Just found out that the pronunciations in England and Thailand are different, so I’m wondering whether there is a pattern here, or should I just get more exposed to them and internalize them in the end?
Most countries ending with -land are pronounced like England and New Zealand. If in doubt, most places are pronounced this way, including:
Iceland
Greenland
Scotland
Finland
Thailand is an exception.
Newfoundland, Canada is a weird case. Most Americans and others pronounce it NOO-fun-luhnd, rhyming with England. Canadians/Newfoundlanders pronounce it noo-fun-LAND, rhyming with Thailand and with stress on last syllable.
I can't think of any other exceptions pronounced like Thailand, but I'm sure there are.
I think that’s something called iambic reversal where the stress switches when the word is part of a phrase. So it’s queensLAND normally but QUEENSland Synphoje Orchestra or whatever.
Maybe it's just because I'm American and almost never hear or say Queensland out loud, but I definitely would've said it to rhyme with England until reading this comment
Either way, most native speakers "normalize" the ending to rhyme with other similarly named places like England and Iceland, while that's not how it's pronounced there. Probably because it's a place with a small population that most people have heard of but never been to.
I'm American, and I say nyoo-fun-LAND. I'm old, though. I had heard that the palatization was fading in American speech. (As for the stress, my late husband grew up in Ontario, and I learned it from him.)
Thailand could be pronounced either way depending on the dialect. I wouldn't bat an eye if someone said Thai lund as an east coast American, though Thai land is a slightly more common pronunciation
From the American South, have lived in both the northeast and the west coast: using the schwa is fine, it naturally feels right if you change the syllable stress (which some people do)
Newfoundland ends in the same -land as England, but they do not rhyme. The only perfect rhymes of Newfoundland would have to end in the same sound that the "-ewfoundland" makes, since the first syllable is the one with the stress. There are no words like this to my knowledge, meaning Newfoundland has no rhymes.
Okay guys, after reading all your comments, which was fun btw, I think in the future, maybe the best way is to say it whichever way comes first in my mind confidently, with zero hesitation 😂
I think you can largely stick with the lənd pronunciation unless people are saying it clearly differently. If I hadn't seen your example I would've thought Thailand was pronounced like the others.
Look up "lexicalization." After a word is lexicalized, the vowel in "land" tends to reduce to either a schwa or /i/ or disappear into the /n/.
Dream land, La La Land, no man's land
..
South-land, Thailand
Thai can stand alone as a separate word, ascan the other examples.
(South-land is a term local to Southern California, specifically to the KNX radio daily traffic report.)
The telling example for me is "Maryland." Please confirm this via Youglish. Americans pronounce the second syllable as /ln/and reduce the middle vowel: mer-i-ln
Brits say Mary.Land
I presume that is because the Brits still haven't lexicalized that name and have fixated on its progenitor, a Catholic Queen Mary.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/09/09/queen-mary-of-maryland/
French-born wife of England's King Charles I, Henrietta Maria was known as Queen Mary. She was the inspiration for the name of the state of Maryland.
Brit here. I'd almost always say Maryland with a schwa when refering to the state. That's also how the tube pronounces the station in Stratford with the same name.
As a born and raised Marylander, the native pronunciation often sounds more like "Merlin" than anything to do with Queen Mary or any kind of land. I feel like this has more to do with the local Bawlmerese accent than American lexicalization.
I would say exposure is the best bet as English doesn’t really have rules for that, and depending on the region, “-land” in all of these words can be pronounced differently. In my part of the US, I pronounce all of these “-land” sounds the same as a kind of “-lund” sound. Although Thailand can be pronounced with “-lund” or a “-layind” sound at the end. Sorry if my indications are confusing, i’m not very good at linguistics. :/
Native Western American English speaker here -- the only "rule" I can think of for my dialect is that "new" names still are pronounced like the land in Thailand and "old" names are pronounced like the lind in England and Zealand. (I think the country changed its name from Siam to Thailand post-World War II, if I remember correctly, so it's a relatively "new" entry into the English lexicon.) Any term like "Tomorrowland" or "Adventureland" would also still be pronounced with land instead of lind for the same reason.
It can get a bit complicated, though, because (somewhat counterintuitively), pronouncing an "old" name like Maryland with the "new" land pronunciation rather than the "old" lind pronunciation sounds old fashioned to me, like someone calling an airplane an aeroplane or calling the radio the wireless. (I would imagine this is because it is signaling "this is a new word!" even though it's actually old.)
So when someone says Mary-land instead of Marillind (sorry, no IPA on my phone 🫣😬), it sounds like they're about to ask if I support the Cavaliers or the Roundheads, or perhaps the Jacobites vs the Hanoverians... but the names of all former British colonies in Africa like Bechuanaland (Botswana) or Swaziland (Eswatini) get the "new" land ending to me because they feel similarly old-fashioned.
I think Thailand is the only one for which British English always uses the "land" rather than "lund". Greenland and Maryland, I've heard both sounds being used, although I think American English always uses "lund" in Maryland.
I don't have a good reason why this is, but Thailand is the only exception; every other country that ends in "land" is pronounced like England or New Zealand.
At least all modern countries using their English names. I'd use the Thailand pronunciation for Swaziland and Deutschland but Swaziland is Eswatini now and we call Deutschland Germany.
I am from the Boston area and I always thought it was NEW-fin-lind (representing the schwas with i). Then I learned people from there say NEW-fin-LAND with secondary stress on the land.
Maybe true for the current English names of countries but not when you consider all "land" words.
These are all the ones I would definitely pronounce LAND from the Wikipedia page for Land_(suffix), not including places that have "Island" or "Land" as a separate word and words I've not heard before and/or could see going either way:
its safer to pronounce it as england and new Zealand for every country, because thats much less noticeable than the opposite. but i think its just something you memorize/ guess
Depends how fast you say it I guess. Though my accent is often considered very lazy, we might overuse the schwa and other lazy sounds ha ha. Kiwi English.
There isn't even a consistent pronunciation in some cases. "Newfoundland", for example. I've heard both pronunciations of "land" following both "New Found" and "Newfund". I'm not sure how the people who actually live there say it.
Not really. It's basically just how it sounds to say. Thailund would sound weird. So it's Thailand instead. England sounds weird so we pronounce it Englund
Irrelevant but do you drop the K sound in the word 'effects' especially during fast speech or do I still need to work on my hearing for thr English vowels?
Not really, no. Most of them are pronounced -lund in British English, eg:
Eng-lund, Scot-lund, Ire-lund, Ice-lund etc.
Thailand is a a exception as you point out, which is pronounced- Thai-land. Green-land is maybe another, although some people will say Green-lund too. I have never heard anyone say Thai-lund though.
Americans seem to pronounce them all consistently.
Most countries ending with -land are pronounced like England and New Zealand. If in doubt, most places are pronounced this way, including: Iceland Greenland Scotland Finland
Thailand is an exception.
Newfoundland, Canada is a weird case. Most Americans and others pronounce it NOO-fun-luhnd, rhyming with England. Canadians/Newfoundlanders pronounce it noo-fun-LAND, rhyming with Thailand and with stress on last syllable.
I can't think of any other exceptions pronounced like Thailand, but I'm sure there are.
Queensland in Australia is one - very definitely the full Land, not the shorter version like England.
Neverland in Peter Pan is another 😆
That's it, that's all I've got.
You do sometimes hear Queensland pronounced with the schwa / short vowel.
I’m in Melbourne and hear both versions (though the fully enunciated ‘land’ is more common.)
If I really think about it, I use both pronunciations depending on context.
I think that’s something called iambic reversal where the stress switches when the word is part of a phrase. So it’s queensLAND normally but QUEENSland Synphoje Orchestra or whatever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41rp-9vi5Zo
Yup. You’ll hear it in rugby shows every week the QUEENSland Reds play in queensLAND
Maybe it's just because I'm American and almost never hear or say Queensland out loud, but I definitely would've said it to rhyme with England until reading this comment
The citiy of Levelland, Texas.
That's the way it's pronounced in the James McMurtry song and the Robert Earl Keen version of the same song. And the Texas Alamanac agrees.
I (British) would say it NYOO-fun-luhnd, with a "y" /j/ as in "new", "cute", "puny", "imbue", "few".
Most Americans omit this "y" sound from "new" (but not from "few"), while most Brits retain it.
Interesting!
Either way, most native speakers "normalize" the ending to rhyme with other similarly named places like England and Iceland, while that's not how it's pronounced there. Probably because it's a place with a small population that most people have heard of but never been to.
I'm American, and I say nyoo-fun-LAND. I'm old, though. I had heard that the palatization was fading in American speech. (As for the stress, my late husband grew up in Ontario, and I learned it from him.)
As an American I've somehow never thought of this. Super interesting
Thailand could be pronounced either way depending on the dialect. I wouldn't bat an eye if someone said Thai lund as an east coast American, though Thai land is a slightly more common pronunciation
I'm from the East Coast and don't think I've ever heard "Tie-luhnd". I wouldn't consider that to be common or correct IMO.
So am I and I've heard both about equally
From the American South, have lived in both the northeast and the west coast: using the schwa is fine, it naturally feels right if you change the syllable stress (which some people do)
I was gonna say Swaziland but TIL it no longer exists
Newfoundland has another pronounciation common in southern Ontario, new-FOUND-luhnd (I hate this)
No, Canadians say it NOO-fun-land
Note:
Newfoundland ends in the same -land as England, but they do not rhyme. The only perfect rhymes of Newfoundland would have to end in the same sound that the "-ewfoundland" makes, since the first syllable is the one with the stress. There are no words like this to my knowledge, meaning Newfoundland has no rhymes.
Okay guys, after reading all your comments, which was fun btw, I think in the future, maybe the best way is to say it whichever way comes first in my mind confidently, with zero hesitation 😂
The world is such a big place!!!
I would go with the schwa sounds (like England), less likely to be wrong. And this dictionary says that Thailand can have either pronunciation: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/thailand?q=thailand
Wiktionary also has both at least for the US.
Everyone will understand you either way, so don't stress too much.
English speakers are used to speaking with people with a lot of different accents.
fwiw, not everyone says Thailand like that. I say it like "England".
Like, rhymes with "island"?
I'd assume so, but I don't know how you pronounce "island" lol
I say both as /lənd/
I think you can largely stick with the lənd pronunciation unless people are saying it clearly differently. If I hadn't seen your example I would've thought Thailand was pronounced like the others.
I think I might have heard it and said it myself both ways in the past… just checked, wiktionary lists both pronunciations for US.
Look up "lexicalization." After a word is lexicalized, the vowel in "land" tends to reduce to either a schwa or /i/ or disappear into the /n/.
Dream land, La La Land, no man's land .. South-land, Thailand Thai can stand alone as a separate word, ascan the other examples.
(South-land is a term local to Southern California, specifically to the KNX radio daily traffic report.)
The telling example for me is "Maryland." Please confirm this via Youglish. Americans pronounce the second syllable as /ln/and reduce the middle vowel: mer-i-ln Brits say Mary.Land
I presume that is because the Brits still haven't lexicalized that name and have fixated on its progenitor, a Catholic Queen Mary. https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/09/09/queen-mary-of-maryland/ French-born wife of England's King Charles I, Henrietta Maria was known as Queen Mary. She was the inspiration for the name of the state of Maryland.
Brit here. I'd almost always say Maryland with a schwa when refering to the state. That's also how the tube pronounces the station in Stratford with the same name.
Marylander here: I say something like /mɛə̯ɹə.lɪnd/ or /mɛə̯ɹə.ln̩d/ (the diphthongs are very short). Im also not the best at transcribing IPA 😅
I think most Brits rarely need to refer to Maryland (and rarely hear it pronounced), hence our uncertainty about how to say it.
As a born and raised Marylander, the native pronunciation often sounds more like "Merlin" than anything to do with Queen Mary or any kind of land. I feel like this has more to do with the local Bawlmerese accent than American lexicalization.
As someone who has spent a lot of time in and around Maryland, the -d is practically never dropped. Marilyn and Maryland have distinct pronunciations.
I would say exposure is the best bet as English doesn’t really have rules for that, and depending on the region, “-land” in all of these words can be pronounced differently. In my part of the US, I pronounce all of these “-land” sounds the same as a kind of “-lund” sound. Although Thailand can be pronounced with “-lund” or a “-layind” sound at the end. Sorry if my indications are confusing, i’m not very good at linguistics. :/
Native Western American English speaker here -- the only "rule" I can think of for my dialect is that "new" names still are pronounced like the land in Thailand and "old" names are pronounced like the lind in England and Zealand. (I think the country changed its name from Siam to Thailand post-World War II, if I remember correctly, so it's a relatively "new" entry into the English lexicon.) Any term like "Tomorrowland" or "Adventureland" would also still be pronounced with land instead of lind for the same reason.
It can get a bit complicated, though, because (somewhat counterintuitively), pronouncing an "old" name like Maryland with the "new" land pronunciation rather than the "old" lind pronunciation sounds old fashioned to me, like someone calling an airplane an aeroplane or calling the radio the wireless. (I would imagine this is because it is signaling "this is a new word!" even though it's actually old.)
So when someone says Mary-land instead of Marillind (sorry, no IPA on my phone 🫣😬), it sounds like they're about to ask if I support the Cavaliers or the Roundheads, or perhaps the Jacobites vs the Hanoverians... but the names of all former British colonies in Africa like Bechuanaland (Botswana) or Swaziland (Eswatini) get the "new" land ending to me because they feel similarly old-fashioned.
I think Thailand is the only one for which British English always uses the "land" rather than "lund". Greenland and Maryland, I've heard both sounds being used, although I think American English always uses "lund" in Maryland.
Lapland.
I don't have a good reason why this is, but Thailand is the only exception; every other country that ends in "land" is pronounced like England or New Zealand.
At least all modern countries using their English names. I'd use the Thailand pronunciation for Swaziland and Deutschland but Swaziland is Eswatini now and we call Deutschland Germany.
Greenland 🇬🇱
See, I pronounce that "Green-lind", not "Green-land".
Interesting! May I ask which area are you from?
Midwest US.
I’ve heard both used in the US
Nope. GREEN-lin.
Not a country but Queensland (Aus) is an exception. I’m sure there’s more
I didn't know that and I have always pronounced it with a schwa.
I did the same with Newfoundland, Canada until I learned locals pronounce the land as land.
Newfoundland is blowing my mind. I knew the found was a schwa but the land not being one is lunacy
I am from the Boston area and I always thought it was NEW-fin-lind (representing the schwas with i). Then I learned people from there say NEW-fin-LAND with secondary stress on the land.
Do you have a schwi in those places, is that why you represent the schwas with the letter i?
Maybe true for the current English names of countries but not when you consider all "land" words.
These are all the ones I would definitely pronounce LAND from the Wikipedia page for Land_(suffix), not including places that have "Island" or "Land" as a separate word and words I've not heard before and/or could see going either way:
Deutschland, Swaziland, Somaliland, Burgenland, Lapland, Rhineland, Sudetenland, Dixieland, Zululand, Togoland, Adventureland, Disneyland, Everland, Legoland, Neverland, Wonderland, Winterland.
Also, not on that page, Graceland.
So, tl;dr, there's no pattern.
Not sure we've ever really called it Deutschland but if you're following the German pronunciation, it ends with a T sound.
Deutschland is a word English speakers know and we pronounce it with a D because we are speaking English.
its safer to pronounce it as england and new Zealand for every country, because thats much less noticeable than the opposite. but i think its just something you memorize/ guess
the “land” in new zealand and england sounds more like “lend,” and in thailand it sounds more like “land.”
edit: realized new zealand and england have a sound that’s actually closer to “lind,” at least for me
No, more like "lind," like the name "Linda."
Definitely not in my accent. It's a schwa for me. British English.
In some accents, short i (ɪ) and schwa (ə) are merged in unstressed syllables.
So, many Americans, for example, pronounce "Lenin" and "Lennon" identically.
In British English we tend to preserve the contrast between the two sounds.
This ^ there’s 0 difference between “Lenin” and “Lennon” for me
Depends how fast you say it I guess. Though my accent is often considered very lazy, we might overuse the schwa and other lazy sounds ha ha. Kiwi English.
oh that’s true, it is closer to “lind” for me!
I have absolutely no idea what the rule is if there is one, which there probably isn't
There isn't even a consistent pronunciation in some cases. "Newfoundland", for example. I've heard both pronunciations of "land" following both "New Found" and "Newfund". I'm not sure how the people who actually live there say it.
Not really. It's basically just how it sounds to say. Thailund would sound weird. So it's Thailand instead. England sounds weird so we pronounce it Englund
I guess the reason is the ’ai’ sound before makes it different. How are you supposed to pronounce ‘Shyland’ if there is such a place?
Irrelevant but do you drop the K sound in the word 'effects' especially during fast speech or do I still need to work on my hearing for thr English vowels?
I think I almost drop the k sound but still pause a little bit.
I pronounce Thailand to rhyme with island. I don't think there is a pattern.
Not really, no. Most of them are pronounced -lund in British English, eg:
Eng-lund, Scot-lund, Ire-lund, Ice-lund etc.
Thailand is a a exception as you point out, which is pronounced- Thai-land. Green-land is maybe another, although some people will say Green-lund too. I have never heard anyone say Thai-lund though.
Americans seem to pronounce them all consistently.
Unfortunately naming in English kinda doesn't have any rules, sorry mate. Look at all the different ways to spell "Elliot" and "Kaylee."