-mouth pronounciation

Muth seems about right but on reflection it is more likely to have a ff sound rather than a th. And no I wasn't talking about a muff for the sake of a quick pun. Falmuff, Exmuff, Plymuff etc :rolleyes:
 
KevO said:
Muth seems about right but on reflection it is more likely to have a ff sound rather than a th. And no I wasn't talking about a muff for the sake of a quick pun. Falmuff, Exmuff, Plymuff etc :rolleyes:
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Only for the youf generation, or people who have lost too many teeth to be able to do "th"...

Mike.
 
Before GPS, I once asked for directions to Meopham in Kent. Blank stare. It was pronounced 'Meppem' apparently.
Anyway, Roberto, thank you for starting the thread. Quite helpful.
 
one of the oddest is Beaulieu river, I think there is little doubt about the French origin of the word "beau - beautiful, lieu - place" where it would sound like "bawlieuh", though I once met a boat from there and I had to make them spell it a couple of times before understanding what it was, how can bewlee be written "Beaulieu" :D
 
Roberto said:
one of the oddest is Beaulieu river, I think there is little doubt about the French origin of the word "beau - beautiful, lieu - place" where it would sound like "bawlieuh", though I once met a boat from there and I had to make them spell it a couple of times before understanding what it was, how can bewlee be written "Beaulieu" :D
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:)

Also, lieutenant - literally "place holder" - but from somewhere we jam an "F" sound into the middle of it.

Pete
 
snowleopard said:
Portuguese can get you in trouble that way too. Thank you is 'obrigado' if the speaker is male, 'obrigada' if female.
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indeed

similarly, possessives "his", "her" etc in English are related to the subject
"her car" is a car belonging to a woman

in neolatin languages possessives are in accordance to the object
seu carro Portuguese, su coche Spanish, la sua macchina Italian,
the car is owned by a third person which can be man or woman


translating "her daughter" directly into those languages loses the fact the one is talking about the mother, as she is a daughter the possessive will always be feminine
 
Roberto said:
one of the oddest is Beaulieu river, I think there is little doubt about the French origin of the word "beau - beautiful, lieu - place" where it would sound like "bawlieuh", though I once met a boat from there and I had to make them spell it a couple of times before understanding what it was, how can bewlee be written "Beaulieu" :D
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On a vaguely related note, the main shopping street in Rothesay is Montague Street, pronounce Mon-TAIG.
 
Roberto said:
translating "her daughter" directly into those languages loses the fact the one is talking about the mother, as she is a daughter the possessive will always be feminine
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A win for German, then, which incorporates the gender of both the possessor and the thing possessed into the possessive. Almost.
 
Roberto said:
my biggest fear is some of those Welsh places whose name have basically no vowels, Wythsrtsthbswth
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It all gets a lot simpler when you realise that "w" is a vowel in Welsh, pronounced "oo". Then all you need to know is how to pronounce u ("ee"), oe ("oi"), th ("th" as in "thin"), dd ("th" as in "the"), f ("v"), ff ("f") and ll (you're on your own, there, boyo) and it's all pretty straightforward, really.



btw how is Vale of Belvoir pronounced ?[/QUOTE]
 
Belvoir is pronounced beaver, presumably (like Beaulieu) a Norman-French name being mispronounced by the Anglo-Saxon peasants. Place names and personal names which are pronounced in a way that cannot be inferred from their spelling are shibboleths, allowing the in-group to be distinguished from the out-group. Examples, of which there are many, can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._Ireland_with_counterintuitive_pronunciations
 
TiggerToo said:
aaaagggghhhhh SPLIT INFINITIVE!!!!
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An interesting point, often raised by the ill-informed. Antagonism to split infinitives originally arose amongst classicists who sought to impose upon English a latinesque structure, largely because they were offended by its profoundly ad-hoc grammatical structure. They decreed that, since Latin had no split infinitives, then neither should English. None of them seemed to notice or care that it's impossible to split a Latin infinitive, so what their dictat had to do with a language only remotely related to it almost two millennia later is anyone's guess.

Fowler, the doyen of English usage and a man not usually wedded to arcane nonsense, had this to say on the subject:
we must warn him [the user of English] against the curious superstition that the splitting or not splitting makes the difference between a good and a bad writer. The split infinitive is an ugly thing, as will be seen from our examples below; but it is one among several hundred ugly things, and the novice should not allow it to occupy his mind exclusively. Even that mysterious quality, 'distinction' of style, may in modest measure be attained by a splitter of infinitives.

And to my ear, "to boldly go" jars less than "boldly to go", if not "to go boldly", although on the whole I prefer the Star Trek version.

So if your "curious superstition" is going to inflict upon us again the scandal-sheet horrors of multiple exclamation marks, please take it up with Mr Fowler.
 
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