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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 [p], 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.)
In a similar vein, I hear "new baby" as in "they have a new baby". As opposed to what? An "old baby"? I think the intention is that the baby has been recently delivered, but when does it cease being "new". That is, why do we need the qualifier "new". A baby is a child under the age of one, typically. That should be sufficient. Thoughts?
kulturvultur, it does seem superfluous, but I've known families that have baby after baby and if you don't specify which baby, they might not know which one you're referring to. “That the baby has been recently delivered” is probably the main (if not only) reason for the use of this construction among one-, two-, or three-child families. That is, if you just say “They have a baby,” people might be inclined to think that that family has a baby, and no other. It's basically just for clarity, I think.
Redundancies are supposed to be very common in Ozarkian language, but I cannot think of many right now. However, "widow woman" is a classic.
I bring it up to point out that the male gender, "widower", is made by modifying the female, "widow". It is the only case in English, of which I can think, where the masculine term derives from the feminine rather than the other way around (for example, woman versus man).
Am I correct? Or, are there others?
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