[QUOTE]Originally posted by arnie:
Let's try another common word with many variations of pronunciation: CONTROVERSY. Here are the two I most often hear:
Cun---troh'--vussy
Con'--truh--versy
[the ' indicates the emphasis]

I've only heard it the first way. I can't even imagine how it sounds the second way. That would be the British accent that I couldn't understand!

There is a regional pronunciation here in the U.S. that just irritates me no end. I doubt you hear this in England. That is, when saying the days of the week, some people say "Mondee," Tuesdee," etc.

The Sunderland lot not far from me say 'Monda', 'Tuesda', etc. with the 'a' pronounced as in cat.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
I've only heard it the first way. I can't even imagine how it sounds the second way. That would be the British accent that I couldn't understand!

There is a regional pronunciation here in the U.S. that just irritates me no end. I doubt you hear this in England. That is, when saying the days of the week, some people say "Mondee," Tuesdee," etc.

Don't bet your life savings on it. That would be the normal way I say the words.

We've talked a lot on this site about the pronunciation of "Worcester," though it was in a limerick thread that went on forever.

Well, I am in Worcester, MA, and I can tell you, they don't pronounce it "Wooster." To be honest, I don't quite know how they pronounce it! It's something like "Woosta," I think, which strikes me as odd since they say "idear" instead of "idea." Those Boston accents are odd, indeed.

Well, I have decided that we need to change the spelling of all words that end in "a" to "er" and all words that end in "er" to "a." That way the Bostonians will speak properly.

When I think about it, I think I pronounce it 'Woosta' too! The Geordie accent does tend to render 'er' sounds as a flat 'a'. You have to remember that even in England we're not too sure how some names are pronounced if we're visitors to the area- the locals often have their own ideas!

I've pronounced it as /ˈwʊstə/, but then I learned said pronunciation from a friend's wife who was from there. (The one in the state of Mass., not England.) It is a common enough feature of the area's dialect to drop rs.

Yes, but I think the funny part is that in the same accent it's a "common enough feature" that they add an r on the end of words that actually end in a. I'd think if you drop rs after words, you'd drop all rs. I guess that would be too logical, though.

But, as you said, the insert rs where they ain't ought'o be. It adds a kind of symmetry. Still, r-less pronuciations are more common in other forms of English, than the r-insertion ones.

Question from OEDILF: How many syllables are there in "swirled?"

In trying to view some old posts about those discussions here (we had talked about "world"), I found this very funny discussion from November of 2002.

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Question from OEDILF: How many syllables are there in "swirled?"

One.

swirled

A monosyllable for me.

Me too. On OEDILF our Judah is using it in a limerick for 2 syllables, and it sure doesn't work for me.

Yet, OEDILF has always been respectful of different pronunciations, and I am very willing to accept that if others pronounce it with 2 syllables.

Pity we're not in the eighteenth century. Judah could have written "swirled" with no-one complaining. If he wanted one syllable he could have used "swirl'd".

The distinction still exists in modern English orthography: swirled, one syllable, and swirlèd, two.

I have another OEDILF question. Here is my limerick:

An APRN is a nurse
Whose treatments we must reimburse.
They've graduate degrees
For preventing disease.
(Though sometimes the docs are adverse!)

I finally changed lines 3 & 4 because of complaints that "graduate" has 3 syllables. Do you say "gradj-u-ut" or "grad-jwut"?

I say (to use your orthography) "gradj-u-ut".

Wow...I wouldn't have expected that from an Englishman. From my workshopping, I've learned that the English smoosh syllables more than Americans do.

I guess it's good that I changed it then.

I'd emphasise that I'd pronounce it more like "grad-ewe-ut", where the final "ut" is pronounced with a schwa sound.

But with 3 specific syllables, right?

I am waiting for Bob to weigh in on this one. I cannot tell you the number of his limericks that I've workshopped where I've had to smoosh syllables together.

My sister thought I was crazy for saying "decade" as "deh-CAID" She says (and she says everyone else says), "DEH-caid."

Is she right?

We stress the first syllable in UK English.

Dictionary.com seems to indicate that both pronunciations exist. As Richard, says, we usually stress the first syllable in the UK, but I think I may have heard people do the opposite. Certainly there is no "right" and "wrong" way, and it doesn't appear to be a UK/US thing.

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Certainly there is no "right" and "wrong" way

In as much as this is language, and there is never any "right" or "wrong"...

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My sister thought I was crazy

Yep, you are absolutely bonkers. I've never heard anyone say "deh-Caid", and frankly, I would probably laugh if I heard someone saying it, thinking they were making some short of joke. Of course, it could be correct, but that's besides the point.

I would reserve the pronunciation "decADE" for the past tense of the verb "to decay". A useful vocal distinction, I feel.

"It has decayed for decades"

Is she right?

I like saying decade with the accent on the ultimate syllable, but mostly I pronounce it with one on the penultimate.

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Yep, you are absolutely bonkers.

Well thanks a heap!

For the record, Richard, Shu has exonerated me on the "decade" vs. "decayed" front. The way I pronounce "decade" (even though I am "bonkers") is dehCAID. The way Shu and I pronounce "decayed" is deeCAID.

My daughter, who is every bit as hard on me as Sean is, says that someone at her work says: imPETus, instead of IMpetus. Is my daughter's friend bonkers, too, Sean?

Working with programmers from different parts of the anglophone world, I've always marvelled how stress accent is shifting. My favorite is BrE DIStributed ~ AmE disTRIButed, as in the phrase distributed objects.

FWIW, I say DECK-aid for "decade" and IMpetus for "impetus," but imPETuous, not that anyone was asking about that one. Kalleh, I'm sure you're not bonkers.

I'm from Cincinnati originally, and I'm not sure if that is where this one came from, or if it's just that the terminal "e" makes me want to use a long "u," but here's one that always makes people laugh at me: deluxe, which I pronounce dee-LUKES (as in Luke Skywalker.) Merriam Webster says this is an accepted pronunciation, but whenever it slips out of my mouth, people just burst out laughing at me.

WM

Nice to see you here, Wordmatic, and I haven't forgotten about workshopping your limericks. Right now I am going through a WEAP (for non-OEDILFers that's when people focus on workshopping your limericks), so I am busy with that.

My most recent foible is "core-DOANED" for "cordoned." There was a protest outside our office which was cordoned off, and when I mentioned that, everyone snickered. I definitely am wrong about that one, and I don't know where I got it.

One of my dearest friends grew up in a family where no one used unusual, less common or more complicated words. He is an avid reader, though, so his reading vocabulary is very large. Every once in a while he'd come out with a word that by definition was appropriate, but his pronunciation of it was nearly unrecognizable! We'd just chuckled along with him as we helped him out. Sometimes we'd all go to the dictionary (being good library staffers) and settle things objectively that way. He'd read a lot of great words, but had never really heard them pronounced.

I hope your protest situation didn't last too long, Kalleh!

Oh, CW, they're always protesting something in Chicago.

We had a speaker from France today, and you should have heard all of his mispronunciations! It was funny. Almost every word with 2 or more syllables was stressed on the wrong syllable.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
Nice to see you here, Wordmatic, and I haven't forgotten about workshopping your limericks. Right now I am going through a WEAP (for non-OEDILFers that's when people focus on workshopping your limericks), so I am busy with that.

My most recent foible is "core-DOANED"

Well Kalleh, "core-DOANED" is pretty funny, I've gotta admit! Don't worry about getting to my limericks in any sort of a rush. We had a huge storm here last night that knocked out all electrical power for over 300,000 households and the power company has triaged the repairs with us at the bottom of the heap. They say we will have no power until Sunday. hopefully this is not true, but OTOH, if it is, it would probably be our just desserts for having an idiot president like "W" who has made such conditions exist for everyone in Iraq. I have power at work but should be working at work instead of playing with words online (darn!)

I do notice that the wordies on this site seem to be far more relaxed and less tense about RULES than they are over at OEDILF, and I realize that some of these wordies are also those wordies. I like it that the wordplay games here have no real rules, which just proves what a slob I am in general. ;-)

Cheers and enjoy your WEAP.

WM

The wordies here are the relaxed ones over there. I used to argue with their prescriptivists when they'd say something like, "You can never have a comma after beginning a line with 'but.'" However, I have learned to just delete the comma and to go on. In the end, what is the difference? Of course, I snicker a bit as I delete it.

One thing that amuses me on my infrequent forays to OEDILF is the number of acronyms and initialisms they use over there. Workshops and forums are full of impenetrable (to me, an irregular visitor) sets of letters, which, on investigation, turn out to be standing for impenetrable jargon in any case. You can tell that CJ was a military man for much of his life!

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You can tell that CJ was a military man for much of his life!

Oh, Arnie, I never thought of that! You are right!

It bugs me, too, and half of their acronyms I don't know and don't intend to learn. CJ recently had a thread talking about the use of acronyms (saying it saves him countless hours of time), and in the end he used that discussion to add a lot more acronyms. The only one that no one would agree to was DP, which was to be "Definition Police." I had never seen that one used, but apparently some, who write limericks that aren't even close to being a definition, have used that one when a workshopper (WE) comes in and complains. Thank heavens that one didn't get accepted.

We of course have a lot of acronyms in health care. Every specialty and discipline has their own particular ones, of course. Pulmonary specialists use "BS" to mean "breath sounds," while gastrointestinal specialists use "BS" to mean "bowel sounds," and the rest of us use it to mean something else. Anyway, it has always been my theory that acronyms were frequently used by those who love to lord their knowledge over everyone else. I also think using acronyms is a good way of keeping others out of your area of expertise. Therefore, I don't like them much, either in real life or on OEDILF. As to OEDILF, I think using all those acronyms is disrespectful to those who are new or who aren't regulars.

However, I lost that argument over there a long time ago.

Re navigating Planet OEDILF as a newbie: at first I was doing exactly what every editor suggested in the workshops, but that got very confusing when they would make conflicting comments or suggestions that wouldn't mesh very well with each other. And all the WEs kept saying, well if you really didn't want to take my suggestion, you should have just said so and explained why you wanted to leave it as is. So, I decided not to be in any terrible hurry to become a WE and just to enjoy writing limericks at my own pace and I'm having more fun with it again. If I'm too tired or distracted to address a comment right this minute, I set it aside for a day or two until it's fun to play with it again.

As for rules and definitions of acrynoms and initialisms, I do wish they were all in one place, together, in a single PDF that I could download and search instead of having to look in the FAQs and then in this forum and that forum until I find whatever it is that's being said. I do a little web editing as part of my job and have considered compiling it all, converting it to PDF and sending it to Virge to post, but that's too much like work. If I ever do get around to it, it'll be when I'm retired.

Still, I'm enjoying participating there and here, where it's just pure fun and nobody wins or loses.

The initials and acronyms are in one place; I believe they are under an "abbreviation" link.

However, I have always wanted a list of accepted rules. Sometimes I will post a limerick, and they will say, "well, now we've decided on the forum that blah, blah blah so this limerick doesn't work." They don't collect their rules in one place so that someone can check that (you literally have to go through all the threads!), but then they don't follow them anyway so I guess it's a moot point.

On the other hand, I just got a limerick approved that had been made so much better after workshopping that it was amazing ("armadillo"). So...it really does make the project better.

I agree that the WSing makes the limericks better, now that I've learned how to handle it more sanely. My bubbly limerick flows much better now than it did in the original. My biometrician one is also much better as a result.

One thing about getting used to workshopping is that I grew up in a time when we were taught that everything had to be our own work and you shouldn't take help from anyone. Now all the writing courses that are taught use this technique of students critiquing each others' work. Even though I've spent my whole life being edited by and editing others, even though I just finished another degree in which teams of students worked on projects and co-wrote papers, this collaborative business on a personal, creative work is still something I am getting used to. Just an old stick-in-the-mud, I guess...

And I do know where all the aconyms are stored, but I always have to bumble around looking for it anyway. I wish they were all linked under a single "help" button. I'm sure it's all too much for one person to corral, and Virge just has his hands full with all the coding and database issues.

Well, I have been with the project since the very beginning, and I still don't know what most of the abbreviations mean, even the most common ones. For example, I don't know what STC means, though from context I know it has something to do with the approval editor (AE) approving them. Someone started talking about TAM, and I was wondering if he meant his hat.

Whenever I workshop I try to use as few abbreviations as possible so as not to overwhelm the already overwhelmed newbies. I was the lone wolf in the forum discussion to argue decreasing the use of abbreviations, and the end of that discussion was???? To add more abbreviations, of course! Oh well. At least I tried.

CJ complimented the following limerick of mine that's about to be approved. When I looked at the original that I had submitted, I realized how very much it improved with some excellent workshopping.

Here's the original:

Armadillos are strange, that's for sure;
Their bodies are armored — no fur.
Their breath they can hold
For swimming, we're told.
When they're roadkill, be careful — deter!

[Author note] Armadillos can hold their breath for up to 6 minutes as they swim at the bottom of a river. One might get leprosy from eating their raw flesh.


Here's the about to be approved one (now co-authored with Richard):

Armadillos are tough little creatures:
Heavy armor is one of their features.
Their breath they can hold
Underwater, we're told,
"And don't eat them raw," say our teachers!

[Author note]Armadillos can hold their breath for up to 6 minutes as they swim at the bottom of a river. Because of their weak immune system and low body temperature, they are ideal candidates for leprosy research. However, a few of these laboratory animals have escaped, thus carrying leprosy. While infected armadillos are rare, one might contract leprosy by eating uncooked meat from one of these animals

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For example, I don't know what STC means...Someone started talking about TAM, and I was wondering if he meant his hat.

STC=set to confirming. An AE has to press the STC button to take a 5-RFA lim from tent to confirming status. I don't know what TAM means and won't care unless somebody says I am that or one of my lims is. It took me five weeks to figure out what all these tents were that people were talking about (limericks in tentative status.)

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Whenever I workshop I try to use as few abbreviations as possible so as not to overwhelm the already overwhelmed newbies.

And that's helpful!

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While infected armadillos are rare, one might contract leprosy by eating uncooked meat from one of these animals

EEEEEEeeeeeUUUUuuuu!
Just reading a humorous little book called Life: the Odds, by Gregory Baer. One of the chapters is on the odds of dying of the plague, in which he notes that most pandemics, historically, stem from the eating of tainted meat. In which case, I will definitely avoid armadillo sushi!

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one might contract leprosy by eating uncooked meat from one of these animals

I have no idea what armadillo meat might taste like, cooked or uncooked. We don't have the animals over here. Is it eaten at all over there?

Is it eaten at all over there?

It was at one time (e.g., during the Great Depression). I have a book about armadillo, which I picked up in Texas, that has a recipe for armadillo chili in it. I've never tried it.

Somehow I imagine it to taste like alligator, which is very nice.

When I was growing up in southeast Kansas (1936 - 1948) armadillos were as scarce as kangaroos.

I was away from that region for 30 years, but as I drove on Kansas highways during the seventies I saw dozens of armadillos -- as roadkill.

The armadillos are definitely movng north, at least as far as forty degrees north.

I never thought of eating armadillo flesh, either cooked or raw. But in my pantry I have a box of Roadkill Helper that I'll gladly give to anyone who is interested.

Reviving a thread...

I got an email from my niece who said, "are school is having a bake sale..." I think I say "our" and "are" slightly differently, though Shu says that they rhyme for him. What about for you? How about "hour?"

I say "Aur."

I pronounce our casual/quick speech /ɑɹ/, formal, careful speech /aʊɹ/; hour /aʊɹ/; are /ɑɹ/. Using IPA symbols for (US) English phonemes (link).

Totally different in UK English. "Our" is pronounced exactly as is "hour". "Are" rhymes with "far"