(Mild sub-thread necro. [Oh, actually the two replies (not counting an even newer one by Blofeld) that have happened since I started this are on this subject, too].)
It's pronunciation. That aside, the Scots word loch. The ch is pronounced as in the German ich. Not pronounced like lock.
How do you pronounce a German ich? It's a sort of silent C, right?
It's like the "ch" in the Scottish word "Loch".
(Seriously... how about trying to voice "h(k)h", a "heh" sound running into (but not quite reaching) a hard "ck"? Or perhaps better as a "hhh" sound with a bit of "nearly k" being attempted part way through.)
If you have
any knowledge of Welsh, that "Ll" (double-L) is the "L" version of the above "K" one. But Welsh also have "Ch", not too dissimilar from that of the various Celtic linguistic relations. (And both of these, and some other digraphs like "ng"[1] and "dd"[2] and "ff"[3], technically being single characters in their own right within the Welsh dictionary.)
But, insofar as new content, my own bug-bears of others' pronunciation:
"Could(/should/would/etc) of" instead of "Could
have" or the contracted "Could've" ("Cud'əv"). I can only really take heart that, typically being inner-city people, there's a higher than usual chance that someone who says this (and, worse,
writes this![4]) may end up being shot.
"Aks" (for the word "ask"). With a similar passive acceptance of the likelihood of firearm death.
...and... I think that's it for my hate-list. Except for some annoying (and continuing) mispronunciations of various local railway stations by the pre-recorded announcements, stresses in the wrong place and elongations and contractions all mixed around, even though the
basic sounds are right.
Not bug-bears, but of note: An amusing near-local pronunciation is "boook" for "book", but they are probably as humoured by my pronunciation as "buck". I can take or leave "Grarse" and "Barth" for "Grass" and "Bath", but I'm a 'short-a' person myself. "Arse" is "Aarse", however, and "Ass" is only applicable (visually or audibly) to something donkey-like (not the butt, tuckus, backside, rear-end, etc), unless I'm lapsing into a Leftpondian accent or terminology for some obscure reason.
My Dad's currently complaining that a lot of people are saying "DE-scent" instead of "de-scENT" for "descent", e.g. Chris Boardman's commentary of the TdF and various Olympics road cycling events. I'm not sure how legitimate that is.
I say the latter, except when I'm emphasising something like "First there was the A-scent, after which there was a DE-scent!"[5]. He also often picks up on "Mayoral" being said "May-ore-ee-al", to vastly rhyme with "Memorial". I agree about the "-ee-al" bit being illogical, but can't make myself say "Mair-al", even though "Mayor" in my accent is pretty much "Mair", so end up saying "May-ore-al", on the few occasions I've ever needed to.
(BTW, a historic mispronunciation of mine was a misreading of the word "Jettison", as in "The first stage of the rocket is now jettisoned", as being "Jetonise" (i.e. to 'jet', or propel, the discarded item away from the rest of the rocket). For probably the reason of that association with "jet", this never applied to non-spacecraft ships discarding items, whether water-based or balloons with their ballast or even (albeit typically pre-jet, WW2) aeroplanes, where I'd correctly parse and internally pronounce the word when reading about how a bomber crew would jettison their bomb load, etc...)
[1] Not
terribly far from the N-tilde in the Spanish word for "Tomorrow", but not actually close enough to state this as fact, either.
[2] Pronounced "Th". As in "The", not "Thing". The
actual letters "Th" is the "Th" in "Thing", and never "Th" in "The".
[3] Pronounced "F", with an "F" on its own actually being "V". Oh, and "Y" is more like a "u"[3a], but less so than the
vowel that is "W" ("Bws" is Welsh for "Bus", frexample, with very little audible difference outside of accent effects), while "U" is quite like "Ee". And now I expect you to know how to pronounce both Cymru (Welsh name for "Wales", approximately "Cum-ree") and specifically the place name "Ystradfellte" (somewhere I was in the vicinity of, at the weekend, but which usually confuses visitors and amuses the locals who have to respond to visitors asking for directions).
[3a] North and south regions of Wales differ on this point, in particular, so YMMV. I've ended up with a bit of a mix of the two accents, however, whenever I'm tempted to effuse in the local lingo.
[4] Take note, forumites! I've seen you do it, those that do. And I
try not to complain via PM (or publicly) when you write "could of" in anything I read here, but you've got to accept that it's just plain wrong and occasionally I can't resist mentioning it in passing!
[5] Emphasis is often gotten so wrong, however. Every now and then you hear something like "The deficit was one million last year, but now it's three
million." (Should be more like "...now it's
three million.", emphasising the changed bit. We already had a "millions" figure. Compare and contrast "It used to be three thousand, but now it's three
million!", which is better. Ok, so add a "misemphasis" cover-all to my only two real mispronunciation bugbears.
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Topic: Mispronunciation (Read 7705 times)