"lie bary"

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Anyone not like it when the library is referred to as the "lie bary"?

I used to work in a library and I would intentionally answer the phone with "Hello, Libary" to annoy my boss. But yeah, generally it does annoy me. It also annoys me when someone says "groshries" instead of "groceries." Ugh. It always makes me think of that enunciation song from "My Fair Lady"..."The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plains..."

in norwegian: bibliotek

my spanish speaking uncle came from spain (hes south american) to norway clueless about the language, but very observative and analytical (hehe) and he figured that with some cunning, he could easily GUESS the norwegian word.

norwegian: bibliotek.
spanish: biblioteca.

SO! First of all, he remembered that the order of words in a sentence are often reversed in norwegian and spanish, like in english. "the red car" vs "el coche rojo" or "the car red"

1. Tekabiblio.

THEN he thought wait... norwegian is a germanic language, spanish is latin, and biblio is a latin word, he needed to replace it w a germanic/norwegian word, and he just so happened to know that it was "bok" just like in english.

he then actually proceeded
to poke peoples shoulders
and just repeat
"Tekaboka? Tekaboka!?"

Sounds uneducated, but really, putting too many r's close together in English is a phonetic train wreck.

Heh, i would suggest quite the opposite. It seems uneducated to take offense or even try to change how someone speaks.

It is not impotEnt

Last edited by Pascal on 17 Jul 2009, 1:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well, getting bent out of shape over pronunciation differences seems in turns ignorant or silly, but the social function is primarily education & class status signaling.

The entire practice of monitoring the grammar of others is an interesting social phenomenon; I was listening to an NPR program on grammar and language one time, and this being NPR the callers were *quite* concerned about correct grammar usages; it was interesting to note that this coexisted with a blatant lack of familiarity with even the most basic of linguistic principles. This strange passionate ignorance seems pervasive among some social classes.

People go to the lie bary to get edumacated.

Yep, in my speech an R-vowel-R syllable usually collapses into a single R, hence Terrorist and Mirror are "Terrist" and "Mere".

I hate Prescriptivist Grammar Nazis, and the smug English teachers that know "Real English Grammar" but know squat about lingustics. How it has become a political issue, usually because of conservatives decrying criticisms of the Gammar Nazis by real linguists as "evil liberals destroying the language and letting those stupid N*****s in the ghetto speak bad English" mystifies me.

I was just thinking about that today. XD;;; In grade school I argued with a kid who said it was libary. Same kid who didn't know what a dandelion was. I thought he was just a liar.

And LOL Darryl!! XD

Back in the time of Queen Victoria many people were against ALL novels and fiction.

Why?

Because novels and fiction are "not true" and if they are not true then they must be lies, right?

To tell a lie is a sin and to read and enjoy lies is a sin.

Thus reading fiction is a sin.

Conservative types seem the worst when it comes to the idea that bad grammar is destroying thought or some such nonsense. But getting picky about grammar seems to crop up among the public radio crowd and the perpetual targets of Stuff White People Like rather a lot.

I of course am not entirely pure of heart. Affected "proper" pronunciation is a pet peeve of mine, though not so much for the actual pronunciation as the attitude that motivated it. You get such silly things as forcing an intervocalic t (or, I swear I've heard this, flapping it, and then aspirating the flap), or inexplicably objecting to some instances of palatalized consonants on the grounds that it's lazy, without any problem with others (steɪʃən and fɪʒən are fine, but whoa, mətʃuːɹ is destroying our language?). Or everyone on NPR speaking general American, but they all "just happen" to preserve an exaggerated form of the hw/w distinction (a distinction made at this point by maybe 17% of all speakers in North America)?

BTW welcome back Odin. How've you been?

All i know is that when i lived in america people would constantly correct my english accent and i wanted to hit them

There is nothing wrong with glottal T's, silent H's or TH-fronting and if it really offends people, then said people should seek psychiatric help.

Funny thing about glottal t is that it's a common allophone in North America too - just not intervocally. Check out the common pronunciation of "mitten".

LOL, I still have the w/wh distinction in my speech, but that's probably because I grew up in a back-woods rural area. Oh, one thing that bugs me is how many Brits don't use the subjunctive mood, apparently us Americans are more archaic in grammar than the Brits.

Most horrible spring ever. We had the Red River flooding, then a close friend, who is physically disabled, was raped, and then my stepdad suddenly got pancreatitis and died.