Pronunciations You'd Never Heard Before You Were An Adult

[sw2borshch]

The distinct tt in the middle is much easier with a British ending, like 'bettah' and 'buttah' than chasing it with the rhotic urr as Fuss suggests.

https://youtu.be/ndkFvXu1pCE

A classic example. Still strikes me as odd that he doesn't say 'burrah'. Probably because he knew he was going to be on the telly.

[Discordant Resonance]

Estuary English tends to insert an unnecessary "r" at the end of some words, "I sawr it" and Madame Tussaurds" being particularly grating examples.

[Jah Womble]

Oh.

(my second new entry for the day: Welsh first name 'Gruff'. So bloody obvious now it's been pointed out as well)

Yeah, pronounced like the Alas Smith & Jones comedian. (Who obviously spells it differently.)

[Fussbudget]

Tucson. Imagine my surprise etc.

[ursus arctos]

The Spanish missionaries who named it would be equally surprised

[scratchmonkey]

I learned yesterday that you pronounce the 't' in 'bergamot'.

[WOM]

Apparently I say 'utilitarian' wrong.

[Amor de Cosmos]

How do you say it?

[WOM]

I stress the YOU-tl-uh-tarian instead of you-TIL-uh-tarian.

Wait...no...other way around. I can't be arsed retyping it. Shit...now I'm not sure. L tells me I'm doing it wrong, though.

[Hot Pepsi]

There’s not much difference.

[Satchmo Distel]

Emigrating to the US means I have to second guess a lot of pronunciations, even of concepts I teach; but sometimes I'll explain respectfully that I'm sticking with what I know. Thus, for example, I always explain that I am pronouncing 'status' the British way because it would just sound clumsy and false if I tried to say it as "stattus" or even, ffs, "staddus". Infact I still don't understand how "state" can become "statt" when dropping the 'e' and adding 'us'. And how can 'data' be 'dadda'?*

*Although, the more I think about it, Americans don't quite pronounce 'tt' as 'dd'; it's somewhere in between; a consonant sound they've invented that straddles two different letters but hits neither exactly.

[tee rex]

There was a news item on the band Status Quo recently and the Kiwi reporter said "stattus". I've heard that pronunciation quite often in everyday contexts (law etc), but never for the band's name. It sounded far more jarring.

[ooh aah]

I mispronounced 'pyrrhic' until I was corrected by a mature student in a seminar at uni. James Dean Bradfield was to blame.

[Various Artist]

Tucson. Imagine my surprise etc.

I think I've only ever heard it said "TOOkson" – as in the 'oo' from boot as opposed to book. Is that correct/the norm?

[ad hoc]

No. It's two-son (where the Son is pronounced like the Spurs player rather than male offspring. The c is silent)

[ad hoc]

Have neither of you heard "Get Back"?

[Patrick Thistle]

Apparently I say 'utilitarian' wrong.

I like to insert a random pasue into words like that along the lines of how the creepy guy in South Park who runs the Planetarium pronounces it as Planet Arium.

Utilit. Arian.

There is an interesting thing in Wenglish because in Welsh the stress is often on the third syllable of a word and sometimes you hear that same stress in English words if people have a strong Welsh accent. Typically I can't remember what word I heard someone say recently that made me think of this.

[Patrick Thistle]

No. It's two-son (where the Son is pronounced like the Spurs player rather than male offspring. The c is silent)

It always "sounds French" to me. Unlike Des Moines, which sounds like a div 2 one-team stalwart soccer player from the seventies.

[Various Artist]

No. It's two-son (where the Son is pronounced like the Spurs player rather than male offspring. The c is silent)

Ahh, thanks for that! I was actually going to say that my knowledge is mainly based on listening to Get Back, yet I'd clearly never picked up on how the 'c' isn't said.

Edit: That is, at first sight it looks like "TUCK-son". So I guess my takeaway from hearing it was that the vowel sound was distinctly different, and this overrode any secondary considerations about the consonant sounds also being (more subtly) different.

[San Bernardhinault]

Two asides

- Tucson is a great little city. I always love visiting. It sprawls for miles but is in a lovely desert setting of saguaro cactuses, with mountain ranges on all sides, a quite charming little downtown.

- French named US cities are an absolute utter minefield that I still get wrong. I am now comfortable with Boise (boyzee) and Des Moines (D'moyne). I know Baton Rouge is actually close-ish to the way the French would say it. For the longest time I wanted St Louis to be St Louie not St Lewis - as a kid I remember reading a book about Lindbergh and his plane was always the Spirit of St Louie to me and even though I know better I still struggle. Then there are places like Terre Haute and Coeur D'Alene where I really find myself at a loss despite having heard Americans say them on any number of occasions.

[Nocturnal Submission]

I wanted St Louis to be St Louie not St Lewis

I thought it was.

[San Bernardhinault]

As I said, it's a minefield. I thought I was confident that it was St Lewis, but now I'm doubting myself again.

[ad hoc]

It is Saint Lewis

[ursus arctos]

Unless you are a Judy Garland impersonator

[San Bernardhinault]

It's a minefield!