General Chat

Every word will amuse or offend some esoteric reader.

Oddly you never seem to hear the F word and other expletives mispronounced even in foreign tongues!
The British taught the world to swear properly!
:-D

Sir John Cheke (16 June 1514 – 13 September 1557) was an English classical scholar who wrote:

‘I am of this opinion that our own tung should be written cleane and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borowing of other tunges; wherein if we take not heed by tiim, ever borowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt‘.

(Apologies if you have read this piece before!) :-S

It is every free-born Englishman/woman's God given right to mis-pronounce foreign words/names as we wish! Mumbai? Beijing? Utter tosh. It's Bombay, Pekin.

'Our Ken' Bob? That's beyond me ;-) :-D

Ken, 'I'll file it under R' > R for Ron > Later Ron > Later on - no time/can't be bothered to deal with it :-D

wundrin if she means "Our Ken"?????

Island, I don't understand your post about filing under R. :-D

Sylvia, the mis-pronunciation of names annoys me too :-|

Who decided Romsey was 'Rumsey'?
Why did Raleigh (as in bikes and the explorer) become 'Rawleigh'?
As for Powell becoming 'Poll' - well I suppose if that's how you want to pronounce your name....

Butter etc the tt is replaced in Estuary English by a glottle stop eg he ain't got no bo'le. It is not wrong but some do find it annoying.
oi

Allan, it confused me for years.
It's pronunciation, but you pronounce the words.

Lots of words seem to have silent 'T's' these days! i.e.:- bu(tt)er! fi(tt)er etc. Drives me mad!!

As an aside - many years ago, a lady with an old fashioned tape recorder had a fascination with regional & foreign accents.

In our office comprising of about 100 employees, there were many who came from different parts of the UK & abroad. She took great pleasure in asking each one to read aloud one simple paragraph of about a dozen sentences which she recorded.

It was interesting & entertaining to listen to various pronunciations, which we all did frequently during lunch breaks. I often wondered whatever happened to her efforts.

Is the word ProNUNciation or ProNOUNciation :-S

Have you never filed anything under 'R' Ken?


Athaletes :-(

My pet hates are: temeratures, hospitauw, E Stanglia, later Ron. and haitch.

'Language should not stand between the writer/speaker & the reader/listener.'

'Congradulations' :-(

Mis-pronunciation of place names is annoying ....... every Canadian and British TV and radio stations are supposed to have pronunciation experts to help out ..... don't know about US.

Some local announcers drive me crazy with their variation of southern

South is said like "sowth", so they say "sowthern"

I think it should be "suthern"

Then there is Nanaimo, a city on Vancouver Island ................. pronounced "Nan-i-mo mis-pronounced continually (and not just by my m-i-l!)as Nan-a-i-mo


How about I-ran vs Eye-ran, I-raq vs Eye-raq.

got 'im by the jugular in east angular?

laboratory and nuclear mis-pronunciations drive me crazy

and I have heard them from British and Canadian people.

Americans only seem able to" nukelar"

I was educated at the age of 11 re the pronunciation of laboratory ...............

Our lovely elderly male French teacher had us reading out a translation in class, which had the word "laboratory" in it.

"No, No lab'ratory is where you go to the toilet!"

He was French, had been in England since the war, and had obvioulsy had to learn the correct pronunciation himself!