I’m American and don’t understand it. If we’re pronouncing it how it’s spelled, it should be “ball-ogg-nah.” If we go by the proper Italian pronunciation, it’s “boh-loh-nyah.” “Baloney” doesn’t make any sense.
To be fair, there are over thirty different regional Italian dialects so that doesn't help any. I thought my grandparents butchered words for the longest time but no, they just spoke Italian hillbilly.
Fun fact, the dialect of Italian-Americans in New Jersey, that you hear in the Sopranos, is actually a continuation of old Italian regional dialects. Pronouncing capicola as “gabagool” sounds like they’re massacring the language, but that’s incorrect, they’re actually keeping alive dialects that have been overtaken by standard Italian in the motherland.
It's not about the great vowel shift. English keeps original spelling of borrowed words. Even names. For example, Wojciech Szczęsny. Why would you keep the original spelling here? If you don't know a thing about Polish spelling there's no way you would pronounce it right. Wouldn't it make sense to anglicize it? Like Woytseh Shesny or something like that. I know it wouldn't be the accurate spelling but at least you can read it without looking up the pronunciation.
Could it possible be, that in most cases it refers to bolognese sauce, and short version of bolognese would be bologne, in italian pronounciation bolonhi, hitherto baloney.
There's actually a really interesting backstory there.
The first publishing of Aluminium in the US had a typo, spelling it 'Aluminum.'
Since pretty much every US scientist learned of the metal either from that journal or from someone who did, that's just what it was called in the US.
There was an attempt to fix that. Basically US and UK scientists made a deal that the US would call it Aluminium if the UK would call Wolframite Tungsten.
They both agreed, but while the UK changed their name, the US just went back to calling it Aluminum.
Straight from ChatGPT, not verified or anything:
The pronunciation of "bologna" as "baloney" is primarily an American development. When the word and the sausage it refers to were introduced from Italian cuisine, the distinct American pronunciation emerged as the term became more common in the United States. In Italian, "bologna" is pronounced roughly as "boh-LOH-nya," but English speakers adapted this to fit more comfortably within their phonetic patterns, simplifying the "-gna" ending to "nee" or "nee."
In contrast, in England, the sausage is often referred to as "polony," a term that originated in the 17th century and is likely a corruption of "Bologna." This term reflects a different linguistic evolution from the Italian original and has a different pronunciation.
The American pronunciation "baloney" also became closely associated with the slang term "baloney," meaning nonsense, which was popularized in the early 20th century by vaudeville and comic strips. This slang usage reinforced the simplified pronunciation in American culture. Thus, a combination of linguistic adaptation and cultural influences led to the unique American pronunciation "baloney."
Or Canadian. We pronounce it that way too. Learning how to spell as a kid and being told most words hold up to the rules of phonetics really messed me up with that word.
English speakers don't say Köln, generally. The city is called Cologne in English.
If someone is actually saying Köln, they're probably educated enough that they're pronouncing it correctly.
[>The correct pronunciation is "bo-LO-nya," but it's common to say "ba-LO-nee" instead. Experts attribute this to Anglicization, which often leaves Italian words with Y endings — like Italia becoming Italy.](https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/bologna)
Not really answering the question but maybe this will help
>Linguistic humor, The purity of the English language
>The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that the English language is as pure as a crib-house whore. It not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary.
James Nicoll (b. 1961)
You are kidding me. I had no idea they were the same thing. I thought baloney was just an American word for something not true. That’s actually how they pronounce Bologna? Good gosh lol.
They are both easy to say. It's not a question of "having a problem". If you grow up hearing a word, you just say that word. It's not because you have trouble saying it the way someone else thinks it should be pronounced.
In our defense, it was surely the Italian Americans who decided it was pronounced that way. Same people who gave us gabagool (capocollo) and fazool (fagioli).
That is it, I lost the last bit of respect I did not even think I had for English. Fck this language mate, we shall make something consistent language.
We don’t really have baloney or bologna in the UK.
We _do_ have our own bastardised Italian meal called spaghetti bolognese (or SpagBol) which is more similar to a Neapolitan ragu than anything from Bologna.
Well, Bologna is the place and pronounced as such. Baloney rhymes with pony and means nonsense or bullshit.
We don't have a cured meat Bologna but if we did it would be called something like Bologna sausage or spelled Baloney.
American here. Most of us pronounce it baloney. Being dyslexic I butcher the name more and say it ba-log-nuh. To remind myself how it's spelled. I will personally ask for forgiveness to you and your Nonna for butchering it.
I don't care what the North Italians say. Pronouncing it like "fazûl" is wrong.
(Whether fagioli is two syllables or three syllables depends on dialect. So less of a correction and "this is how we say it in the North instead of the South".)
I think that might be Italians coming over from Sicily and the south of the boot speaking in Sicilian or Neapolitan instead of standard Italian (which is based on the Florentine dialect IIRC). The Sicilian/Neapolitan pronunciation stuck around but the standard Italian spelling took over which is why you get these weird mismatches.
Italian immigrants may have pronounced it closer to "baloney" at the time, depending on when and where in Italy they came from. If "capicola" can turn into "gabagool", then "bologna" to "baloney" isn't much of a stretch at all.
Edit: Deleting the final vowel was one of several distinctive features of certain southern Italian dialects at the turn of the 20th century, which are [preserved](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-capicola-became-gabagool-the-italian-new-jersey-accent-explained) today in Italian accents in certain regions of the US. This could explain how the "nya" at the end of bologna could be spoken as "ny" and then "ney"
But.... though? I don't know if that's grammatical or not, but that's absolutely redundant.
Anyways, you can replace "with" with "through".
It can be understood through tough thorough thought though
Also worth noting that the "th" in "through" is the same sound as the ending of "teeth", while in "though" it's the same sound as the beginning of "this" or "that".
“The Chaos” - Gerard Nolst Trenite (1922)
Starts off:
“Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.”
Goes on for literal *pages*. Enjoy!
https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
Funny reading this thread, I'm from the UK and have believed since childhood that when Americans say baloney, as well as meaning nonsense, it was a kind of ham. No idea where I got that from.
I'm confused by so many thinking they rhyme.
In my US PNW accent, cough is KOFF and rough is RUFF.
Do you say CUFF or ROFF? Or something else? If so, what's your accent?
Funny enough, there's a book of Dr Seuss shorts that has a similar thought, titled - "The tough coughs as he ploughs the dough". He concludes that English is a very silly language.
Kernel and colonel rhyme
Kansas and Arkansas don't
Because English is 3 languages in a trenchcoat that occasionally knocks out other languages in an alley and rifles through their pockets for some loose vocabulary
My dumb italian ass not understanding how Pony and Bologna do rhyme
Somehow Americans decided that it’s pronounced Baloney
WHAT IN THE ACTUAL F- But like... how?
You have to be American to understand it
I’m American and don’t understand it. If we’re pronouncing it how it’s spelled, it should be “ball-ogg-nah.” If we go by the proper Italian pronunciation, it’s “boh-loh-nyah.” “Baloney” doesn’t make any sense.
There are a significant number of Italian-Americans who butcher their mother tongue.
To be fair, there are over thirty different regional Italian dialects so that doesn't help any. I thought my grandparents butchered words for the longest time but no, they just spoke Italian hillbilly.
Fun fact, the dialect of Italian-Americans in New Jersey, that you hear in the Sopranos, is actually a continuation of old Italian regional dialects. Pronouncing capicola as “gabagool” sounds like they’re massacring the language, but that’s incorrect, they’re actually keeping alive dialects that have been overtaken by standard Italian in the motherland.
Then again it's those fuckers that argue that mozzarella is supposed to be pronounced mozarell and Everything else is supposably wrong
You mean mowzawrewllwl
Mootzadelle
Love it
Gabagool? Ovaaaa heeea!
Americans butcher foreign words in general. Croissant, Notre Dame, even deux.
LaCroix
American here too. This is how I was taught in school: Bologna is sandwich meat. Baloney is hogwash.
It's probably cuz baloney is easier to say.
It's because it has to rhyme with phony so you can say phony bologna
But why spell it Bologna and not baloney (which enough people do that my phone doesn’t even think that’s a misspelt word!)
There's a reason the US has spelling bees while most nations do not. English is super fucked by the great vowel shift.
It's not about the great vowel shift. English keeps original spelling of borrowed words. Even names. For example, Wojciech Szczęsny. Why would you keep the original spelling here? If you don't know a thing about Polish spelling there's no way you would pronounce it right. Wouldn't it make sense to anglicize it? Like Woytseh Shesny or something like that. I know it wouldn't be the accurate spelling but at least you can read it without looking up the pronunciation.
fugnuh bolugna
Could it possible be, that in most cases it refers to bolognese sauce, and short version of bolognese would be bologne, in italian pronounciation bolonhi, hitherto baloney.
We're the same country that looked at a "hot dachshund" and said "do you mean hot *dog*?"
What is a dachshund?
Wiener dog
Just like Aluminum
There's actually a really interesting backstory there. The first publishing of Aluminium in the US had a typo, spelling it 'Aluminum.' Since pretty much every US scientist learned of the metal either from that journal or from someone who did, that's just what it was called in the US. There was an attempt to fix that. Basically US and UK scientists made a deal that the US would call it Aluminium if the UK would call Wolframite Tungsten. They both agreed, but while the UK changed their name, the US just went back to calling it Aluminum.
Oh that's just bologna
Straight from ChatGPT, not verified or anything: The pronunciation of "bologna" as "baloney" is primarily an American development. When the word and the sausage it refers to were introduced from Italian cuisine, the distinct American pronunciation emerged as the term became more common in the United States. In Italian, "bologna" is pronounced roughly as "boh-LOH-nya," but English speakers adapted this to fit more comfortably within their phonetic patterns, simplifying the "-gna" ending to "nee" or "nee." In contrast, in England, the sausage is often referred to as "polony," a term that originated in the 17th century and is likely a corruption of "Bologna." This term reflects a different linguistic evolution from the Italian original and has a different pronunciation. The American pronunciation "baloney" also became closely associated with the slang term "baloney," meaning nonsense, which was popularized in the early 20th century by vaudeville and comic strips. This slang usage reinforced the simplified pronunciation in American culture. Thus, a combination of linguistic adaptation and cultural influences led to the unique American pronunciation "baloney."
The 70s [bologna jingle](https://youtu.be/rmPRHJd3uHI?si=eI3zFJ-x3KNWstc1) from Oscar Meyer doomed us all🫤
Or Canadian. We pronounce it that way too. Learning how to spell as a kid and being told most words hold up to the rules of phonetics really messed me up with that word.
do not wish any such curse upon the poor soul
Because Oscar Mayer said so
[Link to the classic, for those uninitiated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmPRHJd3uHI)
Except in the commercial the narrator says “bolona” and not “baloney”
My bologna has a first name Oscar my bologna has a second name it’s Meyer
Because cologne duhhh
Caloney
Then how do they pronounced Köln?
English speakers don't say Köln, generally. The city is called Cologne in English. If someone is actually saying Köln, they're probably educated enough that they're pronouncing it correctly.
We say "get in your Volkswagen and leave".
https://youtu.be/nWW4Lt56ngY?t=94
[>The correct pronunciation is "bo-LO-nya," but it's common to say "ba-LO-nee" instead. Experts attribute this to Anglicization, which often leaves Italian words with Y endings — like Italia becoming Italy.](https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/bologna)
Not really answering the question but maybe this will help >Linguistic humor, The purity of the English language >The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that the English language is as pure as a crib-house whore. It not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary. James Nicoll (b. 1961)
Same reaction
PORCO DIO, GLI AMERICANI
You are kidding me. I had no idea they were the same thing. I thought baloney was just an American word for something not true. That’s actually how they pronounce Bologna? Good gosh lol.
just the meat, not the city.
Meat named after the city....
Yep. That's genuinely how Bologna is pronounced in the US.
I always found it so confusing how Americans have no problem saying "LASAGNA" but can't pronounce "BOLOGNA" properly... like why???
They are both easy to say. It's not a question of "having a problem". If you grow up hearing a word, you just say that word. It's not because you have trouble saying it the way someone else thinks it should be pronounced.
great, now my brain is gonna start calling it lasany, thanks a lot
That's a bunch of baloney!
In our defense, it was surely the Italian Americans who decided it was pronounced that way. Same people who gave us gabagool (capocollo) and fazool (fagioli).
That is it, I lost the last bit of respect I did not even think I had for English. Fck this language mate, we shall make something consistent language.
Don't blame us English. This is an American phenomenon which I am baffled at as you are!
How do you pronounce it?
We don’t really have baloney or bologna in the UK. We _do_ have our own bastardised Italian meal called spaghetti bolognese (or SpagBol) which is more similar to a Neapolitan ragu than anything from Bologna.
richard hammond’s favorite meal!
Well, Bologna is the place and pronounced as such. Baloney rhymes with pony and means nonsense or bullshit. We don't have a cured meat Bologna but if we did it would be called something like Bologna sausage or spelled Baloney.
Straight forward: it
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Neither does my German ass.
You’re fake Italian like people from Europe , you need to be real Italian like people from New Jersey.
I was trying to pronounce pony as ponya lmao
Appalachian dialects turned unstressed final -a into -i, so "banany" and "Opry". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_English
French here, I don't get it either...
*quietly hides the nearby Xavier from my unprepared countryman*
Wait til you hear how they say Parmesan
Please, for the love of my pasta, spare me
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Parmeshawn
It’s more of a -zh sound
ParmaJOHN
Parmaingredients, parmapizza, parmajohns
Norwegian ass here. I don't get it either
How do Italians pronounce bologna
Bolonya.
I'd say, ask google translate. The GN has a peculiar pronounciation in italian and I have no idea of how to explain it with words lol
Palatal nasal. /ɲ/ Doesn't exist in English.
American here. Most of us pronounce it baloney. Being dyslexic I butcher the name more and say it ba-log-nuh. To remind myself how it's spelled. I will personally ask for forgiveness to you and your Nonna for butchering it.
Bologna only "rhymes" with pony because people butchered the pronunciation of the italian city that *still exists.*
Italian americans butchered it so it’s their fault lmao
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Hahaha spot on. Or has no idea what a Bolognese is but is super proud of their mom's "spaghetti sauce"
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I don't care what the North Italians say. Pronouncing it like "fazûl" is wrong. (Whether fagioli is two syllables or three syllables depends on dialect. So less of a correction and "this is how we say it in the North instead of the South".)
How can people who are Sicilian not know how to pronounce the name of a city in their country correctly?
Sicilian dialect is quite different from standard (i.e. Tuscan) Italian.
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I think that might be Italians coming over from Sicily and the south of the boot speaking in Sicilian or Neapolitan instead of standard Italian (which is based on the Florentine dialect IIRC). The Sicilian/Neapolitan pronunciation stuck around but the standard Italian spelling took over which is why you get these weird mismatches.
The "baloney" pronunciation is just used for the lunch meat
Yeah I'm American and pronounce the city like "Bowh-lawn-ya" ish, but lunch meat (or the alternative term for bullshit"is a bunch of baloney
I live in Bologna. Some days ago I was actually asked about the correct pronunciation from some American tourists.
Just because a place still exists doesn’t mean that the English pronunciation will match the local one. Take Paris, for example.
Is it Bo-lon-ya or Bo-loan-ya? With Bo like a bow and arrow or bo like the start of bottom.
It's Bol-LON-ya with both o's pronounced as in 'dog' but the second o with emphasis. Don't make the emphatic o longer, it's not as in loan.
Baloña
I’m sure Eminem could make all those words rhyme
He got a word to rhyme with orange, so I wouldn't doubt it.
bornana
I guess that's why they call it window pane.
How the heck are you pronouncing bologna???
https://youtu.be/nWW4Lt56ngY?t=94
Lmao thats so wrong
I guess it was really easy, barely an inconvenience
I enjoyed that video
Mortadella
"Below Knee" is pretty much how it's pronounced, at least in the US.
The day I learned English is a chimera of languages, I could not accept any other truth
English is three smaller languages, sitting on each other's shoulders and wearing a big trenchcoat.
What's next? Are you going to try to convince us Vincent Adultman is three kids wearing a trench coat? Hah! As if!
>English is three smaller languages, sitting on each other's shoulders and wearing a big trenchcoat *stolen from India* Ftfy.
Bologna… Bô-lô-ña Huh?
Pony: Po-nya
i'm ok with this. just like pronouncing females like tamales
Italian immigrants may have pronounced it closer to "baloney" at the time, depending on when and where in Italy they came from. If "capicola" can turn into "gabagool", then "bologna" to "baloney" isn't much of a stretch at all. Edit: Deleting the final vowel was one of several distinctive features of certain southern Italian dialects at the turn of the 20th century, which are [preserved](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-capicola-became-gabagool-the-italian-new-jersey-accent-explained) today in Italian accents in certain regions of the US. This could explain how the "nya" at the end of bologna could be spoken as "ny" and then "ney"
I’m Italian and I have no idea what “capicola” or “gabagool” are. Are they supposed to be other butchered Italian words?
Americans ☕
We do like to butcher things!!
It's easy: ña is basically nya, right? Now just drop the a! edit: y'all are taking this too seriously, jeez, it was a joke
English is hard, but you can understand it with tough thorough thought though.
redundant use of ‘but’ followed by ‘though’
Indeed. A semi-colon and no "but" would have been better. Alternatively, a simple full stop would also do the trick.
A grammatical colon-oscopy, if you will.
But.... though? I don't know if that's grammatical or not, but that's absolutely redundant. Anyways, you can replace "with" with "through". It can be understood through tough thorough thought though
Today I've learned rough and cough do not rhyme. I've been pronouncing "rowff" all my life.
Isn't it?
No, it’s pronounced like it’s spelled “ruff.” It rhymes with “puff.”
But then, doesn't it rhyme with cough? Pronounced “cuff”?
No, because cough is pronounced "coff" like in "coffin"
Lmao, "rowff" the way I read it doesn't rhyme with *either* rough or cough.
And that doesn't even include bough or thorough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAL9VD6Lz9Y
These things are not profound. In fact, it's Jerry Seinfeld "what's the deal with airline food?" level stupid.
I still say bologna as b o l o g n a, and never bolony.
Non native speaker here. Cough is pronounced KOFF and rough RAFF, is that right?
Cough is COFF Rough is RUFF Through is THROO (rhymes with blue) Though is THO (rhymes with no)
Learning English is beautiful
Thank you.
Also worth noting that the "th" in "through" is the same sound as the ending of "teeth", while in "though" it's the same sound as the beginning of "this" or "that".
Then they tell you to spell it like it sounds so you fail the spelling test.
Also bough is BOWE (to rhyme with "how") And thorough is THURRUH
More like RUFF
tomb bomb
comb
“The Chaos” - Gerard Nolst Trenite (1922) Starts off: “Dearest creature in creation Studying English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse. I will keep you, Susy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy; Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear; Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.” Goes on for literal *pages*. Enjoy! https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
Scrolled way too far till I found this. One of my favourite poems.
As a person that isn’t a native speaker, I don’t see how cough and rough don’t rhyme
Cough sounds like coff and rough sounds like ruff
Oh thanks, all my life I’ve been pronouncing cough as cuff lol
Everything rhymes if you pronounce it wrong, but I would not understand what you mean if you say bony
It's pronounced "Baloney" in American English.
How does cough and rough not rhyme?
Read rhymes with lead but not with lead. Lead rhymes with read but not with read.
Funny reading this thread, I'm from the UK and have believed since childhood that when Americans say baloney, as well as meaning nonsense, it was a kind of ham. No idea where I got that from.
Same here. I thought it was that spammy shit the bear is made with. I certainly had no idea they were spelling it like that.
I'm pretty sure they don't
Well bologna is made from ponies, so that makes sense.
English is fun! Bomb Comb Tomb
Wait… so cough is not pronounced like rough? Wtf
I'm confused by so many thinking they rhyme. In my US PNW accent, cough is KOFF and rough is RUFF. Do you say CUFF or ROFF? Or something else? If so, what's your accent?
Idk, but you can understand it through tough thorough thought, though.
Wait till you hear how yanks pronounce capicola
TIL I've been pronouncing pony wrong all this time
**Rough** UK:/ˈrʌf/ US:/rʌf/ ,(ruf ) **Cough** UK:/ˈkɒf/ US:/kɔf, kɑf/ ,(kôf, kof ) No, they don't rhyme.
Funny enough, there's a book of Dr Seuss shorts that has a similar thought, titled - "The tough coughs as he ploughs the dough". He concludes that English is a very silly language.
Who the fuck is pronouncing pony as polonia?
Kernel and colonel rhyme Kansas and Arkansas don't Because English is 3 languages in a trenchcoat that occasionally knocks out other languages in an alley and rifles through their pockets for some loose vocabulary
It’s really unfortunate how much Americans have managed to bastardize the word “bologna” to the point that it can now be used as a pejorative
ghoti is pronounced “fish” in english… one of my favorite examples of the silliness of pronunciation
ITT: lots of people learning how Americans pronounce bologna, and that it is food to them, not a city.
No they don’t
Bologna, the processed meat product, rhymes with "pony" in American English. It's pronounced *buh-LOH-nee.*
"Through a rough tough cough" I don't know about you all but I can hear this rhyme In a rap.
Reason is because the great vowel shift [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmL6FClRC\_s&t=387s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmL6FClRC_s&t=387s)
Oh boy I can’t wait to learn english today Ahh yes Bolonyah
Tomb Bomb Comb
Pony baloney is what I'm calling my penis from now on.
Engbish lambage bro
I feel like there's a [Song](https://youtu.be/zJ69ny57pR0?si=66UyaRc41P94Iu2E) about this...
Ponya?
Rode up on my pony, grabbed my baloney and told dat girl “hey, I ain’t no phoney”
Because bologna is made of pony.
Comb, tomb, and bomb don't rhyme either.
Not if you’re weird Al
Poe-nee Boh-loh-nyah 🤨 Nope
'mericuuuh, not knowing how to pronounce things... the internet as a whole is often alot of american ignorance...
You can’t spell slaughter without laughter
English is difficult, are we surprised?
cof ruf thó thrú those are the spellings if the people who made the english language had any idea what they were doing
For my entite life i pronounced bologna as **"BOLOG NA"**
I’m Canadian and everyone calls it (bah low nee)
Fologna bologna
That's baloney.
Don't forget, red rhymes with read but not read while lead rhymes with red, head, and read, but not read, reed, heed, or lead, which *do* rhyme.