How to pronounce "tuba"

[Donn]

ˈt(j)ubə

That "j" is the sound we normally use "y" for in English (in their international phonetic alphabet, "j" follows from its origin in the Roman alphabet where it was just a different way to write "i" and Julius was pronounced "yoo li oos", if I remember right, it's hard to remember clearly that far back.) Anyway, that "j" is not for everyone. If you pronounce "Tuesday" the same as "two's day", then they're not talking to you - that's why the parentheses, for the dialectal variant that has dropped that sound and pronounces "u" the same as "oo" after alveolar consonants like d, t and n.

If on the other hand you do come from a dialectal region where "tube" would have that "y" sound, do you also pronounce "tuba" like that?

The dictionary can be wrong. I'm not talking about adopting common mispronunciations and misunderstandings of words, which they also do. They also take shortcuts and copy each other's errors instead of checking up on the facts (consider for example the common definition of espresso.) I'm not sure what I think about this one. I suppose the "u" vs. "oo" story goes back several hundred years to before modern English, and the tuba came along much later. Modern English spelling is more historic than orthographic, and the spelling of "tuba" can't be taken as an authoritative guide to its pronunciation.

[Uncle Buck]

I have never pronounced it the way you've described from that dictionary entry. But I grew up in Arkansas and have now lived in Utah for 20 years. Neither location is terribly well-known for sophistication of dialect.

[Donn]

"prelude" seems to be an anomaly - if anyone pronounces words like that "lyu", in general, it's sure not as distinct, nor is it recognized by the dictionaries. Except for prelude. Don't know why, looks like an affectation that caught on.

"tuba" is different - I'm guessing that the tyooba pronunciation could likewise be a sort of error, but out of confusion rather than affectation. But only for people who'd also pronounce "tube" that way, and so forth - etude, etc. Outside of that crowd, which I guess is fairly small in the US, it's "tooba".

[bort]

I think British people tend to say "teeu-bah"...?

[iiipopes]

I pronounce it "bāss."

[Jack Denniston]

Mr Bell pronounced it TEW-buh, as I recall.

[Donn]

Mr Bell pronounced it TEW-buh, as I recall.

Hard to know for sure what you mean.

Could be like "hew", which everyone pronounces with the leading "y"? Then there's "crew", which no one pronounces with a leading "y", or "new" and "dew" which some people pronounce with a leading "y". I'm guessing you mean as in "hew", but ... I didn't know Mr Bell as well as some other folks here apparently did!

[MikeW]

I spent a few minutes with google.

Looks like the original word was Latin "tuba" and probably had the "oo" pronunciation.

When Weiprecht invented the "basstuba" he didn't give it an umlaut so he probably intended the "oo" sound

Living in Britain, I always heard it with the liquid u ("tju:ba"), so I guess that's a British English v. American English thing (like British "Aluminium" v. American "Aluminum").

On the "prelude" question, I would favour the Italian pronunciation, which seems (maybe) to use the liquid u - "prelju:d"

[DonShirer]

Random House dictionary says 1. too-bah, 2. tyoo-bah (which second definition my spellchecker keeps changing to typo-bah)

[Donn]

I started off questioning the dictionary on this point, so further citations of the dictionary kind of beg the question.

Living in Britain, I always heard it with the liquid u ("tju:ba")

British pronunciation is probably the clue, because that's where most of the people are who would pronounce "tune" "tyoon" instead of "toon". However, they're as likely to be confused on this point as anyone, so it's still only a clue and not proof.

It's easy to hear how the Italians would pronounce "prelude", just fire up translate.google.com, type in "prelude", ask for it to be translated into Italian ("preludio"), and select the little speaker icon. But even if they said prelyoodio, it wouldn't really be much help, we're dealing with English here and it follows its own weird ways. Nothing I can think of would account for why preh-lyood would be a correct pronunciation, but then I could never figure out what kind of brain damage causes people to pronounce "coupon" "kyoo-pon."

[ralphbsz]

Isn't there a really old Bloom County cartoon about this?

Opus (the penguin) is watching TV, and for some reason wants to say "tuba player", and instead says "tubrlgrmpf", or something along those lines.

[MikeW]

The British pronunciation thing seems to be pretty general; they/we tend to use the liquid u wherever possible (tune, Tuesday, tuba, coupon - but not Sun...).
On the other hand, I've heard Americans pronouncing Houston as "HEW-ston", which is equally weird.

There are even British Linux users who pronounce "Ubuntu" as EW-bun-TEW. Actually its a Bantu word, and when Nelson Mandela described it in a speech (included as an audio-visual example file in the Ubuntu distribution) he pronounced it "OO - BOON - TOO".

I just file these things under "Two nations divided by a common language"

[Donn]

The British pronunciation thing seems to be pretty general; they/we tend to use the liquid u wherever possible (tune, Tuesday, tuba, coupon - but not Sun...).
On the other hand, I've heard Americans pronouncing Houston as "HEW-ston", which is equally weird.

There are even British Linux users who pronounce "Ubuntu" as EW-bun-TEW. Actually its a Bantu word, and when Nelson Mandela described it in a speech (included as an audio-visual example file in the Ubuntu distribution) he pronounced it "OO - BOON - TOO".

Houston is an example that goes to show, names are all messed up.

Ubuntu is a good counter-example to the "how the British pronounce things in general" argument. Words adopted from a foreign language will invariably use "u" to spell what is, in their language, the vowel in "two." There's no reason we need to change that sound (English speakers have no difficulty saying "two" for example), and we don't need to change the spelling to Ooboontoo to do it. If the English have a propensity to fail at this and say things like "jag-yu-ar" and "nic-a-rag-yua", that doesn't make it a good thing. The way I'm leaning on this is that "tuba" entered the language after whatever phonetic turmoil in Middle English accounts for the pronunciation of "tune" for example; there is no general phonetic rule here (hence "two"); spelling is not a valid pronunciation cue ("ubuntu"), and the derivation (Latin, via German if you like) suggests an "oo" sound.