It really took two lectures to realize he wasn’t talking about cows?
In an Architecture class? Was he showing a slid of a Reitveld next to a cow pasture or something?
I figure it took them two lectures to realize he was saying “CHAOS” specifically, as it was probably pretty obvious that he wasn’t saying “cows” but they couldn’t figure out what he WAS saying immediately.
Haven taken architecture classes before, I am just surprised that that word was not understood, is all.
If they want a pin for poking then you’re just fucked (that does feel good, ** Early Out**.)
There’s an easy solution for this:
“Sorry, I’m fresh out. Can I interest you in an extra-sharp pencil?”
As for my experience, I quite agree with how frustrating it can be when people, especially in supermarket checkout lines, mispronounce numbers. For instance, when I get to the register with a gallon of milk, and I’m all set to hand over my two bucks, the clerk will often say something totally off the wall, like, “That’ll be four dollars and fifty-nine cents, please.”
I’m sorry to be so pedantic but it is actually ‘Worcestershire Sauce’ (pronounced wooster-shire).
With regards to accents I am usually quite good but Glaswegian always gets me as does a thick Northern Irish accent. Glaswegians seem to pronounce the letter ‘G’ as ‘Jye’ which always takes a while to work out when I am taking work references from any of our Glasgow sites. My grandad was from Glasgow and at his funeral my dad made a speech which essentially said that he was a lovely bloke but nobody understood a bloody word he said. I thought it was very funny.
I knew you were from California before I looked up. I mean, geez - are the cows staying at the Ritz Carlton now? Another thing I’ve noticed is that when I pay my 20 bucks at the gas station, the pump seems to shut off too early. 
An epi-pen springs to mind.
That would make me burst out laughing. I would be just about herniating from the effort of not making a complete fool of myself.
Anyway, a bit of wisdom: “I don’t have an accent. You have an accent.”
Yeah, that’s pretty pedantic, allright. Only the English could pronounce a word in a way that bears almost no resemblance to the way it’s spelled, and then get picky about it.
Yeah I know, I am sorry! I don’t understand why it said like it is either it is a bit silly isn’t it? I think I have caught pedantism from my girlfriend…is it a communicable disease?
Oh, I was just kidding. You were right, of course. I know that’s the actual English pronounciation; it just seemed like such a great example of swallowing up syllables that I fudged on the fact that it’s technically not a mispronounciation.
Reminds me of an argument one of my relatives had with an English friend about how to pronounce the word “butter”. The English person said, "You Americans don’t pronounce it right; it has the letter ‘t’ in it. It’s not ‘budder’, it’s ‘buttah’. The American person said, “Yes, but it has an ‘r’ at the end.”
“tu-TWEN-ty five” is quite alright with me. What infuriates me is when they ring it up and say absolutely nothing, just standing there waiting for me to pay, expecting me to just read the total from the screen of the cash register!
Now, of course the screen is completely visible and by this time, yes, I do already know how much is owed, so I’d feel like I was being a dick to actually say, “Will, you please tell me how much it is?” so I usually just end up paying and pushing all my anger down deep inside where it gets bottled up. One day I’m afraid there will be no place left to stuff the anger and I will just explode! :mad:
In linguistics surd = voiceless consonant. Not really in use anymore.
Ha! That’s a good one. Here’s what I do, and it works really well: I just stand there as well and wait. Eventually, the cashier realizes that he/she hasn’t done his/her job correctly, and reads the total to me.
And before anyone says this is really anal, let me point out that for some reason it seems to be common practice these days for cashiers to subtotal the purchase and just leave the subtotal on the screen. I don’t know if this is some kind of trick to allow them to still void the transaction in case a mistake is made, or what. It’s especially common at Starbucks, for some reason. It’s very odd - often they will tell me the total, and it’s different than what is showing at the register, because they haven’t added the tax yet (apparently they did it in their head). So I never assume that what’s showing on the register screen is the final total that I owe.
A few weeks ago, I was listening to a briefing by a telecommunications expert who is a native of China. I couldn’t understand why he kept referring to “a raw chicken”. Then I realized what he was actually saying: “error checking”.
A restaurant-owner friend of mine had an employee who was here in the US on a temporary visa, which required her to travel back to the Phillipines after a specified duration here.
When she came back, the INS questioned her about her plans – she stated that she was here temporarily. They produced a questionnaire she had answered on her last entry to the US (verbally, with an INS agent writing down her answers).
They pointed out an answer she gave which contradicted her claim to have no intentions of staying permanently: “I have no intention to leave here”. What she had actually said was, “I have no intention to live here”, but with her accent, she pronounced “live” as “leave”.
Partly as a result of this, she was denied re-entry.
To write with?
so do I! It’s a Dublin thing, and there ain’t nothing wrong with it.
Shouldn’t that be “t’ain’t nothing wrong with it”? 
No, to poke with!
I’ve been on both sides of this confusion. I don’t know WHY but there certainly is a natural tendancy to enunciate the wrong bit.
I recommend being explicit: “What was the hundreds digit?” or “Could you say that louder?” or “What did that mean?” and also making a momentary effort to think before repeating something to decide what the mishearer probably needs. I’m so bad at this, I need it explained to me like this…