Buena
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Following up on the issue of English spelling variation, this picture has been making the rounds on social media:
I thought of it when I was reminded that the New Jersey borough of Buena is pronounced /ˈbjuːnə/ — so that the first syllable is the same as the first syllable of beauty.
It's not clear how this (mis-)pronunciation got started — according to the Wikipedia article,
Buena was incorporated as a borough by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on September 1, 1948, from portions of Buena Vista Township. The borough was reincorporated on May 18, 1949. The borough derives its name from Buena Vista Township, which in turn was named for the 1847 Battle of Buena Vista during the Mexican–American War.
The "Buena" part of Buena Vista Township is also pronounced /ˈbjuːnə/, according to Wikipedia.
The other English words in which "ue" is pronounced /juː/ — at least the ones that I can think of — are all Germanic proper names, like "Bueller" and "Mueller". Maybe there are some non-proper-name borrowings as well? But anyhow, I'm not clear why mid-19th-century South Jersey folks (or their descendants) applied Germanic-borrowing pronunciation to an obviously Spanish word.
[Update — commenters remind me of a bunch of obvious non-proper-name parallels: Cue, rescue, fuel, imbue, …]
Elle Cordova chose the "i before e except after c" thing as the thematic "rule" in her 5/2/2025 Grammarian vs. Errorist skit, presumably because it's so well known. The raw statistics line up a bit oddly against the aphorism, and not only on bookstore sidewalk signs: the counts of relevant wordforms in (for example) CMUdict are;
ie 4324 ei 2238 cie 177 cei 41
There are no comparable couplets to help us with "ue" and "eu", although CMUdict has 1368 wordforms containing 'ue" and 630 containing 'eu', and there's plenty of variation in the letter-to-sound mapping…
Dick Margulis said,
June 6, 2025 @ 7:41 am
Has shibboleth been ruled out as a reason for the odd pronunciation?
I'm thinking of the various Berlins, named for the German city, where the local pronunciation puts the stress on the first syllable (perhaps apocryphally a deliberate change made at the onset of the Great War). But I'm also thinking of Chili ('chai 'lai) New York and the nearby section of Rochester Charlotte (shar 'laht); Lima ('lai muh), Ohio; and innumerable other places with locally "mispronounced" names.
JimG said,
June 6, 2025 @ 8:49 am
The photo seized my attention by including my middle name.
Philip Anderson said,
June 6, 2025 @ 9:25 am
As I’m sure you know, in British English "ue" is usually pronounced /juː/, or sometimes /ju:-el/; however, that probably didn’t come into play in NJ.
More likely is (subconsciously) generalising an imagined “foreign spelling” rule, in a period when Spanish was little-known in the area.
The original name of the village of Beguildy, in Wales but almost on the English border, came from the Welsh form “Bugeildy”, which is easily interpretable as bugail + dy (shepherd house), but with the vowels switched to match the English pronunciation.
Seonachan said,
June 6, 2025 @ 9:58 am
Cue, rescue, fuel and puerile come to mind.
Robert Coren said,
June 6, 2025 @ 10:02 am
Even in AmE, there are non-proper nouns in which "ue" is pronounced /juː /, such as "imbue" and (in some idiolects) "due". (Also "fuel", which some people pronounce as a single syllable.)
Ross Presser said,
June 6, 2025 @ 10:16 am
As a South Jersey native, I've always pronounced the town name "Buena" as /ˈbwe.na/, as if it were directly a Spanish word. Same for the town name "Buena Vista". The Wikipedia instruction surprises me greatly.
Ross Presser said,
June 6, 2025 @ 10:17 am
As a side point, I discovered today that MS Copilot (and probably other LLMs) are quite happy to interpret IPA and to use IPA in answers when asked. Great, another reason for me to postpone actually learning IPA myself.
Grant said,
June 6, 2025 @ 11:19 am
The town of Buena Vista in Colorado shares the weird pronunciation. We also do some odd things with almost every other word of Spanish origin in the state. My IPA is rusty, but if you look up how we pronounce the towns of Salida or Limon, or Galapago St. you'll get an idea of how definitively early settlers in the state didn't know Spanish pronunciation.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
June 6, 2025 @ 11:34 am
@Ross Presser: If you dig deeper, you will be sorely disappointed. As in other fields, LLMs (OK, my experience is with ChatGPT) display a lot of confidence but if you know your IPA, you will quickly see it's hallucinatory far too often. Also, if you dig into allophonic transcription, then on occasions it tends to "spew nonsense", as a student of mine said in an experiment we ran.
Rodger C said,
June 6, 2025 @ 12:31 pm
Lie-ma, OH, shares its state with Bewna Vista and Rye-oh Grand.
Rick Rubenstein said,
June 6, 2025 @ 2:34 pm
Years ago I lived on Ximeno Ave. in Long Beach CA. Even the native-Spanish-speaking locals (of which there were many) pronounced it "Ex-im-eno.
Rod Johnson said,
June 6, 2025 @ 2:36 pm
There's a road near where I live, bafflingly spelled "Easudes," and even more bafflingly pronounced "you-SAY-deez" (as if it were spelled "Eusades").
TonyK said,
June 6, 2025 @ 3:36 pm
The full rule, which I learnt in school, is "i before e except after c (but only when the sound is /i:/)" (OK, it wasn't written like that). This only leaves 'Keith', which doesn't really count, being a proper name.
Ted McClure said,
June 6, 2025 @ 3:44 pm
There is a town in southern Arizona named "Sonoita". I didn't understand why it was pronounced "so-NOY-ta" on local radio, when my (poor) Spanish suggested "so-no-EE-ta". Turns out, it's not Spanish–it's from the local pre-Columbian residents. Also, remember "ver-SALES", Ohio.
C Baker said,
June 6, 2025 @ 6:42 pm
Sure, if you leave off nearly every part of the rule then it seems like there are a lot of exceptions. Quoted in full, not quite as many exceptions:
When it makes the [single] sound "ee"
Then write i before e
But not after c
Nor when it says "ay"
As in neighbor or weigh
The phonogram "ei" does not represent the single sound ee in most of the words on that sign. Rule does not apply.
Phillip Helbig said,
June 7, 2025 @ 2:44 am
I before E, except after C, or when sounded like ay as in neighbour and weigh. The common exceptions: Neither financier seized either weird species of leisure. That’s what I learned. Referring to the sign above, the “after C” and “sounded like ay” means that some of them are among the well known exceptions. As for feisty, if it’s pronounced like I and not like something else then it always I after E, right? Any counter examples? (Australians are obviously not allowed to contribute.)
So true exceptions: Keith, foreign, counterfeit. In foreign the ei is unstressed and in couterfeit not pronounced as in Keith. So, as somone mentioned above, if the rule is only if the sound is /i:/, rather then except when sounded like ay, then Keith is the only exception.
What’s the difference between a buffalo and a bison? The former is a large hairy bovine native to North America. The latter is where an Australian washes his hands.
An Englishman wakes up after having been in a coma in a hospital in Australia, looks around at all the equipment in the intensive-care room, feels miserable, and says “I must have come here to die.” The nurse replies “No, you got in yesterday, mate.”
The bayby vs. bighby pronunciation split applies to other languages as well, such as ij and ei in Dutch (also, whether those are pronounced the same depends on the dialiect; the former is the long ij and considered to be one letter and often written as a ligature or, informally, as a y with two dots over it (for the dots on i and j) (or, in Afrikaans, as y) while the latter is the short ei and consists of two letters. Also, ay is the common pronunciation for ei, ey, ai, ay, in Austrial, whereas it’s igh in Germany. (Again, Australians will notice no difference as they don’t distinguish the sounds in English—right might?
David Marjanović said,
June 7, 2025 @ 8:12 am
No, it's between the two – [ɛ̞ɪ̯], just like the more traditional Dutch pronunciation of ij & ei. Both of the English sounds are equally exotic for us.
Terry K. said,
June 7, 2025 @ 9:13 am
It's a good mnemonic (memory aid), for those of us who have an intuitive sense of when to apply it. It works well for me. But it does leave a lot unsaid, regarding when it applies.
Actually, the only word that doesn't follow it that I've ever had trouble remembering how to spell is "weird". I just remember "weird's a weird word". Not a true description, but useful to remember how to spell "weird".
Rodger C said,
June 7, 2025 @ 12:48 pm
Easudes isn't a Spanish word (not that Rod Johnson said it was), but a surname whose origin I can't find quickly. "You-SAY-deez" does remind me of the body of water in the PNW, discovered by Bruno Heceta, which eventually became Hecate Strait.
Annie Gottlieb said,
June 8, 2025 @ 12:16 pm
And Houston Street, pronounced "How-ston" in NYC.
Robert Coren said,
June 8, 2025 @ 4:53 pm
Some people pronounce "leisure" with /i/.
C Baker said,
June 8, 2025 @ 7:24 pm
> And Houston Street, pronounced "How-ston" in NYC.
Because it wasn't named after Sam.
Keith said,
June 9, 2025 @ 9:26 am
I lived for seven years in Bergen County, NJ.
My local friends were most confused when I talked of having driven through /bogoˈta/ that morning (thinking that I'd Americanised the pronunciation sufficiently).
"What? Where's that?"
"Just this side of Hackensack."
"Oh, you mean /bəˈɡoʊdə/!"
ajay said,
June 10, 2025 @ 8:04 am
So true exceptions: Keith, foreign, counterfeit. In foreign the ei is unstressed and in counterfeit not pronounced as in Keith.
I wonder if foreign and counterfeit were originally pronounced with "ei" rhyming with weigh, and because it's an unstressed syllable it's gradually been eroded to forrin and counterfit?
Keith comes from Scots Gaelic, in which "ei" is always pronounced "ee" – see other Scots names like Keir, Reith, Leith, and also Scots words like beild, sheiling, and so on.
Chas Belov said,
June 10, 2025 @ 7:29 pm
I learned the same rule as Phillip Helbig, except for the "u" in neighbour.
California has plenty of Spanglish place names. "San Jose" comes to mind, with the English a, the Spanish J, and the English "z" sound for the second s.
Chas Belov said,
June 10, 2025 @ 7:35 pm
I would have certainly have failed the Buena shibboleth. Travel tip: Do learn the pronunciation of the address you will be staying, lest a taxi driver mark you as a tourist. When I visited Vancouver in the days before cell phones with live mapping (or their metro to the airport), I got the pronunciation of Broughton St (which I've now forgotten) from the place where I would be staying and used that pronunciation when giving my destination to the driver. He didn't find out that I wasn't local until he was crossing the Granville Street bridge. He told me he would have taken me via Cambie. I later looked it up and discovered it would have been a bit out of the way (on a metered taxi).
Chas Belov said,
June 10, 2025 @ 7:37 pm
Ah, remembered. "brow-tən"
Rodger C said,
June 11, 2025 @ 12:40 pm
Scots Gaelic, in which "ei" is always pronounced "ee"
Uh, no.
"San Jose" comes to mind, with the English a, the Spanish J, and the English "z" sound for the second s.
What I usually heard was "Sanna Zay."
Chas Belov said,
June 22, 2025 @ 1:42 am
@Rodger C:
Good point. I usually say "Sanna Zay" unless I'm taking care to say it out. But on the radio, they do generally say it out.