An interesting thing I didn't know until today

[1974ddr]

Ooo! Please tell me Ace Kefford is on it.

Edit: The Move are so that's close enough I guess.

Roy Wood, Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan, anyway

[Sporting]

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.

[Patrick Thistle]

The height of the internal ceilings determine whether a house is actually classed as a cottage.

[Sits]

Don't leave us hanging, what are the criteria?

[Patrick Thistle]

I don't know. All I know is one of my colleagues lives in a terraced house that's classed as a cottage.

[Sam]

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?

[ad hoc]

No, Im with you. I've never heard anyone say M'cark

[TonTon]

No-one has ever said it.

[Patrick Thistle]

I could see it being like barth and grarss - pronounced in that 1940s BBC voice. Hyacinth Bucket would say "oh, look a mackark"

[Sam]

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?

[Jah Womble]

No, Im with you. I've never heard anyone say M'cark

Except for when one of them dies.

[Patrick Thistle]

Right, I can 'see' that too, but have you ever actually heard anyone say it that way?

No. Never. Its always ma-cack

[WOM]

Over here it's pronounced like m'cock. As in "I can't answer the door right now because ...etc"

[Satchmo Distel]

...the hoover is stuck on..

[San Bernardhinault]

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?

How does it pronounce Macquarrie?

[Sam]

How does it pronounce Macquarrie?

I have asked, and will report back (although I don't expect a response really).

[ad hoc]

Macquarie (the university anyway) is always pronounced M'kwori with a short o

[Nocturnal Submission]

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.

Is this sort of carry on common?

[Patrick Thistle]

Yes in rural areas

[Capybara]

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.

Is this sort of carry on common?

https://www.geofftech.co.uk/downloads/RequestStops.pdf

[Nocturnal Submission]

https://www.geofftech.co.uk/downloads/RequestStops.pdf

Wow, much more common than I thought, (well, since Thursday).

[Sits]

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.

[Balderdasha]

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.

[ursus arctos]

There are request stops on Amtrak's cross-country services.

[San Bernardhinault]

Macquarie (the university anyway) is always pronounced M'kwori with a short o

Well I never. In my head I always pronounced it to rhyme with Larry, or similar to the way that British people pronounce Macaque.

Not to rhyme with Lorry (or the way, apparentlly, Canadians pronounce Macaque).