Heh. It does sort of tend to end up there, doesn’t it? There are several responses here already that sound pretentious to me. Does that make me pretentious :D?
But I was thinking about these and I guess it just depends in my mind. For example I would never use the French pronunciation of Paris in casual conversation while speaking English. That would just sound odd to me.
But I’d stab myself in the liver before I would ever pronounce Versailles as “ver-sales”. And lest you think this wouldn’t come up much, there is a street by that name in a nearby town in the Bay Area and most ( though not all ) locals do indeed pronounce it “ver-sales”. Every time I hear it I want to claw off my ears. It sounds wrong to me.
If that makes me pretentious, so be it. I’m sure it’s not the only pretentious thing about me. Not by a long shot :p.
Looking down one’s nose at people who play video games as drooling morons universally obsessed with blinking lights and violence. It’s a mainstream multi-billion dollar industry, you snobs. Summed up perfectly by this.
People who use the term ‘one’ when ‘your’ would have sufficed.
These are usually people who hear ‘video games’ and think Pac-Man or Space Invaders. They have no concept and fail to realize that modern video gaming can be an incredibly immersive, involving experience. I always ask them, “Do you like movies? Fictional books? Sports?..What’s the difference?”
Fuck that, what’s the difference between Pac-Man and those things?
Pac-Man is one of the most perfect, pure joys that can be found in gaming and if those jokers feel the need to mock that, well then I feel pity for them.
Knowing all the different variety of apples, peaches, plums, and pears isn’t pretentious.
Referring to them by their proper name is.
As in, “Ooh, this Bartlett is soooooo wonderful! And so is this Gala!”
Buying nothing but the most expensive brand names at the grocery store doesn’t make you pretentious. (But if you’re also constantly complaining about how broke you are, it makes you stupid.)
Calling all the store brand products crap, especially when you haven’t tried them, is.
I also hate the related Cult of the Dead Tree: The irrational idea that the only reading that counts comes off of pulped trees, to the exclusion of screens of any sort. Reading George Orwell’s essays is just as interesting (and, in the case of Politics and the English Language, frustrating) regardless of where the text is presented. I have read and reread them exclusively off of screens.
As for people who think nobody can read long-form works off a screen: I don’t think you’re pretentious, but you are mistaken.
I’m making a list of everything in this thread so I can do them all while I’m out of town. I’m worried that I’ve become less of an asshole over the last year, so I’m going go be double-pretentious while I’m gone. Maybe triple.
I’m old enough to remember the days when you bought clothing because of its quality. Not the name on it. The first time I recall it really occurring to me was when I saw a Gucci t-shirt. I thought “Wait, isn’t Gucci known for leather? WTF does Gucci know about t-shirts?” I still think that. Plastic purses that have the logo of the manufacturer all over them (who are typically known for, well, leathergoods) come to mind.
Since my husband and I both lost our jobs within a month of each other, both directly due to the recess, er, fumbling economy, I had to buy new clothes for my new job. I went to goodwill. I was looking for jeans, I decided, heck, since I’m paying $6.77 for a pair, how about trying some of the name brand stuff. Every single pair of Tommy Hilfiger pants I tried on completely sucked. Bad zippers, buttons that didn’t close properly, etc. Now, I understand this is the used stuff, but I did not notice that in any other particular brand I tried. FWIW, it seems Lucky jeans are worth every dime. Not only were there only two pair there, both of them functioned properly in all ways.
Oh, and I hate people that are pretentious about their religion. Or lack thereof, although I can understand.
If we are going to use the wiki I’ll point out that it goes on to say: “In English it refers to a symbol consisting of two intersecting arcs, the ends of the right side extending beyond the meeting point so as to resemble the profile of a fish, said to have been used by early Christians as a secret symbol and now known colloquially as the “sign of the fish” or the “Jesus fish.””
So I’m not being pretentious. I’m being precise. I don’t care that they call it a fish. I also don’t think I’m better because they call it a fish. I don’t correct them if they call it a fish.
If someone tells me they have a fish on their car its vague. There are several wildlife and fishing organizations that use fish symbols and it could be those. But if they tell me they have an ichthys it means something much more precise.
When the author of some academic literary essay in a genre theory textbook writes this: “Retheorization of the proliferation of distinctions reflecting the underlying dynamic of cultural modernity…” and then decides to quote passages of French literature, and doesn’t bother to translate them… THAT is pretentious.
P.S. I did NOT make that sentence up.
P.S.S. Also on my list of pretentious people? Mac users.
Hey hey HEY! I have an iMac back home in the States and I use it because I like it. I had no problem loading Microsoft Office onto it for work purposes and I certainly don’t sneer at people who use PCs. It is kinda nice, however, to be able to plug in my iPod and set right to work on my music collection.
My basic rule of thumb is: does the pronunciation, in the context of an English sentence, call overdue attention to itself? If the pronunciation is incorrect, and not based on an English convention, then I’ll sound ignorant (kind of like Elizabeth Berkeley’s character in Showgirls–pronouncing “Versace” so it rhymes with “your face” instead of “Ver-SAH-chi”). If, on the other hand, the pronunciation is correct, but there is an English equivalent for that place name, then I may come off sounding overly pedantic and (depending on my audience) possibly pretentious.
In most cases, especially with the touristy sites, English equivalents* have been adopted down through the years, and using the Italian pronunciation sounds a bit jarring when speaking English. “Florence” and “Rome” sound perfectly fine to my ears, and they flow better with the sound of spoken English.
Most of the cities that you name have English equivalents–Padova=Padua, Sicilia=Sicily (do you really say “Sicilia”? as in, “See-CHEELya”?), Genova=Genoa.
However, I don’t think there are English versions of Cagliari, Parma, or Capri (although in the case of Capri, the local pronunciation stresses the first syllable rather than the second).
It is pretty funny that we have a word like “Rome” for “Roma,” when most English-speakers can approximate the Italian “Roma” (OK, the Italian “R” doesn’t quite fit with English sound patterns, but it’s not so far off that one couldn’t understand it)–while we don’t have an English equivalent for a place like “Cagliari,” which would be a challenge for most English speakers (“Cah-GLEE-AIR-eeey??” Not quite!).
And then you have places like Livorno, which until the twentieth century was called “Leghorn” in English (and “Legorno” in Italian up through the 17th-century). Nobody calls it “Leghorn” nowadays. Maybe a similar shift will eventually happen with the English versions of Firenze and Roma and Venezia, etc., but I wouldn’t count on it.
*in the case of “Florence,” the English version, which (like many other European place names) comes to us via French, is actually closer to the original name of the city–“Florence” is based on the Latin “Florentia.”
Thank God for snobs! I’m glad some people are confident enough and care enough to be snobs about something. Honestly this “I’m as common as an old shoe” crap so many people (esp in this thread) like to indulge in when it’s not about their particular zone of interest is the most tedious and pretentious wankery of all.
People who spend weeks configuring Linux, and then bitch publicly about how difficult Vista is to use. The system may be buggy, but it’s sure not difficult to use.
Also regarding the small town thing: There are multiple other cities and towns with my home town’s name. Saying I’m from “outside city x” saves me from having this conversation over and over again: “No, I’m not from New York.” “No, I’m not from North Carolina.” “Yes, in state x. Near city z.”
SDMB pretentious: the one person who MUST interrupt a thread and share his superior taste.
If I say, “I love this writer, and his second book was great” the pretensious person (pp) MUST drop in to let me know that the writer is a hack and the book I love is rubbish. He then will give me a list of “better” books on the subject.
If I say I love an album, he’ll (the pp - say it out loud, it’s fun!) let me know that the group was good only until 1996 and the album I love is just commercial garbage.
If I rave about a movie, he’ll belittle the film I love, then direct me to the 1938 black and white.
Don’t worry, Olentzero, I don’t actually think Mac users are pretentious. I just like to say that to get a rise out of them. (That wouldn’t be pretentious behavior on my part… would it?)
(That wouldn’t be pretentious behavior on my part… would it?)