[QUOTE=dennis gallagher]
I would like to hear more about the African American doctor who was/wasn’t denied a blood transfusion. I always thought it was true.
[/QUOTE]
Ask and ye shall receive…
[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]
As a boy, I knew a lot of words from reading before I knew how they were pronounced. I once embarrassed myself by pronouncing “despot” with a silent “t,” likening it to the pronunciation of “depot.”
[/QUOTE]
I shop at Home Despot all the time!
I think I believed in God (at least in the religious superstition sense) until I was at least 14 or 15.
[QUOTE=Cub Mistress]
It was right here on the Dope that I learned the “forte” isn’t pronounced “for-tay” but is instead, “fort.”
[/QUOTE]
It really depends in what context you’re using the word. You don’t play your musical intrument ‘fort’, you play it ‘fortay’.
[QUOTE=Baffle]
It really depends in what context you’re using the word. You don’t play your musical intrument ‘fort’, you play it ‘fortay’.
[/QUOTE]
Or you could read post 376. It has cites and everything.
It took me a long time to figure out that the name “Sean” in books I read was pronounced the same as “Shawn”.
[QUOTE=Baffle]
It really depends in what context you’re using the word. You don’t play your musical intrument ‘fort’, you play it ‘fortay’.
[/QUOTE]
I was going for the “that in which one excels” usage of forte. I don’t mind when others say “for-tay”, I’m just not crazy about being corrected when I say “fort.” It’s not that I mind the language changing, but “fort-tay” already means something else. Well, “fort” does too, so I guess that’s a pretty weak argument. Nevermind.
I’ll just go with the flow. “For-tay” it is.
It’s a stage name. His agent did not think his real name, Penis van Lesbian, would be suitable.
[QUOTE=jackdavinci]
It took me a long time to figure out that the name “Sean” in books I read was pronounced the same as “Shawn”.
[/QUOTE]
But now there’s a weekend weather guy on the Today show who’s name is Sean, and pronounced “seen.” It annoys me every time I hear it.
Similarly, when I was growing up in Indiana, there was a newscaster who’s first name was “Diane,” but prounouced “de-on,” like Dionne Warwick’s first name. For quite a while, I thought the TV news people just spelled her name incorrectly.
I once had to correct someone in his 30s that “hyperbole” had more than three syllables. He thought it was pronounced “hyper-bowl”.
[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
I once had to correct someone in his 30s that “hyperbole” had more than three syllables. He thought it was pronounced “hyper-bowl”.
[/QUOTE]
The first time I had occasion to use the word, I said that someone had a “breathe-y” voice.
You could always just speak French and work around the whole issue that way.
[QUOTE=SkipMagic]
Should you believe a poster is breaking a rule, the proper response is to report the post or otherwise alert a mod. What you shouldn’t do is insult the poster (outside the Pit); this is not a new or complicated rule, nor is it one with which you are unfamiliar, having received a similar warning in the past.
Further comment on the subject should be posted in the Pit.
[/QUOTE]
Goodness me, are we still talking about that? Rather a waste of effort for a single use of the D-word over a post which seemed to have been submitted solely in order to be provocative (how I wish there was a word to describe such behaviour), and, y’know, finally getting around to noticing the provoker at about the same time as you’re delivering the above lecture to me shows a certain slowness off the mark, Skipster.
But really the whole affair’s too petty for the Pit, which is certainly saying something, and I promise you that next time I will keep my thoughts to myself, and however dickish I may consider someone’s dickishness, I won’t call a dick a dick in this forum.
[QUOTE=Leaper]
I had no idea until this thread that people actually thought that pineapples grew on trees.
[/QUOTE]
I’m having great difficulty realizing that anyone anywhere thought that pineapples grew on trees. Lest that sound too smart-assed to bear, I’ve learned several things in this thread that I’ve been wrong about for many years.
I’m in London, England. Over here, ‘primer’ is always PRY-mer, rhymes with ‘timer’. Or rhymes with ‘rhymer’, come to think of it. It can mean an introductory guidebook, or an undercoat layer when painting a wall. I have never in my entire life heard ‘PRIM-mer’, rhymes with ‘trimmer’. Not even once.
I was about 9 before someone told me that spaghetti doesn’t grow on trees.
I didn’t believe them…I do now though
Wasn’t there an April Fool’s Day joke on BBC Television once involving a documentary about spaghetti farmers?
[QUOTE=Siam Sam]
Wasn’t there an April Fool’s Day joke on BBC Television once involving a documentary about spaghetti farmers?
[/QUOTE]
You can watch it here
Malacandra, I’ve already said to stop with the hijack and to keep further comments on it confined to the Pit or e-mail, yet you continue to respond regardless. That’s not wise, and neither is throwing in a trolling insinuation and insulting the same poster again.
This is your second warning. Move it to the Pit, take it to e-mail or whatever third option you’d like, as long as you do not address it again in this thread.
When I was little I thought that the purpose of tv commercials was to give the actors a chance to use the bathroom. I had a slight continence issue as a child, so that might have had something to do with my misconception. I think I was 11 or 12 before I realized that tv shows weren’t live.
[QUOTE=Struan]
The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest
You can watch it here
[/QUOTE]
Caution: that’s a Real Video file download, and not a YouTube or similar link.