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In another thread on this site a question was asked about the pronunciation of the word Caribbean; that discussion focused on the position of the accent. Cognate forms of the word Caribbean have existed in European languages and English since the discovery of the New World. The New Latin form caribbaeus, available for international communication in Latin, provides a plausible answer to the question: ae is a diphthong in Latin, and for metrical purposes diphthongs are treated as long vowels. A long vowel in the penultimate position of a word gets the stress accent.

But is it appropriate in contemporary spoken English to rely on such historical usage? And in particular, what sense does it make to rely on the historical position of the accent when, in everyday speech, the rules for the pronunciation of the Latin vowels are ignored? Note that in typical English usage the e in Caribbean is pronounced as the e in the word me — in other words like the Latin i. And that Latin i is notorious for becoming a weak vowel, for shifting from long to short. And isn’t that what has happened when Caribbean is pronounced "ca-RIB-be-en"?

In other words, if you insist that the accent be on the be of Caribbean, wouldn’t it make just as much sense to insist on using the Latin vowel sound for the same syllable?

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Jim McKenney
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    Welcome to ELU. I've tidied up the paragraphs which Markdown doesn't really help with, and added use-mention of words. You may want to add an "American-English" tag if that's relevant. The British pronunciation and AmE pronunciation appear to differ. And what do you mean by "the Latin vowel sound for the same syllable"? This is where IPA is necessary (and not just useful). – Andrew Leach Feb 07 '15 at 15:35
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    The etymological fallacy is a genetic fallacy that holds, erroneously, that the present-day meaning of a word or phrase should necessarily be similar to its historical meaning. This is a linguistic misconception. // For centuries there has been a movement to reform the spelling of English. It seeks to change English spelling so that it is more consistent, matches pronunciation better, and follows the alphabetic principle.... Some spelling reform proposals have been adopted partially or temporarily.... [Wikipediax2] I think pronunciation is even less likely to conform to 'the old ways'. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 07 '15 at 16:07
  • Your premise is flawed. As far as I can tell from searching Google books, the New Latin forms caribbaea and caribbaeus only date to the mid-18th century, long after Caribbean was first used in English. So the New Latin seems to be derived from the English (it certainly doesn't seem to be derived from the French, Spanish, Italian, or German, as those are all spelled somewhat differently). – Peter Shor Feb 07 '15 at 16:59
  • @ Andrew I avoided the use of IPA there so the discussion would not become focused on the specific nature of the vowel sound in question. The important thing was to note that that vowel sound was a long vowel sound. Any long vowel sound in the penultimate syllable would have caused that syllable to be stressed. – Jim McKenney Feb 10 '15 at 16:24
  • @Shor If my premise is flawed, it's because the dictionary I'm using is flawed: Webster's 7th, in the definition of Caribbean, cites Caribbaeus for the etymology. – Jim McKenney Feb 10 '15 at 16:29
  • Non-low vowels in English are long (or tensed) when before another vowel. The "e" of Caribbean is before "a", so it's long, regardless of whether it's stressed. Like "area", "diarrhea", "arboreal", "piteous", "igneous". – Greg Lee Mar 30 '15 at 11:12
  • @Jim: the OED says the derivation is either Caribee + an or Carib + ean. No mention made of Latin. I see no reason why the word would have had to go through Latin to reach English, rather than coming directly from the Spanish. Sailors would have spoken English and Spanish, not Latin. – Peter Shor Aug 28 '15 at 12:28

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I question whether it is really true that Caribbean was borrowed from a form with [ai] in the next last syllable. There is an old British tradition of pronouncing Latin words spelled with "ae" as [i] ("ee"), as in alumnae, so maybe the Latin original with "ae" was actually pronounced with [i] at the time Caribbean was borrowed.

I tried to track down online the source of this British tradition of pronouncing Latin "ae" as [i], but I couldn't find it. Maybe another reader knows.

I agree that if there has been a continuous tradition of pronouncing words that were originally borrowed, it would make more sense to treat them explicitly as loan words, in describing their current pronunciations.

Greg Lee
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  • Actually, from the chronology of their first uses I can find in Google Books, it looks like the New Latin forms caribbaeus and caribbaea were derived from the English Caribbean, and not the other way around. – Peter Shor Feb 07 '15 at 18:22
  • There's actually an entire regular system of pronouncing vowels in words taken from Latin according to the English Great Vowel shift, which can be seen in many common latinate words like Caesar, algae, etc. In these words, the rules for latin vowel quality are not ignored so much as replaced by a modified system. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciation_of_Latin – herisson Feb 08 '15 at 10:01
  • @Shor That you were able to trace caribbaea and caribbaeus to the mid-18th century is not surprising: that's when internationally used standardized formal scientific nomenclature for plants and animals began. Searching the non-standardized pre-Linnaean literature is harder (the voice of experience speaking here) but surely the word must have been used before Linnaeus. – Jim McKenney Feb 10 '15 at 16:36
  • @Greg Google "Traditional English pronunciation of Latin". – Jim McKenney Feb 10 '15 at 16:43