Pronounciation

I'm off-ten axed my favrit word.


Hugo Brady Brown

Americans saying 'Mary was merry'.

Or their odd "Mary Christmas": probably Santa's aunt.


Hugo Brady Brown

wyrn wrote: »

Ok this one is very pedantic and I know people are going to disagree with me, but I have to say it. It drives me frickin nuts.

EuroS

People who pronounce the S in euros. It's meant to be silent.
I was working in retail when the changeover occurred and we had the EU guidelines. I've even gone to the EU website to download the document where it tells you how to pronounce it (the reason is due to different nations being able to pronounce it, a bit like how Jif went to Cif). Yes, it's gotten that bad that I had to download it to see if I had just imagined it.

It really annoys me when people in the know pronounce it wrong, they are the ones that say the IMF isn't coming and that we owe €3.6 billion more. The only financial people you can trust are the ones who know how to correctly pronounce euros because they have done their homework.

On an aside, hate people who call euros yoyos.

I'm probably the only one who has this pet hate.

I think that this prohibition on our forming an English plural in a natural way is an imposition by French bureaucrats lodged deep within the Brussels and Frankfurt system. They failed to pawn their original name 'Ecu' off on us for the currency (a word with deep historical resonances for the French, but for few others), so they then decided that the plural for Euro was going to be formed in a way that suited their ears and their language.

Mind you, they also told us that the names of the units had to be completely uniform throughout the Euro area, Euro and Cent. But what happened? The Greeks gave them the courtesy of listening to them and then gaily started minting cent coins goodo with the word "Λεπτά" or "Lepta" on them. Good for the Greeks, of course; if only someone in Frankfurt had seen the early warning signs that they weren't going to pay a blind bit of notice to any of the Franco-German rules, whether linguistic or fiscal!

Returning to the main point, I believe that we should speak our own language naturally, and say Euro or Euros as and when that suits us. (In the past we had a dual system of saying 'ten pound' and 'ten pounds'; there were slight differences of register between the two versions, but both were freely in use. While we have a long tradition of freedom, continental member states may have more recent experience of hard dirigiste regimes, or of linguistic dictatorships, and so may more easily swallow mindless orders from the top.



Hugo Brady Brown