From the time I was a child my family always pronounced the banana type fruit plantain as plan' tin. Lately I have noticed more and more on television that people are pronouncing the word as plan' tain, with an emphasis on the tain. The first time I noticed people saying plan' tain was when Cosmo Kramer from the "Seinfeld" television show went shopping for fruit and he told Jerry that he bought a plan' tain. It may seem a little nuts, but I had to look up the pronunciation of the word in Webster's New World Dictionary and Thesaurus and it states that plantain is pronounced plan' tin. Then I said to myself, "ah ha", I knew that I was right. If we start saying plan' tain then we might as well start saying moun' tain and foun' tain instead of pronouncing them as mount' n and fount' n. Some people even try to separate green plantains from the sweet plantains by saying that the sweet plantains should be pronounced as plain' tain and the green ones should be pronounced as plan' tin.
What do you think?
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13 comments:
You got that right!! Plan'tins!
I personally pronounce it plan-TAYNE
maybe it's one of those toma-TOE to-MA-toe type of things
but the rule doesn't follow for all -tain words what about sustain contain and entertain for example, should we start saying sust'n cont'n and entert'n?!!?
pronunciation is an interesting thing~
From what you said instead of saying brain we should just say brin and maintin in stead of maintain.
I am ABSOLUTELY in the plan' tin camp!! I grew up in Tampa, Florida... I think I saw a cooking show recently where they called them plan'tins... and they made some comment about it being kind of a regional, dialectical difference. Unfortunately, my partner insists that it's plan'tain and cites his years in Puerto Rico and hearing it pronounced that way as evidence that he's right. Well, no, he's not. :-P PLAN'TIN. EOL.
My 1973 American Heritage Dictionary lists only one pronunciation, which is basically PLAN-t'n.
It is my impression that the plan-TAYNE pronunciation started when they started showing up in grocery stores, and people who had never heard of them saw the word for the first time, and got it wrong.
Countries where plantain's are grown, it's pronounced plan-tin by the local people and markets.
When imported into 'new' countries people tend to pronounce things they don't know how to pronounce phonetically---this time as plan-tain.
Caribbean is pronounced 'car-rib-be-an', but in Canada/US/UK they pronounce it Care-a-bean. Thailand is pronounced 'Tai-land', again Canadian/US/UK folks will pronounce it as 'Thigh-land".
It's all just phonetics.
I grew up in Miami - mi familia always called them plan-tins.
Native countries where plantain was grown, they pronounced it plan-tain, that is south america, asia and africa
Lets look at works that have similar vowels and spelling
Main-tain
B-rain
I'm a teacher and I know it to be that the spelling pattern for 'ai' when it is a verb, is pronounced with the long a sound such as sustain, entertain, and complain. For a noun though it is pronounced as a short i sound, such as captain (cap-tin), mountain (moun-tin), fountain (foun-tin),etc. People just don't know all the rules for pronunciation.
I should clarify- the 'tain' ending for nouns is pronounced 'tin'.
I used to pronounce it plan-tain, until I went to Jamaica. Everyone there pronounced it plan-t'n. The last bit is not produced as tin but rather an unusual tn sound at the end.
When I went to St. Lucia the pronunciation was plan-tin.
Now back in Toronto, Ontario, Canada no one except Caribbean (which I pronounce car-rib-bee-an) folks know what I'm talking about if I say plan-t'n. Most folks up make it sound like plan-tayn-ne (really drawn out at the end lol).
The reason maintain, contain and entertain are not pronounced with a -tin is because they are all verbs. ("Brain" doesn't even count because it does not end in "tain")
But captain, chieftain, curtain, fountain, mountain AND plantain are all nouns. And all have the same etymology.
Besides which, in every reputable dictionary you find the pronunciation as plan'-tin.
Maybe at some point the ignorant (and I mean that in the nicest way) pronunciation will be so widely used that it will become acceptable. But that time has not yet arrived.
Mintin
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