Well, firstly, I have to admit that this poll was inspired largely by the fantastically bad movie "Puma Man", as seen through the lens of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys. In this terrible movie, all of the characters pronounce the "hero's" name POO-ma, except for the villain (played by well-known British character actor Donald Pleasance), who says PYOO-ma, much to the amusement of the American MST3K guys, who mock his pronunciation heartily.

Of all the polls I've done to date, this one had the clearest results. No one chose 'Other', and the responses divided relatively well along national lines, with most British, British-influenced, and Australian respondents choosing PYOO-ma, most Americans POO-ma, and Canadians divided, with more POO-mas but a few PYOO-mas. Most British dictionaries list only PYOO-ma, while most American dictionaries list POO-ma as the primary variant with PYOO-ma secondary.

'Puma' came into English in 1777, via Spanish and ultimately from Quechua. In both source languages, POO-ma is the accepted pronunciation. It is thus surprising that British English would use PYOO-ma.

However, English is a curious tongue (as you all should know by now!). Once upon a time, most English consonants followed directly by the letters 'eu', 'ew', or 'u' when pronounced like [u] (a long U sound) were pronounced as if there was a Y sound (IPA: [j]) between the consonant and vowel. You still hear this in plenty of words, like pure, human, butane, few, cue, etc, etc. When an [u] sound is spelled 'oo' or 'ou', however, no Y sound is inserted: poor [pur] vs. pure [pjur]. (I won't go into why the spelling makes so much difference; it has to do mostly with the Great Vowel Shift).

However, a process delightfully named yod-dropping takes place, wherein the Y sound is dropped after certain consonants. This almost always happens with 'r' and 'ch', but also, in many dialects, after, for instance, [s], [l], [z], [t], [d], and [n]. So, for instance, in British English dew is [dju] but in American English it's [du]. In British English one says [njuz] for news as opposed to Standard American [nuz]. And so on. However, for other consonants, such as [b], [p], [k], and [h], there is no yod-dropping in most English dialects, so [pu] > [pju] in pure, puberty, computer, pupil, and so on.

The upshot of all this is that in both American and British English, there is a tension between the etymologically correct POO-ma and the pronunciation expected from the spelling, PYOO-ma. Because British English is more conservative when it comes to yod-dropping, British speakers follow the general rule that the [j] sound should be inserted, whereas American English, even though it normally adds the [j] after [p], leaves it out. This may very well also be because pumas (also known as cougars and mountain lions) are native to the Americas and thus North Americans are more likely to hear and use the term, while Brits, Australians, and others are more likely to see it only in writing. Other words that may exhibit similar variation include capuchin, tempura and ampoule/ampule, however, and none of these are so geographically restricted.

Now my only question is: Why doesn't anyone say HYOO-la hoop?

Tags: language, wp
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