Very zon

[pne]

For the longest time, I thought that "Verizon" was pronounced like "very" + "zon" (rhymes with "gone"). It wasn't until I heard a commercial on CNN at the airport yesterday that I learned that it's pronounced to rhyme with "horizon".

It'll probably take me a while to change my internal pronunciation, though.

Comments

[arthur-sc-king.livejournal.com]

I've always wondered why English vowels are so dang different from continental vowels.

I mean, I don't expect English to be pronounced like a Romance language ... but the fact that our vowels are so different means that (a) Anglos routinely mangle words and names from other languages, (b) Anglos whine about learning other languages more than most, and (c) English becomes spectacularly difficult to learn for other people.

Anyhow, you guessed how to pronounce "Verizon" the way any other European would. That, or perhaps "very zone". Makes perfect sense. It's English that doesn't make sense.

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

To be fair, if I looked at the name "Verizon" without having heard it, I'd probably pronounce it "very zahn" too. The only way one could be expected to pronounce it correctly would be because horizon is the only common word that looks like that.

There are a lot of trade names in North America that are not intuitive at all, because they're made up words or made up contractions of words that don't sound like they look.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

In a nutshell, it's the Great Vowel Shift (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_vowel_shift) that's at fault.

Speaking of corporate names, the recent spate of mergers has led to the creation of a beverage conglomerate called Diageo. I can't wrap my mouth around it. Wherever I put the stress, what values I give the vowels, it still comes out sounding wrong somehow.

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

but horizon + gone rhyme (at least around these parts)!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Rhyme as what? I have [ɪ] in one and [ɔ:] in the other.

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

Hmmm - LJ decided not to send me this comment by email! Unfortunately, I have no idea what the symbols you wrote mean or how they sound. Around these parts, "gone" is pronounced as a hard g (as in "get") followed by "on" (as in "switch on"). Horizon is Hor-I-z-on (short z as in "zip", o as above).

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Bad LiveJournal! No biscuit!

You can find an explanation of those International Phonetic Alphabet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipa) symbols with reference to RP in this article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation). On is a troublesome word to use for comparisons like these; I have [ɔ:] in it, but other American English speakers have [ɑ] or even [a:]. (For the last sound, think of a very posh pronunciation of yeah.)

In any case, it's likely we have similar pronunciations for gone, but the vowel I have in the last syllable of horizon is the same one I have in sin, only shorter.

[asciident]

Not even remotely for me. ;)

[pne.livejournal.com]

But the "i" in "horizon" sounds like the letter "I", while the "i" in "very" sounds more like the letter "E", and the stress is different in "véry zon" and "horízon".

(And as others have said, the last syllable isn't always the same for me -- since the "o" in "horizon" is unstressed, it tends to become a shwa, or something like the "u" in "sun", or maybe even like the "i" in "sin", as muckefuck said. Only when I'm talking slowly or carefully would I use the "o" in "gone" in the last syllable of "horizon".)

[pne.livejournal.com]

"y" in "very", of course.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Personally, I would never have [ɔ] in the final syllable of horizon, no matter how slowly and distinctly I was talking. Some reduced vowels regain their full value when exceptionally stressed, but not this one; it would surface as [ʌ] (as in the word son). When I hear [ɔ] in this context in popular music, it always strikes me as terribly affected.

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

Interesting - apart from the first two letters, I pronounce both the same: Hor-I-z-on (with the 'o' most like the 'o' in "gone"). Perhaps sometimes the 'o' might sound more like the 'u' in "sun", but only accidentally :)

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

Yes, Verizon = vertical horizon.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Oh, is that where it comes from?