Oh, and ALso... (Jenn, scroll down, read the post under this!)

[conuly]

Banal can be pronounced both the way I say it (baNAL) and the way Jenn says it (baynl, rhymes with anal).

Yes, I had to go look this up. MY pronunciation comes first in the dictionary, though.

Comments

Hahah, agreed!

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

It's indeed "bah-NAHL"! >:[ "BAY-nal" just sounds... erm, wrong. XD

[gep.livejournal.com]

I agree with the way in which you pronounce it. Not all of the dictionaries I could turn up listed the other pronunciation. I did, however, find this interesting bit regarding the issue:

Usage Note: The pronunciation of banal is not settled among educated speakers of American English. Sixty years ago, H.W. Fowler recommended the pronunciation (bān'əl, rhyming with panel), but this pronunciation is now regarded as recondite by most Americans: no member of the Usage Panel prefers this pronunciation. In our 2001 survey, (bənāl') is preferred by 58 percent of the Usage Panel, (bā'nəl) by 28 percent, and (bə-näl') by 13 percent (this pronunciation is more common in British English). Some Panelists admit to being so vexed by the problem that they tend to avoid the word in conversation. Speakers can perhaps take comfort in knowing that these three pronunciations each have the support of at least some of the Usage Panel and that none of them is incorrect. When several pronunciations of a word are widely used, there is really no right or wrong one.

(Source: "banal." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 17 Sep. 2009. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/banal>. You can find it there if the IPA shows up as mojibake.)