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It is my understanding that Gala can be properly pronounced three different ways (sorry I don't know IPA):
- noun: like GAY-la meaning a party (hopefuly with GAity)
- adjective: GAL-uh, describing a type of event (on the CALendar)
- other: GAH-luh, like the kind of apple (from Latin mala: apple)

Is this the usual way to pronounce it?

EDIT: Looking around for sources, I see a video saying "Americans" say it the 3rd way, and a video declaring that British people say it the 1st way (or as someone noted: GAR-la with the usually silent R that they like to make explicit). I grew up with three pronunciations and three meanings.

A source says that it is derived: From French gala or Italian gala, both from Medieval Latin, Latinized form of Frankish wala ‎(“good, well”). (Latin would pronounce that WAH-luh.) So, that would support the 3rd pronunciation, which is also the least used in my experience. How could the original pronunciation come to be forgotten?

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    Is what the usual way to pronounce it? – Alex W Jun 24 '16 at 18:26
  • @AlexW no, not what, the three ways I listed above. (I don't know) (Third Base!) –  Jun 24 '16 at 18:32
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    While there are indeed three ways to pronounce gala, I don't think any of them are used preferentially for different meanings. – Peter Shor Jun 24 '16 at 18:39
  • There's no general tendency for words from Latin to be pronounced with the reformed pronunciation (what you can "original pronunciation") where "a" represents the "AH" of "father." This pronunciation scheme did not even exist in English until relatively recently historically. While some words are pronounced according to the reformed pronunciation (such as "drama"), many other words exhibit the normal English sound changes that also turned native "a" into "AY" in some positions. Similar: Data pronunciation: “dayta” or “data”? – herisson Jun 24 '16 at 19:16
  • @sumelic OK. But for 'data' to sound like 'drama', you would have to say dah-tah, which no one does. My guess is that there are actually three distinct origin words here. But I have never heard anything like that as an explanation. More likely people just mis-pronounced written words. –  Jun 24 '16 at 19:37
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    Please change your transcriptions to IPA, your present transcriptions are very confusing – Azor Ahai -him- Jun 24 '16 at 20:10
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    @nocomprende: Some people do say "dah-tah." That's the pronunciation transcribed with /ɑː/ in the linked post. You can see that it is only used by a very small percentage of people, around 2% or less. – herisson Jun 25 '16 at 00:31
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    @no comprende: what do you mean: nobody says dah-tah? It's the third pronunciation in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which means it's used, even if it's the least common. – Peter Shor Jun 25 '16 at 22:24
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    I have never heard /geɪlə/ (your number 1) here in the UK, except for the specific event called the "Durham MIners' Gala". Otherwise it is always /ˈgɑːlə/ (your number 3). – Colin Fine Jun 25 '16 at 23:38
  • You know, if IPA is the proper way to spell things phonetically, why don't we simply start using it? –  Jun 27 '16 at 00:56
  • @nocomprende There is a question about that: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/144717/american-refusal-of-the-ipa-why – MetaEd Jun 27 '16 at 20:51
  • @MετάEd I meant, not just in dictionaries, but in all writing? If the goal is to write down sounds, then let's write down sounds! All of these questions about how to pronounce anything and whether the British or American "way" is correct would simply vanish. It is pronounced the way it is spelled, period. This would go for all languages, not just English. Make one alphabet and use it. –  Jun 27 '16 at 21:57
  • @nocomprende That would be a good conversation to have in [chat]. – MetaEd Jun 27 '16 at 22:15
  • No one thought that my reply to Alex was funny! Have you never seen Abbott and Costello? What is the world coming to? –  Jun 27 '16 at 22:45

1 Answers1

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Walker's pronouncing dictionary of the English language, from 1828, says that gala should be pronounced gayla /geɪlə/, drama should be pronounced drayma /dreɪmə/, and stratum and strata should be pronounced straytum /streɪtʌm/ and strayta /streɪtə/, etc.

Assuming that English adapted these words during Middle English, and pronounced them then in the Latin manner, if they underwent the expected changes from the Great Vowel Shift, the result would be gayla, drayma, strata pronunciation. This was actually the standard way to pronounce Latin words in English at the time. While gala and stratum were adapted when the Great Vowel Shift was almost over, presumably they were pronounced with /eɪ/ by analogy with other Latin words.

At some point since Walker wrote his dictionary, some scholars suddenly realized that this wasn't the way that Latin used to be pronounced, and tried to get English speakers to revise their pronunciation of these words. This has led to mass confusion. So now, instead of having a uniform way of pronouncing these words, different people pronounces them differently.

Peter Shor
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  • So, you are saying that scholars caused people to learn a wrong pronunciation that has now become the most common one? And the least common one (my #3) is what it should have been? With scholars like that, who needs imbeciles. But it is not true that "everybody pronounces them differently" because I specifically learned 3 distinct ways for the 3 situations that I outlined. This, to me, is what should be the case. –  Jun 25 '16 at 21:55
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    Pronunciation number 1 is what you would expect if these words had been adapted into English with their Latin pronunciation before the Great Vowel Shift, and they were affected in the standard manner by the GVS. And this is also what Walker's pronouncing dictionary recommended in 1828. (Of course, I don't know whether Walker's was the only pronunciation at that time). – Peter Shor Jun 25 '16 at 22:17
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    By "everybody pronounces them differently," I meant that currently people pronounce them in different ways. – Peter Shor Jun 25 '16 at 22:21
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    @nocomprende: None of these pronunciations is "wrong." What you learned is just your personal usage; I can't see any good reason for distinguishing these three meanings with three different pronunciations. But you do, and that's fine. This kind of variation in pronunciation can arise in all sorts of contexts. – herisson Jun 25 '16 at 23:05
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    @PeterShor: I upvoted for the link to Walker, but I think your post is currently a bit misleading insofar as it seems to suggest "gala" was taken from Latin into Middle English. The OED, and other dictionaries I have looked at, say it is actually a loan from a Romance language (either Italian, French or Spanish), with the earliest citation being from 1625 (i.e. early Modern English). It's possible Walker's favored pronunciation with /eɪ/ is the result of analogy, not regular vowel shift (in fact, analogy may be the reason why he favored it). – herisson Jun 25 '16 at 23:07