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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Heaven: Poking fun at the (linguistically) handicapped
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
On names, there's a name in my family, Xenia, which everyone has always pronounced "zenny." (Rhymes with "Kenny") I have no idea why - the spelling isn't changed (as if a nickname). When I see it elsewhere, though, I'm not sure how it should be pronounced. "ZEEN-ya" would be my guess... ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
Re: "idee-er" etc. - "R-insertion" and "R-deletion" are very regional. In the US, I think both tend to occur on the East Coast, as in Boston or the Bronx. We don't do it here in the Midwest, but in Michigan, we have our own peculiarities - the most obvious is in words like "like" and "fire" - monosyllabic words with an "i" followed by either an "r" or an unvoiced consonant - we say the "i" as the dipthong "uh-ee" where "uh" is the schwa and "ee" is as in "see." (This would be easier with IPA characters, I know...) I think some parts of Canada around us do that too.
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
Re: "idee-er" etc. - "R-insertion" and "R-deletion" are very regional. In the US, I think both tend to occur on the East Coast, as in Boston or the Bronx.
Also in Warshington State.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Mamacita
Lakefront liberal
# 3659
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Posted
More on names: I used to work with a woman named Yvette, who pronounced her name Y-vette (as in saying the letter "Y" for the first syllable), instead of Eee-vette. I never did figure out how that happened.
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Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
Posts: 20761 | From: where the purple line ends | Registered: Dec 2002
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
I have a co-worked named Yvonne, and people do that to her name all the time. It would drive me nuts if I were her.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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John Donne
Renaissance Man
# 220
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Posted
Before I realised the correct pronunciation of 'Yvonne' I thought there was another name... 'Evon'... not like this name which I pronounced: 'Yee-von' or 'Yuh-von' ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Now why would ya put a 'Y' at the beginning of a word for the 'Ee' sound when there are so many other options?!
Posts: 13667 | From: Perth, W.A. | Registered: May 2001
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Gracie
Shipmate
# 3870
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Coot:
Now why would ya put a 'Y' at the beginning of a word for the 'Ee' sound when there are so many other options?!
Thats probably because both Yvonne et Yvette are French names and the French pronunciation of 'y' is 'ee'.
[ 21. December 2004, 06:38: Message edited by: Gracie ]
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When someone is convinced he’s an Old Testament prophet there’s not a lot you can do with him rationally. - Sine
Posts: 1090 | From: En lieu sûr | Registered: Dec 2002
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babybear
Bear faced and cheeky with it
# 34
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Posted
There are quite a few English accents that swallow up the letter 'r', especially if 'er' is at the end of a word. Usually 'r' in the middle of the word is sounded. In these accents there is a tendency to replace 'a' at the end of a word with an 'er'! But the 'er' is a very wimpy thing indeed.
There are also English accents where if two vowels next to each other one of them mysteriously disappears.
My hypothesis is that many English people don’t like their language and they don't like the shapes and sounds that they make when they are speaking. This means that they take no care over their words and mangle them abysmally.
My hypothosis is that many English people dodn't like their language and they don't like the shapes and sounds that they make when they are speaking. This means that they take no care over their words and mangle them abysmally.
Posts: 13287 | From: Cottage of the 3 Bears (and The Gremlin) | Registered: May 2001
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Mother of a friend who taught reception class in primary claimed to have had a child in one year's intake who gave his name as 'Gooey'. When eventually she got to talk to the mother, the woman said yes, she'd read it in a magazine and thought it was a nice name - g-u-y - Gooey.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Hazey*Jane
Ship's Biscuit Crumbs
# 8754
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gill H:
Then there was 'desecrated coconut' (for dessicated)
I used to refer to it as 'detonated coconut'. Which sort of makes sense - I mean, what would a coconut look like if you blew it up?
quote:
Originally posted by KenWritez:
Of course, that brings up the bizarre and illogical UK practice of the shoving in of unnecessary extra letters into words...when they're in wombs, they're a "foetus,"...
Sheesh! Somebody'd think we spoke a common language or something! ![[Eek!]](eek.gif) ![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
Tangent
I have to confess that it really annoys me reading American textbooks with the proper ( ![[Biased]](wink.gif) ) spellings dropped. Is it THAT much effort to put in the extra letters to be clear on pronunciation and meaning? eg. "foetal" is clearly pronounced "fee-tal", but how are you supposed to know that "fetal" doesn't rhyme with "petal" if you are unfamiliar with the word? Also, doesn't the change from "paediatric" to "pediatric" suggest that the former is pertaining to children whilst the latter is pertaining to feet? And then there are the changes that don't even eliminate letters eg "eukaryote" to "eucaryote". Why?!
Tangent over
Sorry, hope that wasn't too rant-y for Heaven ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
Posts: 4266 | From: UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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dogwatch
Shipmate
# 5226
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Posted
Further illustration of adding sounds (not just an -r) as a regional phenomenon:
Around Bristol, they add an "l" sound to words that end in a neutral vowel - usually -a. So you hear "That's a good ideal!" and "He's had an operation on his hernial." Girls' names are not exempt - "Sandral!" And the city motto is "Virtute et industrial". They've even done it to the name of the city - originally Anglo-Saxon Brycgstow.
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"There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
Posts: 83 | From: Wrecked at Ezion Geber | Registered: Nov 2003
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melliethepooh
Shipmate
# 8762
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Posted
foetal looks like it should be pronounced foi-tal. Mayhap 'somebody' should edit American texts before they go across the pond.
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"You can't go out right now."
"And yet I'm going. You're thinking of a cult. You can't get up and leave a cult."
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Gill H
Shipmate
# 68
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Posted
Yes, there's the joke about the three girls from Bristol called Normal, Eval and Idal.
While we're talking UK/US differences, is it true (as I read today) that the word 'twice' isn't used in the US? I know that 'fortnight' isn't used.
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*sigh* We can’t all be Alan Cresswell.
- Lyda Rose
Posts: 9313 | From: London | Registered: May 2001
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Sparrow
Shipmate
# 2458
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Posted
Just thought of another ... "different to" or (even worse) "different THAN"
It's different FROM, people.
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For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life,nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Posts: 3149 | From: Bottom right hand corner of the UK | Registered: Mar 2002
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gill H:
While we're talking UK/US differences, is it true (as I read today) that the word 'twice' isn't used in the US?
No, that isn't true. However, some people in the mountains around here add a 't' to the end. Then it rhymes with 'heist'.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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melliethepooh
Shipmate
# 8762
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Posted
Here's a lovely little tidbit from my travel itenerary:
If passenger no-shows ticket will no longer have any value.
I'm not sure what part of speach 'no-show' is, but when did they decide to make it a verb? And even hypothetically, no-show is so passive that I have a hard time imagining it as a verb...
Fortnight is understood but not common. Score is hardly ever used, except when reciting the Gettysburg address. Twice is used, and thrice if you're feeling really spiffy today. Do you guys say 'pithy'? I like that word a lot.
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"You can't go out right now."
"And yet I'm going. You're thinking of a cult. You can't get up and leave a cult."
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Fool of a Took
chock full o' nuts
# 7412
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Posted
The sign on a reptile tank in my high school amused me.
quote:
Please refrain yourself from touching the tank!!
But nothing annoys me like people who "Could care less".
Posts: 1205 | From: Toronto-ish | Registered: Jun 2004
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Gill H
Shipmate
# 68
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Posted
Obviously my information source (an article by Barry Humphries) was wrong. He must have blanked out 'you're once, twice, three times a lady'!
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*sigh* We can’t all be Alan Cresswell.
- Lyda Rose
Posts: 9313 | From: London | Registered: May 2001
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Gracie
Shipmate
# 3870
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Posted
To come back to the whether or not the 'r' is pronounced thing. In the distant past when I had to teach phonetics, I discovered the difference between a letter and a phoneme. It then transpired that the letter 'r' in many words does not represent a phoneme, but alters the phoneme for the letter it follows.
So if you put an 'r' in cat pronounced with a short 'a' it becomes cart pronounced with a long a [ a:] but no 'r'.
cod becomes cord pronounced in the same way as the 'augh' in taught or 'ough' in bought.
etc.
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When someone is convinced he’s an Old Testament prophet there’s not a lot you can do with him rationally. - Sine
Posts: 1090 | From: En lieu sûr | Registered: Dec 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
I think you are on to something there.
Maybe this business of hearing "R" when it isn't there is a sort of overcompensating shift in decoding other people's speech.
For example, people from the south of England notoriously use a long "a" in many words where all other English speakers have a short "a".
So if I'm in the north of England I sort of "shift" my hearing. If somone uses the short "a" in "bath", "dance", I soon get used to compensating and I hear it as the word I'm used to.
Us southerners really don't have an R in words like "beer" or "fear" or "cheer". There is no consonant there, no interruption in the flow of breth through the mouth, no flick of the tongue against hte troof of the mouth just behind the teeth (which is what an R sound is of course). Those words as spoken and in vowel sounds - a glide from the long "ee" to a schawa.
It might be that Americans (or even Scots) listening to us get used to that and hear that sound as just our way of saying "R". So when we make exactly the same sound at the end of "idea" they mentally assume that an R ws in there.
For at least some Scots (& from this conversation I assume for at least some Americans) "deer" and "idea" do not rhyme. For them there is a consonant at the end of "deer". For us southerners, there isn't.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
There's a town next to Ann Arbor called Ypsilanti (where Iggy Pop is from ). The "Y" should be pronounced "i" as in "hip," but people are always saying "yip-silanti."
The thing about place names, I think, is that they should be pronounced as the locals do, no matter how "wrong" it may be. There's another town near Ann Arbor called Saline. The "a" is a schwa, and the second syllable is accented. My dad always pronounces it like the solution he uses to clean his contact lens. Turns out the town really was named for its salt mines, though.
And on people's names, I had a friend whose sister was named Siobhan, but she eventually had to change the spelling to "Shevon," because no one ever said it right! I would never have caved like that if I were her.
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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dogwatch
Shipmate
# 5226
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Posted
"Siobhan" is Irish. Irish spelling is a law unto itself - e.g. names like Niamh (pron. Neev), Padraig (pron. Porrig), Grainne (pron. Grawnia). There's material there for a whole new thread, but I suspect it would be the Irish who would regard us Brits and Americans as linguistically challenged.
Any Erse-speakers care to comment?
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"There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
Posts: 83 | From: Wrecked at Ezion Geber | Registered: Nov 2003
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Carys
Ship's Celticist
# 78
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Posted
Ken's post on r makes a lot of sense.
We haven't mentioned the intrusive r yet though. Despite the fact that we often don't pronounce an r at the end of the word, it is often audible if the following word begins with a vowel. However, on occasion this occurs when the word actually ends in a vowel and not in an r at all.
The most obvious example of this is:
Gloria in Excelsis
which often ends up being said (or sung) Gloria rin Excelsis
Though I just find pronouncing rs difficult. It is noticeable that native English people usually understand my version of my name, but that non-native English speakers (excluding of course Welsh first language people) struggle and think I've said Cavis or something.
Carys
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O Lord, you have searched me and know me
You know when I sit and when I rise
Posts: 6896 | From: Bryste mwy na thebyg | Registered: May 2001
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dogwatch
Shipmate
# 5226
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Posted
Ah, the intrusive r! Don't forget the mistress of all politicians desperate for re-election - Laura Norder.
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"There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
Posts: 83 | From: Wrecked at Ezion Geber | Registered: Nov 2003
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melliethepooh
Shipmate
# 8762
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
The thing about place names, I think, is that they should be pronounced as the locals do, no matter how "wrong" it may be.
Absolutely-that's how you tell the natives from the outsiders, eh? I've had more arguments with people trying to correct the way I say "Coloradan" (as opposed to Coloradoan). It's my state, I will say it as I please.
On the other hand-New Englanders drop the 'r' at the end of beer (or at least it sounds like that to me). It sounds more like 'beea'. ish.
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"You can't go out right now."
"And yet I'm going. You're thinking of a cult. You can't get up and leave a cult."
Posts: 218 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
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Posted
One of the things that sets my teeth on edge is being told to "image this" instead of "imagine" by the local fourteen year old.
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Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
Posts: 3710 | From: Hay-on-Wye, town of books | Registered: Aug 2003
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Campbellite
Ut unum sint
# 1202
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
It might be that Americans (or even Scots) listening to us get used to that and hear that sound as just our way of saying "R". So when we make exactly the same sound at the end of "idea" they mentally assume that an R ws in there.
For at least some Scots (& from this conversation I assume for at least some Americans) "deer" and "idea" do not rhyme. For them there is a consonant at the end of "deer". For us southerners, there isn't.
Ken,
I don't think this should be surprizing, since such a large number of the early American settlers were of Scottish decent.
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I upped mine. Up yours.
Suffering for Jesus since 1966.
WTFWED?
Posts: 12001 | From: between keyboard and chair | Registered: Aug 2001
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by melliethepooh:
Absolutely-that's how you tell the natives from the outsiders, eh? I've had more arguments with people trying to correct the way I say "Coloradan" (as opposed to Coloradoan). It's my state, I will say it as I please.
Yeah, one of my pet peeves is "Michigander" - used by many Michiganians (although both are considered correct). But it came from a pun, coined by Abraham Lincoln, poking fun at a senator from Michigan.
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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Gracie
Shipmate
# 3870
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Us southerners really don't have an R in words like "beer" or "fear" or "cheer". There is no consonant there, no interruption in the flow of breth through the mouth, no flick of the tongue against hte troof of the mouth just behind the teeth (which is what an R sound is of course). Those words as spoken and in vowel sounds - a glide from the long "ee" to a schawa.
That's exactly it. The phonetic transcription for "beer", "fear", "cheer" etc. has no 'r'. So maybe you're right in your supposition that people who put one there in their own pronunciation, imagine that other people are pronouncing one when they aren't - I like your comparison with the pronunciation of "bath" (though I'm form the north ). I wonder if American dictionaries have phonetic transcriptions included? And whether it's possible to write in phonetic transcription in UBB code?
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When someone is convinced he’s an Old Testament prophet there’s not a lot you can do with him rationally. - Sine
Posts: 1090 | From: En lieu sûr | Registered: Dec 2002
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hazey Jane:
I have to confess that it really annoys me reading American textbooks with the proper ( ) spellings dropped. Is it THAT much effort to put in the extra letters to be clear on pronunciation and meaning?
That's like asking why writers of English don't spell "day" with a "g" to make its meaning clearer to Germans.
The American spellings are the American spellings. Thank you, Daniel Webster. (Or was it Noah Webster? I can never keep them straight.) At any rate what's done is done and there's no going back at this point. Each side's fussing about the other's spelling is really more than a little silly.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gracie:
I wonder if American dictionaries have phonetic transcriptions included?
Yes. See dictionary.com. The pronunciation of "beer" is given as "bîr" there.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
In the classroom, I use US spelling. In order to be neighbourly and not too colourful on the Ship (just an ordinary middle-aged bloke with grey hair) I spell words correctly!
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gill H:
Yes, there's the joke about the three girls from Bristol called Normal, Eval and Idal.
While we're talking UK/US differences, is it true (as I read today) that the word 'twice' isn't used in the US? I know that 'fortnight' isn't used.
Twice is used in the US. As for the article by Mr. Humphries, I can ask the man himself if you'll send me a link. I'm a local stagehand on the Dame Edna show when it comes to my town. Dunno where he was born, but he's from Australia now.
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
However "thrice" isn't often used and sounds stuffy.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Gracie
Shipmate
# 3870
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
quote:
Originally posted by Gracie:
I wonder if American dictionaries have phonetic transcriptions included?
Yes. See dictionary.com. The pronunciation of "beer" is given as "bîr" there.
Thank you, Ruth. Except all that I ger when I click on the link is a completely white page. Either I have a problem or their site is down. I'll try again later.
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When someone is convinced he’s an Old Testament prophet there’s not a lot you can do with him rationally. - Sine
Posts: 1090 | From: En lieu sûr | Registered: Dec 2002
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Gill H
Shipmate
# 68
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Posted
Sir Kevin - it was an article in the Spectator , but I see you have to subscribe to get it. Don't bother!
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*sigh* We can’t all be Alan Cresswell.
- Lyda Rose
Posts: 9313 | From: London | Registered: May 2001
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chukovsky
Ship's toddler
# 116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Campbellite:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
It might be that Americans (or even Scots) listening to us get used to that and hear that sound as just our way of saying "R". So when we make exactly the same sound at the end of "idea" they mentally assume that an R ws in there.
For at least some Scots (& from this conversation I assume for at least some Americans) "deer" and "idea" do not rhyme. For them there is a consonant at the end of "deer". For us southerners, there isn't.
Ken,
I don't think this should be surprizing, since such a large number of the early American settlers were of Scottish decent.
Although it's also been said that the common US English accent, with /r/ pronounced, is derived from the rural South of England accent (now mainly to be heard in the West Country).
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This space left intentionally blank. Do not write on both sides of the paper at once.
Posts: 6842 | From: somewhere else | Registered: May 2001
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
When visiting the UK at age 16, I found that 'treble' is the number of cylinders in a Triumph Trident or a room for 3, what we'd call a triple here. When I was taking piano lessons, I learned treble was the opposite of the bass clef. Why?
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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Wet Kipper
Circus Runaway
# 1654
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gracie:
That's exactly it. The phonetic transcription for "beer", "fear", "cheer" etc. has no 'r'.
That's only becuase it's the phonetic representation of a southern English person saying it. ![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
We (Me Scottish, wife English ) have often had pronunciation discussions. She uses a Dictionary as back up, which it seems had an southern english person do all the phonetics, so I can never win. bath pronounced 'barth', etc
If it is supposed to be pronounced 'beea', why isn't it written that way ?
And how come it bears a striking resemblance to the German word 'Bier' which is definitely pronounced with an "R"?
The Germans have the right idea - you pronounce every letter in a word,(subject to certain rules) and they have laws about spelling....
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- insert randomly chosen, potentially Deep and Meaningful™ song lyrics here -
Posts: 9841 | From: further up the Hill | Registered: Nov 2001
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Gracie
Shipmate
# 3870
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Posted
The dictionaries I use stipulate that the phonetic transcript given is that of Received Pronunciation. In many cases it isn't mine either...
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When someone is convinced he’s an Old Testament prophet there’s not a lot you can do with him rationally. - Sine
Posts: 1090 | From: En lieu sûr | Registered: Dec 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by chukovsky:
Although it's also been said that the common US English accent, with /r/ pronounced, is derived from the rural South of England accent (now mainly to be heard in the West Country).
The original settlement of New England was mostly from the East of England - East Anglia, Lincolnshire, London, Sussex, Kent.
Virginia & the coasts of the Old South were mostly settled from the West of England and Ireland - often via the West Indies - for example some people moved from Britain to Barbados & then their descendents moved on to the Carolinas. They'd have been more likely to be rhotic.
The largest source of British colonists in the Appalachians and also in the midland areas were from the North of England, Lowland Scotland, and Ulster. They were also the people who moved west into the old midwest.
There's some evidence (folksong versions, dialects & so on) that the main Anglo settlement of Texas was direct from the British Isles, often Scots ort Irish. Many of the early Anglo-Texans were first or second generation immigrants, not people from the other Southern states.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Birdseye
I can see my house from here!
# 5280
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Posted
I was delighted to hear a senior colleague declare that she was trying to install some Christmas spirit -'how decent of the company' I thought 'to set up a seasonal mini-bar'
Nope -she meant instil.
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Life is what happens whilst you're busy making other plans.
a birdseye view
Posts: 1615 | From: West Yorkshire | Registered: Dec 2003
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gracie:
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
quote:
Originally posted by Gracie:
I wonder if American dictionaries have phonetic transcriptions included?
Yes. See dictionary.com. The pronunciation of "beer" is given as "bîr" there.
Thank you, Ruth. Except all that I ger when I click on the link is a completely white page. Either I have a problem or their site is down. I'll try again later.
Weird. It was working yesterday. Try the Merriam-Webster dictionary online.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Gracie
Shipmate
# 3870
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Posted
Thanks again, Ruth.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary works for me. The American pronunciation is given, but not with the International Phonetic Alphabet so I had to click on the little loudspeaker thing to work out what the letters given for pronunciation correspond to phonetically. A very interesting experience.
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When someone is convinced he’s an Old Testament prophet there’s not a lot you can do with him rationally. - Sine
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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The English way of saying words like "beer" is discussed on this website
No idea how generally sound it is - I just googled into the middle of it.
But it does have a link to a sensible-looking discussion of rhotic and non-rhotic dialects of English.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Amazing Grace*
Shipmate
# 4754
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papa Smurf:
quote:
Originally posted by Gracie:
That's exactly it. The phonetic transcription for "beer", "fear", "cheer" etc. has no 'r'.
That's only becuase it's the phonetic representation of a southern English person saying it.
We (Me Scottish, wife English ) have often had pronunciation discussions. She uses a Dictionary as back up, which it seems had an southern english person do all the phonetics, so I can never win. bath pronounced 'barth', etc
When I was at university in Brum I slipped into a transatlantic accent that borrowed a lot from the North of England*, because they gave consonants the respect I thought they deserved, especially the r. Which was put in what I thought to be the correct places.
* The cleaned up version that a lot of northerners speak to non-northerners.
The vowel sounds were also closer to what I was used to as a speaker of what is pretty close to American Standard English.
quote:
If it is supposed to be pronounced 'beea', why isn't it written that way ?
You need to read Mark Twain's piece on spelling reform!
But it's obviously to identify the non-locals.
Charlotte
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.sig on vacation
Posts: 2594 | From: Sittin' by the dock of the [SF] bay | Registered: Jul 2003
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Pindy
Apprentice
# 8848
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Oh dear... I only have myself to laugh at for being linguistically handicapped...
My mum says I talk like a foreigner sometimes...
One thing I can never say right it car park... always comes out as par cark.
Actually now I'm thinking about it one of my friends isn't actually very good at talking either... we developed a book with all the weird things she came out with (occupied much of our time at school)
One which sticks in my mind is her saying "they got as much in a little as possible"
I'm affraid I can't translate as we never did find out what the hell she was talking about
Pindy
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Hazey*Jane
Ship's Biscuit Crumbs
# 8754
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Not so much a case of the wrong words, but has anyone else come across what I can only describe as 'unnecessary euphemisms'? I was on a London Underground platform the other day and there was an announcement over the speaker:
"Please stand behind the yellow line. Your next Mobile Service will be arriving in one minute."
Mobile Service?! What on earth is offensive about the word "train"?
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Welcome, Hazy Jane!
I know what you mean - I think this one started about 10 years ago, but I really hate when retailers call their customers "guests." Especially the low-price supermarket types. I'm sorry, I don't make my guests wait in line and pay for stuff on their way out the door.
Here's another I'd forgotten until I was listening to some Christmas music last night (for the first time this year)... On the first Christmas CD by the Projekt label (darkwave) - "Excelsis" - there's a track of Eva O singing "O Holy Night." I'm not making this up: she sings
quote:
Long lay the world in sin and error pinning
The thing is, that had to pass everyone who heard the song rehearsed; the band; the recording engineers; the producer (presumably); the CD's compiler, and who knows who else, and nobody said, "Er, I think it's pining..."
[ 22. December 2004, 17:55: Message edited by: churchgeek ]
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
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Astro
Shipmate
# 84
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Posted
quote:
I know what you mean - I think this one started about 10 years ago, but I really hate when retailers call their customers "guests." Especially the low-price supermarket types. I'm sorry, I don't make my guests wait in line and pay for stuff on their way out the door.
The equivalent trend in the UK was to refer to everyone as customers - thus hospitals did not have patients but customers, trains and airlines did not have passengers but customers etc. This seem to co-incide with a deteriation in standards of service so it seems to me that a hospital treats its customers worse than it does its patients, and transport companies treat their customers worse than thay treated their passengers.
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if you look around the world today – whether you're an atheist or a believer – and think that the greatest problem facing us is other people's theologies, you are yourself part of the problem. - Andrew Brown (The Guardian)
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Another thing that annoys me is the proliferation of 'specialists'; this seems to be a recent trend here. It's not longer sufficient to be a mere plumber, builder, or glazer; one has to be a 'plumbing specialist', 'building and construction specialist' and 'window installation and glazing specialist'.
Matt, Legal Specialist
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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
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