Marc Adler (of adlerpacific.com), who comments here as marc, sent me a link to Volokh’s post A Pronouncing Dictionary of the Supreme Court of the United States, which begins:
Gene Fidell (Yale Law School) and some of his students are putting together an article tentatively titled A Pronouncing Dictionary of the Supreme Court of the United States, which will basically help people know the standard ways of pronouncing Supreme Court case names (such as City of Boerne v. Flores and Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada). They have a list of cases to include, but if you have some suggestions, please post them in the comments. The requirements, of course, are that (1) it’s not obvious what the standard pronunciation is, and (2) the case comes up often enough to make it worth knowing the standard pronunciation. I should note, of course, that the query isn’t about the right pronunciation in some etymological sense; and even the party’s own pronunciation of his own name may not be relevant in some cases, especially if the case is old enough.
This is an excellent idea, but I can see already, from the comment thread over there, that some people are confused; one says, “My law prof pronounced [Giglio] phonetically (‘JIG-lee-oh’), but under standard Italian pronunciation, the second ‘g’ should be silent” and another says “In the case of getting Giglio correct, probably the most important part is getting it to be two syllables rather than the three that many English speakers would get. So, it’s not jzhee-lee-oh, it’s more like jzhee-lyoe.” Italian pronunciation is of course irrelevant. And it should go without saying that Fidell et al. should not take any one respondent’s word for standard pronunciation.
I was surprised to learn from the thread (and from this Safire column, linked from it) that amicus, in America, is universally pronounced either uh-MEE-kuss or AM-uh-kuss; no one except Justice Stephen Breyer uses my version, uh-MY-kuss, learned (I suppose) from UK-oriented dictionaries like the OED. But (not being a lawyer) I will not change my old mumpsimus for your new sumpsimus.
The “Volokh” mentioned here is Eugene Volokh, the whizkid immigrant who graduated college at 15 and got his law degree from UCLA Law School at 24.
Dunno about the OED, but we certainly learned uh-MEE-kuss at school in the UK.
My schooling was refreshingly free of petty-nationalistic point-scoring. One exception was the odd mutter about the horrors of English pronunciation of Latin.
Dunno about the OED, but we certainly learned uh-MEE-kuss at school in the UK.
Ditto in Toronto.
My schooling was refreshingly free
But a lot of petty-nationalisic point scoring at home, dearie? French mum, something like that?
amicus [curiae]
The OED pronunciation is given as /əˈmaɪkəs kjuːrɪiː/. Stangely, it does not show the plural. SOED does, with the pronunciation /aˈmʌɪsʌɪ/. Butt-ugly. (Note the different systems for pronunciation, in current SOED and current OED. They contain legions.)
Strangely more than stangely. But that too.
“But a lot of petty-nationalisic point scoring at home, dearie? French mum, something like that?” Certainly not. As my father liked to joke, I was bounced on Dutch and Norwegian knees before ever I met an Englishman.
“Gene Fidell (Yale Law School)”: just a guess, but I suppose a lawyer would prefer that his surname shouldn’t be pronounced “fiddle”.
@dearieme There was a well-known linguistics professor named Twaddell fifty years ago. Unfortunately he accented the last syllable of his name.
“got his law degree from UCLA Law School at 24.”
Yes, college at 15 is impressive. But graduating law school at 24 is not really unusual. Why bring that up?
I always say “am-EE-cus”, but I grew up in a family of lawyers.
graduated college at 15 and got his law degree from UCLA Law School at 24
Nine years in law school?
Our lawyers used to be called Queue and Fester, which they spelled eccentrically as Few and Kester. To spare their blushes they eventually merged with another firm, to become Queue, Fester and Dropdead. Though I made that last part up.
AJP: Nine years in law school? he may well have been trying other things after college graduation, before deciding to go to law school.
Regarding Fidell, Esq.: as I have reported before, there are linguists named Birdwhistell (Ray), Vogelsong (Willem), and Quackenbush (Edward Miller) but to my knowledge still none named Pieplenbosch. Some of these were anthropologists and only borderline linguists.
Also regarding Fidell, Mord Fiddle has a remarkable cameo role in Njal’s Saga.
“Gene Fidell (Yale Law School)”: just a guess, but I suppose a lawyer would prefer that his surname shouldn’t be pronounced “fiddle”.
I presumed it was fye-DELL, but I decided to make sure and found this YouTube clip that confirms it. (He’s introduced by his brother, also a Fidell, so that’s about as authoritative as you can get.)
And here‘s the thing itself. I am not sure whether anyone in all seriousness goes around enunciating “Deutsche Gold Und Silber Scheideanstalt Vormals Roessler”. Could they shorten it at least to Deutsche Gold (or better yet, Das Rheingold)? In any case, the case interprets Trading with the Enemy Act the sole target of which at this time is Cuba (Wiki).
Recommended pronunciation of Giglio, mentioned in the OP, is JEEL-yoh.
@do
Deutsche Gold sounds bad to me (because adjectival agreement) but Deh-Geh-Ess-Ess-Ah (or Dee-Gee-Ess-Ess-Ay in English) might be better, or just Das ehemalige Rössler, (jetzt…) informally. You could even combine the two short names to obtain a short name almost as long as the original.
There are three cases with parties named Gratio, each pronounced differently
That same peculiarly-named German entity was also involved a few decades subsequently in a patentability dispute that stopped one level short of the Supreme Court, by which time some hyphens had been introduced: Commissioner of Patents v. Deutsche Gold-und-Silber-Scheideanstalt Vormals Roessler, 397 F.2d 656 (D.C. Cir. 1968). “Vormals Roessler” is of course “Formerly Roessler,” which sounds like it should come after a comma as additional information that can easily be omitted for convenience. But perhaps for some quirky historical reason that wording is fully incorporated into the German company’s name as a matter of German corporate law?
That said, I really cannot think of any occasion where anyone, whether lawyer, judge, or bailiff, would really need to say the entirety of such a seven-word name (as part of the full name of a prior case) aloud. Thinking that you might is just an example of too-smart-for-their-own-britches (to mix metaphors) law students creating unnecessary problems for themselves due to their lack of knowledge about the actual operation of the actual legal system.
I’m intrigued by how they include the 1899 decision Sonnentheil v. Christian Moerlein Brewing Co. but think that pronunciation help is needed with “Sonnentheil” but everyone can presumably figure out “Moerlein” on their own.
Deutsche Gold sounds bad to me (because adjectival agreement) but Deh-Geh-Ess-Ess-Ah (or Dee-Gee-Ess-Ess-Ay in English) might be better, or just Das ehemalige Rössler, (jetzt…) informally.
By this point we might as well shorten it to its actual German acronym: Degussa.
(At some point – I’m not sure when – “Degussa” became that company’s official name. The company was ultimately acquired by Evonik Industries in 2006.)
The “Degussa” acronym indicates that they eventually got comfortable with jettisoning the “Vormals Roessler” bit.
Founded in 1873 as „Deutsche Gold- und Silber-Scheide-Anstalt vorm. Roessler“, says de.pffft!. “Roessler” links to Friedrich Ernst Roessler, whose father was spelled Johann Hektor Rößler; I don’t know what happened there.