Commonly mispronounced words

[SadistSecret]

I don't consider Ebonics to be a whole and freestanding language. It's like the difference between the English spoken in the British Isles, etc, and the English spoken in the US, but I can at least understand what the British are saying.

Adding the prefix/suffix/something-ix "-izz" [and various forms such as "izzle", "izzouse", etc, doesn't constitute a whole language. It's just a form of heavily butchered English that is also offered as a college course at certain colleges (a fact that makes me seriously ill).

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by SadistSecret

Adding the prefix/suffix/something-ix "-izz" [and various forms such as "izzle", "izzouse", etc, doesn't constitute a whole language. It's just a form of heavily butchered English that is also offered as a college course at certain colleges (a fact that makes me seriously ill).

That's not Ebonics, that's SnoopDoggian, and I'd agree there. It is nonsense. Nobody really talks that way do they?

Ebonics allows things like dropped copula, double negation, not inflecting present-tense verbs for number and person. It's an entire language, mutually intelligible with most other English dialects.

Languages and dialects are the same thing to linguists. Some people draw the line between language and dialect by saying that a language has an army and a navy. That's the only difference.

[SadistSecret]

I'll go with that. And yes, I know people who talk that way.

The things that just irks me are like "I/you/he/she/we/they be...", the "word" "wit", when used in place of "with", and other things like that. I unlike a lot of kids these days (I'm only 19, so I guess I'm still kind of a kid compared to a lot of people here.) actually appreciate the fact that I'm literate, and I frown upon the butchering of my native tongue, especially when I see everyone sending offf text messages "tat lo0k lyk dis yo!" over their bloody phones. I hate text messaging because of it. I don't mind if they take the time to spell out their words, however.

[DanaC]

That's the way it's pronounced by everyone I personally know, including an Iraqi immigrant whom I served with in the US Army.

In the UK and Europe, and amongst the Iraqi population here, it's pronounced Ih Raq. Amongst the Iraqis, the a is softened so that it lies somewhere between a and o, and the r is usually rolled slightly.

Most of the world considers your pronunciation of Iraq to be at odds with theirs.

[SadistSecret]

"Ih-Raq" is closer to what I say than "E-rock"

[Happy Monkey]

Not if "Raq" is pronounced "Rock".

[SadistSecret]

When I have Iraqis telling me it's pronounced "rack" instead of "rock", I will believe them.

[Happy Monkey]

When I have Americans tell me it's pronounced "Murka", I put it down to regional dialects.

[SadistSecret]

Someone is telling you "America" is pronounced "Murka"?? WTF??

[Happy Monkey]

It is pronounced "Murka", in some areas.

[monster]

Originally Posted by SadistSecret

When I have Iraqis telling me it's pronounced "rack" instead of "rock", I will believe them.

Hmm. Not terribly likely to happen then, since immigrants to the US are likely to change their pronunciation for the sake of their sanity and we never hear Iraqis speaking on the TV as they are always dubbed by interpreters.

I'm with Dana, all y'all Murkins are wrong

(not to be confused with merkins)

[Undertoad]

Christiane Amanpour wants us to say eee-Rawn and eee-Rock

I'm so confused!

[monster]

This should help with the I-rack and I-ran confusion.

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by monster

This should help with the I-rack and I-ran confusion.

I'm not a comedy writer and even I know it's the iSuck for the vacuum, the iNuke for the microwave, and the iFrame for the picture frame (a good geeky joke). Why did they make the iProducts so cumbersomely named?

Still, pretty funny.

[Hime]

Since living in Tennessee for a while, I have gotten to see most of the regionalisms not as a source of stress, but as just a nice reminder that the country hasn't been [i]completely[i] homogenized yet. I started to worry when people decided that the solution to good local radio being replaced with crap syndicated radio wasn't to start new local stations, but to import good radio from outer space.

The one thing that puzzles and sometimes annoys me is that here in DC, we have a neighborhood called Judiciary Square. The metro announcers seem to always refer to it as "Joo-DISH-oo-wary Square." I'm not sure what it is that makes that one particular thing so hard to pronounce.