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ArchivesRe: Lovelie pronunciation
in reply to a message by Anneza
Alright, thank you for the information. I assume it’s just supposed to be a redid version of Lovelie, it means “lovely”, and can also have a different pronunciation too. Nobody would say Lovely as luv-EH-lee in English, I hope. So yes, you can say that Lovely is a creative spelling, but I’m also saying at the same time that’s not really the case.
https://www.behindthename.com/pnl/217493
"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves." - William Shakespeare
https://www.behindthename.com/pnl/217493
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Replies
Depends on the dialect. In My Fair Lady, before Higgins gentrifies her pronunciation, Eliza makes it three syllables:
All I want is a room somewhere
Far away from the cold night air
With one enormous chair
Aow, wouldn't it be loverly?
All I want is a room somewhere
Far away from the cold night air
With one enormous chair
Aow, wouldn't it be loverly?
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Two comments about that--the spelling "loverly" indicates that the word is to be pronounced differently from the norm, and songwriters and poets too) will often tweak pronunciation to make words fit the meter. I haven't researched to see if "loverly" was actually a known pronunciation, but just because it appears in a song doesn't mean one can assume it to be.
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The point of the song, the musical and the GB Shaw play on which it was based is that the London (Cockney) dialect (like the Midlands, Yorkshire, Dorset etc, etc dialects) was socially unacceptable and for Eliza to be admitted to high society, her pronunciation had to change. It was and is very much a known pronunciation! In today's world, it isn't the barrier to success that it would have been a hundred years ago, but it's still there all right and has been for centuries.
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