Cat (as in cat) vs. Ka (as in ka-ching).
Maybe I should have presented it as Cu-Tar.
mmm
It should have cat-are with neither syllable stressed. That’s the standard British pronunciation.
(And I chose “very confident” in that I consider it correct, and don’t care about the actual Arabic pronunciation, if I’m locally correct.)
Pronouncing ‘Qatar’ turns out to kind of be a none-of-the-above thing, as detailed in the link below…the Q in particular has some work involved.
My feelings on these kinds of pronunciations is informed by German, which I speak somewhat, and where many of the cities are pronounced differently by natives, but where the world has moved on. Germans aren’t bothered by and large, and everyone understands what is being said (though when in Germany I would say München, nit Munich, so maybe I’m trying to have it both ways).
In any case, I’m comfortable that pronouncing it as a homophone to ‘catarrh’ is widely understood and accepted, enough so that I’m not going to call it wrong.
ETA: see also Deutschland, España, etc
Honestly, it would be very weird for an English speaker to feel the need to pronounce “Qatar” as described in @Maserschmidt’s article. I think it’s OK to use a “close enough” sort of pronunciation that fits in with the language one is speaking.
I only starting hearing “Cutter” a few years ago, and always got the feeling that the people using it were just trying to sound smarter than the rest of us. It seems even more pretentious now that I see it’s clearly no more correct than “kuh-TAR.”
I’ve never found it necessary to say “Qatar”.
Given their history of human rights abuses, I don’t care what the “correct” pronunciation is.
My immediate reaction to “how do you pronounce “Qatar”?” was “Wrong, probably.”
I’ve been pronouncing it cutter because that is how I’ve been hearing other (American) speakers pronounce it.
But I recently asked an acquaintance about its proper pronunciation - he is from the Middle East, his brother lives in Qatar and he visits him regularly - and he told me that ka-TAR is correct.
mmm
The innovations poll reminded me of when I was a little girl and my father was telling me about the first time he used that amazing new invention, the escalator. He also talked about seeing television for the first time. I started wondering what new inventions I could tell my children about someday, and concluded that pretty much everything had already been invented, and there couldn’t possibly be anything new. I can only imagine that the children of today will be similarly spectacularly wrong.
Aww, I forgot to make Poll B of the Spielberg poll public. But 5 votes would have been lost if I changed it once I caught the mistake. And I think it was too late to edit by then anyway.
I didn’t care for any of the movies in poll B. I think if they’d all been one poll, or shuffled differently, I would have voted for a few more of the items in poll A.
Exactly. I have been totally uninterested in anything he has done this century.
As for the sweet potato poll - I had to really use my imagination for that one. “Out of bourbon.” That’s pushing a hypothetical to the breaking point.
I should point out that the sweet potato recipe already includes brown sugar (and butter and apple cider). Unless that option in @puzzlegal’s poll means you’d add additional sugar to account for the different alcohol.
In the Spielberg poll, I’m just surprised Duel isn’t ranked higher. That movie was absolutely gripping, and is one of my favorite movies overall.
We were visiting a friend and helping her in the kitchen preparing dinner. I mentioned that a half bottle of beer would be a good addition and my gf agreed. Our friend said that she didn’t have any beer. My gf and I made eye contact and fought back the giggles.
It wouldn’t surprise me if few people have seen it, especially compared to all of the later blockbusters in that same poll. It was a made-for-TV film, and I don’t think it ever had a wide release in theaters in the U.S. You can find it on Blu-Ray, or on Amazon Prime, but I suspect that awareness of it is low, except among Spielberg fans.
Ok, since we’ve had a request for the complete sweet potato recipe, this comes from Anthony Bourdain’s cookbook Appetites. It’s prefaced with the sentence “Put those goddamn marshmallows away.”
3 lbs sweet potatoes (about 6-8 large potatoes), cut into quarters.
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup apple cider
pinch of salt
1/4 cup bourbon
Preheat oven to 375F
Place the sweet potatoes in a pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes, at which point the sweet potatoes should be cooked through but still offering a bit of resistance to a fork. Drain, and once they are cool enough to handle, peel the potatoes and cut them into 1 inch chunks.
Use 1 tbsp of butter to grease a roasting pan that’s large enough to hold the chunks in a single layer, and place the sweet potatoes in it.
In a small skillet, melt the remaining butter and the sugar together, then whisk in the cider, salt, and bourbon. Let bubble on the stovetop for 1 minute, then remove and drizzle the mixture over the sweet potatoes, tossing gently to coat. Roast in the oven, stirring the sweet potatoes with a wooden spoon and rotating the pan every 10 minutes, for about 40 minutes, until the sweet potatoes are very tender and the liquid is syrupy.
I picked “some other adjustment” because, whether or not I substituted a different alcohol, I would almost certainly greatly reduce the sugar. I think sweet potatoes are sweet enough already.
Of course, I probably wouldn’t be making candied sweet potatoes, for that reason. But if somebody asked for them, or if the recipe looked fascinating enough otherwise, I might. – and if so I probably would try the recipe given, if only for the prefatory sentence! Marshmallows are for s’mores. That, IMO, is about all they’re good for. [ducks]
I didn’t vote in the movie polls. I generally don’t vote in movie polls, because I usually haven’t seen enough of the movies.
I didn’t realize it was candied sweet potatoes. (Maybe it said that, and i just spaced out…) But i had been thinking that bourbon is sweeter that the other options, and even though sweet potatoes are kinda sweet on their own, maybe I’d adjust…
But yeah, an additional teaspoon of sugar would never be noticed in that recipe.
IIRC, the TV movie proved so popular the studio decided to film some additional scenes to expand it to theatrical length, and release it in theaters. But now I don’t remember if it actually got a theatrical release in the US, or just internationally. But I agree that likely fewer people have seen it.
I admit, in Poll B of my own poll I just voted for the four movies I’d actually seen.
I will admit to occasionally also wanting a marshmallow in hot chocolate, but whipped cream (real whipped cream that is) is always superior. Just that I can keep marshmallows in the pantry, and whipped cream gets used up . . . fast.
On the poll in question, I was in the ‘add vanilla’ camp - I find a good aged bourbon tends to have vanilla-y hints from the barrels, and so if I’m subbing I may need to supplement.