The Official Henry Higgins Thread

[Elly]

How about pronouncing the T in often? I was taught not to, but it seems many do.

I have a cousin who uses "no" instead of "not" as in "Are we going there or no?" It irritates me (but then SHE irritates me no matter what she says).

[jaxsue]

I love this topic. As a copy editor, bad grammar (either in writing or speaking) makes me crazy. I don't expect perfection, but if you don't have command of your native language (barring true disabilities) it's pretty sad. Regional dialects have their charm, but not knowing how to speak in professional/formal settings definitely limits your life choices.

In writing, the biggest pet peeves are not knowing when to insert an apostrophe or comma, so the individual sprinkles them throughout the sentences and they're usually wrong. Also irritating is misusing "their, they're, there," and "too, two, to."

In speaking my pet peeve is when people totally mutilate words. If there's a disability, I'm forgiving. However, if there is no excuse other than poor education/habits, I'm not so forgiving.My pet peeves:
prolly instead of probably
realator instead of realtor
lie vs. lay (you LIE on a sofa, you don't LAY on a sofa)
sit vs. set (you SIT on a sofa, you don't SET on a sofa)
And this one, which is regional (SE US): PIN used for a writing instrument. I've been in this area for 22 yrs and I still cringe at this.
Totally mangled sentences such as, "I'm going to borrie (borrow) me some sugar." My rural Georgia (US) in-laws say this all the time.

Local newspeople should know how to pronounce words, even if it's cities in other countries. Recently a local newscaster (female) pronounced Edinburgh, Scotland as "Edinburg" (as in Pittsburgh). Arghh! If she had had a question as to the pronunciation, she should have asked somebody! As it is, her report came off as unprofessional. Yes, I did contact her to correct the pronunciation.

[Venus193]

Local newspeople should know how to pronounce words, even if it's cities in other countries. Recently a local newscaster (female) pronounced Edinburgh, Scotland as "Edinburg" (as in Pittsburgh). Arghh! If she had had a question as to the pronunciation, she should have asked somebody! As it is, her report came off as unprofessional. Yes, I did contact her to correct the pronunciation.

I actually went to broadcasting school once upon a time and there were several class sessions devoted to foreign pronunciations specifically to avoid this situation.  To mispronounce foreign leaders' names, for example, makes for poor credibility.

[jaxsue]

>>I actually went to broadcasting school once upon a time and there were several class sessions devoted to foreign pronunciations specifically to avoid this situation.  To mispronounce foreign leaders' names, for example, makes for poor credibility.<<

I agree. It definitely lowered my opinion of her, profession-wise. I may not live in a major metropolitan area, but our standards for newscasts should be high.

[Venus193]

That was at a time when we were told that our first jobs would be in small places.  You have to work in Boise before Denver, before New York, etc.

I never did once I saw myself on videotape.  Scared the daylights out of me.

[NEDESAPIO]

How about pronouncing the T in often? I was taught not to, but it seems many do.

I have a cousin who uses "no" instead of "not" as in "Are we going there or no?" It irritates me (but then SHE irritates me no matter what she says).

[/i]

I believe both of the things you mention are regionalisms, particularly the second; my relatives in the New York area are "guilty" of both.  In fact, I can see how the second probably comes from a foreign language such as Italian, where you say something like "L'amaste o no?" to mean "Do you love him or not?"  (My paternal grandparents were Italian immigrants.)

Another "immigrant" kind of regionalism I personally can't stand to hear:

"Close the light" for "Turn the light off."  (But this also comes from a literal translation of the Italian.)

[DottyG]

I have a cousin who uses "no" instead of "not" as in "Are we going there or no?" It irritates me (but then SHE irritates me no matter what she says).

THIS is why I am so angry that they've stopped teaching diagramming sentences in school.  The change happened sometime between my years in school and my brother's.  He's 5 years younger than I.

Diagramming would have taught her that the true sentence she was saying was "Are we going there or not going there?"  Her sentence was a shortened version of that, but the rules still apply.

Likewise, to someone who doesn't know how to diagram a sentence, what I wrote above may look odd.  But the complete sentence, that I shortened, would be "He's 5 years younger than I am young."

Why did they take this vital skill out of our teaching?!

[Leemum]

I see you, and raise you one: plural Latin or Greek nouns used instead of the singular words. I've probably lost the fight for "medium" and "datum", and "criterion" is on the skids, but can we at least agree on "phenomenon"?

I grew up in the day when a good hunk of English class was devoted to grammar. I can parse a sentence until it bleeds. Studying French, German, and Latin also helped, if only to make me more aware of English grammar.

P.S. I HATE it when my boss pronounces the abbreviation "etc." as "ek setera". The full form is "et" cetera". meaning "and "others", or "and other things". The only possible excuse for replacing the "t" with a "k" sound is that you grew up speaking Latin, where the "c" is always hard, and you just ignore the "t". But if you go on to say "setera", there goes that. The only other explanation is that you (or the person) who taught you to say it) never bothered reading carefully.

[Brentwood]

Local newspeople should know how to pronounce words, even if it's cities in other countries. Recently a local newscaster (female) pronounced Edinburgh, Scotland as "Edinburg" (as in Pittsburgh). Arghh! If she had had a question as to the pronunciation, she should have asked somebody! As it is, her report came off as unprofessional. Yes, I did contact her to correct the pronunciation.

I actually went to broadcasting school once upon a time and there were several class sessions devoted to foreign pronunciations specifically to avoid this situation.  To mispronounce foreign leaders' names, for example, makes for poor credibility.

When I was working my first radio job, part of my work included doing the news on the morning program. I did not, however, do the sports stories - our morning man was a sports junkie, and he did all sports-related programming at the station.  So how did our sports man pronounce the name of tennis player Guy Forget? You guessed it. He pronounced it like the English words "guy" and "forget".

[Venus193]

He pronounced it like the English words "guy" and "forget".

[quietly gagging]

[Scritzy]

When I was in radio, I had written a spot for a local grocery to be done live. The midday announcer said, "Clorox Bleach on sale this week!" Only he pronounced Clorox as "CLOW-rox." I called him and asked if he knew what he had just said. When he didn't, and I told him, he said, "Oh ****! Did I really pronouce it like that?" When he listened to the playback of the feed, he was mortified.

But he never mispronounced it again.

[arkzak]

He pronounced it like the English words "guy" and "forget".

*wincing*

[goblue2539]

Does that mean I can't get away with saying Patrick Roy as "Roy", even if I admit I'm saying it wrong on purpose?   

For non-hockey folks, it's pronounced Wah.  But, he's an Av, and I'm a Wings girl so I enjoy saying it wrong. 

FWIW, I also enjoy making up my own words.  But, I try to only use them with family or close friends who know I know the difference between real words and made-up ones. 

[kisu]

One of my pet peeves is misspelling words so that they come to mean something totally different, eg. "the isle of the church" instead of the aisle, or "a tool skirt" for a tulle skirt.

Another is the already discussed deliberate bad pronunciation of difficult or foreign words. Horse divers for hors d'oeuvres, bacon-fed knave-fixation for asphyxiation, Pear-is instead of Pa-ris, etc.
 

[Brentwood]

When I was in radio, I had written a spot for a local grocery to be done live. The midday announcer said, "Clorox Bleach on sale this week!" Only he pronounced Clorox as "CLOW-rox." I called him and asked if he knew what he had just said. When he didn't, and I told him, he said, "Oh ****! Did I really pronouce it like that?" When he listened to the playback of the feed, he was mortified.

But he never mispronounced it again.

I'll bet that was a cold read and he never did that again either.