I love it when i can smell my boyfriend's colon

[Angel!]

Oct 16, 2014 16:57:41 GMT -5 Firebird said:

That's basically how I meant the first one   Neash as in rhyming with leash or teach. 

I'm honestly not sure though. 

Gotcha, the T confused me.  Maybe we were both right then & neither I nor my coworker is an idiot. 


ETA - And right now I am totally overthinking the "I nor my coworker" phrase above. I think I said it wrong.  "me nor my coworker" is what I am pretty sure it should have been.  Argh!  I get annoyed when people use "X and I" incorrectly.  People are so stuck on the rule that "X and me" is wrong they say it the other when even when it is wrong.  But, I confused myself with the neither nor in the sentence.

[cktc]

Oct 16, 2014 16:50:55 GMT -5 Firebird said:

I have a question. How do you pronounce 'niche'?

That might be a regional thing, because I've heard it pronounced both "neetch" and "nitch."

(Or there just might be more than one right way to pronounce it, like the word "schedule.")

I've heard it pronounced neesh, nish, and nitch.

The name from Catch22 I used to butcher was "Luciana" I used to say Lucy-ana, when it is Loo-cha-na.

[dannylion]

The word "niche" is French. It is properly pronounced as "neesh." There are those who contend that using the proper pronunciation of niche (which is neesh) is pretentious and annoying. They insist that it should be (mis)pronounced as "nitch." They are wrong.  They are likely the same people who have wrong opinions about "voila," but people were mean to me the last time I went there, so I will leave that one alone.  Except that it is possible to have unexpressed thoughts.  I'm thinking one now.   

ETA:  I'm allowed to make pronouncements like this because I was a professional linguist for nearly 40 years, and one of the languages in which I was certified was French.

[Firebird]

People are so stuck on the rule that "X and me" is wrong they say it the other when even when it is wrong. But, I confused myself with the neither nor in the sentence.

Neither, nor.  Either, or.  I just try to remember that the two n's go together. 

For the "x and me" thing, you can tell if it's right or not by dropping the second party from the sentence.

"Jack and me went to the park." -->  Wrong. 

"Jack and I went to the park."  --> Right. 

But at the end of the day, English grammar is ridiculous. 

[Angel!]

How is 'voila' supposed to be pronounced?

Is it another word I have always said wrong? 

[Firebird]

Wall-AH!, I hope?

[dannylion]

Voila is pronounced as "vwala."  The issue with voila is that there are those who do not know of its existence as a written word and have only heard or misheard it in conversation, so they think it is "wala" and persist in writing "wala" when they mean "voila" and become abusive if the truth is pointed out to them.

[dannylion]

Oct 16, 2014 17:15:57 GMT -5 Firebird said:

Wall-AH!, I hope?

NOOOOOO!!!!

[Angel!]

Oct 16, 2014 17:17:14 GMT -5 dannylion said:

Voila is pronounced as "vwala."  The issue with voila is that there are those who do not know of its existence as a written word and have only heard or misheard it in conversation, so they think it is "wala" and persist in writing "wala" when they mean "voila" and become abusive if the truth is pointed out to them.

Aha! I feel better that I both can pronounce & spell the word.  I've never noticed the 'wala'.  I probably just didn't know what the hell they were talking about & didn't bother to figure it out 

[Firebird]

Oct 16, 2014 17:17:37 GMT -5 dannylion said:

Oct 16, 2014 17:15:57 GMT -5 Firebird said:

Wall-AH!, I hope?

NOOOOOO!!!!

Well I know that V sound is in there but I think it's hard to hear/pronounce for English speakers.  Vwala and wala don't sound fundamentally different to me when I say them out loud. 

[dannylion]

Oct 16, 2014 17:14:33 GMT -5 Firebird said:

People are so stuck on the rule that "X and me" is wrong they say it the other when even when it is wrong. But, I confused myself with the neither nor in the sentence.

Neither, nor.  Either, or.  I just try to remember that the two n's go together. 

For the "x and me" thing, you can tell if it's right or not by dropping the second party from the sentence.

"Jack and me went to the park." -->  Wrong. 

"Jack and I went to the park."  --> Right. 

But at the end of the day, English grammar is ridiculous. 

No, English grammar is not ridiculous. The problem is that it is never explained properly.  English is generally described as being an uninflected language with no oblique cases.  This is not true.  It originally had grammatical cases (like Latin, German, Russian, Finnish, and others), and that is retained in the pronouns. 

X and I is used when it is the subject of the sentence because I is the nominative case of the first person pronoun. 

X and me (the oblique case) is used when it is the object of the sentence (Esmeralda explained the pronunciation of voila to Abelard and me).

That is all you need to remember.   Easy peasy.

[dannylion]

Oct 16, 2014 17:21:15 GMT -5 Firebird said:

Oct 16, 2014 17:17:37 GMT -5 dannylion said:

NOOOOOO!!!!

Well I know that V sound is in there but I think it's hard to hear/pronounce for English speakers.  Vwala and wala don't sound fundamentally different to me when I say them out loud. 

Voila is an actual word with meaning ("there it is"). Wala is meaningless. That is the difference.

[Firebird]

X and I is used when it is the subject of the sentence because I is the nominative case of the first person pronoun.

That is all you need to remember. Easy peasy.

Except I don't know what that means and it's easier to just drop the second party to see if your sentence makes sense

(I'm being a little sarcastic here.  I do know what you mean but I still think my way is easier.  I can construct a perfect sentence 99 times out of 100 but I picked up most of what I know about grammar by osmosis, not by understanding the reasoning behind every rule.  And grammar IS tricky.  So I think the rules/tricks are easier for most people.) 

[Firebird]

Voila is an actual word with meaning ("there it is"). Wala is meaningless. That is the difference.

Sure, if you're writing it.  Otherwise we wouldn't be laughing at the post.  But I'm talking about pronunciation here.

To me, (spoken) "vwala" doesn't sound very different from "wala."  I get that there's a difference, I understand that one is a real word and one is meaningless.  And obviously I do know how to spell voila.  But to me, the pronunciation of the gibberish word versus the real word sound almost the same.  

[Angel!]

Oct 16, 2014 17:29:37 GMT -5 Firebird said:

Voila is an actual word with meaning ("there it is"). Wala is meaningless. That is the difference.

Sure, if you're writing it.  Otherwise we wouldn't be laughing at the post.  But I'm talking about pronunciation here.

To me, (spoken) "vwala" doesn't sound very different from "wala."  I get that there's a difference, I understand that one is a real word and one is meaningless.  And obviously I do know how to spell voila.  But to me, the pronunciation of the gibberish word versus the real word sound almost the same.  

To me they sound very different.  I might have a more heightened awareness of the V sound though.  My brother's name is Sven & it was both sad & comical the number of adults that were unable to make the SV sound.  If only he had grown up post-frozen when the name was at least popular due to a cute reindeer

[Firebird]

Where the V is placed makes a huge difference, I think.  Sven sounds very different from Sen.  Like those actually sound like two different words.

To me, vwala and wala sound basically the same.  FWIW, "wala" and "vala" sound pretty similar also.  Maybe it's the hard consonant right at the beginning that sounds the same to me? 

As an experiment, I tried violin and wiolin.  They sound similar to me too.  But at this point I need to stop muttering words to myself in my office, lest someone think I'm crazy...

[Pants]

Oct 16, 2014 12:58:33 GMT -5 Firebird said:

As a young kid I knew how to spell the word and knew its meaning. But never having ever heard to word said, I thought it was pronounced epp-ih-toe-may.

When I was a kid, I constantly mispronounced words.  I can't remember any specifics but I do remember once using one in class on the first or second day of school.  My teacher smiled at me and asked me if I read a lot - I said yes, and she said that she could tell because one of the hallmarks of a reader was that they had a large vocabulary but hadn't heard all of the words actually spoken.

The word I remember having trouble with most recently is detritus.  I know exactly what it means but I still have to stop and think about how to pronounce it, so I probably wouldn't use it in conversation. 

I had this same issue like 3 weeks ago. I had to ask my FIL to.pronounce it for me!

[Angel!]

-rofl-It's ok...on YM you're expected to be a little crazy.

For my brother it always turned into "Seven".  The V was always there, people just couldn't combine the sounds without spacing them apart.  What was worse is when asked his name, people would assume he just mispronounced his name & would call him Steven.

[Deleted]

'niche"

It's pronounced "neesh". 

I am used to my students slaughtering the English language (the smart ones with a v good level of English sometimes do it in a very clever and and creative way), but that was beyond anything I could have ever imagined!

Pink, everybody has both an "active" and "passive" vocabulary. You can recognize the "passive" vocabulary, and know (even more or less) what it means, but not know how to use / pronounce it. Because if you do, it is "active" rather than "passive" vocabulary.

[Firebird]

I had this same issue like 3 weeks ago. I had to ask my FIL to.pronounce it for me!

Which word?

[Firebird]

What was worse is when asked his name, people would assume he just mispronounced his name & would call him Steven.



Because not knowing how to pronounce your own name is totally a thing. 

[cktc]

Oct 16, 2014 17:11:20 GMT -5 dannylion said:

ETA:  I'm allowed to make pronouncements like this because I was a professional linguist for nearly 40 years, and one of the languages in which I was certified was French.

Yes, and the insight is greatly appreciated, but you also have to admit that language is fluid, and whatever the origin, "walla," "nucular" and "brushetta" are now part of American vernacular.

[Pants]

Oct 16, 2014 17:42:45 GMT -5 Firebird said:

I had this same issue like 3 weeks ago. I had to ask my FIL to.pronounce it for me!

Which word?

Detritus. 

[Deleted]

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Weird Al's Word Crimes! One day I had an early class (8 am) and the class next door was playing it full volume, and all singing to it. I WISH I knew who that teacher / which class it was (it wasn't an English class). 

Most of my students are regular university students, but I also teach several Personnel classes (Admin or Managers or Professors at my university who need / want English classes). Last July I played Word Crimes for one of my Personnel students who has a very good level. She is visibly one of these people who blushes and turns beet red (although she had never done that before with me.) At "cunning linguist" she turned so red / purple I seriously thought something had happened to her, then I realized it was shock / embarrassment.

So I said, E, this is embarrassing for both of us, but I'm going to do it anyway. I reversed, and hit pause. I said, don't just listen to it, READ IT. She did, burst out laughing, and said, "Yay, I got it!" LOL

[Firebird]

Oct 16, 2014 17:47:22 GMT -5 Pants said:

Oct 16, 2014 17:42:45 GMT -5 Firebird said:

I had this same issue like 3 weeks ago. I had to ask my FIL to.pronounce it for me!

Which word?

Detritus. 

AHAHAHA.  I love that I'm not the only person who struggled with that particular word!

[Deleted]

Debt. rit. us. Tonic stress on the first syllable. 

[Firebird]

Debt. rit. us. Tonic stress on the first syllable.

But.

Debt.  TREAT.  Us?

Or

Debt.  RIGHT.  Us?

[Deleted]

rit = rhymes with it, zit, pit. Soft "i"

[dannylion]

Oct 16, 2014 17:43:51 GMT -5 cktc said:

Oct 16, 2014 17:11:20 GMT -5 dannylion said:

ETA:  I'm allowed to make pronouncements like this because I was a professional linguist for nearly 40 years, and one of the languages in which I was certified was French.

Yes, and the insight is greatly appreciated, but you also have to admit that language is fluid, and whatever the origin, "walla," "nucular" and "brushetta" are now part of American vernacular.

Only among those who prefer the deliberate perpetuation of ignorance to he exertion of the teeny bit of effort it might take to retain the beauty of the original form. 

[milee]

Oct 16, 2014 17:43:20 GMT -5 Firebird said:

What was worse is when asked his name, people would assume he just mispronounced his name & would call him Steven.



Because not knowing how to pronounce your own name is totally a thing. 

Well.... Americans can be pretty dumb. 

Years ago I was assigned to a client who named parts of their family business after relatives, so these were family names.  One of the branches was named "Genevieve".  When I pronounced it the correct way in French (probably not spelling the phonetics correctly, but I'll do my best.  The first "g" is a soft "j", not like the hard j in front of James, more like a zj sound)  zj ohn vee ev   the client looked at me like I had two heads and said no, it's "jen uh veev"  

He then acted like I was somewhat retarded.