself) is not a subject of such judgment. What one does with their mistakes may be, but there is no universal rules set in stone for that.

[Analog Kid]

A single person pronounces it with a non-silent ‘L’? We may call it a mistake. Enough people do it that way to make evoke that emotional reaction in OP? It’s just a less common pronunciation. As “valid” or “correct” as any other.that.

You're missing the point, or more precisely half the point:

If the guy had just pronounced it "soLder" in his video and left it at that, this thread wouldn't exist.

Instead he went out his way to insist that this is the real, true pronunciation of the word.
Presumably in the United States, since that's where he lives. Which it is definitely not. We don't say that here.

That's what I'm reacting to here, his schoolmarmish, pedantic (and mistaken!) language-policing.
I don't do language policing. He's free to pronounce anything any fucking way he likes. That's not the point.

[temperance]

If the guy had just pronounced it "soLder" in his video and left it at that, this thread wouldn't exist.

I believe there are more important things going on to worry about in life than one single person doing some language policing in way that seems to bother you.

[Analog Kid]

If the guy had just pronounced it "soLder" in his video and left it at that, this thread wouldn't exist.

I believe there are more important things going on to worry about in life than one single person doing some language policing in way that seems to bother you.

Then why the hell are you posting here at all?
Oh, to chide me, to tell me I'm full of it.
Gotcha.

I'll just ignore that.

[krish2487]

You're missing the point, or more precisely half the point:

If the guy had just pronounced it "soLder" in his video and left it at that, this thread wouldn't exist.

Instead he went out his way to insist that this is the real, true pronunciation of the word.
Presumably in the United States, since that's where he lives. Which it is definitely not. We don't say that here.

That's what I'm reacting to here, his schoolmarmish, pedantic (and mistaken!) language-policing.
I don't do language policing. He's free to pronounce anything any fucking way he likes. That's not the point.

But that seem to be point.. both you and your fellow country man are vehemently insisting their way of pronounciation are right and the others are wrong..
Worse still, insisting their way to be imposed on their fellow country man as well..
oh and dragging the rest of the world into your discussions..  insisting thats not the way Murica works..

Muricans!! 

[Analog Kid]

But that seem to be point.. both you and your fellow country man are vehemently insisting their way of pronounciation are right and the others are wrong..

The evidence is all on my side that the pronunciation "sodder" is "right" (see below for an explanation of that term).
Why is that?

Because something like 99% of Americans pronounce the word that way. They don't say "soLder".
So it's not even a matter of right or wrong; it's a matter of what the common usage is.

Look at it this way: let's say for the sake of discussion that 99% of your fellow countrypersons pronounce the word "fight" like "meatball". (Never mind why; just a silly example.)
Would you then stand up on a soapbox in the town square and shout "No! It's actually pronounced 'plantation'!"
I don't think so.

If it was something like 50-50 then I wouldn't have much of a case, would I?
But it's not even close to that.

Again, my favorite Franz Kafka quotation:

"In the fight between you and the world, back the world."

[temperance]

So here we go, quoting your first post:

says "soLder". "SoLdering".

Not only that, he even mentions it in his video.

BZZZZZZT! Wrong!!!

Now if he were in the UK or Yurp or somewhere else he might be excused for this pronunciation.
But the guy's American, for chrissakes. (In Illinois, apparently.)
Nobody here pronounces the word that way!
Seems like some kind of affectation to me.

Here is what you wrote later on:

You're missing the point, or more precisely half the point:

If the guy had just pronounced it "soLder" in his video and left it at that, this thread wouldn't exist.

Instead he went out his way to insist that this is the real, true pronunciation of the word.
Presumably in the United States, since that's where he lives. Which it is definitely not. We don't say that here.

That's what I'm reacting to here, his schoolmarmish, pedantic (and mistaken!) language-policing.
I don't do language policing. He's free to pronounce anything any fucking way he likes. That's not the point.

So it is not about sodder or solder anymore...

[negativ3]

Last time I checked (never) Mouser et al do not host a speech-to-text engine.
I did try searching for sodder tho. "did you mean solder"?

[Analog Kid]

Last time I checked (never) Mouser et al do not host a speech-to-text engine.
I did try searching for sodder tho. "did you mean solder"?

Yeah, so what? That's the way it's spelt.

[negativ3]

Last time I checked (never) Mouser et al do not host a speech-to-text engine.
I did try searching for sodder tho. "did you mean solder"?

Yeah, so what? That's the way it's spelt.

Speech to text would involve a corrective step. Thought that was obvious.

I sold some sod to an old sod, but the sod didn’t like the sod, so he told me to sod off with my sod.

[Sorama]

So here we go, quoting your first post:

says "soLder". "SoLdering".

Not only that, he even mentions it in his video.

BZZZZZZT! Wrong!!!

Now if he were in the UK or Yurp or somewhere else he might be excused for this pronunciation.
But the guy's American, for chrissakes. (In Illinois, apparently.)
Nobody here pronounces the word that way!
Seems like some kind of affectation to me.

Here is what you wrote later on:

You're missing the point, or more precisely half the point:

If the guy had just pronounced it "soLder" in his video and left it at that, this thread wouldn't exist.

Instead he went out his way to insist that this is the real, true pronunciation of the word.
Presumably in the United States, since that's where he lives. Which it is definitely not. We don't say that here.

That's what I'm reacting to here, his schoolmarmish, pedantic (and mistaken!) language-policing.
I don't do language policing. He's free to pronounce anything any fucking way he likes. That's not the point.

So it is not about sodder or solder anymore...

Indeed.
I think it never was.
Pot and kettle.

[sanleontexas]

It's about beating on a dead horse, thinking it can somehow be brought back to life.

[Zero999]

But that seem to be point.. both you and your fellow country man are vehemently insisting their way of pronounciation are right and the others are wrong..

The evidence is all on my side that the pronunciation "sodder" is "right" (see below for an explanation of that term).

But there is no evidence to suggest that sodder is the correct pronunciation and the same is also true for soLd er. It's just what happens when a language spreads from one region to another; it develops two distinct dialects.

There's a load of nonsense about received pronunciation being the correct way, which is not the case. It was just a form of snobbery and few people in Great Britain every spoke with that accent. Then there's the idea of original pronunciation, which was supposed to be closer to modern American-English and is also a nonsensical idea. Original pronunciation didn't exist because English, like any language with a large number of speakers is always changing and were are a larger number of dialects of British English hundreds of years ago compared to today. We do know that one feature of American English, rhoticity was more prevalent in British English a couple of centuries ago but other than a few words such as gotten (this didn't die out so much in Scotland and Ireland) and fall, that's it. Other Americanisms such as yod dropping did exist in some British dialects but were nowhere as widespread as is the case in modern American English.

We don't know for sure which pronunciation of solder was more common 250 years ago. I suspect it's most likely there were a mixture of the current American and British pronunciations in circulation, yet purely by chance one variant became dominant in Great Britain and another in North America. Either way, we don't know for sure, because there was no sound recording back then.

I do find this interesting, but it doesn't upset me. The only reason why Americans are teased about this is because it sounds a little rude to us, like sod her, but with the H-dropped. I certainly don't mean to be nasty about it.

[IanB]

The phrase "Lighten up!" comes to mind. Most people don't care about small idiosyncrasies in speech or other things, and honestly just smile rather than getting upset about it.

[Analog Kid]

The evidence is all on my side that the pronunciation "sodder" is "right" (see below for an explanation of that term).

But there is no evidence to suggest that sodder is the correct pronunciation and the same is also true for soLd er. It's just what happens when a language spreads from one region to another; it develops two distinct dialects.

Yes.
Let's drop the "correct/incorrect" distinction here.
My point is not really what the "correct" pronunciation of the word is.
I'm certainly not a linguist nor a philologist.
The point is that the commonly accepted pronunciation here in the U.S. happens to be "sodder" across the vast majority of English speakers here. Whether it's right or wrong.
That's what this guy is trying to buck by insisting that all those millions of speakers are "wrong" and that he is "correct". That's what bugs me here.

[Gyro]

...
Let's drop the "correct/incorrect" distinction here.
My point is not really what the "correct" pronunciation of the word is.
I'm certainly not a linguist nor a philologist.
The point is that the commonly accepted pronunciation here in the U.S. happens to be "sodder" across the vast majority of English speakers here. Whether it's right or wrong.
That's what this guy is trying to buck by insisting that all those millions of speakers are "wrong" and that he is "correct". That's what bugs me here.

Oh ffs Kid, time to get a life now. 

1) He pronounces it the way he pronounces it.
2) He posts videos on the World Wide Web.
3) [Edit: I don't see ANY evidence of him insisting that anyone is wrong.]

If it irks you that much then don't watch, rather than taking it as some sort of personal insult or to your fellow citizens (who probably couldn't give a sh*t as they haven't rolled up here in a mob, clutching pitchforks)!

[Analog Kid]

3) [Edit: I don't see ANY evidence of him insisting that anyone is wrong.]

Watch the video at the head of the thread again; it's in there somewhere.

[IanB]

That's what this guy is trying to buck by insisting that all those millions of speakers are "wrong" and that he is "correct". That's what bugs me here.

But why does it bug you? Why do you care?

To quote Cordelia Chase, "What is your childhood trauma?"

[Gyro]

3) [Edit: I don't see ANY evidence of him insisting that anyone is wrong.]

Watch the video at the head of the thread again; it's in there somewhere.

Timestamp or it didn't happen.

[Analog Kid]

That's what this guy is trying to buck by insisting that all those millions of speakers are "wrong" and that he is "correct". That's what bugs me here.

But why does it bug you? Why do you care?

Why does it matter to you why it bothers me? It just does. Do I have to have a valid reason?
Why is everyone trying to psychoanalyze me?

Either fucking participate in the thread because you have something to add, or just kindly STFU and stay out of it, for chrissakes!

[PlainName]

Either fucking participate in the thread because you have something to add, or just kindly STFU and stay out of it, for chrissakes!

Looks to me like they are participating. You've misused 'participate' to mean 'agree with me'. So basically you only want those confirming your view to say anything and everyone else can gtfo.

Unfortunately, that's not how forums work. You can set up mailing list for your purposes easily enough, but here it's open to anyone to say whatever they want (within the forum rules). You have no claim over this thread other than you show as the starter of it.

Don't want these disagreeing and/or psychoanalyzing comments? The just "kindly STFU and stay out of it, for chrissakes!"

[m k]

Why does it matter to you why it bothers me? It just does. Do I have to have a valid reason?

Without a valid reason you're a troll.