OT Humour - Written & Spoken English

I *love* your rules Val! I did have a little chuckle over some but that was more due to me remembering what we as kids used to do with regards to calling our dad at work

I must remember to write up some rules for my kids as soon as they can both read ;-)

What about Cholmondley pronounced Chumley. Worcester....Wooster Bicester.........Bister Salisbury..........Sallsbury It goes on and on. Ruth Sydney

Houston .... in georgia (state of, usa) pronounced houseton in texas, (no comment on) pronounced hueston

klh > The one English name that always had me bemused was the

Pat, I've searched this thread thoroughly; has no one mentioned the Aussie pronunciation of 'khaki'?

rusty (who has an official half-Aussie daughter now; she received her dual citizenship last month(g))

Houston, MN, is pronounced the same as Houston, TX. Wonder if we could get that changed ;)

Julia > Houston ....

In Idaho, we have a tiny little town, mostly just a post office, spelled Huston - pronounced like Houston, Texis (as Sairey spells it!)

No, Rusty! they haven't. I think that might be a step too far >gg< . In message , rusty writes

I have heard Aussies say either car-key or ca-key (like cat without the "t")

So which one are you snickering at ladies lol

to snicker about?i say it ca(as in cat)key too. and this is quilt related... say it as they do here tho never knew why, just sounded european to me so i added the soft j sound.oh you can listen to words here as well as the country origin, etc.jeanne

Howdy!

Sam Houston: from Virginia to Tennessee. But he got to Texas as soon as he could.

R/Sandy

Hi Cheryl -- According to my DSIL, it's car-key :D rusty

Of course it is...LOL ca-key means awful

Dee > >

Yes - I agree. I grew up with a Dad who always described hid Army uniforms as car-key green.

And ca-ckie is what we called yuckie things when we were kids rofl

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That is how Sinclair came about - from St. Clair. So that's two examples. As for travelling hundreds of miles and not hearing an accent change, Russia is similar. There are very few true accent differences. I often wondered if 70 years of Communist education was the reason - on any given day, every school in that vast continent-stretching country was on the same page of the same book. That sort of thing. But then I read that it was true, that there were very few accent differences before the beginning of Communism as well. Very interesting.

-- Jo in Scotland

The original one, in Scotland, is pronounced hoo-stun. Whenever Houston TX comes up in the news here, the Scots newsreaders pronounce that one Hoo-stun as well. Since they do have lists encouraging correct regional pronunciation at the BBC, I always wonder if they're just having a laugh....

-- Jo in Scotland

I've got a place name oddity for you from Texas. The name is spelled "Bexar".... probably named for some long ago settler. It's pronounced exactly the same as "bare" as in "Oh my, the baby's run outside bare again."

I learned the correct pronunciation the hard way. I was a disc jockey for a tiney FM radio station when I was in college. We played "easy listening" music. I read the news and weather on the hour and half hour. Bexar county was one of the ones that always led the list of neighboring counties with tornado alerts. Of course, I said it wrong the first time I read it on the air, mangling the name by trying to get that "x" in there somewhere. Within minutes the phone began to ring. Oh my, who knew we had that many listeners? And so many from Bexar County??

Sunny

If any of you are from rural Texas you'll recognize these:

corner -- prounounced "co'ner" -- keeping the long o but dropping the r

rinse -- pronounced "wrench"

that there -- pronounced "at air" -- as in "at air old truck is on his last legs."

There are millions more. I had a professor in college (Baylor University) who was writing a book on Texasisms. I don't know if he finished it or not. I suspect it could be an open-ended volume.

Sunny

I for one want our diphthongs back! Who took them and where did they go??? I say we begin a "Get Back the Diphthong" movement. It could go far.

Sunny

Houston Street in downtown Manhattan (NYC) is pronounced HOUSE-ton, not YOUS-ton. From that comes the trendy area called SoHo, for South of Houston.

In most American places, the name Pulaski (Hero of American Revolution) is Pu-LAS-key or Pa-Laskey. In the small town of Pulaski, Virginia, it is PEW-lasskey.

PAT, a f> Houston ....