Pronunciation question

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I have always heard paprika, the red spice used in goulash and sprinkled on deviled eggs, pronounced puh-PREE-kuh, with the emphasis on the second syllable. But lately on the Food Network, including tonight’s episode of “Iron Chef America,” they’ve been pronouncing it PAP-ruh-kuh, with the emphasis on the first syllable. Anyone know what the real story is?

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About John

John Carney is a journalist, a certified United Methodist lay speaker, a veteran of foreign and domestic short-term mission trips, and author of a self-published novel, Soapstone.
  • kelly

    Well, I’ve heard both pronounciations, myself, and seem to recall that the Hungarian/slavic/language of origin word is “paprikash.” I’m not sure that little tidbit helps with pronounciation.
    So I checked http://www.m-w.com, which is Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary online. Besides having some nice word games, they also have a little button you can click on that will pronounce the word you’ve looked up. Webster’s stresses the 2nd syllable.
    Well, that got me thinking that maybe this was a British vs American English thing, like their bizarre pronunciation of contreversy (now with extra syllables!). So I went to our library’s online OED (Oxford English Dictionary, the Queen of dictionaries, an etymological dictionary, much fun for browsing), and they gave me this under pronounciation:
    Brit. /paprk/, /pprik/, U.S. /pprik/, /pæprik/
    not much help. there are actually some phoenetic symbols that the computer cut-and-paste didn’t pick up, but based on my admittedly fuzzy recall of phonetic notation (I took a whole semester of German phonetics in undergrad, thank you very much, so this is actually knowledge I had at one time, although I’ve forgotten it now), it looks like the difference between British and US pronounciations has to do with the vowels, rather than the accents.
    Was that more of an answer than you were wanting? Can you tell that I have a lot of grading to do?
    KCWC

  • kelly

    Well, I've heard both pronounciations, myself, and seem to recall that the Hungarian/slavic/language of origin word is “paprikash.” I'm not sure that little tidbit helps with pronounciation.
    So I checked http://www.m-w.com, which is Merriam-Webster's Dictionary online. Besides having some nice word games, they also have a little button you can click on that will pronounce the word you've looked up. Webster's stresses the 2nd syllable.
    Well, that got me thinking that maybe this was a British vs American English thing, like their bizarre pronunciation of contreversy (now with extra syllables!). So I went to our library's online OED (Oxford English Dictionary, the Queen of dictionaries, an etymological dictionary, much fun for browsing), and they gave me this under pronounciation:
    Brit. /paprk/, /pprik/, U.S. /pprik/, /pæprik/
    not much help. there are actually some phoenetic symbols that the computer cut-and-paste didn't pick up, but based on my admittedly fuzzy recall of phonetic notation (I took a whole semester of German phonetics in undergrad, thank you very much, so this is actually knowledge I had at one time, although I've forgotten it now), it looks like the difference between British and US pronounciations has to do with the vowels, rather than the accents.
    Was that more of an answer than you were wanting? Can you tell that I have a lot of grading to do?
    KCWC