Posts Tagged ‘pronunciation’
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Posted by Sharon Creese on October 13, 2010
HRT…in the UK, this acronym commonly stands for hormone replacement therapy, a common treatment for women undergoing the menopause. Linguistically however, HRT stands for high-rising terminal. This is the questioning intonation that appears at the end of a sentence, whether it is a question or not. This pronunciation habit seems particularly prevalent amongst younger people in the [...]
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Posted by Valerie Collins on October 12, 2010
Spanish English month continues with a guest post by Valerie Collins on pronunciation. Valerie is a writer and linguist, a former translator, and co author of In The Garlic: Your Informative, Fun Guide to Spain. __________ I’ll say it upfront and get it out of the way. After 37 years in Barcelona, Spanish English still [...]
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Posted by Beth Penfold on August 20, 2010
Habitual mispronunciations have long been an irritation to those of us who revere the spoken word. Mispronunciations are not colloquialisms, malapropisms, spoonerisms or any other type of ‘-ism’; they are simply words spoken wrongly. I hear all sorts of people mispronouncing common words; professional and public-facing people, not least my daughter’s teacher! This is not [...]
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Posted by Adam Kilgarriff on August 02, 2010
When I was thirteen, I went to a chess championship in Southend-on-Sea. It was grey and windswept, and I was a little lonely and homesick, and as far as I remember I lost all my games. I remember just one spark of colour in this otherwise cheerless scene: my partner in one game, delighted with [...]
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Posted by Denise Du Vernay on July 27, 2010
We continue American English month with another guest post from Denise Du Vernay. Denise earned her master’s degree in English from Florida State University. She is co-author of The Simpsons in the Classroom: Embiggening the Learning Experience with the Wisdom of Springfield. Her favorite pop is Diet Coke. __________ As a child growing up in [...]
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Posted by Liz Potter on November 17, 2009
I have recently been asked why we say years the way we do. Why, for example, do we say nineteen hundred (1900) but two thousand (2000)? The recently released film 2012 (pronounced twenty twelve) has highlighted this question. ‘What will happen in the 22nd century?’, the questioner continued. ‘Will we be saying twenty one hundred [...]
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Posted by Jonathan Cole on August 19, 2009
BBC Radio 4 has started a new series on the English language, titled Fry’s English Delight. In the second programme, which you can listen to below, Fry explores the subject of pronunciation. He is joined by experts of communication skills and elocution to dicuss the power of proper pronunciation. The radio broadcast will be available [...]
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Posted by Gedaly Guberek on August 18, 2009
Are you a practical joker? Is April Fools Day your favorite day of the year? Are you accused of being devilish, impish, naughty, puckish, rascally, or mischievous? If you feel like you’re on top of the world and want to cause some mischief, you might say that you’re mischievous. I have been accused of being [...]
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Posted by Shane Rae on March 25, 2009
Why do the British refer to their eggplant as an ‘aubergine’? This Canadian wants to know. Upon my arrival in the UK, I was astounded to find that the Brits not only pronounce the names of some vegetables incorrectly (e.g. tomato) but they even use the wrong words for some. Could this be their desire [...]
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