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I own a car...
Topic Started: Oct 27 2007, 07:17 PM (476 Views)
Sabre_Justice
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Ask me about very angry cats
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Actually, foreigners ought to know that a dictionary will not help you in casual conversation- English is filled with sayings, idioms, clichés and expressions that often differ by the dialect and region, as this thread has turned to the discussion of.

English may only have 26 letters, but there's way too many ways to use them.
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Pixellated
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Being responsible
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I say it coy-yo-tea.

I've noticed that most English people have a lot of trouble pronouncing foreign words, such as the one in that letter: Porche. German word, "Por-shuh" or with a Tirolian accent, "Porschhhhhhhhhhha", with emphasis on bringing up every amount of flem in your throat. Tirol rocks. ^_^
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Lothar Hex
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Illogical
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RedFox742,Oct 31 2007
12:07 AM
Yeah, added to Bernard Shaw's classic example of how to pronounce the following word: "ghoti".

The answer? "Fish". (The [gh] comes from "laugh", the [o] from "women" and the [ti] from "nation".)

I'm sticking to my guns on this one, though. The word "jaguar" has it's roots in the Tupi language--"yaguara" or "jaguarete", depending on your source. Both make a diphthong out of the [ua]. It then comes via Spanish and Portuguese, who use the English spelling, and pronounce it "yah-gwar" (j's are pronounced like English y's in Spanish). The word is a cognate in nearly every Western language. In actuality, as far as I know, only in British English is the [ua] in "jaguar" NOT a diphthong. All in all, it strikes me as one more incident of the British fascination with extra vowels. (Or is that a fascinatione with voweles? *is a jackass*)

How do I know all this crap? Well, truth be told, the jag is my second favorite animal (after... well, take a bloody guess). S'why I asked in the first place (and I'm also always interested in differences in dialects). And at least it couldn't be worse than my roommate from last year, who had the ever-irritating habit of referring to the poster on my wall as a "jag-wire". That one's just indefensible. ;)

A very, very fast Google search produced this, along with hundreds of other results, of course. (Most seem to care more about the car than the animal, heh.)

(P.S.: As long as we're on different ways of pronouncing animal names: Anyone here say 'cai-yote" instead of "coy-oh-te"? I like to bring this one up in any pronounciation debate.)

Yeah Red? No one cares.
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RedFox742
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Obama's got a gun...
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Blasphemy! Obscure word origins are completely relevant to the topic of your car.
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