I didn’t really watch the show, but I read on some language blog or other that Mad Men, famously set in the 1950s, would occasionally mention the “CFO” of one company or another.
“Chief financial officer” as a job title didn’t really exist in the 50s. It only started being used in the late 1960s, at least according to said blog. At the time of Mad Men, the person in charge of a company’s finances would be called the treasurer, the financial manager, or perhaps the comptroller.
In an episode of Downton Abbey, set in 1920, the housekeeper finds a lump in her breast. She goes to a doctor, taking the cook with her for moral support, and later the butler finds out they’ve been to the doctor and wants to know why. All four use the word "cancer ", very straightforward, no whispering or euphemisms. I’m fairly certain that’s not accurate for 1920. People didn’t say that word aloud, and a cancer victim’s obituary would state that s/he had died “after a long illness”.
(MrAtoz, Mad Men was famously set in the 1960s.)
ROTFLMAO I know, listened to it as well. Also from Western NY. We have a town, Avon. Bucolic little place. Pronounced with the flat Rochester A aaaahvon, no particular emphasys going on. As opposed to long a Avon Stratford upon Avon or Avon CT =)
And in audiobook fun - Caesar’s Legion by Stephen Dando-Collins. mrAru and I were listening to it on our last road trip westwards, and were perhaps a bit slap happy, but we kept hearing about an officer of the Gens Fufia [particularly Gaius Fufius] and comments about Marcus Aemelius Lepidus … which lead to the decision to make an SCA persona named Marcus Fufius Lepidus Minor, who would have little bunnies as a device [Little Bunny FuFu hopping through the forest =)] Of course, we kept hearing the narrator referring to Foofius and thought we were mishearing something because of the difference between how a normal person would pronounce a Roman name and how apparently the edumacated pronounce shite. [lepidus being close enough to lepus for our purposes =)]
I will say, trying to keep track of generational naming of the Latins aside, [come on guys, use more than 5 freaking names, will you?] the book was very interesting if you have any interest at all of military history of the Romans. We do like audiobooks, but one does have to remember to take the stereo off shuffle, or it gets very confusing [we oopsed and listened to Bujold Cryoburn on shuffle for about 5 chapters until it dawned upon us that the chapters after chapter 1 were not in order =) ]
Singular…gah-RAHJ.
Plural…gah-RAHJ-es.
:o
oops forgot - can you still sing the State Fair song naming the various cities?
Well, I said I didn’t watch it! 
When I was working as an EFL teacher, we had a whole list of words that were spelled the same but pronounced differently by Americans and Brits, with the stress shifting from one syllable to another.
“Garage” was one of them; the only other one I can think of offhand was “cigarette.”
There are no rules for “correct” pronunciation in English, only patterns.
Even in Japan pronunciation varies. The city of Nagano is stressed differently in different areas.
And at the Comedian’s funeral, the undertakers are dressed in the British style with top hats wrapped in black silk. IME, American undertakers/funeral home staffers go hatless at all times.
The British pronunciation of the Central American country is Nic-a-RAG-you-ah, I believe, while Americans say it Nic-a-ROG-wa.
ER usually did a halfway-decent job of believably being set in Chicago, except for one thing which always hit my ear wrong.
They always added the word “the” when referring to highway numbers. For instance: “There’s a big pileup on the 290!” Nobody in Chicago would ever say “the 290.” It’s either “290” or “the Eisenhower.” Chicagoans simply do not say “the [highway number].” This is totally an L.A. thing, where most TV is made. Took me right out of suspension every time.
Oh, and if I may weigh in on the “Garage” discussion, in Chicago it’s one syllable: Grodge.
This is why southern Californians say “the” 101, etc. Before the interstate numbering system, LA freeways came with an article: The Pasadena Fwy, The Golden State Fwy, etc.
I guess so. I get the impression there are lots of non-English words whose vowels have been given a sort of best-fit-equivalent in our respective accents. Like “pasta” (either PAS-tuh or PAHS-tuh), “taco” (TACK-oh or TAH-koh) etc: they’re attempts at faithful recreation of the vowel sounds we hear, according to our own lexical sets.
The worst is that the British pronounce the Spanish name Javier as if it were French, Javieh. No one in the Spanish speaking world pronounces it in that way.
The American pronunciation is closer to the pronunciation in Spanish (with some differences in the vowels), with “gua” being a single syllable.
Similarly the British pronunciation of jaguar is JAG-yu-ar, rather than the American JA-gwaar, which is similar to the Spanish (except for the pronunciation of “j” as “h.”)
Best enjoyed with a flute of Champagin.
Yes, and they’re careful to say it that way in all the Jaguar car ads here in the States, because it’s so excrutiatingly British. We wouldn’t have it any other way! I think the American pronunciation is closer to JAG-wahr, though.
Back to the OP: I recently read that when Sir Ralph Richardson got his script for Time Bandits, in which he was to play the Supreme Being, he marked up his character’s dialogue at several points, confidently writing to the director, “He wouldn’t say that.”
Mad Men is set in the 60s. It begins in 1960 and ends in 1970.
I just heard the narrator of an AHC documentary on terrorism say “[The FBI informant] had a brainwave.”
That line had to have been written by a Brit. Otherwise he would have said “brainstorm.”
Asahi Homecast?
Hold on, are you saying that it is a two-syllable word?