Lois’s answer to “After reading Masquerade in Lodi, I am now rereading all the Penric books, as there were references…” > Likes and Comments
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Funny I always assumed the song was about Lodi, Wisconsin. But Wikipedia says it is indeed referring to the California town. Regardless, I love your Lodi!
I see that the Italian Lodi is a town of 45,000 people, about 30 km south-east of Milan. Napoleon won a battle there in 1796. It has the river Adda but no canals, as far as I know.
I grew up near the Lodi in New Jersey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodi,_N... - named after the Italian one.
I know the one in New Jersey is pronounced LOW-die. How is the one in the 5GU pronounced?
I suppose the Italian pronunciation should be correct. Acccording to Wikipedia, the 'o' is as in 'code'.
Italian is not subject to The Great Vowel Shift, so the Lodi in Lombardy is pronounced /LOH-dee/. The one in California is pronounced the same as the one in New Jersey, i.e. /LOH-die/. No clue about 5GU, but in most languages, 'i' denotes a sound in the /ee/ or /ih/ family, so the Italian pronunciation is more likely than the American one.
Oops, I made the mistake of looking in the English Wikipedia for the pronunciation of an Italian name. When I check the Italian Wikipedia, I see that it should be a simple 'o' sound (as I'd expect), so 'Lodi' should rhyme with 'Noddy'.
Nope, 'o' pronounced as 'a' (as in Noddy or body) is also a Vowel Shift artifact. Most languages that aren't English use 'o' to denote the vowel in "no" or "oh".
Martha, if you pronounce 'Noddy' or 'body' as 'Naddy' or 'bady', your pronunciation of English is very different from mine—which is perhaps not surprising. Wikipedia actually uses the International Phonetic Alphabet, and Italian Wikipedia gives the pronunciation of Lodi as ˈlɔːdi.
IPA [ɔː] is a slightly open 'o' sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_vow...
The vowel in "body" and "noddy" is even more open than that: [ɒ:] or even [ɑ:]. Languages other than English spell those sounds with the letter 'a', not the letter 'o'.
The city in Italy has vowels close to the word "moldy": https://forvo.com/word/lodi/#it
Hm, I should never have tried to describe pronunciation in terms of English words, because there are so many different English accents, and the vowel sounds change so much from one to another. My own accent is vaguely from the south of England, but there are many different accents even in the south of England. Juli's spoken examples are helpful; they sound to me more like 'body' than 'moldy', but evidently we all say these words differently.
I always thought that Lodi was not an allusion to an Italian city of that exact name, but a pun on the venetian island Lido, just as I took Agenno as a pun on Genoa, Patos on Patras, Adria on the Adriatic Sea, Cedonia for (Ma)cedonia the start of Alexander's Empire, Westria for Austria. Some of the other names are harder to find correspondences for. Vilnoc for (Dub)Lovnic = japanese for (Dub)Rovnic ?????? Grabyat does beat me, though, as well as Carpagamo.
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Evenstar
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Nov 09, 2020 06:00PM
Funny I always assumed the song was about Lodi, Wisconsin. But Wikipedia says it is indeed referring to the California town. Regardless, I love your Lodi!
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I see that the Italian Lodi is a town of 45,000 people, about 30 km south-east of Milan. Napoleon won a battle there in 1796. It has the river Adda but no canals, as far as I know.
I grew up near the Lodi in New Jersey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodi,_N... - named after the Italian one.
I know the one in New Jersey is pronounced LOW-die. How is the one in the 5GU pronounced?
I suppose the Italian pronunciation should be correct. Acccording to Wikipedia, the 'o' is as in 'code'.
Italian is not subject to The Great Vowel Shift, so the Lodi in Lombardy is pronounced /LOH-dee/. The one in California is pronounced the same as the one in New Jersey, i.e. /LOH-die/. No clue about 5GU, but in most languages, 'i' denotes a sound in the /ee/ or /ih/ family, so the Italian pronunciation is more likely than the American one.
Oops, I made the mistake of looking in the English Wikipedia for the pronunciation of an Italian name. When I check the Italian Wikipedia, I see that it should be a simple 'o' sound (as I'd expect), so 'Lodi' should rhyme with 'Noddy'.
Nope, 'o' pronounced as 'a' (as in Noddy or body) is also a Vowel Shift artifact. Most languages that aren't English use 'o' to denote the vowel in "no" or "oh".
Martha, if you pronounce 'Noddy' or 'body' as 'Naddy' or 'bady', your pronunciation of English is very different from mine—which is perhaps not surprising. Wikipedia actually uses the International Phonetic Alphabet, and Italian Wikipedia gives the pronunciation of Lodi as ˈlɔːdi.
IPA [ɔː] is a slightly open 'o' sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_vow... The vowel in "body" and "noddy" is even more open than that: [ɒ:] or even [ɑ:]. Languages other than English spell those sounds with the letter 'a', not the letter 'o'.
The city in Italy has vowels close to the word "moldy": https://forvo.com/word/lodi/#it
Hm, I should never have tried to describe pronunciation in terms of English words, because there are so many different English accents, and the vowel sounds change so much from one to another. My own accent is vaguely from the south of England, but there are many different accents even in the south of England. Juli's spoken examples are helpful; they sound to me more like 'body' than 'moldy', but evidently we all say these words differently.
I always thought that Lodi was not an allusion to an Italian city of that exact name, but a pun on the venetian island Lido, just as I took Agenno as a pun on Genoa, Patos on Patras, Adria on the Adriatic Sea, Cedonia for (Ma)cedonia the start of Alexander's Empire, Westria for Austria. Some of the other names are harder to find correspondences for. Vilnoc for (Dub)Lovnic = japanese for (Dub)Rovnic ?????? Grabyat does beat me, though, as well as Carpagamo.
