Wheel of Fortune THIS | Page 3 | Golden Skate

Wheel of Fortune THIS

Joined
Aug 16, 2009
I like to say sub-tile.

I think that's how it was probably pronounced in Shakespeare's time. It's from French, I think, and they definitely pronounced the /b/. The Brits tended to swallow consonants over time. Remember how Beauchamps became "Beetcham" and Cholmondely became "Chumley"? Or how Ralph Fiennes' name is pronounced "Rafe Fynes"? Or how Worcestershire became "Woostersheer"? Most of us Americans and Canadians think we're speaking English but really, we couldn't possibly.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
In our cataloguing of the ins and outs of English pronunciation, I've just been reminded that many Americans (can't vouch for anyone else in the English-speaking world) do not pronounce the g in strength. They say "strenth." I just listened to Jennifer Hudson say it that way on an advertisement. If they were told to pronounce the word clearly for a contest, this is how they would pronounce it. There are other people who say "heighth," because they echo the construction of "length" and "width." Cathy Rigby used to pronounce it that way right on international TV, in the Olympics.
 

Scrufflet

Final Flight
Joined
Mar 1, 2010
In our cataloguing of the ins and outs of English pronunciation, I've just been reminded that many Americans (can't vouch for anyone else in the English-speaking world) do not pronounce the g in strength. They say "strenth." I just listened to Jennifer Hudson say it that way on an advertisement. If they were told to pronounce the word clearly for a contest, this is how they would pronounce it. There are other people who say "heighth," because they echo the construction of "length" and "width." Cathy Rigby used to pronounce it that way right on international TV, in the Olympics.

Re "strenth". I've heard Jennifer Hudson say "shtrenth" and "ek-shtream-lee" for "extremely". I do not know why that drives me bonkers. I can handle such things if they are considered normal pronunciation but when it's sloppiness (my husband's theory), I get annoyed. Odd, I noticed that Justin Bieber started doing the "sh" thing too; he was hanging out with California rappers at the time and changing how he spoke. He is an Ontario boy after all! A friend told me that this whole language/pronunciation thing is a sign of age. Anyone over 50 hates how the young speak. Apparently this has often been the case. A friend who was a history teacher says that the ancient Romans complained that the young were ruining the language. I keep telling myself that the language is evolving to suit the needs of those using it but I must say that every time I hear someone on radio or tv using "like" every 4th word (Kelly Clarkson or Taylor Swift are really bad with this), I have to turn the sound off. We have a really good CBC radio host, Jian Ghomeshi, who interviewed Clarkson last year and was deluged with feedback from listeners who said that they counted the number of times that she said like and stopped counting after 140! Me, I turned the radio off. Curmudgeonette! Get her on WOF. "Like seven like swans a-swimmin(g), like?" Hee hee.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
You mean a-schwimmin'....

Frustrating, yes. Although, in many ways the elasticity of English is one of its strengths. We add vocabulary from everywhere, making it one of the most vocabulary-rich languages in the world. (It may even be the richest; I haven't researched that.) Also, look at how many countries use English as a primary or major language (including India, where it's pretty much the lingua franca). And every area has a different way of pronouncing it, different vocabulary (official vocabulary, mind you, not slang), and different idioms. I guess this shows how adaptable English is.

Spanish is very varied in its way, too. I once helped on a Spanish textbook for English-speaking students, and I was astounded to watch how many arguments broke out over the position of the adverb in a sentence, or the use of particular vocabulary words. This is because in the Western hemisphere, Castilian Spanish from Spain no longer has primacy, and there isn't any other country with enough clout to be the "main" way of speaking Spanish. Argentina won't follow Mexico, and vice versa. Chile and Bolivia won't give way to Venezuela. Understandable when you realize that each of these countries is proud of its own standing and culture. I wonder whether more linguistically concentrated and homogeneous countries, such as Finland, Cuba, and the Koreas, have such disputes.

I'm working on a lesson on Macbeth currently, and I realized that when I studied it in high school, I, my classmates, and my teacher all pronounced Glamis incorrectly. (Remember "Hail, Macbeth, Thane of Glamis"?) We all said it the way it looks, "Glam-mis," in two syllables. Well, in Scotland and England they pronounce it "Glahms." I'm putting this in our lesson.

I have to say, I sometimes use "like" in a sentence to make things sound more casual or less precise. I hope I don't use it excessively. I think I use "um" all over the place, though.
 

Tonichelle

Idita-Rock-n-Roll
Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 27, 2003
"axe" for "ask" drives me batty

as does "supposibly" and "pacific" instead of "supposedly" and "specific"
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
I'm fascinated by "axe." I can't for the life of me figure out how it arose.

"Supposibly' and "pacific" one can understand as natural mispronunciations by people who don't do a lot of advanced reading. "Supposibly" parallels the construction of other "able" and "ible" suffixes like "impossibly," and "specific" is just hard to pronounce. But "axe"? Especially since it's typically African-American, not just a mispronunciation that occurs generally or even regionally. Fascinating.

One that used to bother me a lot is "irregardless," which has two negative elements tacked onto it. Do two negatives make a positive? Of course, that's not an error one is likely to find on Wheel of Fortune, because if you're reading the word aloud, you're not going to add an entire prefix that isn't represented by the letters.

In real life, the error I really have to bite my tongue about so as not to correct people (it's so rude to correct other adults) is using the nominative pronoun after a preposition--"with John and I." You wouldn't say "with I," so why say "with John and I"? And yet people do it all the time, even on national television. I listened to Steven Spielberg use that construction last night on TCM, in an otherwise wonderful program on his collaboration with composer John Williams. Dang, I'm presumptuous. I want to correct Steven Spielberg's grammar. I couldn't make five seconds of narrative that would stand comparison with his, and I want to correct him...shame on me. I've been an editor for too long.

Scrufflet, is that a common error in Canada as well, or is it just an American one?
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
I'm working on a lesson on Macbeth currently, and I realized that when I studied it in high school, I, my classmates, and my teacher all pronounced Glamis incorrectly. (Remember "Hail, Macbeth, Thane of Glamis"?) We all said it the way it looks, "Glam-mis," in two syllables. Well, in Scotland and England they pronounce it "Glahms." I'm putting this in our lesson.

Cool! I suppose it makes a difference in getting the meter right.

Speaking of “ng,” what about that sound at the beginning of words? (For initial gn, the g is always silent in English, right? Gnome. Although…there once was a wildebeest puppet character on the Howdie Doodie show named Paddle the Gnu, where the G had a separate syllable. Paddle the Gnu lived in the town of Early, Tibet. We kids never understood why that cracked our parents up. And why wouldn’t Bullwinkle the Moose go to college at Wazzamatta U.? ;) )

The initial Ng is common in many African and Pacific Island languages. It is more sub–tile in Vietnamese, where the most common name is Nguyen. The best that Americans can do when trying to pronounce this name is just to ignore the whole issue and say “Win.”)

Some linguists claim that every language retains a vestige of the initial glottal stop in a slight tightening of the throat muscles at the beginning of certain words. This is offered as evidence that all modern spoken languages have a single common African source.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
In real life, the error I really have to bite my tongue about so as not to correct people (it's so rude to correct other adults) is using the nominative pronoun after a preposition--"with John and I." You wouldn't say "with I," so why say "with John and I"? And yet people do it all the time, even on national television.

ikr. :laugh: I think it's because our first grade teachers drummed into us that we should say "John and I went to the store," not "Me'n John."

Then there is the opposite mistake, saying "It's me" instead of "It is I." "It is I" sounds so pedantic that most people would rather make a deliberate grammatical error than come off like a pompous stuffed shirt. ;)
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
About "axe," I am pretty sure that this pronunciation is just what linguists call African American Vernacular English. This is the surviving remnant of the creole or pidgin language of slaves brought to the American South and Caribbean region in past centuries, where the people spoke all kinds of different African languages and tried to communicate as best they could with a few words of English and French.

If you look at the first attempts by American writers of the eighteenth century – or even as late as Mark Twain – to write “slave talk” phonetically in English, it is practically indecipherable to modern readers of English.

Edited to add. BTW, I just noticed that "English" is another word like Long-Gyland where the G does double duty. :)
 

Dee4707

Ice Is Slippery - Alexie Yagudin
Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 28, 2003
Country
United-States
About "axe," I am pretty sure that this pronunciation is just what linguists call African American Vernacular English.

Thanks for the explanation, I often wondered about it too, since I think, "axe" is harder to say than "ask."

It's funny in the Midwest we say ruff for roof, dowel for doll and clouset for closet.
 

Scrufflet

Final Flight
Joined
Mar 1, 2010
I'm fascinated by "axe." I can't for the life of me figure out how it arose.

"Supposibly' and "pacific" one can understand as natural mispronunciations by people who don't do a lot of advanced reading. "Supposibly" parallels the construction of other "able" and "ible" suffixes like "impossibly," and "specific" is just hard to pronounce. But "axe"? Especially since it's typically African-American, not just a mispronunciation that occurs generally or even regionally. Fascinating.

One that used to bother me a lot is "irregardless," which has two negative elements tacked onto it. Do two negatives make a positive? Of course, that's not an error one is likely to find on Wheel of Fortune, because if you're reading the word aloud, you're not going to add an entire prefix that isn't represented by the letters.

In real life, the error I really have to bite my tongue about so as not to correct people (it's so rude to correct other adults) is using the nominative pronoun after a preposition--"with John and I." You wouldn't say "with I," so why say "with John and I"? And yet people do it all the time, even on national television. I listened to Steven Spielberg use that construction last night on TCM, in an otherwise wonderful program on his collaboration with composer John Williams. Dang, I'm presumptuous. I want to correct Steven Spielberg's grammar. I couldn't make five seconds of narrative that would stand comparison with his, and I want to correct him...shame on me. I've been an editor for too long.

Scrufflet, is that a common error in Canada as well, or is it just an American one?

I am jumping up and down shouting, "Oh yes, someone else gets it"! Indeed, this is becoming a Canadian error! The grammar these days on CBC is horrible. It used to be the one place where you could rely on decent grammar and pronunciation! People do say "with John and I" instead of "John and me", whichis correct. One also hears "with myself" a lot. Come shop "with myself". Seriously? My mother used to yell at us if we said "irregardless" so of course we used to do it periodically just to annoy. But we knew it was incorrect! And I always hear "there is" when it should be "there are".
Because I am in Toronto, a very international place, I am so used to many different accents and levels of language skill. I worked at a college with new Canadians and was surprised to find that their English was superior to those born here. Now that really ticked me off.
A humourous aside: one day we were listening to a garden show on CBC and caller complained that squirrels has "desecrated" her flower bed. What could she do? A long silence. The expert suggested that she might have to "reconsecrate" her garden. We presume she meant "decimate".
By the way, Chris and all, how does one pronounce "coyote"? I've always said "keye-oh-tea" because it flows.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
OK, since we are venting pet peeves, here's mine. :) Some people seem to think that "gonna" is a word. It's all over the Internet. "Mao Asada is gonna win Four Continents." No, no, no; she is going to win. :laugh:

But at least that's better than "gwine." As in the song Camptown Races, "Gwine to run all night! Gwine to run all day!"

Then there is "fixing" meaning intending or preparing to do something. I am fixing to get up and cook (pronounced "I am fittin to git up an cook.") :yes:
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
And I always hear "there is" when it should be "there are"

:yes: And so many people say "this data is" for "these data are" that it hardly seems wrong any more.

But at least young people nowadays have learned to say DAY-TA instead of DATTA.

I don't know exactly why, but when computers first came on the scene almost all computer programmers and software engineers pronounced this word wrong. It was sort of like an inner circle. If you said (correctly) DAY-TA, then you weren't a member of the club.

The only thing that saved us was Star Trek. On the Next Generation there was a character name Data, so the "next generation" of kids knew how to pronounce it. :laugh: (I always thought it was cool that Data's evil twin was named Lore.)
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
I loved the cleverness of Data's and Lore's also! Yeah, sometimes it sounds so off to say the data "are," though technically data is plural—datum is the original Latin singular. I think it's second declension neuter, if that means anything to anyone here. Four years of Latin...sometimes it comes in handy. The Romans were very punctilious about word endings. Five different declensions of words, each with six singular and six plural cases. You could go out of your mind chasing a noun around a sentence.

That's cool, that "fixing" is pronounced "fitting," because it marks it as a Southern expression. That's where the pronunciations "bidness" and "wadn't" for "business" and "wasn't" originate, I believe. Another phonetic variation that I simply can't explain. At least the Brooklyn/New Jersey plural "youse' (as in "youse guys") seems logical (add an s to make a plural) and also has a historical justification—it tracks back to certain parts of Ireland, I believe.

Scrufflet, that is hysterical about decimate/desecrate, and the garden expert's clever response about reconsecrating the garden.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
The one that bothers me is "should of." That's what "should have" often sounds like, so there are people who write it that way.
 

CoyoteChris

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 4, 2004
Toni is correct....KI (hard I) - "O" hard O- Tea....those that say the word KI-oat have a bad opinion of this sacred animal......
I am jumping up and down shouting, "Oh yes, someone else gets it"! Indeed, this is becoming a Canadian error! The grammar these days on CBC is horrible. It used to be the one place where you could rely on decent grammar and pronunciation! People do say "with John and I" instead of "John and me", whichis correct. One also hears "with myself" a lot. Come shop "with myself". Seriously? My mother used to yell at us if we said "irregardless" so of course we used to do it periodically just to annoy. But we knew it was incorrect! And I always hear "there is" when it should be "there are".
Because I am in Toronto, a very international place, I am so used to many different accents and levels of language skill. I worked at a college with new Canadians and was surprised to find that their English was superior to those born here. Now that really ticked me off.
A humourous aside: one day we were listening to a garden show on CBC and caller complained that squirrels has "desecrated" her flower bed. What could she do? A long silence. The expert suggested that she might have to "reconsecrate" her garden. We presume she meant "decimate".
By the way, Chris and all, how does one pronounce "coyote"? I've always said "keye-oh-tea" because it flows.
 
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