Australian here, who says jag-you-are for the car and the cat, and who says al-you-min-ee-um. Just because everyone in the US says it one way doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t go our own way.
On a related note, I’m a yank but I love the idea of calling the letter “z” a zed instead of “zee”. Sounds cooler. Is there any way I can get away with using this without sounding horribly pretentious?
In my accent, “onner”. And I think you’ll find it’s spelt honour. 
Yes. Emigrate.
Fffffft. What a waste of a vowel. n’ner is about all I could transcribe the local variant as.
It just wouldn’t be the same to have a dream about a big star who always ate at the Goo-avv-ah bar.
No.
Thanks for the link, Thudlow – shoulda realized there are no new questions at the Dope.
Someone better tell Eddie Izzard this guy’s stealing his material.
Just gonna post the same thing, Smeghead.
“You say lee-zhur, and we say ly-zhur-ee-ay.”
I think it’s fair to say that the company can pronounce the name of its own car however it wants. I also think that, if you are an American, if you call it a “Jag-you-arr” you will unavoidably sound like a “jag-you-off.” Being an American, I feel compelled to pronounce it a “Jag-war,” just as I would the Panthera onca, so as not to sound pretentious. OTOH, it sounds cool when Brits say it the other way. You can get away with it, we can’t. JMO.
Move. But not too far! Just up the coast! I’ll have my mother train you. You’ll be hearing “Hay is for horses” and “Yes is with an ‘s’” and “Zee??? Zee is for ignorant unwashed Americans!”* in no time.
*This is a lie. She’s just sneer at you and shake her head, muttering something about raising savages who’ll never find proper husbands under her breath when she hears you say “zee”. And think the “unwashed American” part.
Maybe English, but not the word in question. That one belongs to the Spanish and Portuguese.
And about “zed” how come you don’t pronounce B as “bed” too?
I blame the empire-hungry Plantagenets. From here.
Some bright spark over t’other side of the Atlantic in 1677 musta said, “Hey! Wait a minute, there …!”
So presumably you pronounce “Stuart” as “Stwahrt” then?
Touche! (pronounced “towch”) 
If you don’t like the way they say ‘jaguar’, you’re really going to hate the way they say ‘Nicaragua’.
Speaking of Nicaragua, is there much call for rolling r’s in any American accent?
There is NO call for a rolled R, a trilled R, or a flapped R, (and NEVER and uvular R) in any American dialect.
The closest we come is dropping it altogether or turning it into a glide after a vowel.
(I guess we just got the wrong immigrants from the island during the settling. You can find some near-rolled Rs in Canada, but they allowed in far more Scots and Northumbrians.)
What’s with pronouncing “drawing” as “drawring”?
From here:
In other words, the guy who named it named it aluminum before he changed his mind and named it aluminium. So the American spelling has the distinction of coming before the British spelling.
Of course Davies changed his mind eventually and called it aluminium and most people agreed (including Americans for most of the 19th century). I’d say the arguments for the “aluminium” spelling are pretty good, but at the same time it’s not as if it has pride of place.