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Heaven: 2021 Proof Americans and Brits speak a different language

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  • ForthviewForthview Shipmate
    'taptoe' is indeed used in the Scouts in Belgium and no doubt in the Netherlands and appears in German as' Zapf zu' referring to the bugle call at the end of any evening free time which troops might have had.The bugle call indicated it was time to drink up and return to barracks.
  • EirenistEirenist Shipmate
    'Last Post' is rather different. It refers to setting the guard at a military garrison. The officer commanding the guard makes his rounds, posting a sentry at each guard post. All troops should be in barracks by the time he reaches the last post. Any soldier found out of barracks after the call 'Last Post' is sounded will be AWOL. My authority: the military historian Richard Holmes, in Redcoat, (a history of the British soldier in the time of the musket). 'Taps' sounds like a friendly reminder; Last Post is a warning.
  • Penny S wrote: »
    I wonder if it's related to the Somerset word "rhyne" for a drain, as in artificial watercourse carrying water from a marsh.

    In South Wales, that word is 'reen' from what seems to be colloquial Welsh 'run' (same general pronunciation)
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Penny S wrote: »
    I wonder if it's related to the Somerset word "rhyne" for a drain, as in artificial watercourse carrying water from a marsh.

    In South Wales, that word is 'reen' from what seems to be colloquial Welsh 'run' (same general pronunciation)
    @Rev per Minute and @Penny S that's genuinely quite interesting. Is 'reen/run' a Wenglish idiomatic use of English 'run' or is it from a Welsh word? On the English side of the water there is the word 'Pill', pronounced as spelt, which means a tidal inlet that one can use as a harbour. I'm sure it's the same word as Pwll and a similar word that appears in place names on the Welsh side of the water.

  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    I can't find a word in the Geiriadur Prifysgol (Welsh's answer to the OED), and native Welsh words don't begin with R - rh yes, but not r - and I've checked for possible rh- words. I don't think the word ultimately had a Welsh origin.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Regarding Pil and Pwll - Geiriadur Prifysgol has Pil borrowed from Old English, meaning a creek or inlet. Pwll appears as Pol in SW England - Polperro, Polzeath - and means "pool", derived from either Latin Palus (swamp) or Old English Pol. Whether the words ultimately have a common origin can't be determined.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    I am suddenly reminded of a tale about the tribe of Native Americans on the Mississippi who used small roundish leather covered basket type craft to fish, and had words resembling the Welsh words for such things, and the stretches of water they used them on, which was taken to confirm a Welsh expedition back before Columbus. I think there was a consensus that this was accidental similarity, and no weight should be given to said tribespeople greeting the first white arrivals with "iechyd da".
    A bit more difficult to rule out common origins when speakers live closer together and have languages derived from a common root, though.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited June 2021
    Penny S wrote: »
    I am suddenly reminded of a tale about the tribe of Native Americans on the Mississippi who used small roundish leather covered basket type craft to fish, and had words resembling the Welsh words for such things, and the stretches of water they used them on, which was taken to confirm a Welsh expedition back before Columbus. I think there was a consensus that this was accidental similarity, and no weight should be given to said tribespeople greeting the first white arrivals with "iechyd da".
    A bit more difficult to rule out common origins when speakers live closer together and have languages derived from a common root, though.

    This would be the Prince Madoc Mandan myth.

    There is no credible linguistic link.

    Even when languages are geographically close, linguists look for evidence to support hypotheses of borrowing and etymology.
  • A question for our antipodal shipmates. I was watching a video made by two Australian musicians. One I believe is Chinese from Singapore and the other from Taiwan, and from their accents it's evident that they're not native speakers of English. They pronounced "archive" with a soft 'ch' as in "church" not as a 'k'. Is this regional, or were they victims of yet another landmine in the field of English?
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    A question for our antipodal shipmates. I was watching a video made by two Australian musicians. One I believe is Chinese from Singapore and the other from Taiwan, and from their accents it's evident that they're not native speakers of English. They pronounced "archive" with a soft 'ch' as in "church" not as a 'k'. Is this regional, or were they victims of yet another landmine in the field of English?

    No. It's a spelling pronuniation, common problem for second language speakers.
  • Enoch wrote: »
    Penny S wrote: »
    I wonder if it's related to the Somerset word "rhyne" for a drain, as in artificial watercourse carrying water from a marsh.

    In South Wales, that word is 'reen' from what seems to be colloquial Welsh 'run' (same general pronunciation)
    @Rev per Minute and @Penny S that's genuinely quite interesting. Is 'reen/run' a Wenglish idiomatic use of English 'run' or is it from a Welsh word? On the English side of the water there is the word 'Pill', pronounced as spelt, which means a tidal inlet that one can use as a harbour. I'm sure it's the same word as Pwll and a similar word that appears in place names on the Welsh side of the water.

    I couldn't find 'run' /reen/ in any online dictionary either, so perhaps the word is shared either side of the Severn Sea (called the Bristol Channel by the English :wink: ) and a Welsh version is colloquial or Wenglish. (One of my current churches is in the village of Marshfield, Maerun /MY-reen/ in Welsh)

    Newport has an area known as Pill, officially Pillgwenlly/Pilgwenlli which means 'Gwenllian's Pill'. There is a story about a Welsh chieftain falling in love with a princess called Gwenllian but being rejected by the king, her father, as unworthy (= not rich enough). Not being one to take 'no' for an answer, the chieftain kidnapped Gwenllian, with her full consent, obviously, and carried her off to the Usk where he sailed away with her from the pill that now bears her name. Pill has been the Docks area of the city for the past 200 years as ships moved away from the town centre.

    Less poetic are Crindau Pill and Jack's Pill - all meet your description of a tidal inlet, useful for loading and launching a ship away from the main river (the Usk). On another tangent, the name 'Usk' apparently comes from a pre-Roman word meaning 'water', hence the Roman names Isca Silurium (Caerleon) on the Usk and Isca Dumnorum (Exeter) on the Exe. There are a number of other rivers in Britain with the same derivation. This last fact brought to you courtesy of a General Studies speaker during my Sixth Form, worryingly close to 40 years ago...
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    I wonder if the people either side of the Severn were as much in each others' lives as Kent and Essex used to be in the days when the river was a highway not a barrier. (See organisation of Peasant's revolting.) Obviously greater differences than between Angles and Jutes.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    KarlLB wrote: »
    A question for our antipodal shipmates. I was watching a video made by two Australian musicians. One I believe is Chinese from Singapore and the other from Taiwan, and from their accents it's evident that they're not native speakers of English. They pronounced "archive" with a soft 'ch' as in "church" not as a 'k'. Is this regional, or were they victims of yet another landmine in the field of English?

    No. It's a spelling pronuniation, common problem for second language speakers.

    Yes, I've never heard it pronounced other than "arkive".
  • deletoiledeletoile Shipmate Posts: 18
    [quote
    No. It's a spelling pronuniation, common problem for second language speakers.[/quote]

    Or second language readers! I spoke English first but learned to read in Dutch, which, like French, is quite phonetic. I remember, aged 8 or so, my mother teaching me to read English - I had commiserating conversations with our butcher who was preparing to emigrate to Australia. The running family joke became lingerie, pronounced, obviously, as in "linger". I became an avid reader, but for at least another 20 years would suddenly realize I had only read a word, and did not know how to pronounce it. And that is without dealing with oddities like "St John" being pronounced sin-jun, and "Maudlin" College, Gloster, and Chumly......
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    There is a pub in the ‘hood which was previously the Beauchamp.

    Lately I have noticed that it is now the Beacham🙀

    Not happy, Jan as the Antipodeans say…
  • I read today that Brits say "orientate" when westponders say "orient". Is this true? Crazy Brits inventing unnecessary new words. :)
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    They do it in the Antipodes.

    Like Orientation Week at uni: one is orientated to the ins and outs of tertiary eddication
  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    Question for the Brits: I've been an avid Dorothy L. Sayers fan and I very much enjoyed Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon. I especially enjoyed Lord Peter's scamp of a nephew, St. George, AKA Jerry AKA Gherkins. As St. John (as a given name, not the saint or Gospel) is pronounced pronounced sin-jun is there a special way that St. George is pronounced? Thanks. :smile:
  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    mousethief wrote: »
    I read today that Brits say "orientate" when westponders say "orient". Is this true? Crazy Brits inventing unnecessary new words. :)

    Whereas you decided that "oblige" wasn't enough and went with "obligate".
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    *cough* burglarize *cough*
  • Jonah the WhaleJonah the Whale Shipmate
    edited June 2021
    deletoile wrote: »
    No. It's a spelling pronuniation, common problem for second language speakers.

    Or second language readers!

    Many of those obscure places or names will catch a lot of native English speakers out. But there are also some standard English words that I mispronounced for an embarrassingly long time. I remember an aha moment in my early 20s when I realised it was a-wry and not aw-ry.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    My one was ‘fiery’ is fire-y, not fear-y.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    misled
    mize-eld
  • Gill HGill H Shipmate
    Cel-IB-acy.

    (Spot the vicarage kid…)
  • cgichardcgichard Shipmate
    Con-trace-ption - the final syllable on the analogy of Gumption, a tin of which sat on the end of the bath, for the cleaning thereof.
    (My reading range was vastly more extensive than my experience at that time of my life.)
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Miss-chell-aineous. Probably a lot more I've forgotten - I was a desperately literary child.
  • Sir Cadogan (picture in Harry Potter books?)
    I thought it was Caddo-gan, others told me it should be Ca-duggin
  • Mi-lit-i-ya, not milisha - out loud reading Pride and Prejudice in class, oh, the shame. I'd never heard it said, anywhere. But I read much more than I heard, and spent years hearing words and realising "Oh! That's how that's said!"

    And then there's the words that are now universally mispronounced, such as heinous, which should be haynus, and usually isn't.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    My now elderly Chambers 20th Century Dictionary says hay-nus, sometimes hee-nus. The online version of the Oxford English Dictionary offers both pronunciations without comment.
  • But there are also some standard English words that I mispronounced for an embarrassingly long time. I remember an aha moment in my early 20s when I realised it was a-wry and not aw-ry.

    As others have noted, this is pretty common in people who have learned words by reading. Should one have had need to consult a dictionary, one would have discovered the "correct" pronunciation, but in many cases, the meaning of an unfamiliar word is made clear by context, and no dictionary is required.

    The highly non-phonectic trivia that @deletoile refers to (Cholmondsleys and Featherstonehaughs, for example), plus all those words that English has stolen from other languages (often keeping the spelling, but abusing the pronunciation) are extreme examples of this more general feature.
  • Gill HGill H Shipmate
    I did once tell someone I was reading a tri-ology, but that was obviously a misreading.
  • All the reading tests I used to administer insisted on hay-nus for heinous, which meant it was often the final word to trip the students up. (Although I'd let them read a bit further and there'd be something else in the same line - the sort of test that continued to synecdoche and terpsichorean.)
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    And how are you supposed to know, aged eight, that what is spelt as if Mac-lee-ode is pronounced M'Cloud?

    Though talking of names, it faintly irritates to hear M'Grath instead of M'Grah and McDow-ell instead of McDole.
  • Firenze wrote: »
    And how are you supposed to know, aged eight, that what is spelt as if Mac-lee-ode is pronounced M'Cloud?

    Every few months, the "get random people to pronounce these Irish names" game resurfaces, and we get to see a bunch of random people stumbling through "See - ob - hahn" and the like. And that's really a category error: Siobhán is not an English name with funky spelling: it's an Irish name which is spelled phonetically - just with a different set of phonemes from those that are used in English.
  • You know, hearing that all the Mc names are up for grabs is the opposite of reassuring. I'm now going to have to ask every one of my friends-of-paternal-Scottish-extraction how to say their names. Ah well, I suppose it's fair revenge for them having to say (INSERT VIETNAMESE HERE), though in my favor I plead that we allow people to Americanize it.
  • You know, hearing that all the Mc names are up for grabs is the opposite of reassuring. I'm now going to have to ask every one of my friends-of-paternal-Scottish-extraction how to say their names. Ah well, I suppose it's fair revenge for them having to say (INSERT VIETNAMESE HERE), though in my favor I plead that we allow people to Americanize it.

    I was at school with two boys with the surname Strachan - one of which pronounced it "Stracken" and one of which pronounced it "Strawn". It was only a problem if the surname was listed, and you didn't know which boy was meant.
  • As a child, I thought people were talking about the ruth of your mouth. I thought it was very odd that the top of your mouth had a girl's name. I think I was in high school when I saw it written as roof, and then of course it made perfect sense.
  • orfeo wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    I read today that Brits say "orientate" when westponders say "orient". Is this true? Crazy Brits inventing unnecessary new words. :)

    Whereas you decided that "oblige" wasn't enough and went with "obligate".
    KarlLB wrote: »
    *cough* burglarize *cough*

    Typical SOF response. Ignore the question and jump up and down on the throwaway line.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    There was a joke in which a person is asked the pronounciation of a sequence of Mac names, spelled out letter by letter. And after MACGREGOR, MACKENZIE, MACALLISTER, MACLEAN, and so on, preferably with a few odd ones, the joker introduces MACHINERY.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    MACEWAN is a good one too. My paternal grandfather (half-Scot, married to a Scot) while picking out lettering in contrasting tiles on a roof read it as ‘mace wan’ - and was never allowed to forget the faux pas.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    I read today that Brits say "orientate" when westponders say "orient". Is this true? Crazy Brits inventing unnecessary new words. :)

    @mousethief - Orient is usually a noun in English English, usually referring to the countries of the east, with oriental the adjective. Orientate is the verb for positioning oneself, with orientation as the noun that comes from that.

    You possibly would have less irritated responses if you hadn't commented that Brits are inventing unnecessary words.
  • Orientate is the verb for positioning oneself.

    Sorry, CK - I can't let that one pass without going all pedantic on you, and pointing out that positioning and orientation are orthogonal. (And yes, I know you didn't mean that, but the opportunity was too good to miss ;) )
  • Penny S wrote: »
    I wonder if the people either side of the Severn were as much in each others' lives as Kent and Essex used to be in the days when the river was a highway not a barrier. (See organisation of Peasant's revolting.) Obviously greater differences than between Angles and Jutes.

    My suspicion is that the much greater tidal flow in the Bristle Channel as opposed to the Thames would have made it a lot more precarious venturing across the water - but I'd love a definitive answer, always good to learn something.

    (Boy, does that look like a dodgy euphemism!)
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    Apart from an instance where ‘orient’ is used as a verb meaning to arrange something specifically to face east, all the other citations for ‘orient’ and ‘orientate’ in the 1971 Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary are within a couple of decades each other or overlapping - with a slight priority to ‘orient’.

    I rather suspect that ‘orientate’ is a back-formation from ‘orientation’ - there is no word ‘oriention’ listed.

    Now I’ve written this much I have a niggling feeling that there another verb which does the same sort of thing, but I can’t think what it is..

    (Incidentally, someone mentioned ‘burglary’ above. In the same dictionary it appears that ‘burglary’ (poss. c.1200, certainly c.1516) is older than ‘burglar’, but not by much, and the late-arriving ‘burgle’ (c.1870) is only attested ten years earlier than ‘burglarise’.)
  • You possibly would have less irritated responses if you hadn't commented that Brits are inventing unnecessary words.
    I think he was simply alluding to the oft-made claim that it’s Americans who invent unnecessary words, and suggesting it’s not just Americans.
    :wink:

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Firenze wrote: »
    And how are you supposed to know, aged eight, that what is spelt as if Mac-lee-ode is pronounced M'Cloud?

    Though talking of names, it faintly irritates to hear M'Grath instead of M'Grah and McDow-ell instead of McDole.

    The standard pronunciation here is McDowl.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    You possibly would have less irritated responses if you hadn't commented that Brits are inventing unnecessary words.

    Less or fewer - I suspect that you meant fewer.
  • No, I meant less, as in less irritated, rather than fewer responses. No comma between the less and irritated as the two adjectives are linked; there should be a comma if I was listing both the fewer and irritated adjectives as both relating to the responses separately.
  • No, I meant less, as in less irritated, rather than fewer responses. No comma between the less and irritated as the two adjectives are linked; there should be a comma if I was listing both the fewer and irritated adjectives as both relating to the responses separately.

    I think if you were talking about fewer responses that were irritated, there wouldn't be a comma - because fewer would modify "irritated responses".
  • I guess the alternative is to return to hyphenating all connected adjectives and adhectival phrases, but that is more-than-a-tad old-fashioned, and outside whichever parent's school textbook I read it in, I haven't seen anyone do that in the best part of two centuries.
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