I didn’t have cable TV until I moved out of my parents’ house and got a job. They still don’t have cable.
What this means is that in high school, I didn’t have the benefit of MTV. (This would be the early-to-mid 1980s.) Oh, weep for the deprived child.
So one time I’m over at a friend’s house, not really paying attention, and he says, “Hey, this is the new video from Hall and Oates.”
“Mmm,” I said, and watched for a minute.
Then I said, “Who’s the other guy?”
My friend: “What?”
See, I was thinking the guy with the mustache was prominently featured in the video, so he had to be Holland Oates, and I couldn’t figure out who the other guy was.
Took me till I was 16 to figure out Xing meant Crossing. Was sitting in the back seat of my parents’ car, driving along, and saw a Deer Xing sign, and as they always had, it perplexed me. Xing? What’s an Xing?? I mean, it obviously a sign to watch for deer crossing the road, but what does Xing…oh…ohhhhh. :smack:
I used to think that “hors d’oveurs” was pronounced “whores day voors.” I understood the spoken pronunciation, but never made the connection between that and the written word.
Related language problems for me: Although both my parents speak German, and usually did when certain friends and family came to visit, I grew up speaking English first (my sister’s fault, really - but that’s another story). Still, there were English words for some things that I didn’t learn until I was rather older. I still remember the day my sister came home from high school - I was in 4th grade then- to announce excitedly that “Käsenudeln” (“cheese-noodles”) were actually called macaroni and cheese. And I think it was 6th grade before I knew what a “washcloth” was, having called it a “Waschelappen” (“wash rag”) until then. Btw, I was at no great advantage in German class much later, having really only heard my parents’ dialects and not knowing how their pronunciation deviated from standard German speech (and thus spelling). I had to read out loud in order to figure out the texts we were given.
Also: I was a 5th-year grad student before I ever actually “saw” the face of the man on the moon. I don’t know why, but I always figured it was just an expression. :o
*There was a young girl of Vancouver,
Who, when told it was not ‘horses doover,’
Found she hadn’t the nerve
To ask for *hors d’oeuvres, So had soup as a saving manoeuvre.
Sunfish:
Don’t feel bad. I did a music video as a computer project in Grade 10, and in one scene I morph my mom’s face into the man in the moon (don’t ask). My teacher thought that was sooooo creative – more than she might have, because she had never seen the man in the moon before! (And no, she wasn’t from a culture where they see something different in the moon, like a rabbit or so forth.)
Odd. My mother (a native Hindi speaker) always called a torch/flashlight a battery . (Whereas I grew up in England and always thought of it as a torch). I never understood why, especially since she called a battery a battery too.
Confusing in the extreme- “Boy! Fetch the battery!” I would have to figure out what she meant by context. If it was dark, I brought a light source. If it wasn’t, I brought AAs.
6 entries found for forte.
To select an entry, click on it.
forte[1,noun]forte[2,adverb or adjective]forte[3,noun]forte-pianomezzo fortepeine forte et dure
Main Entry: 1forte
Pronunciation: 'fOrt, 'fort; 2 is often 'for-"tA or for-'tA or 'for-tE
Function: noun
Etymology: French fort, from fort, adjective, strong
1 : the part of a sword or foil blade that is between the middle and the hilt and that is the strongest part of the blade
2 : one’s strong point
usage In forte we have a word derived from French that in its “strong point” sense has no entirely satisfactory pronunciation. Usage writers have denigrated 'for-"tA\ and 'for-tE\ because they reflect the influence of the Italian-derived 2forte. Their recommended pronunciation 'fort, however, does not exactly reflect French either: the French would write the word le fort and would rhyme it with English for. **So you can take your choice, knowing that someone somewhere will dislike whichever variant you choose. All are standard, however. **In British English 'fo-"tA\ and 'fot\ predominate; 'for-"tA\ and \for-'tA\ are probably the most frequent pronunciations in American English.
You should see the look on the face of a 40 year old adult who did not know that raisins are dried grapes.
Now follow this…
A cow-orker just discovered this fact last week (raisins = grapes), after I explained to someone else at the table that I like prunes. Everyone was like, “Ew, prunes. They make you go to the bathroom.”. So kiddingly, I said, “I’ll just switch to plums.” And everyone agreed that was better. And then no one chuckled.
So, I had to ask, “You do know that prunes are dried plums…right?” And about 12 people looked at me like I was nuts. Then I said, “Hellooooo, prunes are dried plums and raisins are dried grapes and milk comes from cows. Am I on this planet alone?”
Now, I don’t want to turn this into a political debate, but I know I’m not the only one who wishes that Dubya would have an epiphany soon and start pronouncing the word nuclear properly.
And on the topic of the OP … my own pronunciation epiphany came when I learned that epitome was four syllables. That was when I stopped pronouncing it as eh-pi-tome (last syllable rhyming with home).
And yeah, I was confused in a 7th grade social studies class that focused on morals and ethics – I couldn’t figure out why young kids in Asia were such a moral dilemma.
And finally, it wasn’t until a biology class in college that I came across the verb lyse, meaning to kill cells by bursting their membranes. All of a sudden, I figured out the logic behind naming a disinfectant spray Lysol.
“You think someone would have told him by now. You would think that at least Condoleezza Rice would have gotten up in his face, ‘Fool, it’s NU-CLE-AR!!’”
I was in my mid 30s when I found out how a dishwasher works. I always figured it just filled up with water, like an aquarium. My family likes to bring that up from time to time.
I’m embarassed to admit that I was out of high school, in college, and then I learned that there is no land under the northern polar regions of Earth, as there is under the southern.