Pronunciations that drive you mad

pickarooney

On the other hand we don't say yens and rands.

fricatus

Sea Filly wrote: »

IMO, heightH makes more sense than throatH. At least there's a 'th' at the end so you can see how people might grow up thinking it's 'th' but throat just has a 't' at the end.

Ehhh, no, "height" does not have a TH at the end. Although in fairness, I can see how people would have a difficulty spelling that word. G-H-T isn't exactly a pretty sequence of consonants...

fricatus

pickarooney wrote: »

On the other hand we don't say yens and rands.

Fair point, but we do say dollars and pounds, so in currency units that we're more familiar using in our own language, we certainly do add the final -s.

coffee_cake

I'm pretty sure official guidelines said euros was acceptable in countries where they used the s, like us
I used to correct people on it as well until I went off and read up on it

as for height-h - this is like the "wrought-h iron" conversation with my mother all over again...

Wibbs

Sea Filly wrote: »

Sadly, yes.

IMO, heightH makes more sense than throatH. At least there's a 'th' at the end so you can see how people might grow up thinking it's 'th'

Eh no, there is not. HeightH is a holdover from the fear of dropping Aitches and is repeated so often by media Irish types that "speak proper" it continues on. There was one road safety ad that was on the box a year or so ago about trucks and high loads and the woman voice over kept saying heightHH. Arrgh. :mad: That said many centuries ago, there was an aitch at the end of height, but unless you're a time traveler from the 1700's there isn't any more.

pickarooney wrote:

On the other hand we don't say yens and rands.

Maybe because we don't use them regularly?

seamus

thomond2006 wrote: »

not really a pronounciation but I hate when people say 'euros' instead of 'euro' for the plural.

"Euros" is the correct pluralisation.

The confusion arose because many of the european languages don't pronounce the "s" at the end of a plural. In French for example, pluralisation is indicated by the definite article, so it's, "le euro" and "les euros".

However, they still spell the plural with an "s" at the end like any other regular noun.

In English, where we don't really have any gender, and usually only one in/definite article ("the" or "a"), it is considered regular to pronounce the "s" at the end of the word to indicate plurality.

It's only for a handful of irregular nouns that this convention is dropped - sheep, fish, deer, etc. "Euro" is not an irregular noun, and should be pronounced "Euros".

Although you'd be forgiven for the confusion since EU legislation uses "euro" for plural, even though the official EU translation service insists that "euros" is the correct plural.

tiny_penguin

Not a pronunciation thing - well kind of but I hate when people say yo-yo's instead of euro/euros. Both my parents do this all the time, i dont think i have heard them say euro/euros in the past 2 years.

fasttalkerchat

tiny_penguin wrote: »

Not a pronunciation thing - well kind of but I hate when people say yo-yo's instead of euro/euros. Both my parents do this all the time, i dont think i have heard them say euro/euros in the past 2 years.

I got myself into and out of the habit of saying "youra".
Years ago people up north used to refer to "the punt money".
£20 is 30 in the punt money.

hcass

Ah do yis remember coolapops? Also know as cool pops or mr freeze. Cola was the best.

marcsignal

Morketing (Marketing)

:mad::mad::mad:

Sea Filly

fricatus wrote: »

Ehhh, no, "height" does not have a TH at the end.

That's what I meant. And I'm sure you knew what I meant too.

This kind of nitpickery kind of gets on my wick. I very much doubt you and the people who thanked your post pronounce every word correctly and have perfect grammar. I have never come across a person who does.

Sea Filly

Wibbs wrote: »

Eh no, there is not. HeightH is a holdover from the fear of dropping Aitches and is repeated so often by media Irish types that "speak proper" it continues on. There was one road safety ad that was on the box a year or so ago about trucks and high loads and the woman voice over kept saying heightHH. Arrgh. :mad: That said many centuries ago, there was an aitch at the end of height, but unless you're a time traveler from the 1700's there isn't any more.

Do you speak every word correctly?

I have actually also noticed you using 'it's' where it should be 'its' a fair few times, Wibbs. Not a pronuciation error but a very, very basic, primary school one.

Denise90

thomond2006 wrote: »

not really a pronounciation but I hate when people say 'euros' instead of 'euro' for the plural.

Drives me mad!! Regardless of whether it's the right way to say it or not, it just bothers me. Tescos, Aldis, Lidls all fall into the same category (as in "I'm going to Tescos")

fricatus

Sea Filly wrote: »

That's what I meant. And I'm sure you knew what I meant too.

No, all I know is what you wrote, and that's what I replied to. I didn't mean to be deliberately insulting, so sorry if I was.

Sea Filly wrote: »

This kind of nitpickery kind of gets on my wick. I very much doubt you and the people who thanked your post pronounce every word correctly and have perfect grammar. I have never come across a person who does.

I would suggest respectfully that if you don't like nitpickery, this is the wrong thread for you. This is the sort of thing that pedants like me love discussing!

Sea Filly

fricatus wrote: »

I would suggest respectfully that if you don't like nitpickery, this is the wrong thread for you. This is the sort of thing that pedants like me love discussing!

I've never yet come across a pedant who doesn't make mistakes themselves.

Bigcheeze

Denise90 wrote: »

Drives me mad!! Regardless of whether it's the right way to say it or not, it just bothers me. Tescos, Aldis, Lidls all fall into the same category (as in "I'm going to Tescos")

They don't fall in to the same category.

The S in Euros is the correct use of the plural. The S in the supermarket names is incorrect use of the possessive, as in it's Mr. Tesco's shop.

The use of Cent instead of Cents as a plural annoys me more than the use of Euro as Cents was already well established in English as the plural of Cent.

The French call "Cents" Centimes and the Spanish call them Centimos so there's no point making a standardisation argument.

Wibbs

seamus wrote: »

It's only for a handful of irregular nouns that this convention is dropped - sheep, fish, deer, etc.

Some still use fishes S, though it's much less used today than in the past. I've noticed that in old flyfishing books I have about the place.

Sea Filly wrote:

Do you speak every word correctly?

Close enough yea, or at least strive to. My diction is pretty clear, or so non native English speaking folks have told me in the past anyway. Mark though, I don't have a Dort accent or anything like it.

I have actually also noticed you using 'it's' where it should be 'its' a fair few times, Wibbs. Not a pronuciation error but a very, very basic, primary school one.

Really? I'm usually very specific about watching for that and similar(or is it pacific... ). HeightH is both a pronunciation error and (oddly?)a spelling one.

TBH I am not the pedant about some of these things as many seem to be. Many "errors" hereabouts seem to be just local accent based ones and I'd personally hate to see them go. Part and parcel of the history and development of local language. I love some Cork accents*. I find them very pleasant to the ear, but if you were to look at many of the pronunciations objectively, they'd be "wrong". Give me that "wrong" any day of the week. The adding of aitches though, often as part of a Dort/telephone voice for some reason grinds my gears. That and examples like "ruf" instead of "roof".

It reminds me of those accents beaten into some at the point of an elocution teachers cane a few generations ago. A while back read an interesting one(well..) on that point. Apparently in the 60's and 70's Ireland had one of the highest numbers of elocution teachers in the western world. It might explain my experience growing up of meeting people, girls in particular near gagging on marbles in their mouth, yet their parents had perfectly bloody fine regional accents. I'd much rather turn my ear to the latter than the former. Give me the strongest turbo charged Culchie or Dub accent you can find any day over to some half vowel strangled put on accent. The more recent American/the Hills nasally twang, the ill formed bastard offspring of Daddy Dort and Mommy** 'Murkin damn near makes me murderous. End rant... :pac:




*as a Dubliner that nearly stuck in my craw to say



** and it would be mOm. I quite honestly never heard "mom" before the mid 90's and I knew enough D4 types. Mum, yes. Ma, Mam etc, but never mom, unless they were North American in background.

languagenerd

fricatus wrote: »

When the euro was introduced, some "barmy eurocrat" decided that the noun was invariable because it had to be the same in all languages, yet they have no problem with the Greeks even putting the word "leptá" for cents on the back of their coins.

A massive double-standard and a ridiculous arbitrary rule!

That's 100% not true. In French and Spanish, for example, they put an "s" on the end, so if your "barmy eurocrat" made this decision, he would have made it the other way around.

I looked this up before because a Spanish friend asked me about it. According to here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_issues_concerning_the_euro#In_Ireland, it was someone in our Dept of Finance who decided it should be "euro" for both, and seeing as we're the only English-speaking country who use the currency, other countries imitate that.

It might be because we'd say "a twenty-euro note" (not "twenty euros note"), so some of us (myself included!) say "euro" in the plural by analogy. I only say "euros" if I'm talking about a pile of one-euro coins. Not saying I'm right, btw, just pointing out where it came from.

The King of Moo

It's one thing to talk about pronunciations you find annoying; it's only natural to find some pronunciations grating.

But it's another to talk about "correct" pronunciations when it comes to words like "schedule" and "controversy" which have alternative pronunciations which are both considered correct.

Most English words have one broadly-accepted pronunciation, but there's still an incredible diversity within, and particularly between, English-speaking countries.

If you look at any pronunciation book in any language school in Ireland, it'll recommend that the letter "r" not be pronounced at the end of words like "flower" or "car."
Does that mean that Irish people and a number of Americans are wrong to pronounce that "r?"
Of course not.

I love the diversity of English, and hate to see people claim that a certain pronunciation of a word is the only valid one simply because they prefer that pronunciation or because it's more common.

One more pronunciation I hate: "pronounciation!"

earlyevening

fricatus wrote: »

Ehhh, no, "height" does not have a TH at the end. Although in fairness, I can see how people would have a difficulty spelling that word. G-H-T isn't exactly a pretty sequence of consonants...

I'm sure the confusion over "height" comes from the fact that length, width and breadth DO end in "th".

earlyevening

Gbear wrote: »

Modren.

Throw "eastren" and "westren" in there too. Pat Kenny is a big man for those pronunciations.

twinQuins

BarnhallBull wrote: »

Mispronouncing schedule as Skedule

Please don't tell me you pronounce it shedule. Do you also pronounce school as shool?

Sea Filly

Wibbs wrote: »

Really? I'm usually very specific about watching for that and similar(or is it pacific... ). HeightH is both a pronunciation error and (oddly?)a spelling one.

Yep, really. You're not that careful, I'm afraid.

Anyway, my point was, I've often noticed that pedants are often the worst for fúcking up.

Like the acquaintance on Facebook who once declared she dislikes "people who use poor grammer". So, acquaintance, you hate poor "grammer" but you've no problem with bad spelling then? :pac:

Sea Filly

The King of Moo wrote: »

It's one thing to talk about pronunciations you find annoying; it's only natural to find some pronunciations grating.

Yeah, my offering to this thread was 'secsual' for 'sexual'. It gets on my nerves, but it's probably not wrong.

Brendan97

Whenever I say scone(pronounced scon) and someone else says "no you say it 'scone'(scone as in cone)", it makes my blood boil because they are infact wrong
Because its from scotland and they named it Scone(pronounced scon)

its like us pronoucing facebook as fak-book (never heard this happen before its just as an example)
they named it that so why change it

I don't mind them saying it, its just when they argue to say that I am wrong, when THEY are wrong, is what gets on my nerves

Bigcheeze

Brendan97 wrote: »

Because its from scotland and they named it Scone(pronounced scon)

How do you pronounce Paris ?

LordSutch

Sea Filly wrote: »

IMO, heightH makes more sense than throatH. At least there's a 'th' at the end so you can see how people might grow up thinking it's 'th' but throat just has a 't' at the end.

TroaTH

That's a new one on me, do some people really say TroaTH?

HEIGHT, THROAT, Simples.

Wibbs

LordSutch wrote: »

TroaTH

That's a new one on me, do some people really say TroaTH?

Yep they really do.

GaryIrv93

One that used to drive me crazy years ago was 'Grand Prix'. I'd always pronounce it as 'Grand Pricks' I'd go mad, asking why on earth was the 'x' even there if it wasn't pronounced

"H" should be pronounced "haytch". The clue is that there's a H at the start of it.