As a retired High School teacher of languages (English and German) I found this thread interesting. There are many words in the English language that are often mispronounced and not just by you and me but also by people with high education. The county name Worcestershire is typical. The ”shire” ending is pronunced ”shur” in this instance but if used on its own is pronounced to rhyme with ”tire” as in Shire horses or The Shire in the Lord or the Rings books. I remember my English mother in law telling me that during the war American GI’s in London who wanted to go to Leicester (Lester) Square would ask for directions to Lie-cester Square. Not easy if like most of them you probably hadn’t traveled far outside your home town. Another word mentioned in the clip was schedule. In American English it’s pronounced ”skedule” but in British English it’s pronounced ”shedule”. There are many other words that are pronounced differently depending on which side of the Atlantic you live. Here are just a few. Word American English British English Buoy Booee Boy Oddly enough something that can float is buoyant - pronounced boyant wherever you are Leisure Leezhure Lezhure Semi Seemeye Semmee Tomato Tomayto Tomahto Vase Vayss Vahz Privacy Pryvacy Privacy (i as in it) Amen Aymen Ahmen Dynasty Dienasty Dinnasty I could go on much longer but that will do to start. Here’s a short poem about the English language. https://www.learnenglish.de/pronunciation/pronunciationpoem2.html Many UK place names are hard to pronounce, so how good are you? I’ll post the correct pronunciation in a few days. Let me know how many of them you got right. No cheating!! Marylebone Teignmouth Bicester Hunstanton Cholmondely Godmanchster Southwell Magdalen (a college in Oxford university) Leominster Shrewsbury Happisbrugh Gloucester Belvoir Castle Ruislip (a London suburb) Gateacre Kirkudbright Edinburgh Mousehole - yes it is a real place Alnwick Fowey Greenwich Salisbury Warwick Now try this one: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Yes it really is a place Have fun!!
Thanks for putting that song in my head ' Lets Call The Whole Thing Off',here I'll give it back to you,
I, too, am a retired German and English teacher. I have my Dr.Phil. from a university in Austria (Graz). Austrians are very proud of their local dialects, but are also well steeped in standard German. I grew up in SouthEast Idaho, lived in Louisiana 22 years (Prof at LSU), and now in Northcentral Florida, so, along with travel, I'm quite familiar and interested in regional dialects. It's interesting that in the small town where I grew up had several men who had involved with Roosevelt's CC Camps, and just stayed, so I was familiar with southernism. As a fellow German teacher you must be saddened by the dying out of foreign languages in both schools and colleges.
Not me as you may have noticed I'm still working on the my own lango.Did like like cajan [ did I spell it right] ?
@James Hintze I think you’ll find that the situation regarding the dying out of foreign languages in schools and colleges differs immensely between the USA and Sweden. English is taught from first grade here - children start school at age six and from grade six almost all students start a second language. My eldest grandson for example who started sixth grade this year has started learning Spanish as his second foreign language. This of course is very much due to the need to learn a second language which is greater here because Swedish is spoken by a small population of about ten million compared to the approximately three hundred million English speaking population of the USA. You’ll find for example that most politicians and other people in a position of authority have a very good command of English and can communicate with little difficulty in most situations. In comparison, how many American politicians would be able to communicate in German or French? So I think that generally speaking learning a foreign language is much more common here than in the USA and is certainly not dying out.
I attended a catholic school for all of my primary school years ( 6- 12 years old ) before going onto high school. The nuns were cruel however they taught us to speak correctly so I hate watching the news or TV programs where no one seems to able to speak clearly or say YES …it’s yay or yeah even newsreaders don’t say Yes ..
Well look on the bright side you Aussies will at least be able to corrospond in proper lango in the gulags where it looks like all of us are going,
English is indeed the language of the world. Russian secondary ed students must pass an English test to complete. As I've posted before, visiting another country, even if most people do speak English, it's good to know a bit of the local language. When wife and I visited Norway a few years back I spent a few weeks of evenings learning Norwegian. I could read the billboards and newspaper titles. I know that having studied and taught the evolution of German and English gave me a big advantage. We had signed on to a cruise that would have visited Sweden, but it was cancelled because of you know what. (Both maternal and paternal branches of my family claim to be Danish, in spite of the German name.) My wife, Austrian, had to have five years of both Latin and a modern language to finish the 'Mittelschule.'
I might add that Swedes, Austrians, and others frequently know more about US politics and foreign policy than most Americans do.
I've never left the south for more than a few weeks. I always wanted to visit Norway or Switzerland in my younger days.
Switzerland. Sweden would be nice too. I;d like to visit nations where some of our ancesters migrated from. Here in America we have every ethenic Heritage groups but the Caucasian which is constantely under attack and it seems most of our caucasian ancesters hate their own guts along with some minority's. I undersyand most of us are mutts but so are most humans.We are hated in the nation our ancestors built.