Maybe not interesting and certainly rather embarrassing on my behalf, but I found out today that Python Lee Jackson was an actual band and not some kind of invented name for Rod Stewart due to contractual issues or whatever.
Via the (private) editing forum I post on: every British dictionary, and Google's UK English pronunciation guide (among others), reckons the second syllable of the word 'macaque' (as in the monkey) rhymes with 'park' in British English. So it's pronounced (in BrE) 'mack-ark' (with a non-rhotic 'r').
It's not just me and my editing colleagues who've literally never heard a British person say it any other way than rhyming with 'backpack' (with slightly different stress, true, but you know what I mean), is it? How is David Attenborough not the ultimate authority on this?
Right, I can 'see' that too, but have you ever actually heard anyone say it that way? Dictionaries (the main ones in the English-speaking world, at least) are supposed to be descriptive rather than prescriptive on matters like this. (I mean, they can be prescriptive if they want, but none of them are, generally speaking.)
An editor in Australia has now chimed in to say that the Macquarrie also lists the 'park' rhyme first (indicating the more common/preferred variant). Have any of our Australian correspondents ever heard this?
An editor in Australia has now chimed in to say that the Macquarrie also lists the 'park' rhyme first (indicating the more common/preferred variant). Have any of our Australian correspondents ever heard this?
Not today, Thursday actually, but I was chatting to a friend who holidayed in West Wales in the summer and he told me that the local train service was request-only at certain stations. You had to signal with your hand if you were waiting on a platform and wanted the train to stop or inform the guard before your destination if you wanted the train to stop and let you off.
Originally posted by Nocturnal SubmissionView Post
Not today, Thursday actually, but I was chatting to a friend who holidayed in West Wales in the summer and he told me that the local train service was request-only at certain stations. You had to signal with your hand if you were waiting on a platform and wanted the train to stop or inform the guard before your destination if you wanted the train to stop and let you off.
Right, I can 'see' that too, but have you ever actually heard anyone say it that way? Dictionaries (the main ones in the English-speaking world, at least) are supposed to be descriptive rather than prescriptive on matters like this. (I mean, they can be prescriptive if they want, but none of them are, generally speaking.)
An editor in Australia has now chimed in to say that the Macquarrie also lists the 'park' rhyme first (indicating the more common/preferred variant). Have any of our Australian correspondents ever heard this?
I don’t think I’ve ever heard an Australian say “macaque” in twenty-four years here.
I have a friend who is originally from Doncaster and very working class. When she went to Oxford university she assimilated so well that her accent is now very received pronunciation, much posher than mine. The only things that even vaguely give away her origins are that a) her accent slips slightly when she's drunk and b) she went too far and now says "parsta" instead of "pasta", which I've never heard anyone else say, not even certified aristocrats.
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