Pair blossom
Maxim’s June cover story features someone named Moon Bloodgood, of whom I had never heard, and who will play a substantial role in the upcoming film Terminator Salvation.
Of course, this being Maxim, she’s there as eye candy, but the second thing I noticed (never mind the first) was the name itself: the only vowels are three pairs of O’s, and — this is the fun part — all three pairs are pronounced differently. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a Bond girl with a name like that.
Tatyana »
15 May 2009 · 2:06 pm
mOOn and gOOd are pronounced differently?
Kirk »
15 May 2009 · 2:33 pm
Well, yes, unless somehow “good” comes out of your mouth sounding the first syllable in Gouda, as in cheese.
Tatyana »
15 May 2009 · 2:48 pm
I don’t know what to think anymore
Lisa Paul »
15 May 2009 · 2:51 pm
It takes a special kind of man to ponder the phonics possibilities while contemplating a Maxim girl.
CGHill »
15 May 2009 · 3:01 pm
Well, you know, if I can’t talk to ‘em, it doesn’t do me a whole lot of good to look at ‘em.
Dr. Weevil »
15 May 2009 · 3:22 pm
Looks like you’ve found another winning entry for the Volokh Conspiracy’s Puzzleblogger’s contest: other names with at least six vowels, all of them the same, are Renee Zellweger, Ellen Degeneres, and Canaan Banana.
CGHill »
15 May 2009 · 4:05 pm
So Renée wouldn’t be ruled out for the accent aigu?
Tatyana »
15 May 2009 · 4:58 pm
I checked; they are not.
Ha.
McGehee »
15 May 2009 · 5:34 pm
Hmm. I hadn’t heard of her before today either, but now I see she’s in two episodes of the upcoming new season of “Burn Notice,” so I was going to have noticed her sooner or later.
unimpressed »
15 May 2009 · 6:45 pm
I remember seeing her in _Eight Below_….at that time, as I recall, she didn’t even have an IMDB entry. Serious eye-candy.
Tatyana »
15 May 2009 · 7:36 pm
God knows, what people call eye-candy these days.
Of course, it’s possible to blame it on her stylist, the way she looks here, but in my opinion, the girl has generally empty face. Suited to transform into anything – very valuable quality in models. Suited for videogames that’s called movie business now, but she’s definitely as far from beautiful, or even pretty, as I’m from Pacific.
Her name makes sense now – she’s obviously American Indian (somebody might recognize what tribe, I don’t).
And the u: sound is indeed the same in “moon” and in “good”.
Lisa Paul »
15 May 2009 · 8:38 pm
I, too, thought she might be a child of hippies a la Moon Unit Zappa or Leaf, River and Rain Phoenix. Turns out she’s part Korean and Moon is her middle name. Since Moon is a widespread name in Korea, I’m assuming that’s where it came from.
McGehee »
16 May 2009 · 9:35 am
“Moon” rhymes with “spoon,” and “good” rhymes with “book.”
Tatyana »
16 May 2009 · 9:57 am
McG: but it’s the same sound, just a bit longer (UU, in one case, u in another).
M[oo]n and bl[oo]d are different sounds, m[oon] and g[oo]d are not.
McGehee »
16 May 2009 · 1:29 pm
Tat, you and I are undoubtedly working from different definitions of “pronounce.” ;-)
Moira Breen »
17 May 2009 · 11:36 am
“…the only vowels are three pairs of O’s, and — this is the fun part — all three pairs are pronounced differently.”
Only Charles would immediately notice things like this. This is why I come here.
Tatayana: “…but it’s the same sound, just a bit longer (UU, in one case, u in another).
M[oo]n and bl[oo]d are different sounds, m[oon] and g[oo]d are not.”
Nope, two distinct vowel sounds.; length has nothing to do with it – at least in any American regional accent known to me. Drag ‘em both out: mooooooon, gooooood. Note the position of your tongue (and lips) with each. Different. (Drop the initial consonant of both words to get a better comparison.) “Mood” and “moon” use the same vowel, but “good” rhymes with “should”.
(Speaking of “long” and “short”, did anybody else have grade school teachers who would insist that what we called long and short English vowels (e.g., cat vs. Kate, met vs. meet, etc.) actually had something to do with how long you held the sound? I sure as hell couldn’t hear it but all the other first-graders seemed to go along so I lay low, fearful that something was out of whack with my ears or my brain. Years later I was much reassured by professional language guys that Miss Crabapple was talking crazy talk.)
Can’t think of any other anglophone native accents I’ve heard where the two are pronounced the same, but I’ll keep my ear out. Now, I have come across lots of people for whom English is not their mother tongue who use the same vowel for both (and it is immediately noticeable to me as “non-native pronunciation”), but, assuming Charles is a native speaker, he done heard right. Then again, maybe Miss Bloodgood says all the oo’s in her name like the oo in moon. That would sound nice and ominous, but really wouldn’t work for a Bond girl.
Tatyana »
17 May 2009 · 3:46 pm
Moira, it’s Tatyana.
And the sound in moon and good are the same.
Tatyana »
17 May 2009 · 3:54 pm
To clarify.
In “should” the consonant affects the vowel, making it [yu] and not [u:]. In Russian it’s easier to spot, because we have different letters for these distinct sounds: ю for [yu] and щ when sh becomes “soft”. When people try to imitate the sound of щ in English, they got stuck in combinations of sch, csh, shch or god know what.
“Good”, however, is not pronounced as g[yu]d. As in “mute”. That would not only not good, but downright perverse.
Lisa Paul »
17 May 2009 · 7:23 pm
Hey, looks like we’re all Hooked on Phonics.
Since the new Bond girl does have worldly, multi-cultural good looks, I vote that she pronounce Moon, Blood and Good the same to give her even more exoticism. Try it. It sounds very Count Dracula.
I have to agree with Moira that you wouldn’t find a corn-fed American girl of the Midwest pronouncing them the same.
CGHill »
18 May 2009 · 12:18 pm
For those who wouldn’t recognize Ms Bloodgood on sight, this may not help.
Moira Breen »
18 May 2009 · 6:25 pm
Tatyana: In Russian it’s easier to spot…
Russian speech isn’t the first place I’d go looking for the values of English phones, so I wouldn’t recommend it as a method for trying to convince anglophones that they don’t hear distinctions that they do hear. The vowel a native speaker of English sticks into the word “should” is not the same vowel that is represented by the Russian “ю” (though “shoot” would come closer.) To remove any confusion introduced by the “sh”, let’s use “would” instead. “Good” rhymes with “would”, which is homonymous with “wood”, which doesn’t rhyme with “mood”, which has the same vowel as “moon”.
“Good”, however, is not pronounced as g[yu]d. As in “mute”.
Well I’m glad we can all agree that “good” is not pronounced “g[yu]d”. I’m also pretty sure that the disagreement here is based on actual differences in pronunciation, rather than anybody’s mishearing of phones. If you tell me that “wood” rhymes with “mood”, I will take your word for it that you do indeed pronounce them such that they rhyme.
Lisa: …you wouldn’t find a corn-fed American girl of the Midwest pronouncing them the same.
Nor this Southerner, nor a Yankee, nor an Oregonian, nor a Kiwi or an Aussie or a Yorkshireman, to the best that my ear can recollect.
CGHill »
18 May 2009 · 6:48 pm
Lore Sjöberg’s infamous quantum-physics love song to Björk (it can still be heard here) attempts at one point to rhyme “Björk” and “work,” to the dismay of Dave.
(Wait a minute. You mean Fleck is the “mid-Atlantic WASP”?)
Tatyana »
19 May 2009 · 6:07 am
Moira,
I never said I try to convince anglophone they don’t hear distinctions they do.
I don/t. The distinction you’re talking about is not phonemic distinction, is distinction in the length of pronouncing the same vowel.
If your ever tried to divide verbal language to phonemes (one unit is called “phoneme”, not “phone”) you’d know the principle is the same in any language. Regional pronunciation has nothing to do with basic building blocks of language (which are phonemes, by definition). In every language there exist certain literary regional etalon of pronunciation, considered (by consensus of linguists, I guess) to be the most correct and clear in the nation. I’m sure you have it America – and it’s different from British English and from Australian English.
Chaz: Bjork and work definitely rhyme.
I started to think that our differences are in the definition of “rhyme”.