Hurricun 9

[2ffat]

I've been listening to the Governor of North Carolina talk about Hurricane Irene. She insists on calling it "hurricun." To me that grates on my nerves worse than fingers on a black board. Anybody else hear some mispronounced words that give them the "willies?"


James P. Cottingham
[sup]I'm number 1,229!
I'm number 1,229![/sup]

 

[SamBones]

However, the pronunciation I can cope with - it is when I see "a chest of draws" written down that I really want to scream and break things.

Well, you do "draw" them out of the chest by the handle.

No, I'm not trying to defend it. That use makes me want to commit arson too.

 

[N1GHTEYES]

Well, you do "draw" them out of the chest by the handle

True. That usage also makes me think of hanging, drawing and quartering...

Tony

 

[BadBigBen]

Well, you do "draw" them out of the chest by the handle

I was wondering, why did they call them that, I mean why not "pushs" or "pushers"?

you "draw" them out, either taking stuff out or placing stuff in, then you'd "PUSH" them in...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[Annihilannic]

Probably because many people of the less fair sex (myself for instance) forget to do that part, much to my peril!

Annihilannic
[small]tgmlify - code syntax highlighting for your tek-tips posts[/small]

 

[N1GHTEYES]

By the way Santa, I missed this ealier:

•thought -- rhymes with not

Really?

Surely thought rhymes with sort?

Tony

 

[Welshbird]

or even Nought.

Fee

"The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea." Isak Dinesen

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

My contribution - great poem - almost Dr Seuss like.

The Chaos.
Gerard Nolst Trenité.
This version is essentially the author's own final text, as also published by New River Project in 1993. A few minor corrections have however been made, and occasional words from earlier editions have been preferred. Following earlier practice, words with clashing spellings or pronunciations are here printed in italics.

The Chaos.
Gerard Nolst Trenité.
This version is essentially the author's own final text, as also published by New River Project in 1993. A few minor corrections have however been made, and occasional words from earlier editions have been preferred. Following earlier practice, words with clashing spellings or pronunciations are here printed in italics.

Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;

Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.

Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it! 10
Just compare heart, hear and heard,

Dies and diet, lord and word.

Sword and sward, retain and Britain
(Mind the latter how it's written).
Made has not the sound of bade,

Say - said, pay - paid, laid but plaid.

Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
But be careful how you speak,

Say: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak, 20

Previous, precious, fuchsia, via
Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir;
Woven, oven, how and low,

Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.

Say, expecting fraud and trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
Branch, ranch, measles, topsails, aisles,

Missiles, similes, reviles.

Wholly, holly, signal, signing,
Same, examining, but mining, 30
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,

Solar, mica, war and far.

From "desire": desirable - admirable from "admire",
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier,
Topsham, brougham, renown, but known,

Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone,

One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel.
Gertrude, German, wind and wind,

Beau, kind, kindred, queue, mankind, 40

Tortoise, turquoise, chamois-leather,
Reading, Reading, heathen, heather.
This phonetic labyrinth

Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.

Have you ever yet endeavoured
To pronounce revered and severed,
Demon, lemon, ghoul, foul, soul,

Peter, petrol and patrol?

Billet does not end like ballet;
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. 50
Blood and flood are not like food,

Nor is mould like should and would.

Banquet is not nearly parquet,
Which exactly rhymes with khaki.
Discount, viscount, load and broad,

Toward, to forward, to reward,

Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet?
Right! Your pronunciation's OK.
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,

Friend and fiend, alive and live. 60

Is your R correct in higher?
Keats asserts it rhymes with Thalia.
Hugh, but hug, and hood, but hoot,

Buoyant, minute, but minute.

Say abscission with precision,
Now: position and transition;
Would it tally with my rhyme

If I mentioned paradigm?

Twopence, threepence, tease are easy,
But cease, crease, grease and greasy? 70
Cornice, nice, valise, revise,

Rabies, but lullabies.

Of such puzzling words as nauseous,
Rhyming well with cautious, tortious,
You'll envelop lists, I hope,

In a linen envelope.

Would you like some more? You'll have it!
Affidavit, David, davit.
To abjure, to perjure. Sheik

Does not sound like Czech but ache. 80

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, loch, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,

People, leopard, towed but vowed.

Mark the difference, moreover,
Between mover, plover, Dover.
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,

Chalice, but police and lice,

Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label. 90
Petal, penal, and canal,

Wait, surmise, plait, promise, pal,

Suit, suite, ruin. Circuit, conduit
Rhyme with "shirk it" and "beyond it",
But it is not hard to tell

Why it's pall, mall, but Pall Mall.

Muscle, muscular, gaol, iron,
Timber, climber, bullion, lion,
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,

Senator, spectator, mayor, 100

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
Has the A of drachm and hammer.
Pussy, hussy and possess,

Desert, but desert, address.

Golf, wolf, countenance, lieutenants
Hoist in lieu of flags left pennants.
Courier, courtier, tomb, bomb, comb,

Cow, but Cowper, some and home.

"Solder, soldier! Blood is thicker",
Quoth he, "than liqueur or liquor", 110
Making, it is sad but true,

In bravado, much ado.

Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Pilot, pivot, gaunt, but aunt,

Font, front, wont, want, grand and grant.

Arsenic, specific, scenic,
Relic, rhetoric, hygienic.
Gooseberry, goose, and close, but close,

Paradise, rise, rose, and dose. 120

Say inveigh, neigh, but inveigle,
Make the latter rhyme with eagle.
Mind! Meandering but mean,

Valentine and magazine.

And I bet you, dear, a penny,
You say mani-(fold) like many,
Which is wrong. Say rapier, pier,

Tier (one who ties), but tier.

Arch, archangel; pray, does erring
Rhyme with herring or with stirring? 130
Prison, bison, treasure trove,

Treason, hover, cover, cove,

Perseverance, severance. Ribald
Rhymes (but piebald doesn't) with nibbled.
Phaeton, paean, gnat, ghat, gnaw,

Lien, psychic, shone, bone, pshaw.

Don't be down, my own, but rough it,
And distinguish buffet, buffet;
Brood, stood, roof, rook, school, wool, boon,

Worcester, Boleyn, to impugn. 140

Say in sounds correct and sterling
Hearse, hear, hearken, year and yearling.
Evil, devil, mezzotint,

Mind the z! (A gentle hint.)

Now you need not pay attention
To such sounds as I don't mention,
Sounds like pores, pause, pours and paws,

Rhyming with the pronoun yours;

Nor are proper names included,
Though I often heard, as you did, 150
Funny rhymes to unicorn,

Yes, you know them, Vaughan and Strachan.

No, my maiden, coy and comely,
I don't want to speak of Cholmondeley.
No. Yet Froude compared with proud

Is no better than McLeod.

But mind trivial and vial,
Tripod, menial, denial,
Troll and trolley, realm and ream,

Schedule, mischief, schism, and scheme. 160

Argil, gill, Argyll, gill. Surely
May be made to rhyme with Raleigh,
But you're not supposed to say

Piquet rhymes with sobriquet.

Had this invalid invalid
Worthless documents? How pallid,
How uncouth he, couchant, looked,

When for Portsmouth I had booked!

Zeus, Thebes, Thales, Aphrodite,
Paramour, enamoured, flighty, 170
Episodes, antipodes,

Acquiesce, and obsequies.

Please don't monkey with the geyser,
Don't peel 'taters with my razor,
Rather say in accents pure:

Nature, stature and mature.

Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,
Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly,
Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,

Wan, sedan and artisan. 180

The TH will surely trouble you
More than R, CH or W.
Say then these phonetic gems:

Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.

Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,
There are more but I forget 'em -
Wait! I've got it: Anthony,

Lighten your anxiety.

The archaic word albeit
Does not rhyme with eight - you see it; 190
With and forthwith, one has voice,

One has not, you make your choice.

Shoes, goes, does [1]. Now first say: finger;
Then say: singer, ginger, linger.
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,

Marriage, foliage, mirage, age,

Hero, heron, query, very,
Parry, tarry, fury, bury,
Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth,

Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath. 200

Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners,
Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners
Holm you know, but noes, canoes,

Puisne, truism, use, to use?

Though the difference seems little,
We say actual, but victual,
Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,

Put, nut, granite, and unite

Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer. 210
Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,

Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.

Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific;
Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,

Gas, alas, and Arkansas.

Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,
Next omit, which differs from it
Bona fide, alibi

Gyrate, dowry and awry. 220

Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,

Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion,
Rally with ally; yea, ye,

Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!

Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver. 230
Never guess - it is not safe,

We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.

Starry, granary, canary,
Crevice, but device, and eyrie,
Face, but preface, then grimace,

Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.

Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging;
Ear, but earn; and ere and tear

Do not rhyme with here but heir. 240

Mind the O of off and often
Which may be pronounced as orphan,
With the sound of saw and sauce;

Also soft, lost, cloth and cross.

Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting?
Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.
Respite, spite, consent, resent.

Liable, but Parliament.

Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen, 250
Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk,

Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work.

A of valour, vapid, vapour,
S of news (compare newspaper),
G of gibbet, gibbon, gist,

I of antichrist and grist,

Differ like diverse and divers,
Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers.
Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll,

Polish, Polish, poll and poll. 260

Pronunciation - think of Psyche! -
Is a paling, stout and spiky.
Won't it make you lose your wits

Writing groats and saying 'grits'?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel
Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale,
Islington, and Isle of Wight,

Housewife, verdict and indict.

Don't you think so, reader, rather,
Saying lather, bather, father? 270
Finally, which rhymes with enough,

Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough??

Hiccough has the sound of sup...
My advice is: GIVE IT UP!


ACSS - SME
General Geek

 

[mscallisto]

to Annihilannic

Not certain who wrote it but this link:

http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/media/poems.php

points to Richard Krogh and a Google search on him seems to support what I suspect.

Anyway there are many more "poems" on words at that same link.

Sam

 

[mjldba]

I was a car mechanic many years ago & it drove me nuts when someone asked me to check the water in their "bat-tree".

I told them the water level in their battery was fine.

 

[SantaMufasa]

I was speaking with a friend who had immigrated from China. She owned multi-unit rental properties both in our community and in another, more urban community. She expressed her preference for her properties in this way:

I like dah clam tail here in dis community much moh dan dah clam tail in my uddah propuhty.

I had to mentally rehearse what she said a few times (using my English-second-language accent) before I realized that "clam tail" was her pronunciation for "clientele".

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
“People may forget what you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

 

[GSCaupling]

thought -- rhymes with not

I'm surprised no one challenged this one, if I may respectfully disagree.

Thought rhymes with taut or sought or caught.



GS

[Green]******^*******
[small]I[/small] [small]Hate[/small] [♥] [small]Ambiguity.[/small][/green]

 

[SantaMufasa]

I just heard another "pet peeve" on CNN Newsroom. CNN's Latin American desk reporter, Rafael Romo, twice introduced video segments in his report by saying, "...Let's take a Listen..."

How do you "take a listen"...and how does that differ from simply saying, "listen"?

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
“People may forget what you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

 

[SantaMufasa]

thought -- rhymes with not

I'm surprised no one challenged this one, if I may respectfully disagree.

Thought rhymes with taut or sought or caught.

Perhaps this is a regional/dialect issue, but in my accent experience, all five words (thought, not, taut, sought, and caught) seem to rhyme. Perhaps the lack of previous, or subsequent, challenge is from others having a reaction similar to mine...but I'm willing to change, if necessary.


Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
“People may forget what you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

 

[N1GHTEYES]

Sorry Santa, I'm firmly with GS on this one.

Not, rot, sot, hot...

Do not rhyme with

Caught, bought, thought, fraught, tort, sort...

Is this a UK / US thing?

Tony

 

[SantaMufasa]

N1GHTEYES,

Having lived in the UK for multiple years, I acknowledge that the following pairs of words are, in the (most of the) UK, both rhymes and even homophones:[ul][li]taught / tort[/li][li]sought / sort[/li][li]caught / court[/li][li]fought / fort[/li][li]et. al.[/li][/ul]
But here in the U.S., all of your above exemplar words (up to, but not including, "tort" and "sort") rhyme with one another.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
“People may forget what you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

 

[N1GHTEYES]

Sorry Santa, I'm not quite clear here. Are you saying that you consider sot to be a homophone for sought? What about rot and wrought?

If so, what parts of the US do you think that applies to? My wife hails from there (she would claim her accent is "neutral" or "standard", though she is originally from Maryland) and she would certainly NOT pronounce sot and sought identically.

BTW, in your list I would claim that:

taught / tort and sought / sort are indeed homophones (or at least very, very close), but caught / court and fought / fort are not.

Tony

 

[N1GHTEYES]

Santa, see

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sot.

A quick browse in there will show that they agree with me:

sot, cot, rot etc rhyme with each other, but not with
sought, caught, wrought.

There is indeed a wide range of accents in the UK, but I've never met anyone over here who pronounces not to rhyme with naught (or nought for that matter).

Tony

 

[2ffat]

According to my ears, I have to agree with SantaMufasa on this. I've had people complain in Michigan that Don and Dawn are pronounced differently but they sound the same to me so I pronounce them the same.

Somewhere I recently read an article on accents around the US. I wish I could remember where.



James P. Cottingham
[sup]I'm number 1,229!
I'm number 1,229![/sup]

 

[N1GHTEYES]

I guess we could do a straw poll.

If you want to take part, please asnwer the following questions:

1 Do you pronounce cot, not and sot to rhyme with caught, naught and sought?

2 What country & region (state, / county / department / canton etc) are you from?

3 Do you consider your accent to be very local to your region (answer YES), or within the "standard" range for your country(answer NO)?


I'll start the ball rolling:
No,
England / Lancashire
No

Tony

 

[hjgoldstein]

I think that this whole subject illustrates the beauty of the English language.

Two people may pronounce the same word in subtly (or less so) different ways due to regional variations.

Who are we to say which is correct? For me, the answers to Tony's questions are:

1 - No.
2 - Scotland (Lanarkshire)
3 - No.

I don't claim to be an expert in linguistics. I appreciate that when a Glaswegian asks "how?" he may mean "why?" and would no sooner correct him (other than in a light-hearted way) than I would correct Dave's pronunciation of taught.

The concept of received pronunciation - or the Queen's English - has been replaced in my opinion by understandable English.

I have noticed in recent years that there are far more announcers and reporters on, for example, the BBC with regional accents than was the case previously. Also I have noticed far more recently that some of those with quite strong regional accents tend to deliver their reports much more slowly, probably (and again this is my opinion) in order that their audience is more able to understand what they are saying.

There are a small number of regional accents I don't like to hear but I'll keep that to myself for fear of offending any of you fine MAIers.

It is time for pacifists to stand up and fight for their beliefs.