Forum menu
“No Alan you can’t”.
NSFW
Cougar. Can you actually speak English?
First thing you hear. “tchorizo”, tʃoʁiso, Spanish innit.
No, I'm talking about the invisible T in the middle. Choritzo, or even choritzio.
But I get rolled eyes when I make it sound shoritho. And the tuts I get when I say paella.
You mean pie-eh-a
As my brother points out: ordering food in French, Italian and Spanish restaurants using the correct pronunciation makes you sound educated and liberal. Less so, though in Chinese, Indian and Caribbean restaurants.
On the aspirated/unaspirated h, yes Irish people speaking English will tend to aspirate the h at the beginning of words. So we will rarely use “an” before a word beginning with h. Though our t’s at the end of words can sound a bit funny, especially with the preponderance of the glottal stop these days for words ending in t. I don’t even know how to spell the pronunciation phonetically. It’s made by not quite touching the back of the front teeth as you would for a hard t, and pushing a tiny bit of air through. 😀
Crisps ...
quips
Cool Whip
Cougar. Can you actually speak English?
I don't think 'corr' is actually a word outside of three attractive sisters and an anti-vax roaster.
On the aspirated/unaspirated h, yes Irish people speaking English will tend to aspirate the h at the beginning of words. So we will rarely use “an” before a word beginning with h.
I didn't even know words beginning with h could be 'an' until a few years ago. Just didn't make sense, mind you I don't speak like Danny Dyer so 'a historic home' makes perfect linguistic sense. Put 'an' on the front and I can't say it out loud without sounding like a Dalek reading a teleprompter. Or Danny Dyer.
One thing I've noticed a lot, relates to mountainbiking, is that when riders talk about riding in a World Cup, the rising part tends to be on 'World', not 'Cup' as it usually is when someone is on about football.
wORLd cup instead of world cUP
I've noticed Steve Peat do this a lot and I think the Athertons.
Neither is wrong, just different intonation for some reason..
Dealing with software you’d think I’d have sorted this in my head by now, but some mental block constantly renders “Deprecated” as “Depreciated”.
I thought "toe the line" was "tow the line" until my 50s.
I guess it comes down to whether you've heard a word and read it.
Dealing with software you’d think I’d have sorted this in my head by now, but some mental block constantly renders “Deprecated” as “Depreciated”.
I have a friend who says “self-depreciating” when they mean “self-deprecating.” I’m not ever correcting them as I love it so much. 😀
My dad refers to his bald spot as his bold spot. His pronunciation of Solskjaer is hilarious, soksjar, I sometimes pretend to not hear what he said and get him to repeat it.
The wife always thought the name Penelope was pronounced (and no joke) pen-e-lope. I discovered this after we married.
kayak23
wORLd cup instead of world cUP
I’ve noticed Steve Peat do this a lot and I think the Athertons.
Neither is wrong, just different intonation for some reason..
Could be to differentiate it from some other cup I suppose.
OH has some brilliant mispronounciations and words that don't exist but I'm not gonna share them as she missed out on a lot of education through no fault of her own.
When talking to pretentious people I like to lay on my dales accent and deliberately mispronounce connoisseur as con-osser, rhymes with tosser.......does that make me pretentious?
some mental block constantly renders “Deprecated” as “Depreciated”.
My boss does this all the time and it drives me round the bend.
@cougar I also can't type "exchange" quickly - it constantly comes out as "exchnage" & somehow this has entered my workstation's custom dictionary.
Dictionary poisoning is a problem for sure.
In loosely related news, I read earlier today someone saying they had a "softs pot" for something.
I remember the first time I saw the word paradigm.
Have we had 'segue' yet? I was amazed when a friend pointed out, just a few years ago that it is pronounced 'segway' not 'seeg'.
But I get rolled eyes when I make it sound shoritho. And the tuts I get when I say paella.
Don't get a job as a cycling commentator. You'll get no end of flack on Twitter for pronouncing foreign riders' names correctly.
In loosely related news, I read earlier today someone saying they had a “softs pot” for something.
We had a guy at work with one of those, he had a tank fall on him when he was in the army (REME) and only had a one minute notice for bowel movements on a good day.
I'm reminded of one of the guys at my college. He was German but an excellent English speaker. He did have one blind spot, though. He told me a story about when he first moved to England and lived in a shared house. He suggested they could to the local pub, The Plough, only he called it The Ploff. From that point on all the lads in the house called it The Ploff. The only trouble was he couldn't actually recall what was the correct pronunciation so kept alternating the story between Plow and Ploff without quite knowing which was the right one and which was the joke one and correcting himself wrongly.
the other day my eldest asked which “rowt” (route) we were taking. 😖
One assumes he got the hiding he deserved?
Have we had ‘segue’ yet? I was amazed when a friend pointed out, just a few years ago that it is pronounced ‘segway’ not ‘seeg’.
Sigway Sigway Sputnik pictured recently...
Have we had 'fine tooth comb'?
As we're well into 6 pages. Have a go at this yiddish word;
Tchotchke
Tchotchke
Gesundheit.
I was always slightly disgusted by the phrase 'falling between two stools.' You have to be careful.
Not me, but a former housemate pronounced chassis, "shassey".
It doesn't bother me when folks mispronounce the words they know they want to use half as much as the previously alluded to folk who don't know what the word they're trying to use actually is: Upmost respect, tenderhooks, pacifically, "literally" etc etc!
That's a point actually. Names of foreign origin give us a quandary, do you pronounce them Anglicised or do you risk sounding like a pretentious arse?
Take car marques. Skoda should be "schkoda" (sounds like you have a speech impediment) Porsche is "pour-shuh" (gaining wider acceptance), Dacia "datch-ia" (likewise because yay Advertising) and VW is "falks vahgen" (pretty much unheard of in the UK). Then we see fit to mock Americans for pronouncing Notre Dame as it's spelt, at least they're broadly consistent.
Funny old thing, language.
Not me, but a former housemate pronounced chassis, “shassey”.
Uh, that's correct... ?
Not me, but a former housemate pronounced chassis, “shassey”.
So do I
Uh, that’s correct… ?
I was going to say thank god someone else can speak properly but, you know 😉
You also forgot Perjo
As we’re well into 6 pages. Have a go at this yiddish word;
Tchotchke
Chotch-ki?
Like auntie in Polish?
Sash-Say as opposed to Sash-cee is, i think what chr15 is suggesting his mate said.
Tchotchke is pronounced Chat-ka (if you're interested)
How about "Braun"?
"Subtle" always caught me out on those 1970s primary school word lists we used to have read at school. I seem to recall that teachers didn't correct me for a couple of years.
Apparently it isn't "sub tilee"
How would you pronounce “?
I would call it a quotation mark, compared to a ‘, which is an inverted comma, or a speech mark, depending on whether it’s used in a word like ‘it’s’, or if emphasising something that isn’t a direct quote.
After over thirty years in print and publishing, with many, many hours spent proof-reading lots of text, I tend to be pretty obsessive about correct spelling, pronunciation and usage, inverted commas should show as 6 9, and quotation marks as 66 99, which they actually do on my iPad keyboard - ‘’ and “”
There is a book about correct usage that my studio director was always using for correct spelling and usage in print; he took great delight in correcting poor spelling, punctuation, and general type layout mistakes provided by agencies.
Not that I always get it right, but most pronunciations I’ve learned to say correctly, despite being brought up in the West Country. 🤣
Tchotchke is pronounced Chat-ka (if you’re interested)
Now that’s interesting, I’ve seen the word used by William Gibson, and I know what it means, but I’ve never heard it spoken, so I didn’t know how it’s pronounced. Thanks for that, much appreciated.
Have we had ‘segue’ yet?
That one I learned the correct pronunciation years ago, from radio DJ’s.
Hyperbole (again) is the only word that I can remember really catching me out in an embarrassing way, when I was trying to sound smart about something at uni. Oh how my housemate laughed.
On the reading side, for years - years - I misread 'Rincewind' in the Discworld books as 'Rincewood'. I still prefer my version.
For several years, I pronounced exacerbated as excaberated having misread it at some point. Possibly reading too many Arthurian stories.
Ex girlfriend .......
I was going to say thank god someone else can speak properly but, you know 😉
🤣🤣 well played.
You also forgot Perjo
Oh, yeah. Correctly pronounced poo geeot, of course.
Sash-Say as opposed to Sash-cee is, i think what chr15 is suggesting his mate said.
I think at least one of those is some form of dance move.
It's still not right either way, anyway? It's "shassie," no?
How about “Braun”?
Lost me there. Oh, wait, is this another German one, so it'd be a homonym(*) with "Brown" I think?
I would call it a quotation mark, compared to a ‘, which is an inverted comma,
Aye. Today I'd likely refer to them as "double quotation marks" and 'single quotation marks' but it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Dictating computer game instructions, "type LOAD double quotation mark MANIC double quotation mark and press enter."
Inverted commas always sounded weird to me. The whole "66 and 99" thing from GCSE English - The opening 6 is an inverted comma symbol, but the closing 9 is the right way round just higher up.
(* - shut it, Squirrelface)
Always pronounced awry correctly, if using, but I never really knew it was spelled that way, as whenever I read the word I pronounced it “aw-ree” in my head. Then one day, it clicked that they were one and the same word. 😂
According to wifey, who ran their payroll, Braun is pronounced Brauwn. But then Kronberg is get posh like so who knows.