(Title of post not to be confused with 'boy analysis', something rather different and icky!)

Well, who knew there would be such a close race? As it stands now, 22 respondents have chosen one of the one-syllable pronunciations, and 22 have chosen the two-syllable BOO-ee, with another 7 using both and 5 miscellaneous responses. BOY was off to a strong start but the BOO-ee people caught up quickly, perhaps because British respondents answered earlier than American ones. So, depending on how you look at it, either BOO-ee won or there is a tie between the one- and two-syllable people.

Geographically, there was a strong but not universal tendency for British respondents to say 'BOY', Americans 'BOO-ee', and Canadians either one. Interestingly, most of the BWOY respondents were Canadian, more than would be expected in a random distribution (though this is hardly a large enough sample size). Several other Canadians (mostly of Maritime origin) say BWEE [bwi] (rather like the two-syllable version but contracted into a single syllable). In fact, many of the BWOY and BWEE people probably don't pronounce it with a full W sound, but rather b with lip rounding, thus in IPA [b^w]. It's less noticeable, but you'd still notice a difference between it and boy. Also as expected, a number of people use one syllable for the verb 'to buoy' but two syllables for the noun 'buoy'. I am a little surprised, however, that so many people would say "He was BOO-eed by the BOO-ee"; I've heard the two-syllable noun but never the verb. It is just vaguely possible that there are people for whom boy, buoy, and (to) buoy are each pronounced differently, so that you might say, "The BOY was BWOYED by the BOO-ee". Then again, maybe not.

Buoy is interesting because it's been in English since the thirteenth century, probably borrowed from Old French boie / buie or Middle Dutch boye. Thus, unlike the last four polls, it's of longstanding English usage and thus the variation in its pronunciation is not simple to explain. The Middle Dutch would have been pronounced boo-ee, as would the second French pronunciation, which is where the two-syllable pronunciation and the highly unusual spelling of the English word apparently come from. The OED notes, however, that sailors have for centuries been pronouncing it as BOY, and that while most dictionaries list BOY and BWOY, not all list BOO-ee (even though it is evidently very common!), although many experts prefer it as etymologically more correct.

One person raised the question of buoyant, which as far as I know is always BOY-ant [bɔiənt]. Despite the spelling, it was likely borrowed separately from buoy, in this case from Spanish boyante, and the 'u' added later for consistency.

Ultimately, explaining its pronunciation using dialectal variation isn't entirely satisfactory because there isn't much regularity in its pronunciation from the poll so far - though I can't rule out the possibility that with 1000 respondents, stronger patterns would be evident. Some people may take their pronunciation from the orthography, muddling it out in a variety of ways. Others, in this non-nautical age, may have heard it spoken only on film, and derived it from that.

This whole discussion reminds me of the 'Bowie' debate, namely that some people pronounce the name "Jim Bowie" and the derived "Bowie knife" as BOO-ee and others as BO-ee. Aging glam-rocker David Bowie is always BO-ee, though. And (I hesitate to ask if anyone can confirm this) I heard that annoying Canadian pop-punk singer Avril Lavigne once pronounced David Bowie's name as BAU-ee (to rhyme with 'Maui') at some awards show or another, never having heard of him. Vowels ... can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Unless we switch to a consonantal script. ntl nxt tm, thn!

Tags: language, wp