Author Topic: Pronunciation that makes you cringe  (Read 147220 times)

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #725 on: 04 December, 2020, 09:44:24 pm »
Quite appropriate then; isn't it deputised Serco?
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Hilldodger

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #726 on: 05 December, 2020, 06:06:46 pm »
If you come to Leicestershire you can walk down Belvoir Street or visit Belvoir Castle in the Vale of Belvoir.

Around these parts, it's pronounced 'beaver'. :-)

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #727 on: 05 December, 2020, 06:10:46 pm »
Is there any other way?
(H, Mayflower Junior 1965-1968)

Hilldodger

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #728 on: 05 December, 2020, 06:25:21 pm »
According to many out-of-towners it's 'belv-wah'.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #729 on: 06 December, 2020, 12:01:03 am »
My Danish mother was rapidly re-educated in 1964...

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #730 on: 06 December, 2020, 09:56:46 am »
Someone on the radio yesterday actually said “pronounce-iation”
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

quixoticgeek

  • Mostly Harmless
Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #731 on: 08 December, 2020, 08:04:46 pm »


This one from twitter...

https://twitter.com/jackremmington/status/1336291652441427970

How do you get to Meekro Wahvé?

I...

wtf.

J
--
Beer, bikes, and backpacking
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Mr Larrington

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #732 on: 11 January, 2021, 08:02:25 pm »
Radio's Tim Harford: the first name of your guest Professor Beate Kampmann is not pronounced “Beatty”.  If you do not know how to pronounce a guest's name it is only polite to find out beforehand instead of making an on-air tit of yourself.
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nicknack

  • Hornblower
Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #733 on: 11 January, 2021, 08:06:53 pm »


This one from twitter...

https://twitter.com/jackremmington/status/1336291652441427970

How do you get to Meekro Wahvé?

I...

wtf.

J
I do believe she's taking the piss.
There's no vibrations, but wait.

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #734 on: 11 January, 2021, 08:17:13 pm »


This one from twitter...

https://twitter.com/jackremmington/status/1336291652441427970

How do you get to Meekro Wahvé?

I...

wtf.

J
I do believe she's taking the piss.

She's divulged that it was a riff on a meme about Ikea selling microwaves and the weird names Ikea give to products. So yes it was a joke.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Pingu

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #735 on: 25 January, 2021, 08:09:57 pm »
Someone on C4 News just pronounced chasm with the ch as in cheddar.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #736 on: 26 January, 2021, 12:54:01 pm »
Someone on C4 News just pronounced chasm with the ch as in cheddar.

I remember doing that as a kid, as is the way when you learn words by reading.  You'd think they'd have noticed before they got to do anything newsworthy...

Mrs Pingu

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #737 on: 26 January, 2021, 12:57:48 pm »
Someone on C4 News just pronounced chasm with the ch as in cheddar.

I remember doing that as a kid, as is the way when you learn words by reading.  You'd think they'd have noticed before they got to do anything newsworthy...

It was a person running a campaign to get pupils back to school ASAP. Maybe that's why...
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

Kim

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #738 on: 26 January, 2021, 12:59:23 pm »
Someone on C4 News just pronounced chasm with the ch as in cheddar.

I remember doing that as a kid, as is the way when you learn words by reading.  You'd think they'd have noticed before they got to do anything newsworthy...

It was a person running a campaign to get pupils back to school ASAP. Maybe that's why...

*snork*

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #739 on: 26 January, 2021, 02:13:44 pm »
Might of, could of, etc., as a pronunciation of **'ve.  Leading of course to the written version.  You wouldn't say or write 'I of done that' so it isn't 'I could of done that'.

Kim

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #740 on: 26 January, 2021, 02:17:45 pm »
Might of, could of, etc., as a pronunciation of **'ve.  Leading of course to the written version.  You wouldn't say or write 'I of done that' so it isn't 'I could of done that'.

Corollary to the above, this is what happens when you write words you've learned through listening.  As a child with fluctuating hearing impairment, where dropping 'h's and 't's was de rigueur amongst my peers, attempts to correct this aspect of my vocabulary were met with general disbelief.

I think the moral of this story is that English is a stupid language.  But we knew that already.

ian

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #741 on: 26 January, 2021, 02:29:23 pm »
You would say chasm as in that great Cockney sonic ejaculators Chas-n-Dave-m if you weren't aware of the hard ch. I'm forgiving, I learned from books, which means you grow up to snotty people saying don't you mean? and then delivering their very correct pronunciation. Generally, I'm gracious about their correction, before burying their bodies somewhere they won't be found.

Listening to a presentation at the moment by a French lady. On every other slide there is the word 'focus' which she delivers so it sounds like a bit like 'fuck you.'

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #742 on: 26 January, 2021, 02:34:41 pm »
Never take the mick out of people who don't pronounce words correctly, they must have learnt the word from a book. And we should encourage more of that.
Rust never sleeps

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #743 on: 26 January, 2021, 02:36:24 pm »


Listening to a presentation at the moment by a French lady. On every other slide there is the word 'focus' which she delivers so it sounds like a bit like 'fuck you.'

As pronounced by Father Ted.....

ian

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #744 on: 26 January, 2021, 02:44:11 pm »
There's another chap now who keeps saying BioRxiv (and MedRxiv) as Bio-RX-IV (with the letters pronounced). The X is a chi, so it's should be bio-archive (the name comes from the original physics preprint archive arXiv).

I'm not criticising the poor chap, it's knobbish too-clever naming.

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #745 on: 26 January, 2021, 02:52:45 pm »
Influenced by mobile text-speak, do you think?

ian

Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #746 on: 26 January, 2021, 02:57:25 pm »
Nah, it's the physicists and their love of equations.

Kim

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #747 on: 26 January, 2021, 03:26:42 pm »
See also the great "eye two see" vs "eye squared see" debate.  Obviously the correct answer is "eye eye see", but nobody writes it like that.  Obviously nobody's going to waste brain-cells on pronunciation when they could be arguing about the problemacity of 'master' and 'slave'...

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #748 on: 26 January, 2021, 03:49:39 pm »
Learning words from books is great, as is learning words from speech, but in the case of a word like chasm, it seems odd that you'd reach the stage where you were talking on the news (or whatever it was) without ever having pronounced the word in public or heard others use it aloud.

Vaguely related, there's an article in today's Independent Mispronouncing people's names is a form of racism. The author's name is Yewande Biala. I know how I'd pronounce that but I've no idea how she does; surely names are an area where you have to accept that people don't know how to say your name and either you're going to correct them or they're going to ask, or you're going to accept their wild attempts?
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Kim

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Re: Pronunciation that makes you cringe
« Reply #749 on: 26 January, 2021, 03:55:09 pm »
Learning words from books is great, as is learning words from speech, but in the case of a word like chasm, it seems odd that you'd reach the stage where you were talking on the news (or whatever it was) without ever having pronounced the word in public or heard others use it aloud.

You can fail to make the connection and go quite a long way with the two forms existing as completely separate words in your vocabulary, especially if you're wary of writing the spoken form because you're not sure how to spell it.