UKC

Pronounciation of ‘traverse’.

One of the quirks I find with climbing is how many climbers pronounce the word ‘traverse’.  

Many put the emphasis on the ‘a’, whereas I always thought the emphasis should’ve be on the ‘v’ (for the second syllable).

While listening recently to a podcast, I noticed that Jerry Moffatt flipped between each version.

Anyone else find this odd?

(Inventing my own phonetic system here) 1. TRAvus vs 2. truVERSE ?

I'm with Jerry on using both interchangeably as a noun, although I think I'd be more inclined to use (2) for the verb

What saith the OED? It, too, is happy with both versions:

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/traverse

Always TRAVerse here.

Depends whether you say castle or castle? Butter or butter?  Or Coventry or Coventry? etc etc

Either (or should I say either? ) is correct.

That's what makes our small island to amazing, the rich diversity of accents and pronunciation.

In those examples, though, it would be pretty unusual to hear the same person using both versions interchangeably.

TraVus as a noun, ie head up then there is a short travus left to the stance

TraVerse as a verb, ie, I am traversing, and some wee is coming out.

???

My take is that TRAverse is to DEfence as traVERSE is to deFENCE, i.e. a US/UK thing.

Yes, I would instinctively say TRAvus for noun and traVERSE for verb too, but I couldn't justify it logically. (and also +1 for their scariness, 2nd pitch of Midnight Cowboy springs to mind)

I say go left or go right

Let's call the whole thing off.

Oh sorry, wrong thread

I say both. Is trAverse a northern thing? I’m a southerner and Instinctively I’d say traVerse, but with lots of the voices you hear in climbing being northern and it being a word probably used in climbing more so than anywhere else, perhaps that’s why I’ve picked up usage with the emphasis on the A? I think I maybe use trAverse for the noun form and traVerse for the verb too. 

I've always tended to use traVERSE for both the verb and the noun, though sometimes TRAVus for the noun. I've always thought TRAVus sounds a bit posh and affected (as if to say 'I pronounce it very properly like this, because I've had an education in the classics ...') I can't imagine Brown or Whillans saying TRAVus. 

I've got the opposite impression, traVERSE sounds posher to me. A Cuillin Ridge traVERSE certainly sounds more upmarket than a Cuillin Ridge TRAvus  

I thought that too.

There are many examples in English where there is variation in whether the emphasis is placed on the first or second syllable of a word. eg CONtroversy vs conTROVersy. Sometimes the reason is unclear, sometimes it's a US/UK thing - they say deTAIL, we say Detail, sometimes it's a regional thing - in the southern US they say INsurance, apparently, but not in the north, or anywhere else, maybe.

I remember being told once that words with Latin roots should be pronounced such that the sounds of the root words are preserved, e.g. contro-versy and not controv-ersy. But such considerations are fairly academic considering that "street Latin" at the time of the Romans apparently sounded nothing like formal Latin verse.

Au contraire I'd say. Being a Northerner and these days living just round t'corner from Whillans later home in Rossendale, I think exactly the opposite, having learned it as TRAVus from my climbing beginnings in the sixties. To me traVERSE sounds poncy and Southern maybe because the first time I heard it was when my then brother-in-law, from Sussex, referrred to the climb we were on as "Holly Tree TraVERSE, and I can't imagine the Rock and Ice members using it. Funny old World i'n't it?

I wonder if anyone can be bothered trawling through old footage of the so-called Manchester plumbers ("I were t' time served plumber, Joe were just a jobbin' builder" or words to that effect) to find out? Pity we can't ask Derek Walker who did the best Whillans impersonation I've ever heard.

I've always said 'tra-VERSE' but I've noticed a lot of old-timers (as in people who were climbing in the 60s/70s) usually say 'TRA-verse'. 

I thought the correct use was a grammatical thing, and that you would tra-VERSE on a TRA-verse?

Could just be a weird one like how everyone from anywhere except the north east says NEW-castle, where as locals say new-CASTLE. 

Thinking about an old film about the first ascent of the Eiger Nordwand with Chris Brasher commentating, Hinterstoisser traVERSE  doesn't scan as well as Hinterstoisser TRAverse which has evenly spaced metric feet and probably qualifies as iambic tetrameter or some such.

I've never darkened its doors, but I'm pretty sure the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh has the emphasis on the first syllable.

So, a mixed perspective the...

Ps. I found this  youtube.com/watch?v=2ZO94oySkVc&

*then*

I call it ''a go a cross' .