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Post by Verbivore on Jul 31, 2018 22:10:40 GMT
At work yesterday I encountered a word (mis)spelled in the manner it is pronounced – by Americans.
It seems to my ear that the standard (or at least very common) US pronunciation of the terminal ~eur in words such as entrepreneur is ~oo-er: on-trə-prə-noo-er – as though the spelling were entreprenuer (the e and u being reversed). In an article on new, small businesses, I found the word spelled just so: entreprenuer.
The usual pronunciation in Oz pretty much follows that given in the OED: ˌɒntrəprəˈnɜː(r). How do others here say the word, and is it commonly misspelled as above?
(Was it GW Bush who commented: "the French have no word for entrepreneur"?)
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Post by Twoddle on Aug 1, 2018 10:17:49 GMT
I've only ever seen "entrepreneur" spelt correctly in the UK; it tends to be pronounced approximately correctly, albeit the second "r" isn't always entirely evident. The George W Bush story is false, according to Snopes. That's such a shame!
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 1, 2018 10:26:59 GMT
I have only heard the pronunciation entreprenOOer used by Americans. I think Brits would always say entreprenER in the French style.
I have* to admit I doubt if I would notice a mis-spelling. In reading, I think would just slide over it.
* I don’t actually have to admit it. Why does one say this?
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 1, 2018 11:25:46 GMT
Aug 1, 2018 20:26:59 GMT 10 Little Jack Horner said: I have only heard the pronunciation entreprenOOer used by Americans.
Ah. Thanks for the assurance it's not only my ear that hears such.
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Post by Dave Miller on Aug 1, 2018 20:30:49 GMT
I, too, have heard the ~ooer pronunciation only from Americans. They have difficulty with French words sometimes, as in their pronunciation of lingerie. I’d say “lahn-juh-ree”, but the American version comes over as “lon-juh-ray”. I don’t squirm at the “lon”, but do wonder whether the strange “ray” comes from a confusion with other French words which end in “rée”.
Mind you, the Brits are at it, too: how often do you hear amateur pronounced as though it ended in ~ture, rather than ~teur?
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 1, 2018 21:32:36 GMT
Dave: Unfortunately, to my ear, both lon-juh-ray and amma-tcha are both so common in Oz almost to be defaults. The OED reports lãʒ(ə)ri / ˈlãʒ(ə)riː and æməˈtɜː(r) / ˈæmətjʊə(r) as standard pronunciations.
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 1, 2018 22:32:30 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 2, 2018 0:01:45 GMT
Interesting article. I have a feeling that, no matter how irritating I find roadsigns in Welsh or the Gaelic to be, I think preserving these languages is as important as preserving other aspects of our heritage such as Stonehenge and the Tower of London.
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 2, 2018 7:04:42 GMT
An apt Augustinian quotation from an amusing little book by a stickler: New Words for Old: Misused, vogue and cliché words. (Philip Howard; 1977. Unwin) PS: The same Howard also wrote a book titled Weasel Words. I haven't seen it, but I should be interested to compare Howard's weasel words from the '70s with those of Australia's Don Watson, who wrote a Dictionary of Weasel Words in 2004.
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Post by Twoddle on Aug 2, 2018 9:52:42 GMT
I agree with LJH that the preservation of our ancient languages is as important as the preservation of other aspects of our heritage. I took a beginners' course in Scottish Gaelic nearly a quarter of a century ago for that very reason, but I was surprised by the negative responses I received from friends and relatives. Even my mother said, "Why not learn a useful language instead?". Lowlanders, who form the overwhelming majority of Scots, look ignorantly upon the language as "teuchter" - rural and backward - instead of recognising its historic importance as the tongue of the Highlands and the Lords of the Isles.
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 2, 2018 11:24:04 GMT
In Oz we are facing the extinction of most of our remaining Indigenous peoples' languages (and they were once manifold: known to be 290–363 languages belonging to an estimated twenty-eight language families); many are already forever lost. As the few remaining elders who know their language die out, that language (or dialect) usually dies with them. In recent years there has been a concerted effort to teach those languages to the younger generations, but outside of universities and a few specialised institutions I suspect it to be a lost cause.
With loss of language goes loss of story and history (in its pre-Western preliterate forms), and so those cultures’ richness is lost to posterity, failing to continue the role of national cultural enrichment for all Australians, whatever our colour.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 2, 2018 15:40:18 GMT
The Gaelic
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 2, 2018 15:50:29 GMT
The Gaelic is in no immediate danger but many other languages are on the verge of extinction with no likelihood of maintaing any continuation of utility as exists with Latin and classical Greek. It would be interesting to know how far there are any programmes to archive them with rigorous dictionaries, grammars and literature with recordings of pronunciation. There are efforts by some in the British Isles to do this with Manx and Cornish but I am not aware how comprehensive and rigorous these are. Many dictionaries of dialect are only the efforts of amateurs with few academic credentials.
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 3, 2018 9:20:58 GMT
The Graphics Interchange Format: howdjasayit?For the record, I say GIF, not JIF. Despite the format's inventor's insistence that it be pronounced JIF, I persist with GIF because the G represents Graphics, which of course starts with the hard g, not a j.
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Post by Twoddle on Aug 3, 2018 10:51:42 GMT
There are efforts by some in the British Isles to do this with Manx and Cornish but I am not aware how comprehensive and rigorous these are. Many dictionaries of dialect are only the efforts of amateurs with few academic credentials. In my aforementioned attempts to learn Scots Gaelic, I was in touch with a Manx couple who were also learning it and who already had a smattering of the Manx language. They were surprised to discover that, in pronunciation, Scots Gaelic and Manx were very similar, but that the spelling was entirely different. That turned out to be because Gaelic has long been a written language, but (to the Anglophonic eye) not particularly phonetic, whereas Manx became written only a relatively short while ago, and its literary form was based on English phonetic sounds. Hence an Anglophone reading Manx phonetically would be understandable to a Manxophone(?), but would be entirely incomprehensible when attempting to read Gaelic Anglo-phonetically to a Gaelic speaker. (If you see what I mean.)
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