Words You Used to Pronounce The Way It's Spelled!

water_bear88

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 7:47 am

zaq wrote:

Is it a railroad founded in REDing PA or an educational kids’ show like REEDing Rainbow?

If it's the Monopoly space, I believe it's the former. (All the railroads in the game are or were real at some point.)

cbsp

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 8:10 am

zaq wrote:

Doolseh deh lehcheh it is. Or was. I finished it last night. Now it’s dulce de gone.

Thanks for the "dulce de gone" line. And thanks for confirming my pronunciation of "dulce" - my foodie relatives kept correcting it to "dulche" so I deferred to their supposedly greater knowledge...

PinkFridge

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 8:38 am

water_bear88 wrote:

I have a running friendly disagreement with dh about how "gif" should be pronounced. He's on the side that says it started as an acronym, the g of which is for "graphics", and should be hard. I'm on the side that says g is soft before e or I and acronyms are pronounced phonetically, rather than according to the pronunciation of their constituent words. I'm curious to see if one eventually supersedes the other as standard pronunciation.

I would say hard g because of the acronym. So many other exceptions. They prove the rule, right? Whatever that means.

Last edited by PinkFridge on Mon, Nov 13 2017, 8:42 am; edited 1 time in total

observer

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 8:47 am

youngishbear wrote:

I should do a spin-off. How about those times when you do pronounce a word correctly and no one knows what you mean until you spell it?

Genre, for example.

I have never had that. I guess it depends on what kind of people you hang around.

zaq

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 9:07 am

cbsp wrote:

Thanks for the "dulce de gone" line. And thanks for confirming my pronunciation of "dulce" - my foodie relatives kept correcting it to "dulche" so I deferred to their supposedly greater knowledge...

Maybe they mean doolche de less...the Italian low calorie version.

zaq

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 9:14 am

observer wrote:

I have never had that. I guess it depends on what kind of people you hang around.

Oh, I have. Not often, but every so often. Pronounced offen.

And that was a rather condescending post on your part. What “kind of people” are all the people here who are sharing their hilarious experiences with the inexplicable vagaries of the English language? If you read the word in your mind as picture-skew, why do you assume you would recognize it when you hear it as pictur-esk?

InnerMe

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 9:35 am

zaq wrote:

This. Also found it condescending.
We're the "kind of people" who are not embarrassed to admit our ignorance in exchange for knowledge. We're the "kind of people" who can laugh at ourselves and have some fun and learn new things. Come join us! We are a fun crowd!

zaq

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 10:41 am

InnerMe wrote:

And Zaq you are hysterical!
Is there also Dulce de more? t.

Ah, you must mean Dulce de Amor ( Doolche d’Amoreh en italiano). That’s when you’re so crazy in love everything tastes like caramels.

But stay away from Doolche de Letch, which is when a stranger in a big car offers you candy and a ride.

youngishbear

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 11:46 am

zaq wrote:

Zaq, your name rhymes with crack, right?

gamanit

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 12:25 pm

allthingsblue wrote:

Until today, I still sometimes mentally pronounce recipe as "re-sype" (rhymes with type.)

That reminds me of how confused I used to be when in a book a woman would ask another woman for the "receipt" for a certain food... until I realized that "receipt" used to be used to mean "recipe".

Last edited by gamanit on Mon, Nov 13 2017, 12:28 pm; edited 1 time in total

Fox

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 12:25 pm

zaq wrote:

As a French speaker, you’re allowed. It’s when an English speaker says neesh that I cringe. It comes off utterly phony, like an American requesting the honOUr of your presence at the closing of colOUr war at the local community centRE.

We ‘murricans are plain honest folk who go for plain honest speech and plain honest spellin’ without any fancy foofaraw and flummetyspike like them hifalutin’ limeys and frenchies.

I get so flustered by French words that I just avoid them at all costs, though perhaps I simply feel guilty for goofing around in high school French class with my best friend -- who ended up marrying a French Canadian. I can't bring myself to say nitch, but I agree that neesh sounds pretentious. And what the heck am I supposed to do with sans, French for "without" -- as in, "meatloaf sans onions." Do I pronounce it sahn at the back of my throat or do I say sans (rhyming with fans). I usually give up and pronounce it without.

I've never heard cache pronounced any way but cash -- it's a pretty common word in computers.

But I think it's really the Brits who are out to get us. They just do it on purpose! In addition to the ones already mentioned, proper names are an obstacle course: Chalmondeley is Chumley. Althorp is Awltrup. Magdalen is Maudlin. Cowper is Cooper. Most unfair.

makehappy

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 1:06 pm

gamanit wrote:

That reminds me of how confused I used to be when in a book a woman would ask another woman for the "receipt" for a certain food... until I realized that "receipt" used to be used to mean "recipe".

Om I was going crazy how in Hebrew they use the word mersham for a recipe. But mersham is what you get from a doctor to go to the pharmacy with!!!
I guess its the same in English according to what you write above

LittleDucky

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 1:51 pm

Reading This thread with great interest. some of these words I have heard pronounced differently depending on use. Like Awrange vs Orange. Or vaas (like paws) vs Vase (like maze). Fancier vase would be a "vaas" while a cheap or plainer one would be a vase. Or color Orange and fruit is Awrange.

But the neesh vs nitch debate- I have heard well educated college graduates use both.
But maybe it is dependent on where you are from? Did anyone else here take the quiz that made the rounds a few years ago that a college created that figured out where you grew up depending on if you thought it is soda vs pop, highway vs freeway...

zaq

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 2:13 pm

I still think there is a verb “to misle” which means to deceive, hiding somewhere in a deep itchy niche of a byway by the highway of the English language, masquerading as Yiddish maybe. He deceived me with a story: Er hot mir ge”misled” mit a meiseleh. Note the subtle wordplay of “misle” and “meiseh”. Yeah, yeah, that’s it! In fact, uh, it’s a Yiddishism that hasn’t yet been seen in print often enough to be included in the current edition of any dictionary but will be. In fact, uh, I coined the term. Yeah, that’s it! In fact, uh...

youngishbear

Mon, Nov 13 2017, 3:18 pm

zaq wrote:

Speaking of uh, does your choice of uh, erm, um, or er depend on geographic origin?