I have heard people say this as a joke. The speaker may have been trying to be funny, although I suppose jokes at math colloquia are pretty dry.
The word “meme” is not new. It has just recently been repurposed to talk about captioned images. But it used to be a perfectly good word to describe cultural idioms. Being 50 is no excuse.
It’s not “Loover.” It’s Louvr(e). There is no vowel sound between the v and r. I don’t know the correct rendering in the phonetic alphabet.
Apparently there is a raging controversy over the correct pronunciation.
My dad used to be the president of a candy company. Once when I was about 15 he took me with him to a convention. He introduced me to a man who he said worked for the company who makes Turtles. I said, “Oh, the ones with chocolate and PEE-cans!” He said, sounding like Foghorn Leghorn, “Son, they’re called puh-KAHNS. A ‘pee can’ is somethin’ you put under your hospital bed.”
OK, last one. There are a bunch that I can’t really blame people for. These are words that you would never know how to pronounce unless you heard it, and you don’t often hear it. Here are two:
I was in Baltimore’s National Aquarium where a woman was pointing out the anemones to her daughter, and said “AN-a-moans”.
My eighth-grade English teacher said “EP-i-tome” for epitome. The only reason I knew that was wrong is that my dad went to Lehigh and his yearbook, The Epitome, was on the shelf and I had looked up the word.
The doctor told my aunt she had acute angina. She slapped him.
Don’t feel too bad, there’s a street in Chicago named after the same guy, and most of the population of the city pronounces it GO-thee.
When I lived in Baltimore, I was down the street from St. Rose of Lima church. Pronounced as if St. Rose were the patroness of lima beans. Heaven help you if you pronounced it correctly.
Anyone ever eat “horse doovers” as a snack?
A friend of my sister is fond of horse ovaries.
My sister and her friends are, um, interesting…
The longtime leading journal of radical geography (neo-Marxist critical theory, subaltern political ecologies…) is called Antipode. Half of the geographers I know pronounce this “an-TIP-uh-dee.” The others say “ANT-I-pode.”
I tell folks that p-KAHNS are for eating and PEE-cans are what you keep inside for when it’s too cold or dark to go to the outhouse.
AM-und or AHM-und or AHLM-und? (almond)
Guess she never heard of Ibsen’s Anemone of the People.
Heard a new one today from a cow-orker who should know better. She was having computer trouble and was explaining to the IT guy what error message she received:
“It said something about an invalid dominion”.
mmm
And don’t call me Shirley
There are a whole slew of medical terms that get mispronounced and angina pectoris (ANN-jin-uh PECK-tuh-riss) is just one of them.
Play it safe and stress the second to the last syllable. You’ll sound so cool at the doc’s office that they won’t know what to do.
Can someone help me out with this one? I’m not familiar enough with IPA to know if I’ve been pronouncing Bangor wrong!
To add to the thread, I used to have a teacher who pronounced “nuance” as “nu-hance,” with a flat a. It took me a couple classes to figure out what he meant.
bang-gore
Phew, think I’m safe. Thanks!
How would you guys pronounce respite?
I’ve only ever heard it pronounced like despite, but I’m almost certain that that’s a bastardisation of its true sound.
In Ireland (Gaelic), we’d pronounce it a bit differently.
Imagine you’re saying “How in God’s name…”. Just replace the H in How with an S. How in. Sow in. Same sound. We wouldn’t emphasise the ween part.