Pronounciation

flutterflye

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

Sofa, so good! A couch is where a person of loose or no morals drapes him- or herself.



Hugo Brady Brown

Sofa king good

Omackeral

Maybe somebody more learned than myself can assist here. I recall distinctly watching England square off against Romania in the soccer in one of the European Championships. The commentators would say Roo-mania rather than Ro-mania. I could just be a BBC thing?

By the way, that would make one lame and lazy pun if Rooney were to score against them.

Kerrydude1981

On RTE last week the narrator of that programme At Your Service had problems with saying Valentia Island she kept saying Valencia Island

Lynfo

My boss pronounces Zeus 'Zay-us'. Drives me crazy.

flutterflye

Lynfo wrote: »

My boss pronounces Zeus 'Zay-us'. Drives me crazy.

Does your boss talk about Zeus often?
Why???
It's hardly everyday conversation.

DB21

From the RWC: is it Ton-ga or Ton-a

jmayo

Gophur wrote: »

...
I was listening to BBC Radio this week. A newscaster was describing the Jimmy Saville death and his body lying in state in "An Hotel" in Leeds, she pronounced it as An Otel. Surely, even in the depths of Lizzie's England, An Otel is not in any way correct?

Well seen as it was Leeds, was the reporter/newscaster also from Yorkshire which would explain An Otel, just like they would describe a person going "on Oliday" to Spain.

BTW they also forget to use the word "the" in sentences.

Shivers26

Shivers26 wrote: »

The husbag is in the army and I just sent him a text saying 'how do you pronounce lieutenant' and he text me back 'bástard'

Good man.

Having said that he often refers to them as louie's or LT's so I think they do actually say loo-tenant.

A girl I work with always says pacifically instead of specifically - drives me mad!

The husbags entire family are unable to pronounce couch - they all say couNch. I have no idea why. After a fair bit of teasing about it, he says sofa now instead

husbag?

Lynfo

flutterflye wrote: »

Does your boss talk about Zeus often?
Why???
It's hardly everyday conversation.

It's the name of one of our suppliers, so it comes up quite a bit.

FruitLover

Batsy wrote: »

Lef-tenant is the British - i.e. correct - way of pronouncing it.

Loo-tenant is the awful American way of saying it.

How can you have a "correct" British pronunciation of an originally French word?

wyrn wrote: »

People who pronounce the S in euros. It's meant to be silent.

The directive you're talking about was meant as a guideline for legal documentation; it was never meant to re-write the rules of spoken English grammar (and consequently has been amended for clarification). How stupid would it sound to say "that's 2 pound and 30 penny please"? That's how stupid it sounds to say "that's 2 euro and 30 cent please".

IsaMtq

LordSutch wrote: »

Shouldn't that be Stupid?

It absolutely should!

The King of Moo

Omackeral wrote: »

Maybe somebody more learned than myself can assist here. I recall distinctly watching England square off against Romania in the soccer in one of the European Championships. The commentators would say Roo-mania rather than Ro-mania. I could just be a BBC thing?

By the way, that would make one lame and lazy pun if Rooney were to score against them.

I'm not 100% but I'm fairly sure that might be a pretty old pronunciation of the country's name, or at least one based on an old spelling.

I've seen it spelt "Rumania" or sometimes maybe "Roumania" in old books from the 19th/early 20th century.

Gophur

jmayo wrote: »

Well seen [sic] as it was Leeds, was the reporter/newscaster also from Yorkshire which would explain An Otel, just like they would describe a person going "on Oliday" to Spain.

BTW they also forget to use the word "the" in sentences.

It was BBC Radio 2, a national station.

As for the Yorkshire vernacular? With people in their country speaking like the Yorkshire folk, the English have no call to criticise any foreigner for speaking "funny".

Contessa Raven

Pherekydes wrote: »

Why do people say eck setera for et cetera?

This does my nut in. There's an advert on TV for a company called Beds Etc. and the voiceover man pronounces it "eck setera".
I get irrationally angry when I hear him say it because he is supposed to be a professional voiceover artist and yet he cannot pronounce the word correctly. :mad::mad::mad:

*deep breaths*

Edit: rich.d.berry already said this. But the point still stands! It makes me mad!

HugoBradyBrown

And how should we pronounce the names of these two groups of dancers, the Cholmondeleys and the Featherstonehaughs?



Hugo Brady Brown

Shivers26

bluewolf wrote: »

husbag?

Let me have husbag, I get fed up saying OH and we're not married yet.

At least I didn't say DP, DF, DH or similar

rich.d.berry

Contessa Raven wrote: »

This does my nut in. There's an advert on TV for a company called Beds Etc. and the voiceover man pronounces it "eck setera".
I get irrationally angry when I hear him say it because he is supposed to be a professional voiceover artist and yet he cannot pronounce the word correctly. :mad::mad::mad:

*deep breaths*

Snap! Didn't think anyone else would feel the same way about the advert. :cool:

rich.d.berry wrote: »

The Beds Etc. advert on TV bugs me.

Surely if you pay for and advert you insist that the voice artist gets your company name right!

He says ek-set-ra

Correct pronunciation is et-set-ra

Unavailable for Comment

People mispronouncing wary as weary.

I was on an induction course before where the instructor spent 30 minutes stressing how jaded we should be about electricity, unfinished scaffolds, open pits, machinery.

Damn, builders are laid back!

Yakuza

Shenshen wrote: »

Jalapeno
Original pronounciation would be Ha-la-pen-yo. People here pronounce it Ha-la-pee-no...

Ha-la-pay-no would be what a Spanish-speaking person would say if they saw "Jalapeno" written somewhere.
It should be written Jalapeño to get the "nyeh" sound, but it's not in our alphabet (or our keyboards, with out some fancy work on the alt / numeric keypad)

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

Or Mr Noonan with his 'billons' and 'millons' and 'Itallans".

Agreed - what also grinds my gears is the way he says years - "We'll be looking at a deficit of blah billon(sic) in two faarrteen"

Now, unless he's invented a time machine and can bring us all back almost 1800 years into the past, he's talking up his ar5e.

HugoBradyBrown

Yakuza wrote: »

Ha-la-pay-no would be what a Spanish-speaking person would say if they saw "Jalapeno" written somewhere.
It should be written Jalapeño to get the "nyeh" sound, but it's not in our alphabet (or our keyboards, with out some fancy work on the alt / numeric keypad)



Agreed - what also grinds my gears is the way he says years - "We'll be looking at a deficit of blah billon(sic) in two faarrteen"

Now, unless he's invented a time machine and can bring us all back almost 1800 years into the past, he's talking up his ar5e.

And talking of 'years', there's that idiosyncratic way that Mr Alan Shatter TD says ''yers' or 'yurs' or something like that, always and everywhere.

Yers and yurs ago we always said 'years'.


Hugo Brady Brown

Yakuza

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

And talking of 'years', there's that idiosyncratic way that Mr Alan Shatter TD says ''yers' or 'yurs' or something like that, always and everywhere.

Yers and yurs ago we always said 'years'.


Hugo Brady Brown

That's something I see on Sky News - "That's the sickth time that has happened this yaahhh". It must be an RP thing.

HugoBradyBrown

The humble noun 'farmer' and its plural form 'farmers' have changed greatly for the worse in recent decades.

It was Ray McSharry who started the rot, back in the 1980's when he was Minister for Agriculture, even though he's only from Sligo. He started saying 'formers' instead of 'farmers'. Now almost everyone, from Mr McSharry up, is failing in the same way; even farmers themselves, who would once have described themslves as 'faaarmers', 'farrrmers' or 'farumers' have gone soft and are saying 'formers'.



Hugo Brady Brown

HugoBradyBrown

And, though it's off-topic, but in the same Grumpy Old Area, there is the damage that Dick Spring did to the English language in Ireland in the early 1990's, when he didn't understand what the 'body politic' means. It looks as if he heard the term somewhere, got a vague idea that it had something to do with politics, and then started dropping it sombrely into every serious interview going forward. As a result of ever dog and divil of a journalist without a dictionary copying him, it has come to mean (though only in Ireland) the small class of professional politicians who are elected.

Another good term deprived of useful meaning by the unchallenged ignorance of a politician.


Hugo Brady Brown

foxyboxer

* Watching Snooker *

"..and that's a great shot there by Ken Dockerty"

Eroticfishcake

It shouldn't annoy me but it does when commentators say Tim Kayhill for Tim Cahill as this is how he pronounces it.

Also Liam/Noel Gallager with the 'h' dropped drives me mad.

Millicent

Newsreaders and politicians saying the word "finance" make me want to sever a vital artery with my teeth.

What the fuck is fin-ance, you cretins? It's pronounced bloody fine-ance!

Omackeral

Eroticfishcake wrote: »

It shouldn't annoy me but it does when commentators say Tim Kayhill for Tim Cahill as this is how he pronounces it.

Also Liam/Noel Gallager with the 'h' dropped drives me mad.

And who is this Chris Eubanks? never seen him before.

HugoBradyBrown

Millicent wrote: »

Newsreaders and politicians saying the word "finance" make me want to sever a vital artery with my teeth.

What the fuck is fin-ance, you cretins? It's pronounced bloody fine-ance!

I suggest that they may be correct and the poster wrong.

The leading authority in this case is Penelope Keith, in the role of Mrs Audrey Forbes-Hamilton in the TV drama To The Manor Born, where she clarifies for her slightly duller sidekick that it is indeed "fin'ance" and not "fine'ance."

The pronunciation derives from the French, and has been naturalized in English these three hundred years and more. (Consider, for example, Dryden, Pepys, Johnson, to name only three earlier authorities.)

Had the poster lived among us a little longer, she or he would have known that too and not descended into unnecessary rage.


Hugo Brady Brown

Richard

Omackeral wrote: »

Maybe somebody more learned than myself can assist here. I recall distinctly watching England square off against Romania in the soccer in one of the European Championships. The commentators would say Roo-mania rather than Ro-mania. I could just be a BBC thing?

By the way, that would make one lame and lazy pun if Rooney were to score against them.

The English spelling of the country used to be Rumania, and some older people in the UK still pronounce it that way.

Richard

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

And how should we pronounce the names of these two groups of dancers, the Cholmondeleys and the Featherstonehaughs?

Chumleys and, er, I give up.

DebDynamite

When people say "threadmill" instead of "treadmill". There's no H :mad:

Richard

foxyboxer wrote: »

* Watching Snooker *

"..and that's a great shot there by Ken Dockerty"

To be fair, standard English doesn't have the "ough" sound that we use for words such as Lough. It's like when Chinese people sometimes can't pronounce the "r" sound when leaning English as it doesn't exist in Chinese and they aren't used to it. People in England subliminally replace the "ough" sound with "ock" as the mouth shape you make when saying them is similar.

HugoBradyBrown

And how should we pronounce the names of these two groups of dancers, the Cholmondeleys and the Featherstonehaughs?

Richard wrote: »

Chumleys and, er, I give up.

Very good. The other one is something like Fanshaws, although some people think that it is pronounced Coburn.



Hugo Brady Brown

HugoBradyBrown

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

she clarifies for her slightly duller sidekick that it is indeed "fin'ance" and not "fine'ance."

Had the poster lived among us a little longer, she or he would have known that too and not descended into unnecessary rage.

I'm with Millicent on this one. It really annoys me.

Right or wrong, fin'ance makes the person saying it sound like a stuck up ****. The same goes for a lot of that newsreader-speak.

Richard

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

Very good. The other one is something like Fanshaws, although some people think that it is pronounced Coburn.

Coburn?

I think the main reason I know Chomondley is due to that Harry Enfield sketch.

HugoBradyBrown

Richard wrote: »

Coburn?

I think the main reason I know Chomondley is due to that Harry Enfield sketch.

Cockburn is pronounced Coburn (for some unfathomable reason), so the latter is often offered as the pronunciation of any odd-looking surname, no matter how distant its spelling from Cockburn. A sophomoric joke, perhaps.



Hugo Brady Brown

Richard

There's also Magdalen - it's "Magdalen" for the order of nuns, but "Maudlin" for the Oxford college, isn't it?

HugoBradyBrown

true-or-false wrote: »

I'm with Millicent on this one. It really annoys me.

Right or wrong, fin'ance makes the person saying it sound like a stuck up ****. The same goes for a lot of that newsreader-speak.

I am beginning to think that people here are not interested in agreeing on what is the objectively and historically correct pronunciation of words, but in getting the world and his wife to pronounce words according to our own personal likes, standards and idiolect. Imagine if we were all to feel like that, how unhappy the world would be.


Hugo Brady Brown

Alice1

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

I am beginning to think that people here are not interested in agreeing on what is the objectively and historically correct pronunciation of words, but in getting the world and his wife to pronounce words according to our own personal likes, standards and idiolect. Imagine if we were all to feel like that, how unhappy the world would be.


Hugo Brady Brown

The original poster, drumlover, asked us if there were pronounciations that annoyed us and we are telling him/her which ones we each dislike. Hokay?

FruitLover

DebDynamite wrote: »

Lurry instead of Lorry.

Not as bad as 'dunkey' (instead of 'donkey')

rich.d.berry wrote: »

Another one that bugs me is when people say height-th

Not as bad as 'troath'...

RichieC wrote: »

eyetalions..... some dubs say gold for goal.. and goaldy...

Also oiyord'n for iron

HugoBradyBrown

Richard wrote: »

There's also Magdalen - it's "Magdalen" for the order of nuns, but "Maudlin" for the Oxford college, isn't it?

And, to make it even more confusing, the Cambridge college of the same pronounces the word Magdalene! (Just over the bridge on the right, the one with the Pepys Library. And brains were neither here nor there for admissions in my time. I remember thrashing them on the river, while I was in St Johns, that hive of intellectual and musical activity! Ah, happy days! What exactly did they do in Magdalene, except cultivate their windowboxes over the river? Nobody ever wrote a book.)

Hugo Brady Brown

PaulKK

Full.Duck wrote: »

Thats the correct way to to pronounce them.

Boo - k

Not Buck.

No its not.

Do you say luke for look, two-k for took?

Its luck for look, buck for book, tuck for took, huck for hook.


Learn to speak people.

Paddy_Smith

PaulKK wrote: »

No its not.

Do you say luke for look, two-k for took?

Its luck for look, buck for book, tuck for took, huck for hook.


Learn to speak people.

There's certainly nothing wrong with them two pronunciations(Boo-k and Coo-k) where I'm from.

Pherekydes

PaulKK wrote: »

No its not.

Do you say luke for look, two-k for took?

Its luck for look, buck for book, tuck for took, huck for hook.


Learn to speak people.

Good stuff. Now do these:

Though
Bough
Cough
Lough
Tough

My point is that English doesn't have a consistent system for the pronunciation of vowels, combinations of vowels or consonants.

Yakuza

FruitLover wrote: »

Not as bad as 'dunkey' (instead of 'donkey')

"Dunkey" is an abomination, but here's the thing - pronounce "monkey"

HugoBradyBrown

Yakuza wrote: »

"Dunkey" is an abomination, but here's the thing - pronounce "monkey"

People of a certain age generally avoid that coy barbarism 'donkey' and always call the animal what it is called in the Bible, an ass. Before the first Easter, Jesus, we know, went into Jerusalem on an ass; if it was good enough for Jesus ....



Hugo Brady Brown

HugoBradyBrown

Wikipedia has an interesting article on the topic underlying this thread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography




Hugo Brady Brown

Achtung! Bono

Trevor Kent wrote: »

"Specific"

Its not bloody "PACIFIC" which I hear all the time, even on the telly.


EDIT: Just seen Charlietheminxx post the same above.

Have you got any 'Pacific titistics' to back that up?

Shivers26

Shivers26 wrote: »

Let me have husbag, I get fed up saying OH and we're not married yet.

At least I didn't say DP, DF, DH or similar

I'd never heard it before, i thought it might be some little funny joke and i was curious :pac:

Achtung! Bono

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

And, to make it even more confusing, the Cambridge college of the same pronounces the word Magdalene! (Just over the bridge on the right, the one with the Pepys Library. And brains were neither here nor there for admissions in my time. I remember thrashing them on the river, while I was in St Johns, that hive of intellectual and musical activity! Ah, happy days! What exactly did they do in Magdalene, except cultivate their windowboxes over the river? Nobody ever wrote a book.)

Hugo Brady Brown

Must be just me but why do i keep reading your posts in my head with the voice of Brian Sewell?