When you see in an old book the letter “y” where we’d use “th” (“ye olde… etc“), that letter was not pronounced as a “y.” The substitution was just a printer convention to make typesetting easier. “Ye” was pronounced “the”…
– via David Frum
Posts tagged “pronunciation”
Don’t trust anyone who makes the middle of the word experiment rhyme with spear.
To the political analyst who discussed Obama‘s campaign this morning on NPR: I’m sorry to say that you lost any credibility you had the moment you said that something was furmaliar. Nothing is furmaliar. Lots and lots of things are familiar. There is no r in the middle of that word. It’s not an accent. It’s not “the way we say it here”. It’s not anything other than wrong. You disagree. I know you do. So, Mr. Political Analyst, imagine this: If you and I were engaged in a conversation about Obama and I pronounced his name Orbama, would you correct me? I think you would. If I said, “Oh, that’s just the way I say it,” what would you think? Good day, sir. I said, “Good day!”
How to Pronounce the Word Height
I want you to stop what you’re doing. I want you to look at the word below. I want you to speak it aloud. height How did it sound? Say it again. Did it rhyme with “right”? It should have. Say it again. Did it rhyme with “byte”? It should have. Say it again. Aloud,
vocab
Not words: acrost, irregardless, nucular, supposably, nother, alot, alright Not verbs: interface, input, impact, itch
An Invalid
You can imagine how stupid I felt when I called someone an “invalid” in high school. As if they weren’t valid. And don’t even get me started on “epitome”. ehp-ih-tohm. Fark this farking language! Drives me nutty sometimes, it does.
Pronunciation of Gagne
My family and I pronounce it Gag-nee. The French, and technically correct, pronunciation is Gahn-yay. It is not Gayn-je or Gang-ee. It’s not Gag-en or Ganj-ee.