[QUOTE=Zeldar]
Even if a dictionary accepts a pronunciation as okay, there are some that strike me as precious, snooty, faux-intellectual or just annoying.
One I just heard on TV is a prime example: processes. I have always thought “PRAH-sess-iz” was the right was to say the plural of “PRAH-sess” and that “prah-sess-EEZ” was an affectation to make it sound more scientific or academic or just plain “important.”
Any that bug you like this? Do you prefer the version I dislike?
[/QUOTE]
That’s the correct spelling of the word. That is processes, not processis, and that’s version I’ve always heard. Though I suppose if you go with just the spelling alone, it could be pronounced processES where the ES rhymes with mess. I work in an industry where we use the correct pronunciation of these types of words. For instance, analysEEs for the plural of analysis.
Correct pronunciations don’t bug me. What does is the “language is a changing art form so just go with whatever if it’s at all understandable”. As another doper once said in one of these “grammar” threads (paraphrased) “why don’t we just start saying ‘grapefruit’ when we mean ‘lamp’ then?” argh!
That said “nauseous” to mean “I feel nauseated” drives me BUGGY. I don’t CARE that it’s now supposedly correct and in the dictionary and all and has “passed into common usage” (as they say when something is used so often that even when incorrect it becomes accepted). The fact that the word means “something which causes nausea” (and now of course to feel nausea) makes me do the tiny cringe. My internal reaction is “you make people sick”?
I know the dictionary says it’s ok, and I’ve read debates on grammar message boards about it…but my best friend pronounces it this way and I know he does it because he thinks it’s right and it makes him seem smart, but really it just makes him sound like a douche.
[/QUOTE]
How are you supposed to say this one then?
[QUOTE=DanBlather]
That bugs me too. It’s always people that want to seem smarter than they are. A-crossed, as in “it was a-crossed the street”, drives me nuts too.
[/QUOTE]
Okay, now I’m seriously confused. Acrossed is incorrect, it’s across. I thought the OP was about people who pronounce words correctly and how that sounded “snooty” etc.
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
Innovative pronunciations of place names doesn’t bother me. I’d feel pretentious if I said “Naw-luns” instead of New Orleans. I’ve never been there, I shouldn’t try to sound like I have.
[/QUOTE]
I spent 3 “hitches” there during the Katrina recovery. Whenever I pronounced it New Orleans (new Orleens) locals would jokingly “correct” me and try to get me to say “N’awlins”.
I’ve lived WAY up north for 37 years, my drawl is pathetic at best.
[QUOTE=pinkfreud]
Many folks in Oklahoma and Texas pronounce “terror” as “tear” and “mirror” as “mere.”
[/QUOTE]
So then how would an Oklahoman or Texan Tolkien fan say “Mirrormere”?
Re: garage, I can identify three pronunciations which are all quite common even in my part of England.
GARR-ahj. Short “a” in the first syllable, definite “j” rather than “zh” sound at the end, rhymes with the British pronunciation of “massage” (but not the American “muh-SAHZH”).
GARR-ahzh. Similar to the above, but with a more French-style “zh” on the end.
GARR-idge. First syllable as above, but the word rhymes with “carriage”.
The American style “guh-RAHZH” is not unknown, but does strike me as common.
I usually use pronunciation number 2, verring towards 1 on occasion. Number 3 is more of a London thing, I think.
[QUOTE=CanvasShoes]
Okay, now I’m seriously confused. Acrossed is incorrect, it’s across. I thought the OP was about people who pronounce words correctly and how that sounded “snooty” etc.
[/QUOTE]
That’s what I did try to say in the OP. If you allow for the fact that a dictionary allows for the pronunciation in question as “acceptable” (I believe that dictionaries have dispensed with the notion of “correct” when more than one is offered – but they will occasionally label one as “regional” or “sub-standard” if it is fairly unusual) but you find it highly objectionable on the grounds that it just “sounds wrong” to you, then you’ll have the spirit of what I had hoped this thread could deal with.
It’s obvious the interpretation of the OP has been all over the map, but isn’t that what OP’s are supposed to do? Give you a topic that you can modify to suit your own tastes?
In effect, if something about pronunciations makes your skin crawl or sets your teeth on edge or makes you wince, let’s have it.
I hate hearing the word “hearth” pronounced like “harth”. Granted, that’s the correct pronunciation. It still sounds wrong. I had long assumed that it was pronounced to rhyme with “earth”. I will insist to my dying day that it makes more sense that way.
This one is more a matter of overuse than of pronunciation, although sloppy pronunciation assists in making it grate on my nerves. When a sports analyst or commentator is discussing (American) football in football season on a program that is about football, why does he/she feel obligated to continually say “football” instead of just “ball”? We know it’s a football, and not a baseball or a basketball or a softball or a tennis ball or a golf ball or a disco ball or a medicine ball.
But when you add that it’s said “fu-ball” or “foo-ball” or some way that leaves out the “t” it just adds to the grating effect.
Example: “Well, John, this has been a tough fooball game and the fooball players have been handling the fooball very well today. I would hope the referees in the fooball game would set the fooball down close to the yard hash marks on the fooball field so we could tell how many yards they have to go to get the fooball over the 10-yard marker.”
Another vote here against “ant” as the pronunciation for aunt. When I was young I wondered why certain neighbors named the communal bugs in their backyards: “Ant Alice, Ant Suzie, etc.” It really weirded me out.
What I am finding weird is that the people who say (correctly) that “aunt” shouldn’t be pronounced “ant” seem to be saying that it should instead be pronounced to rhyme with “daunt” or “flaunt”. No it shouldn’t – it rhymes with “can’t”.
[QUOTE=Colophon]
What I am finding weird is that the people who say (correctly) that “aunt” shouldn’t be pronounced “ant” seem to be saying that it should instead be pronounced to rhyme with “daunt” or “flaunt”. No it shouldn’t – it rhymes with “can’t”.
[/QUOTE]
Sure, in your pronunciation
The “alternative” pronunciation almost rhymes with my pronunciation of the first syllable in “ontology”, but with neither “daunt”, “flaunt”, nor “pant”. (Sorry, I can’t think of any other words with “ant-” syllables I pronounce that way.)
So then how would an Oklahoman or Texan Tolkien fan say “Mirrormere”?
[/quote]
Many of us would probably say it unintelligibly. When I was a little girl, we presented an adaptation of “Snow White” as our school pageant. At several points in the play, the girl who was the Wicked Queen glared into the looking-glass and chanted “Mere, mere on the wall, who’s the farrest one of all?”
[QUOTE=Colophon]
What I am finding weird is that the people who say (correctly) that “aunt” shouldn’t be pronounced “ant” seem to be saying that it should instead be pronounced to rhyme with “daunt” or “flaunt”. No it shouldn’t – it rhymes with “can’t”.
[/QUOTE]
Where I’m from, “aunt” rhymes with “daunt” and “flaunt”. I suspect they’re all about halfway between your “daunt” and “can’t”. Our “can’t”, on the other hand, rhymes with “ant”.
And I’m from New Hampshire, New England, so obviously my pronunciation is all moderner and betterer than yours.
