pronounciation of common words

My DD will pronounce 'ate' to rhyme with 'get' unless she is reading something out, and then her brain can't seem to ignore the phonetics, and she pronounces it to rhyme with gate

perhaps life is a little too short for getting so upset about pronunciation of words? As a french speaker, I was more than amused about the pronunciation of 'genre', 'cul-de-sac' 'ménage à trois' etc, and the total misuse of 'ménage' for manége', etc. And in English about the unusual use of grammar on the edge of the Danelaw (I were, you was, etc)- and things like 'prostrate' for 'prostate', and so many more.

Always remember my first week of teaching, when on youngster from Braunstone, a oft 'challenged' part of Leicester, asked in the broadest of Leicester (Lesta) accent 'but Miiiis, why can't you speak proper like what we do?'. Indeed, Abigail, indeed...

Some of my neighours here in rural Switzerland, and on the other side in France, do have a really strange accent and pronunciation, and their grammar and spelling are really wobbly- but their are very talented and kind in many other ways- so a bit of tolerance is really 'de rigueur'- and they are very tolerant of OH's efforts to speak French and do try very hard not to ask me 'qu'est-ce qu'y dit' (what's he saying). Honestly.

As a former teacher of English grammar I have many bêtes-noires but am not too bothered by regional variations of pronunciation. What gets my goat is the fact that people are too lazy or uninterested in finding out how a word is pronounced correctly. I do wonder sometimes if it's an auditory thing - perhaps some people just don't have a very developed aural memory in order to reproduce a particular sound.

However while we're at it, here are two of my little irritations:

Pronouncing 'comparable' as 'com-para-bl' - I was always taught to say 'compra-bl'. I'm sure it doesn't really matter, but it always grates.

The other is a vocabulary issue: saying 'disinterested' when 'uninterested' should be used. 'Disinterested' means having no financial or other beneficial advantage; 'uninterested' means having no interest in a subject.

Right, that's me and me barra's outside....

And just to show that I can be as annoying as the next person when it comes to pronunciation, my daughters always snigger when I say 'aah-nvelope' instead of their 'en-velope'. It's a habit I got into from my time in France as a teenager. But at least I don't go the whole hog with 'aah-nvelop'.

I once knew a grand and rather exotic lady who always said 'saandvidge' for sandwich. Lovely.

"lor and ohdah" is particularly irritating. There is no "R" in law and there are two "R"s in order.

Is that the lady know as 'Laura-Norah'?

Well English pronunciation is not easy, is it - read it aloud (and imagine doing it as a foreigner):

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through.
Well don't! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard but sounds like bird.
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead,
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth as in mother
Nor both as in bother, nor broth as in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear, for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose--
Just look them up--and goose and choose
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword
And do and go, then thwart and cart,
Come, come! I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful Language? Why man alive!
I learned to talk it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.

I am absolutely with you, acanthus in respect of 'uninterested' and 'disinterested'.

I also have huge problems with 'convince' being used as a synonym for 'persuade' and 'enormity' instead of 'immensity'.

On the other hand, the OED will tell me that these are now acceptable usages. It doesn't stop them grating

while on the subject can anyone tell me how to say 'Piz Buin' the popular suncream. I said piss broon and got laughed at.(embarrassed)

Ethel - like Newcastle Brown !
Granjura should know as I've just looked it up and it's the name of a mountain in Switzerland.
Perhaps Piz means peak?

Mischievious instead of mischievous: even Princess Diana used to say it.

So how do I say piz bruin, tricia, that's not much help. lol.
Us geordies use the word piss often but Icant think of its relevance to suncream except that's its a similar colour.

Aye but Geordies call that kind of beer the "broon" stuff.

ps no idea how to pronounce piz bruin.
If it was french it would be pees brooang.

I shall think of it now as 'broon piss'.

Piz Buin- certainly NO 'r' in the pronunciation, and no 'r' in the word anyhow! Piz is a peak indeed. Then 'bween' but make the 'ee' short.

My pet hates;

'different to' How the heck (nearly used another word) can anything be different TO? Might as well have 'similar from'....

'fed up OF'

It's all because Grammar aint been taught correkly in recent years.

Incidentally I'm not a gran. Does it matter?

Tricia "brooang" because you are in the south? I love the southern pronunciation - demang for demain, ving for vin etc. Up here in Normandy they swallow the ends of words (ils mangent les mots) and it is much harder to understand, as well as adding the odd word in patois.
Not just the English who notice regional accents!

Mamie - I must be getting used to the local accent. Another unusual one here is the gutteral "r", sort of a growl, like the old Geordie "r" which you hardly ever hear now.

someone on another thread calls her computer her pooter. I cant think how that can sound like computer. Its like nails on a blackboard to me.

someone on another thread calls her computer her pooter. I cant think how that can sound like computer. Its like nails on a blackboard to me.

So bad you have to say it twice?
This thread is an absolute eye opener for judgemental intolerance and the assumption that -*everybody else* must be in the wrong.

sorry must have hit something twice, my pooter is elderly Im waiting for Santa to fetch me a new one

Just wondering, but have you been drinking?

I rarely drink and haven't tonight, cant you see when something is said 'tongue in cheek' Granjura