Author Topic: Pronunciation that makes you cringe  (Read 147196 times)

mattc

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #125 on: 15 October, 2014, 04:31:33 pm »
. How would you pronounce Thierry Henry?
I alway pronounce Thierry the english way.
Has never ridden RAAM
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No.11  Because of the great host of those who dislike the least appearance of "swank " when they travel the roads and lanes. - From Kuklos' 39 Articles

clarion

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #126 on: 15 October, 2014, 04:53:26 pm »
Terry Henry ;)
Getting there...

ian

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #127 on: 15 October, 2014, 06:34:32 pm »
I disagree - if it's someone's name it's downright rude not to pronounce it the way they do. It's not the same as an accent, the name does not have an H sound in it so don't put one in. How would you pronounce Thierry Henry?

Many foreigners have an awful time pronouncing 'Ian' in the proper way. I don't go around correcting them and forcing them to say it as I would. I do correct people who spell it 'Iain' though. The only true Ians are cycloptic Ians.

Mr Larrington

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #128 on: 15 October, 2014, 07:04:41 pm »
We got so used to FOREIGNS mispronouncing the name of my grate frend Mr Sheen that nowadays even BRITONS call him "Yan".
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mattc

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #129 on: 15 October, 2014, 07:10:34 pm »
i've recently heard a lot of coverage for the film:
"Gone Girl".
For a while I suspected it was called "GARN Girl".

Surely "Gone" rhymes with One, On and Won. Not with Yarn.   ???

(The culprits have mainly been pure RP speakers. Ish.)

Has never ridden RAAM
---------
No.11  Because of the great host of those who dislike the least appearance of "swank " when they travel the roads and lanes. - From Kuklos' 39 Articles

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #130 on: 15 October, 2014, 07:12:31 pm »
A certain very eminent French member of AUK always greets me loudly and enthusiastically with, "EYE-YAN!"

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #131 on: 15 October, 2014, 07:14:34 pm »
i've recently heard a lot of coverage for the film:
"Gone Girl".
For a while I suspected it was called "GARN Girl".

Surely "Gone" rhymes with One, On and Won. Not with Yarn.   ???

(The culprits have mainly been pure RP speakers. Ish.)



"Gahn" might be a more universal pronunciation spelling (thinking of how yours would be pronounced down yerr.)

mattc

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #132 on: 15 October, 2014, 07:19:28 pm »
Yeah, "gahn" might be a better fit  :thumbsup:
Has never ridden RAAM
---------
No.11  Because of the great host of those who dislike the least appearance of "swank " when they travel the roads and lanes. - From Kuklos' 39 Articles

Pingu

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #133 on: 15 October, 2014, 07:55:55 pm »
How would you pronounce Thierry Henry?

If it's to do with overpaid-prima-donnas-knocking-about-a-spherical-object then I don't need to pronounce it.

TimC

  • Old blerk sometimes onabike.
Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #134 on: 16 October, 2014, 02:42:45 am »
I disagree - if it's someone's name it's downright rude not to pronounce it the way they do. It's not the same as an accent, the name does not have an H sound in it so don't put one in. How would you pronounce Thierry Henry?

I don't particularly care that the French (among others) have their own name for London (Londres), so equally I don't care that we call Paris 'Parriss' not 'Paree'. It's not rude on either part; it's simply the way it is.

T42

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #135 on: 16 October, 2014, 08:20:13 am »
When I worked in Stuttgart I was told to fly to Mailand to do some software mods. To get home again from Milan I had to get a plane to Stoccarda.

When I drove from here to Breda in Holland I went through Nemours in Belgium.  On the drive back, taking the same roads, Nemours was on none of the sign-posts. Some place called Namen was, though.
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Auntie Helen

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #136 on: 16 October, 2014, 09:20:43 am »
I got a bit confused when following some badly-scribbled road directions on my way by car to Germany because Liege disappeared but I kept seeing this place called Leuk on the signposts.
My blog on cycling in Germany and eating German cake – http://www.auntiehelen.co.uk


Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #137 on: 16 October, 2014, 09:41:35 am »
i've recently heard a lot of coverage for the film:
"Gone Girl".
For a while I suspected it was called "GARN Girl".

Surely "Gone" rhymes with One, On and Won. Not with Yarn.   ???

(The culprits have mainly been pure RP speakers. Ish.)

The drawled long 'O' becomes prevalent as you travel west towards Cornwall.

Also, in RP, one and won rhyme with gun.

LEE

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #138 on: 16 October, 2014, 09:52:32 am »
Imagine how wonderful and interesting the world would be if everyone spoke identically and used received pronunciation.  Why we could even have Pathe News reels back at the cinemas.

I hope nobody here ever visits Ireland because dat would be a terrible ting for your helt.
Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #139 on: 16 October, 2014, 09:56:24 am »
Hugo Chavez is one of the ones you hear all the time. I know a Spanish speaker pronounces Hugo Ugo but we aren't Spanish. They don't pronounce Irish names with an Irish accent for gods sake.

So how do you say Siobhan or Niamh or Aoife or Grainne then? Or, looking eastwards, Marcin? (Probably needs some diacriticals, that one.)

I disagree - if it's someone's name it's downright rude not to pronounce it the way they do. It's not the same as an accent, the name does not have an H sound in it so don't put one in. How would you pronounce Thierry Henry?

Many foreigners have an awful time pronouncing 'Ian' in the proper way. I don't go around correcting them and forcing them to say it as I would.

I don't think it's necessarily about correcting, or forcing. If I don't know how to pronounce a name or find it difficult, I welcome the chance to do someone the courtesy of pronouncing it a bit closer to how it's meant to be said. I'd rather they said something than listen to me cock it up again and again.

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #140 on: 16 October, 2014, 10:16:28 am »
Imagine how wonderful and interesting the world would be if everyone spoke identically and used received pronunciation.  Why we could even have Pathe News reels back at the cinemas.

I hope nobody here ever visits Ireland because dat would be a terrible ting for your helt.

11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.  As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.  Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.  The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.  That is why it was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.


T42

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #141 on: 16 October, 2014, 11:08:25 am »
Ah... RP = Received Pronunciation. Was reading it as Reverse Polish.

Speaking of which, a university chum of mine was Scots-Polish, born in Sedan but brought up in the Borders and speaking only the local variant of English.  He used to say Warsaw the UK way until he went on holiday there, whereafter he pronounced it Warszawa (Varshava) and would savagely correct anyone he heard saying it "wrongly". People like that are tiresome.

To exhaust the topic, the French equivalent is Varsovie. Jacques Brel had a great song called Madame promène son cul sur les remparts de Varsovie. Shame he's gone.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #142 on: 16 October, 2014, 12:29:55 pm »
I disagree - if it's someone's name it's downright rude not to pronounce it the way they do. It's not the same as an accent, the name does not have an H sound in it so don't put one in. How would you pronounce Thierry Henry?

Many foreigners have an awful time pronouncing 'Ian' in the proper way. I don't go around correcting them and forcing them to say it as I would. I do correct people who spell it 'Iain' though. The only true Ians are cycloptic Ians.

That's a fair point, all languages have sounds in them that non-native speakers find difficult or impossible. Certainly the newsreaders referred to by pcolbeck would not get Hugo Chavez's surname correct as the Spanish v does not have an exact match in English, they'll probably get the z wrong too and the o at the end of Hugo. But that is not an excuse for saying we should deliberately pronounce Hugo as "Hyoogoe" instead of "oogo" because "we're not Spanish".
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ian

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #143 on: 16 October, 2014, 12:43:36 pm »
Quote
Many foreigners have an awful time pronouncing 'Ian' in the proper way. I don't go around correcting them and forcing them to say it as I would.

I don't think it's necessarily about correcting, or forcing. If I don't know how to pronounce a name or find it difficult, I welcome the chance to do someone the courtesy of pronouncing it a bit closer to how it's meant to be said. I'd rather they said something than listen to me cock it up again and again.

Well, I think Irish names are a bit different since they're not phonetically pronounced à la English, and you don't get extra points for using a cod-Irish accent (outside of Boston). It's Shivhawn to be sure, you feckers. Having travelled the US in the company of Irish girls, they were mostly wryly amused by phonetic attempts at Niamh and Siobhan (hearing a New Orleans barkeep pronounce Siobhan is something precious). I'm not going to lisp through Spanish names, but I'll do a passable Don Juan.

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #144 on: 16 October, 2014, 12:52:44 pm »
I got a bit confused when following some badly-scribbled road directions on my way by car to Germany because Liege disappeared but I kept seeing this place called Leuk on the signposts.
Sort of like the time I ended up cycling through the middle of San Sebastian because this place "Donostia" on the signposts wasn't on my map and therefore too small to be worth avoiding.

Steph

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #145 on: 16 October, 2014, 02:13:05 pm »
I got a bit confused when following some badly-scribbled road directions on my way by car to Germany because Liege disappeared but I kept seeing this place called Leuk on the signposts.

...and coming back from Germany it became 'Luttich'
Mae angen arnaf i byw, a fe fydda'i

Mr Larrington

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #146 on: 16 October, 2014, 03:09:52 pm »
It has been posited that the Fiat Croma was Italy's terrible revenge on BRITAIN for the Vauxhall Firenza.
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T42

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #147 on: 16 October, 2014, 03:27:40 pm »
Coming back to just English, there are words we read and understand as children but do not hear pronounced for decades. When at last we do hear them they may be totally different from our idea of them.  One such, for me, was chimera: I was well over 40 when I first heard anyone say it, and my immediate reaction was "illiterate swine".  Luckily I didn't say it out loud, for he was right.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Auntie Helen

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #148 on: 16 October, 2014, 04:35:58 pm »
I notice the newsreaders do pronounce Angela Merkel generally roughly correctly, so they do it with some names even if there's an English name. But I guess that's easier than Hugo Chavez correctly.
My blog on cycling in Germany and eating German cake – http://www.auntiehelen.co.uk


Kim

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #149 on: 16 October, 2014, 06:57:12 pm »
Coming back to just English, there are words we read and understand as children but do not hear pronounced for decades.

I'm always surprised by how much piss-taking the resulting mispronunciations attract.  "Yes, I have vast swathes of vocabulary that I acquired through reading.  That's a bad thing, is it?"

And it's by no means exclusive to children.  Occupational hazard with pretty much any specialist knowledge acquired informally.