No-one care to comment on onion/ungyun???

[charliebrisbane]

Well the conversation on aitch and haitch seemed to be going south so I suggested that people let us know who says what. Looks like we all say onion or we are just not prepared to admit to the unyon pronunciation. Well what have you guy got to say????????

Charlie

[bigdog]

awkshun or okshun (auction)... the one I am always reminded of !

[p38arover]

I say "uny'n"

Then there's "route" - rowt or root (I use "rowt")

Schedule: SKedule or sHedule. I say "shedule" but that doesn't fit with the abbreviated form "Skeds" (often used in radio work)

And for Kiwis: Six or Sex :angel:

Ron

[bigdog]

Marooooon or Marone (the colour)...

[p38arover]

Marone

[bigdog]

Marone


Not for a POM:D

[CraigE]

tomaytoe or tomartoe.
potayto or potarto.
howard or d!@^head:o
the list goes on.

[k1000o]

I'm lost ... :p I'm confuse with this post :(

... https://www.aulro.com/afvb/ ...

[p38arover]

Not for a POM:D

I'm not a Pom! :mad:

Ron

[hiline]

I'm lost ... :p I'm confuse with this post :(

... http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/1319/mixedemotions4lubf8.gif ...

dont worry mate a few of us will be :D;)

[JDNSW]

Much less to be made of any of these variant pronunciations than the aitch/haitch one, which at least in the past carried a significant bit of information about the speaker.

Onion (uny'n) is simply not something that we say regularly - you could talk to someone all day without finding out how they say it, unless the conversation turned to cooking.

Ocksh'n is the Australian pronunciation, awkshun is English - the ACOED gives both, SOED gives only the second.

route - ACOED gives only root, SOED gives Rowt as US and Military.

schedule - both dictionaries list both pronunciations without preference

Ignoring kiwi pronunciations -

tomarto is the only pronunciation given in either dictionary

potayto is the only pronunciation given in either dictionary

Ignoring political comments.

John

ACOED = Australian Concise Oxford English Dictionary
SOED = Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

[p38arover]

route - ACOED gives only root, SOED gives Rowt as US and Military.

I used to use root but as I worked in international telecoms and we used the term a lot, it became easier to use rowt when talking to Americans. Root confused and worried them. :)

I do tend to use them both.

Ron

[bigdog]

I'm not a Pom! :mad:

Ron

Not quite sure why you are so touchy about this. I say Marooon, you say Marone :confused:

[Maggot4x4]

I listened to an intersesting conversation on the ABC a few weeks back about changing language and how most of the world is changing the way they say things. It centred around emphsis on letters, for instance, in Australia most would say ConTractor, where as in the UK it would be conTractor.

Apparently a lot of it has to do with with globalisation and the need for more and more non english speaking countries to learn english and of course, they learn American english, or is that aMeriCan english?

[JDNSW]

.......

Apparently a lot of it has to do with with globalisation and the need for more and more non english speaking countries to learn english and of course, they learn American english, or is that aMeriCan english?

Not too sure about that - certainly a lot of them learn American English, and it is spread by their TV programs sold cheaply worldwide, but lots of places where English is a second language tend to learn another variant of English - consider for example that the largest number of fluent speakers of English as a second language in one country is almost certainly India - and they do not speak American English, they speak their own version, and can be expected to spread it as Indian international trade expands - for example by buying Landrover!

I failed to comment above on maroon - the colour.

SOED gives only marooon, ACOED gives only marone, making it clear that the latter is the Australian pronunciation, the former the English (or more precisely, the pronunciation referred to as standard English - that of an educated Londoner)

John

[DiscoStew]

I listened to an intersesting conversation on the ABC a few weeks back about changing language and how most of the world is changing the way they say things. It centred around emphsis on letters, for instance, in Australia most would say ConTractor, where as in the UK it would be conTractor.

Apparently a lot of it has to do with with globalisation and the need for more and more non english speaking countries to learn english and of course, they learn American english, or is that aMeriCan english?

I work at a Uni and I find that some international students use a very proper english as it is text book learnt. The grammer is often better than locals.

Others have broken english but still not colloquial. Not much American styling. Could be different amongst the less educated back at their home country though, I suspect American TV would have more influence there.

BTW I say ung-yn, mar-own and root.

[p38arover]

Not quite sure why you are so touchy about this. I say Marooon, you say Marone :confused:


I don't care about maroon. Just don't call me a Pom! :D

Ron

[duff]

:angel: Now this will evoke the wrath of Ron, TIC.(Ron you have taught me to spell check... always)

But it has always struck me as a bit of a literary snobbery that we spell words to some magic formulae, rather than just spell it the way it should be spoken.

:confused:
I mean it would seem to some of us less correct spellers out here; that English language is actually counter productive (a language that only half the population fully understands)
:blink:

If I hadn't wasted so much time at school trying to learn a language that I have never had to use post school,,,, I may have put more time into a relevant education,,,,,,,,, and just maybe I could be driving a D3 instead of my D2. hohh humm.
:)

[p38arover]

You need to read Bill Bryson's book Mother Tongue.

Very interesting and humourous read (especially if you have read his other books).

See some excerpts at http://f2.org/humour/quotes/lang/bill-bryson.html

For those that don't know him, he's an American writer who has lived most of his adult life in the UK.

Ron

[JDNSW]

....

1. But it has always struck me as a bit of a literary snobbery that we spell words to some magic formulae, rather than just spell it the way it should be spoken.


2. I mean it would seem to some of us less correct spellers out here; that English language is actually counter productive (a language that only half the population fully understands)


3. If I hadn't wasted so much time at school trying to learn a language that I have never had to use post school,,,, I may have put more time into a relevant education,,,,,,,,, and just maybe I could be driving a D3 instead of my D2.

1. Problem with that is - how are you going to decide "the way it should be spoken"? It is a misconception that English is supposed to be spelled the way it is spoken - that is one influence, but it is heavily modified by other considerations such as the etymology of the word or to distinguish visually two words that sound exactly the same but have different meanings, especially where the meanings are distinguished in spoken English by emphasis, for which there is no written version. A lot of the non-phonetic spelling comes as well from changes in how words are pronounced - for example see the thread above, where Ron has changed his pronunciation of route.

Almost no languages have fully phonetic spelling - and there are good reasons for this. Take the example of Norwegian. The spelling of this was made fully phonetic some time in the 1940s. Because there is only a small population speaking it as a native language, the pronunciation has drifted since then, and it is no longer fully phonetic. What is more, nobody under 65 can easily read anything that was written before about 1950.

In the case of a world language like English, changing the spelling as was done in Norway is impossible - can you visualise the likliehood of getting agreement on spelling from all or even most of the countries that speak English - even assuming that any of them were in a position to enforce the changes. And no country is going to make the change unilaterally, as they would simply be cutting themselves off from the rest of the world.

2. Same applies to any language. People generally learn only as much of the language as they have to.

3. I learnt two languages at school - one I have used to a very limited extent, less in the last twenty years, as scientific papers have moved almost entirely to English, the other hardly at all, only for a bit of recreational reading - but I still think it was worth the trouble.

John

[bigdog]

I don't care about maroon. Just don't call me a Pom! :D

Ron


Ron - I am the POM (amongst many other things)! Apologies if you took offence or my post wasn't clear:oops2:.

[Bigbjorn]

I'm not a Pom! :mad:

Ron

your photo looks like a Londoner, but you are a bit too pale

[Bigbjorn]

Marooooon or Marone (the colour)...

At primary school long, long, ago, I was taught to say maroo-on and baloo-on. Fat lot it did most of the class who spoke the way their families did in the case of the Australian born.

[bigdog]

your photo looks like a Londoner, but you are a bit too pale

Don't know who the guy on the left is.....I was just sitting there reading Playboy and he took a bit of an interest and sat down for a look:rolleyes:

[Redback]

Here's one for you

hour or ourwa aitch is silent:p

our or ourwa, no haitch:D

sour or sourwa:D

Baz.

[Quiggers]

I worked in a tv post production facility, where the very nice chief engineer from Macedonia had a few 'issues' with the vagaries of English.

A router is a big box which sends signals from various vtrs to other ones etc.

We call it a rowter - the American vers.

The chief called it a rooter - the correct but unused English vers.

He was a very nice man, so we looked after him, but we often smirked about things getting or being rooted...

Local dialect here amuses me:

'asked' is pronunced 'arkst'

'The Channon' (a village) is pronounced as 'The Channon' (hard Ch) - non locals annunciate the affective 'The Shannon' - which irks older locals:D


The marr-own tomarto is shheduled to be eaten.

Beijing: The slippery Beige-ing is an annoyance, its Bey-jing (hard j).

A new-kew-lar citypolis with many medium strips, pacifically to divide traffic......
the once poor Beige-ing has, due to economic propserity, has become effluent...

I'm malaproped... or was that propped...

for more wordy fun try this:
http://www.fun-with-words.com/malapropisms.html

And one (or two) more annoyances; sports commentary: the 'warm-down' pool....
and in various forms of racing: "he's leading from the front" - uh huh.....

GQ

[Maggot4x4]

You can imagine the fun I had with the name of a town up the road from me when I first moved up from NSW before I learnt the local way of saying it.

The town is spelt South Kolan, pronounnced Co-lan

[Quiggers]

You can imagine the fun I had with the name of a town up the road from me when I first moved up from NSW before I learnt the local way of saying it.

The town is spelt South Kolan, pronounnced Co-lan


Does this town have a 'dump', maggot?:D:D:D

(my 'kolan' has indigestion...:D)

GQ