Ermine pronunciation

[Alpo]

You know - then little brown weasels the term(THAT TURN) white in the winter, with a black tip on their tail.

 

I always thought it was ur-mun.

 

So I'm watching a Bones episode the other night. Somebody murdered Santa Claus. And Hodgins is freaking over his suit.

 

"This isn't off the rack - it's custom made. This is real ermine." Except he pronounced it ur-mine. Like "not yours, mine". Like goldmine, silver mine, ur mine.

 

So have I been pronouncing it wrong all this time or did they screw up on the TV show?

Edited December 1 by Alpo

[Colorado Coffinmaker]

 

You be pronouncing it wrong.  ALL this time.  Yepper.

[John Kloehr]

https://www.google.com/search?q=ermine+pronunciation

 

Edited December 1 by John Kloehr

[Eyesa Horg]

I've always pronounced it "ur min" or just plain "weasel" !

[Subdeacon Joe]

9 minutes ago, John Kloehr said:

https://www.google.com/search?q=ermine+pronunciation

 

 

You beat me to it!

 

In my 68 years on this good Earth I've never heard anyone pronounce it ur-mine.

 

 

[Stump Water]

24 minutes ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

In my 68 years on this good Earth I've never heard anyone pronounce it ur-mine.

 

That's the only way I've heard it pronounced.

 

[Alpo]

I just did a search and found what I was actually hoping for - a YouTube video where he was pronouncing it. So I didn't have to guess what their little symbols and lines and stuff over upside down letters meant, but I can hear someone say it.

 

So this guy says the correct way to pronounce this word and he shows it on the screen is ur-men, with the second syllable sounding like the plural of the word man. Ur men.

 

Then he pronounces it's slower, to make sure everyone caught it. And this time he says ur-man, with the second syllable sounding like the singular of the word man.

 

I'm thinking - damn dude, if you're going to show people how to pronounce something, pronounce it the same way every time!

 

Now that second syllable might be min, like safety pin. Or it might be men, like pig pen. But, and this might simply be because I live in the south, neither the i-sound nor the e-sound is heavily hit on, so it sounds more like a u-sound.

 

Not ur-min, not ur-men, but closer to ur-mun. Like human is not pronounced hu-man. So ermine has the second syllable sounding like man in human.

 

Do I have everyone completely confused yet?

[Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474]

I (and the HBC agent I sold the hides of the ones I used to trap) always called them Urmun

And if that little black tip on the tail was damaged, the price went down significantly!

[Cheyenne Ranger, 48747L]

furry rat

[Subdeacon Joe]

The -min. -man, -mun variations can sound very much the same.

 

As an aside, Heraldic Ermine Spots look nothing like a real ermine.

 

 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Random guy makes a video about how to pronounce a word. BUT is he right?

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

10 hours ago, Colorado Coffinmaker said:

 

You be pronouncing it wrong.  ALL this time.  Yepper.

If he has then so have about 200,000,000 other Americans.  The rest pronounce it wrong or have never heard the word... (he said poetically).

[DeaconKC]

Pee-con or Pee-can?

[Boggus Deal #64218]

2 minutes ago, DeaconKC said:

Pee-con or Pee-can?

Definitely not puh cahn. It’s pee can!

[Alpo]

41 minutes ago, DeaconKC said:

Pee-con or Pee-can?

Depends on whether you're talking about the tree the nut or the pie.

 

Both the nut and the tree are pee-con. The pie, however, is pee-can.

 

Pah-con, or even worse, pah-can, are words dreamed up by Yankees who are trying to speak correctly and failing.

[Cowtown Scout, SASS #53540 L]

Nope it is Pah-con and I was born an raised in Texas.

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

8 hours ago, DeaconKC said:

Pee-con or Pee-can?

Several regional variations.  I grew up in Utah and the Pacific North West (North Wets in some places where the sun never shines), with pee con...then I went to the the Carolinas, then Texas, then New England.

[watab kid]

always been a weasel in my world 

[Jiminy Cricket]

I've never heard of an ermine.  I thought this was going to be about Hermione Granger, the character from Harry Potter.  If someone presented me with this word, that's the way I would have pronounced it.  As far as pecans go, I was raised in Oklahoma, amongst the puh-con trees but I ate pee-can pies.