Ditto. 
By golly, you’re right! See here. Until now, I’d always thought it was a long I sound.
It wasn’t until about six months ago that I realized that Pete Seeger and Bob Seger are two different people.
That made the whole “Electric Dylan controversy” a lot less confusing. I would ask myself, “Why would a man so bothered by Bob Dylan go on to record ‘Old Time Rock and Roll’?” Now, it all makes sense.
I’m 30.
Huh? Anyways, I’ve always known flaccid was pronounced “flacksid” and that “flassid” is incorrect, but I always thought it was spelled F-L-A-X-S-E-E-D
:eek:
I’ve NEVER heard flaccid pronounced any way other than “flas-id.” Some people pronounce it like there’s an ‘x’ in there? Seriously?
No. “Primmer” is a British pronunciation. It may hold more sway in the US than “petrol”, but the idea that you’re “wrong” for pronouncing the word in a way that’s intuitive to American listeners and clearly understood by everyone with any functional comprehension of the English language, is preposterous. It’s yet another example of the ridiculous British assertion that “the Queen’s English” is the superior form, aided by complicit Americans. When I hear British folks pulling out this tired crap (which is not that often, I grant you), I remind them that American English more closely resembles the language that the English settlers used, and that modern Standard British English is a bizarre mutation of it. Don’t let anyone tell you that a pronunciation that rolls off your tongue, fits well in your dialect and leaves no room for comprehension errors is “wrong”. Of course, that also means I have no right to tell you not to say “primmer”, and I won’t.
Woah! I had no idea that was even there!
It’s still known as a hash mark in most of the English-speaking world, and among *nix users (who also call it a comment sign, but we won’t go into that). “Octothorpe”, yet another name for the sign, was indeed invented by American engineers:
The “pound sign” name was not intentionally invented by American engineers, but was accidentally formed with the sign itself by English business clerks. (I was all prepared with the exact same quote as Pygmy Rugger used, too.)
I’m no Latin scholar, but it appears from my searches that English “vapid” comes from Latin “vapidus”, while English “vapor” comes from, well, “vapor”. It’s important to note that gardentraveler’s source, while acknowledging the relation, also says that “vapidus” split away from “vapor” in Latin. It’s Latin “vapidus”, not English “vapid”, that’s “probably related” to Latin “vapor”–in the sense that one actually developed from the other.
But in a way, it’s fair to say that they’re related. One clearly refers to the other, even if indirectly.
It’s not. It’s an equally acceptable pronunciation–if not more so IMO.
The standard green EXIT signs you see everywhere have a weird kind of double-arrow in them, by the way, between the E and the X of course.
I don’t think I ever saw the WSU Cougars logo until I started going to a school that plays against them. But after that, it took me a few months to figure out why the cougar was drawn so weird
It’s both a cougar and the letters WSU. The W is the mane, the S is the top of the head to the lower left part of the logo, and the U is the lower jaw.
In a similar vein, until I was about 14 I theorised that high northern and southern latitudes were colder than the equator because they were further away from the Sun, due to the curvature of the Earth. But hey, how many young kids even have theories about it?
I hate to admit it but I until I read this thread, I hadn’t fully realised that ponies were not merely horses that hadn’t grown up yet :smack:
I did know that there were specific breeds like Shetland ponies which remained in pony form all their lives.
I’m British, and I don’t hear people say “primmer” for primer. I was momentarily confused when Jodie Foster used that pronunciation in Contact.
Actually, that’s a funny one. Central America was originally intended to be similar to the USA, only in the end it’s ended up being little more than a curiosity.
Did you know that Costa Rica and Guanacaste never declared independence? The following account is not what you’ll see in a history book, but how it was told to me by Costa Ricans when I worked in their Guanacaste province.
At the time that the colonies were breaking out from Spain, Costa Ricans were, like now, a pretty laid back bunch. I mean, why get excited, you later have to calm down - too much work. One September 15th, a bunch of Nicaraguans bearing torches came down and told them “we’ve declared independence for the whole province, mates! We’re going to do like the Americanos, we’ll have separate states that are all Central America. There’s going to be Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, and Guanacaste… and we’ll all be one country but different states and…” The alarmed ticos and guanacastecos looked at each other and said “ay, maeee! Isn’t this too complicated? Isn’t it going to hurt?” “NOOOO! No, mae! It’s independence, mae, independence!” “Aaaaah,” said the guanacastecos and ticos, not quite understanding what all the fuss was about (they’d always been pretty out of the way, which is how they liked it). And they went on like before, being as laid back as they could and trying to stay out of trouble cos trouble is so tiresome.
Unlike the 13 colonies et co (where you still find things like treaties between the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the French and German governments, but where the “country” is the USA), in Central America the car plates of the different countries say Central America but the ones we think of as countries are… well, the countries. Guanacaste decided to join Costa Rica as a single country a few years after Independence was declared by those nervous people up north; they figured that with their small population, trying to set up embassies and all that simply was too much ado about something they didn’t care about in the first place.
Learning things like this is what I love about my line of work. Specially because I learn them told in the local accent and that, mae, you don’t find in a book!
You think that’s bad? Try writing a paper on Michael Romanov (I), and misspelling his name consistently throughout the whole paper. e.g. Micheal, not Michael.
Then if that’s not bad enough, do it while your own first name is Michael. (Well, Mike for most usage by that point.)
Then there was the paper we did on the whole Old Believer’s schism. Where, for reasons I cannot fathom, I consistently referred to the actions of the Holy Snod. (It’s supposed to be Synod.)
Russian History was a fun course, but it didn’t do much for my spelling average.
The source you cited appears to contradict you, and I can tell you from my own experience as a British person that the “primmer” pronunciation is not in common use on this side of the Atlantic, and that in the sense of an elementary textbook, it’s much less common than in the US, in any pronunciation.
In this part of the world, it’s called the “Hash Key”. I’ve only ever heard it called a “Pound Sign” in the US, and the first time I heard it, I was trying to work out why an American phone would have a “£” key on it… :smack:
FWIW, I thought- at least until I was about 10 or 11- that Thunder was caused by rainclouds bumping together…
Dick. :rolleyes:
Yup, never heard that pronunciation in 47 years and wouldn’t expect to. Idiomatically, a written “primer” is “priming” you with basic knowledge the same way that you prime a pump or a firearm.
the primmer pronunciation for ‘primer’ would run contrary to the spelling convention too, which suggests its pronunciation history. Compare; glimmer, dimmer, swimmer.
By contrast there’s rhymer, schemer, timer.
And of course “primmer” is a word in its own right, as the comparative of “prim”.
Ack! Took a few different posters telling me, but I finally see it. :smack: In my defense, Webster’s uses a pretty odd system for differentiating vowel pronunciation. I use a modified American IPA in my own formal studies of linguistics, so it must have thrown me for a loop.
Well, for all the sway “primmer” is supposed to hold here, I’ve never heard it in my life and I might not have figured out what it meant if someone tried to say it to me that way before I read this thread.
Oddly, one that I’ve never heard a British person use.
ETA so I guess I wasn’t the first to post about this :smack:
Guess it sucks if the exit is actually on the left! (Which is actually denoted by which side of the sign the exit number sits on top of.)
I thought for the longest time that the old Atlanta Hawks logo was some kind of weird Pac Man.
I say “primmer.”
Well, in the one or two times in my life that I actually used that word.
You mean the most ungodly, blasphemous fruit ever. In my world, pineapples will always grow on trees and palm trees at that. Otherwise, I won’t know what to believe anymore…
I’m also surprised by all this geographic misformation being taught at schools.
For my part, I used to think that ‘hyperbole’ was pronounced the way it looks, like ‘hyper-bowl’.