Mispronunciation

I try to avoid shitake mushrooms because I’m scared people will laugh at me if I pronounce it out loud the way I think it.

As touched on in my fish pond thread the previous owner of our house warned us about the Herring that used to come and snaffle the fish.
Also had some electricians round and when talking about the ivy covering the outbuilding the one lad kept calling it ivory.

On the subject of Topeak, heard someone call it Top-ee-ak once.
My, how we laughed.
(slightly scared now that he might actually have been right all along)

My mother speaks almost perfect English for someone who only moved here as an adult. However her most infamous mistake was when explaining what she did at summers when in Uni

“I used to work with depraved children”

Cue silence. Then laughter.

She also pronounces wolf quite amusingly.

I have a friend who has “muselli” for breakfast. Also when asked once how he slept he said he “went out like a log”.

My boss says Choritsior when he means Choritho, about as often as I can get him to say it. He does come from oop north though, bless.

Us Midlanders just use Cody, Nanty and Deggy for the popular Welsh trail centres. It is lazy and ignorant but then we often struggle with the English language as well.

pinetree – Member

Schwalbe as Schwabble

I like skwabbly tbh.

With welsh stuff; if you spelled it right I’d say it right. Dolgellau is pronounced doll gel lau. If it was called Doll geth lee it’d be spelled Dollgethlee. Simple really but welsh folks keep getting it wrong even though they live there.

I pronounce Les Gets, Lez Getz.

Been asked for ‘them Boat ranger’ tyres…..
Also if those LEN bikes are any good… (take the DMR logo and turn it anticlockwise 90 degrees = it says LEN.
Confused me for ages til the guy showed me a pic of what he was after.
Commercial instead of Commencal.

Seems like a good excuse to post this.

The local shop where I used to live was popular with American tourists. The shop had an extensive cheese counter and I couldn’t help smile listening to them ordering chunks of “Swallydolly” (Swaledale) and “Lie ces ter” (Leicester).

The staff in the shop never did tell them how to pronounce them properly.

The problem with pronunciation is that sometimes saying it right, in the way a local would, makes you sound like a bell end.
Any one that says “Por-sha” when referring to a German sports car is a bell end although they are saying it correctly IF they were German.
If it were correct to say it like that in English then they should also pronounce BMW in the correct German fashion “Bee Em Vee”

Another one often mispronounced…

True. I used to pronounce it Sway-Doon.

Mate works in a bike shop so these are all his:

“Hydroscopic brakes”
“Adjustable expension”
“Maxxis Med-USA” (Medusa tyre)

Another friend was sent to the shops to buy “Mangy Toot” Mange tout, Rodney 😉

I think the IT Crowd had a great episode built around this thread. I can only remember “pedal stool” though. Hmmm

Typical SNL insofar as they drag the joke out too long and take it too far, but I remember when this sketch, about pronunciation of ‘foreign’ names was first broadcast. It seems relevant now…

‘Multi storage car parks’ was one of my dear aunties.

Kwinoah or keenwah?

Try living here.
I drive through Ljungskile on the way home from work. Not “Lung Skill eh”

But Young Sheila.

🙄

Town not far away, Jönköping. Not Jon Coping, but Joon Shooping.

Get the piss taken out of me all the time. An English colleague of mine can’t even say his own address.

A friend of mine who lives in the east midlands was once asked by an American tourist “Do you live here in Loogerborooger?”

Obviously the weirdest thing about that story is how a tourist ended up in the east midlands.

My ex father inlaw refused to go to Cornwall ever again after one trip where he was asking directions for Fowey (fawee) and the local told him there was no such place. Only later did he realise it was pronounced Foy.

He is a grumpy sod at the best of times and never went back ‘Bloody Corns’ is all you get out of him whenever the County is mentioned.

Any one that says “Por-sha” when referring to a German sports car is a bell end

The whole point of German cars is to show that you are proud to be a bell-end, pronouncing it properly just proves that you are fully deserving.

There are a few place names round my way which catch out the unwary-

Milngavie? – Mill-guy
Strathaven? – Stray-ven
Kilncadzow? – Kill-Kay-Gay
Ravenstruther? – Rens-tray
Dalziel? – Dee-El

I’ve heard a few good ones;
Whyte- ‘White-Tea’
Mondraker- ‘Moon-drake-er’

None bike stuff;
River Thames- ‘Thh-emms'(Bus of American tourists)

Leading on from Saxon Rider

Why has nobody mentioned Commencal? I have one and even i’m not sure how to say it! I normally go with Com-en-sal but i’v eheard it pronounced com-en-cal too….

Bath; as in bAth or barth.

The problem with pronunciation is that sometimes saying it right, in the way a local would, makes you sound like a bell end.

I was behind a woman in Costa ordering two capuccini, and then explaining to her companion that that’s the correct plural. No doubt she was right but you could pretty much hear what everyone else was thinking!

I do say Por-sha though and I pronounce chorizo properly, so the line into bell-endery is blurry 😉

Easy to do given the daft rules on pronouncing Y’s in Welsh.

Not daft, nothing like as daft as most of English.

Y as in the definite article is ‘uh’. That’s it. It varies with accent a bit, I think, but consistent with the same sound in all words, for example in Cardiff they might say it a bit like ‘er’ but then they also say ‘merm’ instead of ‘mum’.

The rules I read, and that seem to work:

– y and yr = uh
– single syllable word e.g. byd = ee
– multi syllable words = i or ee if it’s the last syllable, otherwise uh

So

mynydd = m uh n i th (as in the)
Penhydd = pen heethe
Pen y Fan = Pen uh Van
Coed y Brenin = Coyd uh Brenin

The problem with pronouncing words like chorizo and Porsche “properly” is the need to be consistent

Paris for example. Do you pronounce it “properly” or like every other person who uses the word in an English sentence ?

The rules I read, and that seem to work:

– y and yr = uh
– single syllable word e.g. byd = ee
– multi syllable words = i or ee if it’s the last syllable, otherwise uh

Perch-uh-panther? I don’t like it 😉

Then Americans… Hundy (Hyundai). But again, they’re kind of closer than Brits who say Hi-un-day. Proper pronunciation is more He-yunday. Not Hundy though

How is it pronounced in welsh?
Hugh in Die?

Welsh is very regular in its pronunciation, obviously there’s regional variation but they are consistent.

The two exceptions that I was taught were the ‘y’ as the next to last syllable and ‘s’ becomes a ‘sh’ sound when followed by two vowels, so Sian is “Sharn” not “See-anne”

How is it pronounced in welsh?
Hugh in Die?

Huw ‘n’ Dai?

Huw ‘n’ Dai?

I think I met them once….

New-killer for nuclear. Even flippin newsreaders, correspondents and media analysts do it.

I was behind a woman in Costa ordering two capuccini, and then explaining to her companion that that’s the correct plural. No doubt she was right but you could pretty much hear what everyone else was thinking!

Reminds me of… one of the QI researchers who insists that he orders a “panino” for lunch as “panini” is plural. 100% accurate, 100% bellend, and 100% mocked by everyone else on their podcast for it.

neilforrow – Member
Bath; as in bAth or barth.

Baath, unless you’re posh or from the south east. The more west you go, the longer the A.

But then I have a broad A for a lot of words, part from northern ancestry and part from being from Devon.

Proper way of saying stuff like bath, path, grass, none of which have a bloody R after the A.

I was behind a woman in Costa ordering two capuccini

“two cappucinos” or “due cappucini”, but “two cappucini” will make you look like a ponce.

I’m still trying to work out where the X is in espresso

pizza/pizze is the same, but you’re probably not going to order plural

And it’s Baath