My favorite: Notre Dame (the university) is pronounced Noter Daim (rhyming with 'came').

Possibly you know it already, anyway, in of my first semester at uni our lecturer made fun of us by making us read parts of this out in class. And they say German is difficult to learn....



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

(N. Chomsky 1957)

ViVi, that just went on and on and on... great, though. I've spoken English all my life, and I still had to look some of them up.

Vio...point taken...at least German has real rules! That's the problem with English. We have so many pieces of different languages, you kind of learn the basic rules and then learn how to break them with everything else!

Right. A quick reading of that list was enough to tell me that it contained words with origins in 'Old English' (i.e pre-1066 Anglo-Saxon), later British and Amercian forms of English, 'Old Norse', German, 'Anglo-Norman' & later French, Latin, Scots Gaelic, Greek, and (initially written down either by Americans, or maybe by either French or Spaniards) at least one 'Native American' language... and maybe other languages that I missed.

I remember rreading somewhere, long ago, that "Slough" can be pronounced in any of five or six different ways (even without allowing for regional dialects as well as "standard" English) depending on which of its various meanings is intended.

************************************************************

[i]"God rot Botchkamos Istochnik!"[i]

It's Shrewsbury that really prvokes arguments, though.

Locals often call it 'Salop', just to avoid the issue...



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I would have thought Shrewsbury was pronounced 'Shrews- bry'. But that's from an Aussie point of view. We tend to pronounce things as they are written. Hence what is pronounced 'Lonston' in England is pronounced 'Lon-ses-ton' down here.

NOTE TO ALL MAINLAND AUSTRALIANS: Please note that Launceston is NOT pronounced LAWN-seston. It is LON-seston. Mispronounce it at your peril!

Shrewsbury can be said Shrews-bury (as in 'small furry mammal whose natural habitat appears to be dangling out of a cat's mouth') or Shrose-bury (as in 'flower traditionally given to a lover')



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Now we know what psd buys his lovers--shroses!

My love is like a red red shrose
That's newly bloomed in Salop
I'll buy my love some chocolate
And take it at a gallop



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

He's such a romantic, that PSD.

Don't underestimate him Kaz! Apparently he once not only bought his girlfriend flowers but also a vase to put them in.

(That's varrze or vayse, depending on where you live)



--------------

There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.

Coupla things I want to squeak at -

AAC - We pronounce the Moscow in Russia as Mos-co, not moss-COW! Anyone know how the actual inhabitants pronounce it? Or do they call it something else entirely?

Kaz - I pronounce Lon and Lawn the same....trying to do an Oz accent to see how they're different, but I can't do accents...



:--

Do something pretty while you can...

In Russia Moscow is Mockva. Maybe not spelt that way, but pronounced so.

As for that accent thing, I think you may be trying an american accent, Dante. They'd pronounce it the same (at least, to an Aussie ear). Think about how you pronounce 'lawn', as in that strip of grass out in your back yard? Assuming you have one ....

Russian for Moscow - Moskva (Mockba, near enough, in Cyrillic - 'c' is pronounced as 's').



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Beauchamp always does me in....

Loorrrrrn.

That's lawn.

But then I'm not Austrailian, so what would I know?



--------------

There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.

That's it, Sarah! You could be an Aussie. You've got the accent down pat!




Well, for one word, at least....

My favourite is Waldegrave being pronounced as War Grave. Particuarly when we had a Waldegrave as Minister for Defence.

yes, but no-one ever called him that - did you notice? There was always a 'de' in it somewhere... as in "Derr - what d'you mean, they've just bombed us?"



_ _ _ _ _

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.