Pronunciation

gvelasco

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I have a friend from Hawaii who plays uke and corrected me the first time I said you-kuh-lay-lee. She said, "It's ooh-coo-leh-leh." I've taken to calling it an ooh-coo-leh-leh and that makes Hawaiians very happy to hear that, but around non-islanders, I get funny looks. Even at the Austin Ukulele society, they all use the mainland pronunciation.

I've taken it as far as calling it ook for short instead of youk. My best friends and ukulele players are used to it now, but at shops and other gatherings of ukulele players I still feel like I should use the "standard" pronunciation?

Thoughts?
 
I always try to use the Hawaiian pronounciation when in Hawaii or speaking to someone from Hawaii, but often use the mainland pronunciation elsewhere because nobody knew what I meant otherwise.

Then when writing it is complicated. The Hawaiian version would use "an" but the mainland version uses "a."
 
I use the mainland way. I think the rules for this sort of thing is that once a foreign word enters the English language, you can pronounce it like an English word. This has happened a lot throughout the history of English. If I were speaking Hawaiian, I would use that languages pronunciation but I really only know "aloha" and "ukulele".
 
I don't know how well this fits in the discussion, but the leader of our uke group The CC Strummers, Cali Rose, wife of Craig Brandau wrote this song.

 
Do you want things to be even more confusing?

In Spanish and in Dutch, the official spelling is 'ukelele', that's just one U and three Es for you. Although players who speak those languages usually stick to UU-EE, novelists and publishers in those languages insiste on U-EEE.

And in the Netherlands, a band called Nico Haak had a hit song in 1973 with a song about a ukulele, but they had problems with the rhyming, so it was in fact titled 'joekelille', and pronounced like 'yukalilly'. That's how most people in Holland still pronounce it (not Flanders, where the song remained obscure).
 
The 'Ukulele has developed from it's original (oo-ku-le-le) & is now commonly known as a Ukulele (yoo-ku-lay-lee).
(Note the missing apostrophe.)
:cool:
 
In the states I use you-ku-lele. In Puerto Rico I use oo-ku-le-le, because in Spanish that is how the word is pronounced and I am talking to Spanish speaking people most of the time in PR. If I were ever in Hawaii, I would probably do the Spanish version. The reason is that I don't want to sound goofier than I already am so I try to stick with convention. I have to say, that people who insist on using the Spanish/Hawaiian version in Iowa sound goofy to non ukulele people, which is almost everyone else.
 
Down here in South Carolina most folks pronounce it "mandolin"...
We had some friends visiting from California, who are these "we are so cool cause we're from Big Sur" types, and she was pronouncing it Mawndoleen. I guess that would be the Spanish pronunciation, when you get right down to it. Anyway, it sounded a little silly in central Iowa as well.
 
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We had some friends visiting from California, who are these "we are so cool cause we're from Big Sur" types, and she was pronouncing it Mawndoleen. I guess that would be the Spanish pronunciation, when you get right down to it. Anyway, it sounded a little silly in central Iowa as well.

LOL, this is like the pretentious news anchors who say "Nee-ha-rah-you-ahh", instead of "Nicaragua", etc. Always good for a laugh, and always makes that person sound like a pretentious twit. "Ookoolaylee" isn't quite that bad, but when in Rome...
 
LOL, this is like the pretentious news anchors who say "Nee-ha-rah-you-ahh", instead of "Nicaragua", etc. Always good for a laugh, and always makes that person sound like a pretentious twit. "Ookoolaylee" isn't quite that bad, but when in Rome...

Have you seen this one:
 
All of this reminds me of the episode of Seinfeld where George was so annoyed at the pretension of his girlfriend pronouncing "paper mache" as "pah-pee-ay-mah-shay" and calling his doorman Sammy, "Samuel" but drawing it out and pronouncing it, "Sam-you-elle". :D
 
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LOL, this is like the pretentious news anchors who say "Nee-ha-rah-you-ahh", instead of "Nicaragua", etc. Always good for a laugh, and always makes that person sound like a pretentious twit. "Ookoolaylee" isn't quite that bad, but when in Rome...

I've never heard anyone say oo-koo-lay-lee, that would be an interesting combo of pronunciations. I've only heard either oo-koo-leh-leh (Hawaiian) or you-kuh-lay-lee (US mainland).
 
I've never heard anyone say oo-koo-lay-lee, that would be an interesting combo of pronunciations. I've only heard either oo-koo-leh-leh (Hawaiian) or you-kuh-lay-lee (US mainland).

Kimo Hussey says "Ooo-koo-lay-lee". I've heard it several times in different youtube videos.
 
In German, it is pronounced just like the Hawaiian version. :)
 
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