This one is an excellent take on the English language
by CJ | Apr 28, 2012 | Journal | 44 comments
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Wow! Thank you BCS, that was an entertaining listen 😀
I only speak two languages, English and bad English, but I clearly speak bad English better *grin*
This poem (or a version of it) made the rounds of my social media recently. It also led to a spirited discussion, between my best friend and me, concerning the correct pronunciation of the word “nomenclature.”
She won that debate. Then I made her laugh hard enough to spit her drink by declaring it was all just “pronounce-ification.” We’re silly like that.
Toxic Waste: any flavor of Kool-aid, laced with anything left at the bar after the convention is over, with the exception of beer, which doesn’t go well. It is also known as Blog, long before the web-log.
BlueCatShip, you’re right, I forgot r vs rr. This is another oddity of the spelling, as the double flap “rr” sound is written “rr” between vowels, but “r” at the start of a word, while the single flap “r” is written as a single “r” between vowels, and it never happens at the start of a word. They couldn’t go with the simpler “rr for double flap”, “r for single flap”, could they?
And, of course, the bits about spelling are mostly valid for all Spanish-speaking countries, but the phonetics has many variants, even in Spain. The falling of the intervocalic “d” in past participes (pronouncing “venido” as “venío”, or “cansado” as “cansao”) is widespread, for example. The “z” sound (from thin) is almost exclusively used in center, north and northeast Spain, and conflated with “s” everywhere else (inside and outside Spain). Etc, etc. etc.
Good point, Lektu. 🙂
Thanks, everyone! I had fun recording it, and I left in a couple of items where either I missed it and corrected myself, or where the pronunciation differs enough.
The one I really noticed was WIND and MIND. But “wind” is short-I for the or a wind, windy, and long-I for “to wind, wind up/down, winding.” Come to think of it, they got confused about “wound” too: to wind, wound, unwound (OW, AH-OOH) versus a wound (OOH), to wound, be wounded (OOH).
Both “either” and “neither” come out as “igh-dher, nigh-dher” or “ee-dher, nee-dher,” but they vary so much, even within a single dialect, it’s hard to tell. Both are listed as correct in American dictionaries. I think the long-I is typical for British English.
Ad of course the differences between US and UK pronunciation.
“I jumped into the water and clung desperately to the buoy” is ambiguous when spoken in the UK 🙂
I remember watching a US TV series when I was a lad. Something about a submarine exploring the oceans. I was forever perplexed wondering what a boo-ee was 🙂
I think the only time I heard the ‘boy’ pronunciation in the US was in the commercials for Lifebuoy soap,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifebuoy_%28soap%29. At the time I was too you to recognize the play on words. (Notice the young boy in the first picture in the Wikipedia article.)