Proper Pronunciation or lah-dee-dah

Hamsterchops

dxhound2005 wrote: »

This is from an American song:

Oh, and she never gives out and she never gives in
She just changes her mind…

To give out, to break down, to fail, to become exhausted. Then in Hiberno English, to give out means to complain.

cdgalwegian

Apparently the country Chile is no longer pronounced "chilly", at least in the Irish meedjah. It's pronounced Chee-lay these days - as in how the Spanish actually pronounce it. It'll never catch on with the rest of us of course.

dxhound2005

It rhymes with Kylie. The sound is copied from the word Child.

cdgalwegian

"Enny-one for tennis?" or "Anny-one for tennis?". I think the proper pronounciation is the first one, and the second should be banned. I guess I'm a bit of a snob.

dxhound2005

ne1410is

Qrt

This is one that grinds my gears...issue

It's ish-oo, not iss-ee-you

RTÉ do it all the time

Kilometre too...

Quantum Erasure

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119631881#Comment_119631881

whew chile

cdgalwegian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119793722#Comment_119793722

Mine is Cork. It's not Coh-erk. Crunch, crunch.

There's only one thing worse in this world than a snob - and that's a wanna-be snob.

Except, I wonder. Every country has its own brand of anti-intellectualism, but I think it's pretty dreadful in Ireland. Are these meedja micro-snobbisms a form of anti-anti-intellectualism? Although they are annoying, are they - intentionally or otherwise - nudges? Well-intentioned but annoying nudges to raise the intellectual bar? I highly doubt it's a nanny-state conspiracy - more a middle-class aspirational meedja trend that sprouted in colleges and college-speak affectations.

dxhound2005

Tissue and kilometre (spelled/spelt kilometer in US English) have more than one standard pronunciation. As have thousands of other words. This is where widespread usage of different pronunciations are recognised by dictionaries, and pronunciation guides. Scone is probably the best known example. It is pointless for people to lay down the law and say their preferred version is the only correct version. Pronunciatons, definitions and spellings can evolve, sometimes with American versions gaining prominence in the UK and Ireland. Which is ironic when it provokes complaints, since it is often the version that went over to America hundreds of years ago coming back.

I notice a preference for American spellings coming into Boards. Just search for the words "favor" and "neighbor". Perhaps a result of devices "correcting" what people type. If this becomes prevalent enough it will be recognised as part of both US and British English. Railway station in British English usage has declined in the last 60 years, being largely replaced with Train station which gained prominence in America first. And of course if you search for "alot" on Boards or the internet, there are thousands of examples of this new word, which seems to be a product of the internet age. It can't be long before it joins "altogether" and "although" in dictionaries.

The one which I notice a lot is Crow Park. I know that it is due to natural speech, but I often thought the purists would give out more about it. They are not slow to jump on someone on the radio who says Westminister.

Badly Drunk Boy

The one which I notice a lot is Crow Park. I know that it is due to natural speech, but I often thought the purists would give out more about it. They are not slow to jump on someone on the radio who says Westminister.

Do you mean instead of 'Croke Park'? I can't say I've noticed that (and I'm sure I will now that you've mentioned it) but when I do, I'll probably turn into one of those purists. 😉

dxhound2005

Another one the purists complain about is "twenny". But could they count from twenty to twentynine out loud quickly, without making themselves stand out as being odd for pronouncing every T?

Brendan Bendar

Why do those assholes in RTE keep referring to ‘Quarter’ as ‘Qwawtur’

Tbe Financial reporter one is the biggest offender.

Also why does Donal Lenihan keep saying “He left him in” when it should be “He let him in” when describing rugby matches?

Boils my piss.

EchoIndia

Another very common Irish phraseology, usually in media interviews, is "I would have", as in "I would have gone to Dingle on holidays a lot when I was a child". "I went" would be more grammatically accurate.

New Home

Or even better, "I used to". Still, Hiberno-English is Hiberno-English.

TheRiverman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119801196#Comment_119801196

We also have "went" used incorrectly as in "He should have went" instead of " he should have gone". I hear football pundits saying it a lot, " he should have went for the far corner".

TheRiverman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/112750843#Comment_112750843

John Kilraine is still the definitive of it, in London now.

jojofizzio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119801344#Comment_119801344

Problem pronouncing his “r”s,that fella

jojofizzio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119794431#Comment_119794431

Or “Quark”(for Cork)…grinds my gears🤯🤯

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119801196#Comment_119801196

Grammatically they are both fine. The issue here is meaning, not grammar.

Most languages, including Irish, make a distinction between a past instant tense and a past continuous or habitual tense. English does not; it just has one past tense. In English "I went to Dingle" could mean that you went on one occasion or that you went regularly over a period of time; in Irish it's not possible to make this ambiguous statement, because you have to pick one or other of the past tenses.

This affects Hiberno-English, which militates strongly against not clarifying this ambiguity. Thus a speaker of Hiberno-English will nearly always add words to this sentence to clarify what is meant. But, because standard British English doesn't require any words to be added, there are no rules or customs about what words a speaker of standard British English would add here, so there are variety of equally acceptable formulations you can use here:

"I went to Dingle once" - single occasion, and it was some time ago.

"I went to Dingle lately" - single occasion, and it was recent.

"I used to go to Dingle . . . " - went on more than one occasion, but implication that I no longer go.

"I would have gone to Dingle . . . ." or "I would go to Dingle whenever . . ." - went on more than one occasion, and I am about to tell you something about how frequent those occasions were, or what kind of occasions they were.

"I have been going to Dingle . . ." - went on more than one occasion, and still go.

"I had been going to Dingle . . ." - went on more than one occasion, but these occasions were prior to an event which is itself in the past (and which I am about to mention).

Etc, etc. Grammatically they are all fine. Which one is appropriate to use depends on exactly what you're trying to say. But not using one of them, not resolving the ambiguity in the bare "I went to Dingle", while also grammatical, sounds unnatural, stilted, not idiomatic to a speaker of Hiberno-English.

Brendan Bendar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119801320#Comment_119801320

Ronnie Whelan, I hear you

If you want to run through the full gamut of mistakes such as that…….. VM co-comms are the folk you want.

All there……before half time!!

TheRiverman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119804174#Comment_119804174

Yes, a G. Armstrong comes to mind.

TheRiverman

From the past,remember Anne Doyle saying " sex yule" for sexual.

Allinall

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119796573#Comment_119796573

They're arseholes FFS!

An ass is a dunkey, and calling someone a dunkeyhole would be ridiculous.

Jeez.

New Home

Since you brought ut up,

1. Donkey, not dunkey
2. Ass = Arse (as in Bottom)

jojofizzio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119804279#Comment_119804279

😀A classic….must be the only person in the history of the world to pronounce it like that😀🤷‍♀️😀

Brendan Bendar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119804449#Comment_119804449

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119804280#Comment_119804280

D’Arcy thinks it’s a “dunkey”

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119804279#Comment_119804279

Brings a new meaning to "getting your Christmas box"

cdgalwegian

The Tubridy/RTE scandal has the nation rocked! Is it pronounced Renawlt, or Renoh? Or am I missing the essence of the issue?

Qrt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120836578#Comment_120836578

Renoh. It’s french like.

BattleCorp

My Mam says the following:

Tescoes

Aldis

but funny enough she doesn't say:

Supervalues

Lidls

Pherekydes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120838950#Comment_120838950

In the same vein: Arnotts, Easons, Marks & Spencers

Brendan Bendar

Hopefully this is the correct thread to air this issue.

When did this crack of pronouncing ‘news’ as ‘Nooze’ flair up.

Seems to have originated south of a line between around We ford and Clare.

Mainly in the Munster area.

Gaining traction in RTE now with noted protagonists Samantha Libreri, Dunphy, Creedon, Ballsy and most of the Traffic and travel females.

Where did this annoying trend spring from, I wonder?

FishOnABike

Speaking of news. The frequent pronunciation of issue as 'is ooo' it should have in 'ish' sound. Smilar issue with pronunciation of tissue.

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/issue_1

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/tissue?q=tissue

mrslancaster

Community pronounced as comm-oo-nity sounds all wrong to me..

cdgalwegian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120885370#Comment_120885370

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120885447#Comment_120885447

The "ish oos" for the thread are not about proper pronunciations per se (and how annoying they can be to hear), but, rather, about the use of correct pronunciation of (usually, but not necessarily) foreign words: Is the attempt at correct pronunciation preferable, or is it laughably snobbish?

Is proper pronunciation an embarrassing affectation that should be shunned, or encouraged? Is it immature to 'knock someone down to size' if they are just trying to use the proper pronunciation?

Having said that though, is criticizing a growing trend in mispronunciation also a form of snobbery - an attempt to prevent a 'dumbing down' of language? I think I do that all the time without really thinking about. I suppose it is a form of snobbery, in the sense of being a 'mild puritan' about language.

Thinking about it, the types of annoyance in these posts might fit better (or maybe might 'also fit') in the "Trivial things dat annoy you" thread (or something like that title). This one is about pronunciation snobbery. So, are these annoyances a case of being guilty of being "a 'mild puritan'" about language, and hence a bit snobbish, or simply mildly puritan?

Brendan Bendar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120885544#Comment_120885544

Yes you have made good points there , I see now this thread seems to home in on correct pronunciation of foreign words rather than mispronunciation of words used in our daily speech.

Apologies for dragging it slightly off track.

mrslancaster

Also hear so many politicians and media folk saying this when talking about pay rates:

Re-new-mer-ation instead of Ruh-myoo-nuh-ray-shn.

It was everywhere during the recent Tubridy and RTE story. Maybe the new DG will get it right…

Badly Drunk Boy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120885370#Comment_120885370

The news/nooze thing is American. A colleague of mine (in his early 40s) was talking about 'Doon' a while ago, and after a bit I had to ask if he meant the film 'Dune'. He said said that that the only way he had ever heard it pronounced but he's constantly watching American YouTube and Tik Tok clips. When I asked him how he pronounced 'sand-dunes', he said "Oh yeah!".

New Home

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120885573#Comment_120885573

That annoys me, too - re-numeration means re-numbering something; remuneration relates to money and pay.

dxhound2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120885954#Comment_120885954

The Americans got it from people who came to America from various other places. There was nobody speaking the English language in America back in the day. Some on them have kept the old ways (like that pronunciation of News), which should be a source of admiration from those who do not like change.

cdgalwegian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120885567#Comment_120885567

Arah, sometimes going a little off track points to interesting angles. It did bring home better the question of grammatical annoyances. People can be grammar police in terms of more than just strict grammar, because grammar is more linguistically wide-ranging than assumed; intonation and pauses etc can affect meaning implicitly, which grammar provides structure for.

My fresher angle then would be that people bring snobbiness to everyday pronunciation in ways that they might not even realize. In the guise of being duty-bound grammar police (of the more wide-ranging sort), snobbiness can be knowingly or unknowingly brought to bear. It's that which I am pointing out and questioning I suppose - for a bit of soul-searching about one's own potential snobbiness.

Brendan Bendar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120886030#Comment_120886030

Personally my opinion is it’s speech laziness.

Its a lot easier viz a viz mouth action to come up with ‘Nooze’ rather than ‘News’.

The words ‘News’ and ‘new’ seem to be the only ones to suffer this indignity.

dxhound2005

You would fit in well in 1938 upper class England.

"Strong criticism of the growth of slovenly speech in this country was made by Miss M.C. Cobby, the speech training mistress at Latymer School, Edmonton, when she addressed members of the City of London Vacation Course in England at Bedford College, Regent’s Park, yesterday.

“We endeavour daily,” she said, “to inculcate habits of cleanliness and good behaviour in our children, so why not teach them also to speak well. We do not want pedantic speakers who always go one better than the required standard of speech. Nor do we want the people who pride themselves in being colloquial and who say, ‘Joo-no-er?’ for ‘Do you know her?’ Both these types of speakers are offensive. As teachers, therefore, we must do our best to preserve the best features of the King’s English and to restrict the absorption of any element, whether from the drawing-room or from the gutter.”

Miss Cobby declared that Southerners were the laziest speakers in this country, and told the students that they had only to listen to the Cockney bus conductor to know this.

“It is terrible to think how slovenly we are becoming in our speech today,” she continued. Just listen to the people taking their tickets on a bus and you will hear them say ‘kew,’ instead of ‘thank you,’ and you hear people say ‘gimme’ instead of ‘give me.’

Miss Cobby described how a child in a junior class, when writing a composition recently, asked her teacher, “How do you spell ‘mayswell,’ please?” The teacher said that she did not know the word, and asked the child where she had heard it, to which the child replied, “We went to see Auntie on Sunday, and after tea Mum said, ‘Come on, we mayswell go home.’”

After years of experience, added Miss Cobby, she had come to the conclusion that they should not attempt to eradicate natural dialect. What they had to do was to make a child bilingual and teach him how to speak standard English as well as his own local dialect.

Mr. F. W. Chambers, who has been an inspector and head master of an elementary school, said that a good deal of inaccuracy in arithmetic among children arose from the fact that they could not concentrate for any length of time. He thought, therefore, that the type of arithmetic lesson where children were set to do something for half an hour on end was asking too much of the child."

Brendan Bendar

Ah no, don’t think so.. but I do think the famous,or maybe infamous, Mattie McGrath ‘loyal’ exchange with Adrian in the recent RTE business highlighted the need for better diction and less of the ‘seen’ and ‘done ‘ brigade getting traction.

One would think an experienced broadcaster say like Samantha Libreri would stop using ‘Nooze’ at least on air?

Likewise Ballsy on 240k pa.

Its laziness to a great extent of course which is why the true Dub will always go to the ‘Cavvery’ rather than the ‘Carvery’ for a meal and maybe a pint of ‘Calsberg’ ..lazy speech is the reason of course.

You don’t have to shape your tongue around those pesky Rs.

mrslancaster

I regularly hear media reports of 'voy-o-lence' and 'voy-o-lent' behaviour (rhymes with boy) 😳😳

mrslancaster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120889766#Comment_120889766

Not true. Every true Dub I know perfectly and correctly pronounces 'carvery'. I dont know where you got that absurd notion.

Brendan Bendar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120890069#Comment_120890069

Well done…well done… We must move in different circles…. Well done.