Pronunciation Pricks (5 Viewers)

[SONYMEGADRIVE]

i find a lot of people should just stop talking altogether

 

[Froog]

when i lived in a town in cork, if someone said "i'm going to town" people would ask "town town?" which would mean cork city. funny as hell.

 

[jane]

I feel sorta like I'm stealing Nigglybits's thunder here, but:

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Right, before you all jump at once, I'm aware that we Yanks say things like Tooos-day and not Chews-day (but WHATEVER, like), I'm talking not about different legitimate pronunciations (which both of those are), or which country's form of English is superior. That's not the issue here.

The issue, which I originally brought up on the football forum (but really, me? on the football board?) is that yiz have got yourself not just an Italian manager, but a serious pronunciation problem.

Yer wans on the wireless were butchering the fuck out of his name, and it sounded more like a fucking Dolmio ad than a news broadcast. It's perfectly acceptable, so long as you get the basic sounds right, to pronounce foreign words in your own accent. Pat Kenny made Trapattoni sound like "I wanta to sucka your bloooda".

There is a happy medium that most people find when pronouncing names and words that are from another language, but why is this so different? Is it the thrill of having yer man from Father Ted as the football manager? Like, if I am IN Italy and SPEAKING to an ITALIAN IN ITALIAN, I will give my name its proper pronunciation. Otherwise, I just get the vowel sounds right and say it like a normal person. It doesn't need to be waved around like a poncey silk scarf.

Unless you are actually bilingual, there's kinda no point. Like, Lara Marlowe can get away with it because she is genuinely conversant in proper French. Pat Kenny, not so much. Anne Doyle, definitely not.

Is this hurting anyone else's brain?

PS: I would, though, take all the butchering of foreign names on earth if people would fucking realise that there is no 'r' in Chicago.

The way to talk to foreigners is to speak more loudly in English.
Fact.

 

[nlgbbbblth]

another one that bugs me

'What about the XYZ hostel?'

'The XYZ hostel? No way'

'I know it's basic but......'

'Hold on, there's basic and there's basic'

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

[snakybus]

another one that bugs me

'What about the XYZ hostel?'

'The XYZ hostel? No way'

'I know it's basic but......'

'Hold on, there's basic and there's basic'

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Is this something to do with programming on a Commodore 64?

 

[Wilbert]

I hate when I mispronounce something out of ignorance/by accident and some smug prick corrects me and it completely destroys the point I was trying to make and I get really embarrassed.

yeah.

Fixed that for you.

Only kidding, I totally agree.

I'm not sure which is worse; people mangling the english language through ignorance/accident or the goddamned self-appointed Grammar Police!

 

[F. Fred Palakon]

as long as no-one ever says ciao I don't mind

I do this all the time. It's a cunt of a thing because basically any loan-words from Italian are gonna make you sound like a right tool.

There might have been a thread about this before: people who can't say goodbye on the phone properly, and who, instead of saying 'Bye!' and hanging up, say 'Bye byebyebye byebye bye byebye' ever-diminishingly.

I caught myself the other day saying this in Italia ('Ciao, ciaociaociao, ciaociao') which basically means I should be taken out and shot in the next few days.

 

[egg_]

What does going out out mean? Never heard that one before.

Going out dancing as opposed to just going to the pub. That's the way I used to use if, back when I used to go out (and out out)

 

[Pedronimus]

Well in anyways, lets hope aul Rigatoni can lead The Lads to glory. The country could do with a lift, wha?

We're definitely going to have another Celtic Tiger with Traps. Sure didn't Jack Charlton inspire the first one.

 

[timbot]

Its all about the Th pronounced as a T thing.

But hey, I don't lose sleep over it. I'm from Scotland so I suppose we have our whole way of saying things different over there as well, in fact even I have trouble understanding some of my fellow Scots.

Yeah, I guess I just think it is a bit reductive to assume that there is one "correct" way to pronounce all words (the Queen's English). Ireland is famous for the number of accents in such a small country and I love the diversity of pronunciation. I would happily live with a few mangled words to promote it.

 

[Lolo]

fucking bbc newsreaders and presenters with their fucking 'sikth'.

It's not just people on the telly/ radio, posh English people in general do this. And they say "snt" instead of saint. "Is that near Snt Pauls?"

I've got used to it.

But I got into a big argument with an ex-colleague in London who "corrected" me for saying "haitch" instead of "aitch". It is a specifically Irish thing to pronounce the 8th letter of the alphabet in this way, but I refuse to bow to peer pressure and drop the, em, haitch.

 

[jane]

Yeah, I guess I just think it is a bit reductive to assume that there is one "correct" way to pronounce all words (the Queen's English). Ireland is famous for the number of accents in such a small country and I love the diversity of pronunciation. I would happily live with a few mangled words to promote it.

That I love. My problem is the pretentious mispronunciation, the forced way people say shit just to sound like they know stuff. Maybe it makes me a little sad that the forcedness makes it sound like they don't value the way they speak themselves.

The gazillions of dialects and accents is great. We're not just losing minority languages at a rapid rate, we're losing regional accents. Part of that is from marrying people from further away, and from travelling more, and it's not like they can be kept in the way a language can be maintained, but it's fantastic to hear really localised accents.

There was an amazing progamme on a year ago or so where they looked into old accents, and how much *more* distinctive they used to be before people were as mobile as they became after WWII started.

They'd found this German archive that had been compiled during WWI, where they recorded the speech patterns of thousands of prisoners of war, and then they tracked down their families and played the recordings for them -- it was amazing. Most of the families were moved to tears, especially where one or more of the surviving members remembered the person speaking.

Absolutely crazy cool ways of saying stuff. Like parts of southern England where 'father' was pronounced 'fay-thur'. Incredible stuff, and pronunciations you just never knew existed. I'd say the social anthropologists who went around county Clare in the 1930s captured some equally interesting ones -- I keep meaning to look into whether those are still available.

I think partly because I love diversity of accents that it makes me feel awkward to hear people trying to speak unnaturally.

One word that is always enjoyable to the ear is the chim-bleee. Chimney sounds boring in comparison.

 

[IFF]

The way to talk to foreigners is to speak more loudly in English.
Fact.

people do that to me and i'm not a foreigner, i just have speech problems

i do have pronounciation problems since a young age. i can't pronounce H's and other such stuff

 

[shidheat]

fucking bbc newsreaders and presenters with their fucking 'sikth'.

yeah. what the fuck is that about?

 

[evil bandit]

The worst is when people say Dockerty instead of Doherty. Really pisses the fuck pout of me.

A new thing I've noticed creeping in now is people saying Dough-her-ty instead of Doherty

Gallacker instead of Gallagher grinds my gear as well.

 

[Anarcho Munk]

The worst is when people say Dockerty instead of Doherty. Really pisses the fuck pout of me.

Oh god what's worst is when you get the auld wans and fellas pronouncing it


"Dah-HOR-tay"


I had a history teacher for a whole year who said it that way. With two Doherty's on the roll call list, it was not a happy class.

 

[flashback]

Ah here. Pot, meet Mr Kettle.

In fairness like, as soon as I open my mouth, someone says "Oh, you've got a lovely BRRRROOOOOGUE".
And, I'm thinking, brog is a shoe. But, you know, I'll let that one slide.

SO SO, do you speak GAAAYYYYLick?
Em. Like, Irish? No. Not really. D3 in the leaving cert. Shite really.

Ah but, like, what about GAAAAAAAAAAAYlick?
Yeah, no, so, ehh, Irish, Gaeilge, Irish. You know. Spanish, Espanol. Different languages and all that.

Yeah, but do you speak it? How do you pronounce it again?
Irish. No, not really. Shit really.

Irish??? But, that's just english with an accent!!
No. So... thats, jesus, thats.. its... GAYLICK.


OOOHHH, I see. Wow! Thats TOTALLY AWESOME!!! Do you speak it?

Yeah. Fluent gaylick.
AWESOME!!

Yeah. Nice tits by the way.

 

[jane]

Oh man, I think I'd resort to flash cards and pointing, anything not to talk.

Do people then try to mimic you and end up making you want to hurt them in the face?

I went to this chiropractor a few times when I was in Maryland a couple of years ago, some frat boy dickhead who made Bill O'Reilly seem like Noam Chomsky, and who thought my mixed-up accent (it definitely sounds like a hybrid, and may well be irritating to the ear) was the most amusing thing ever.

He THEN decided to tell me all about his trip to Ireland, and how he stayed in an 8000 year old castle and that while in Ireland, he learned to speak with an 'Irish accent', and he insisted on having EVERY conversation with me, INCLUDING ones about my chiropractic treatment in this fucking awful Lucky Charms accent.

I was polite at first, but then I had to ask him to stop doing it.

It just made me worry about the millions of people in the US who get that shit all the time, and worse, since they don't have the in-country advantage of being American as well. I reckon coming across some O'Reilly Licker would make a person worry that if you criticised them, they'd call INS on you.

 

[Janer]

this place is predominately middle class.

This is most def true.