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Are there any words that you deliberately mispronounce?

Arakhor said:
It’s one thing saying Paris rather than Pah-ree, because that’s its accepted English pronunciation, but it’s quite another to look at en route and then somehow mutilate that into enn rowt, simply because you think that US English shouldn’t observe foreign language rules. (Of course, there’s also sometimes only a fine line between ‘accepted’ and ‘unacceptable’.)
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I like being pretentious so obviously I pronounce it with a deliberately exaggerated French accent and a slight sneer
 
Lexicus said:
I like being pretentious so obviously I pronounce it with a deliberately exaggerated French accent and a slight sneer
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It's much more pretentious to use a slight French accent and an exaggerated sneer.
 
I wish I was a jellyfish. They don't talk with some Euro-trash accent.

Spoiler :
song lyric reference, for those who missed it
 
Timsup2nothin said:
Not really. I'm as much 'anglo' as anyone, but I can pronounce French words from their spelling. French word, French rules, sound it out, done. You certainly can't pronounce English words that way. English word, English rules...wait, are there any English rules? There seem to be contradictory sets of guidelines that are randomly applied, but no real rules.
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Actually there are a few rulesets. For some words you use the French pronounciation according to current (20th-21st century) rules. For others you use Mediæval French rules (remember, þ, for example, was taken out and replaced with the th digraph and dh is only used by linguists and translators e.g. Tolkien or myself and usually only to transliterate foreign/madeup languages words), PLUS THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT, I hear Owen yell; for others you have to remember how recently a word has been loaned into English to know whether to mince it into an enn-rowt abomination or keep the original language's. Basically, if you know the orthography of half a dozen languages and know the etymology of a word you're good to go.

This, of course, does not account for Leicester (Lester), Greenwich (Grennich), Cholmondeley (Chumly) and the like.

English is a big Creole made of roughly 30% original Anglo-Saxon words, 30% Latin, 30% French (Latin, adapted Greek, lots of Frankish/germanic words) with smatterings of Arabic, Hungarian, Egyptian, Spanish, Hindi, Chinese and Japanese. It also depends on the particular local substrate or adstrate.

bonus note: Soros in Hungarian is pronounced Shorrosh. The ‘r’ is an alveolar sound, e.g. the t in little in many 'Murican accents.
 
When I said French words I didn't mean words borrowed into English from the French, I meant actual French. If given a couple sentences in French and some time to practice I can read them aloud and act like I speak French. My accent, while not perfect, won't be horrible, and i don't have to have the slightest idea what I'm saying. That's the advantage of consistent rules of pronunciation.

The countering challenge is that my favorite linguists (you and Own) between them couldn't read this word aloud and get it right:

axes

I know you can't get it right because no matter how you said it I can counter with "no, that's axes, not axes." That, in a nutshell, is why English sucks.
 
Exactly, point to Takhisis.
 
hobbsyoyo said:
Oh the Paltrow or Maddona approach
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You do realize that when you live in a country with a different "accent" for a long period of time, you begin to pick up that accent, don't you? Living in Canada these past years has softened my Irish lilt a little, and I use Canadian slang. How is that different from Gwynneth and Madonna acquiring English/British slang/accents?
 
Timsup2nothin said:
Claiming victory and running away? Be careful, you could be the GOP's next presidential candidate.
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In the spirit of this thread, their last one mispronounced the word ‘huge’·
Lemon Merchant said:
You do realize that when you live in a country with a different "accent" for a long period of time, you begin to pick up that accent, don't you? Living in Canada these past years has softened my Irish lilt a little, and I use Canadian slang. How is that different from Gwynneth and Madonna acquiring English/British slang/accents?
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'Murican artists adopting British accents is more of a commercial decision.
 
Takhisis said:
'Murican artists adopting British accents is more of a commercial decision.
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Nyet. It happens naturally over time, but Americans can't cope with that without their heads exploding.
 
Timsup2nothin said:
The countering challenge is that my favorite linguists (you and Own) between them couldn't read this word aloud and get it right:

axes

I know you can't get it right because no matter how you said it I can counter with "no, that's axes, not axes." That, in a nutshell, is why English sucks.
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As I noted in the last thread where people complained about English, that's a problem with orthographic convention, not with the language itself.

Yes we really should revise our orthographic convention (I have some, *ahem* wonderful ideas). I don't think that's a particularly controversial viewpoint. The real question is to do it in a way that works for all dialects.

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, yeah. I'll wait.
 
Lemon Merchant said:
Nyet. It happens naturally over time, but Americans can't cope with that without their heads exploding.
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Hmm, not quite. Jeffrey Hyman (great singer for a great band) actually had a Britishoid accent in his early years for some reason.
Owen Glyndwr said:
The real question is to do it in a way that works for all dialects.
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Are you familiar with orthographic conventions used for Goidelic dialects?
 
Takhisis said:
Hmm, not quite. Jeffrey Hyman (great singer for a great band) actually had a Britishoid accent in his early years for some reason.
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Oh sure, some people put on a fake accent for style or whatever reason. I'm talking about the natural process where your normal accent fades as you pick up the new one that you're exposed to over time. If you've emigrated later in life to the new accent, you are less likely to lose your own, but your own does become altered a little. Pretty sure this is what happens to people who move to England and live there for 10+ years...
 
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