I have a pet peeve. People on television ads offer a "free gift." My husband laughs at me because I talk back to the ads by saying, "Of course it's a free gift. If you had to pay for it, it wouldn't be a gift, or free."
I also have a comment. Brett Favre recently retired. It confused me for a whole season because his name is not spelled the way it's pronounced. But there are words in the Engllish language that are not spelled the way they're pronounced. One of the most obvious examples is "peddle" and "pedal." "Peddle looks like it should be pronounced ped-lee. But "peddler" looks okay. Anyone else have any other examples?
I have the same pet peeve! Free gift as opposed to what?
As a Packer fan I remember the day Brett Favre took the field. Nobody here could get it right for that first game in September 1992. Is it FAV-ruh? FAY-ver? What? But just a couple weeks later, we never got it wrong again! The whole thing is a bit funny because, as most non-Packer fans probably don't know, Brett's predecessor was Don Majkowski, pronounced moo-KOW-ski.
And I concur ... a lot of words in English aren't spelled phonetically. I mean, just look at "phonetically" ... it clearly doesn't start with f!
Or prerogative ... it's pronounced per-rogative. Or phlegm ... my favorite silent g.
I think it's interesting how the English pronunciation of Polish surnames differs vastly from the original.
As you say, Majkowski is pronounced moo-KOW-ski? Whereas in Polish it would be my-KOOF-ski. And remember Lech Wa??sa? Not letch wuh-lay-zuh but lekh va-WENG-sa (in IPA /l?x va.?w??.sa/).
English words beginning with "ps-" are unique in not pronouncing the
, to my awareness. sy-KOL-uh-jee instead of psee-kho-LOH-ghee, if it were phonetic.
And how 'bout “Featherstonehaugh” as fanshaw? Heck, take a look at some of these! Who said English is a cinch?
Speaking of the Packers and Favre, too, I was remiss yesterday in not mentioning the many Wisconsin places whose pronunciation makes no sense at all. Consider Chequamegon - pronounced "SHWAH-meh-gahn" or Shawano (SHWAH-no) or Gratiot (GRASH- it). Then there's Two Rivers (pronounced Trivers) but that's just laziness. 🙂
A really fun website for this is http://www.misspronouncer.com/.
And finally speaking of names, how would the native speaker pronounce the name of Madison Mayor Dave Ciezlewicz? (For the record, he says chess-LEV-itz.)
You mean Cieslewicz, and the (native) Polish pronunciation would be chehs-LEH-veetch (IPA: /??s.?l?.vi?/).
“Favre” as «fahrv» is quite something.
But “free gift” as «free gift» is no great shakes… 😉