Americans are weird....

My first name is "Adam" and I once had a lady from Costa Rica spell my name phonetically as "Harem".

Wtf?

They're jandels in New Zealand for some reason.
The skimpy underwear is called a g-string in Aus.

Who cares, I don't. I like the 'accents'.

When I was in Austria, if I could just get my point across in the bar, I was happy......so was she.

Seems a lot of people are real picky now days has to be 'their' way.
Always has been a difference in how people pronounce words, even in this country from one region to another, and in England, from one place to another, doesn't even have to be another 'country'.

All the same.....'boring'.
I like 'accents'.

As Jayhawk said, I haven't heard a european pronuncing it any other way.

What peeves me off is hari kari. It's harakiri.

It's enough to make you commit hari kari!

should be seppuku of course!

Japanese company names sound almost correct in French, it seems it's more french phonetic than english phonetic translations.

Funny thing if you want a "Coke", you must order a "Coca" in France and a "Cola" in Germany.

Lol. "Coca" means something totally different in Miami. Think of the Colombian snow variety.

I find "aluminum or aluminium" a good example of how small differences in language jump out at you. Heck, we and the UK even spell it differently.

So much depends on what you grew up with. So "aluminum" sounds natural and correct to my ear while "aluminium" sounds odd. My spell check even identifies "aluminium" as incorrect and wants to make it "aluminum".

I like the differences in national languages. It would be boring if the differences weren't there.

Here, too. We also have butt floss and for the men banana hammock among others.

Speaking of better sounding versions, I prefer the British version of avocado even if it more wrong than the US version

***SHUDDER***

Nike is still Ni-Key not Nike as in bike. We've got to get this correct, people. World peace hangs in the balance!

You don't? First/Middle.

It's not people saying a word wrong that bothers me. It's when they say it wrong but insist it's correct that does.

For example, most Americans don't say foreign words correctly, but few pretend to understand. They say it wrong, if someone corrects them they shrug, and either correct themselves or continue saying it wrong because it's "easier."

Very rarely do you see an American telling an Asian "no, you're saying it wrong!!" when they say "pokemon" and tell them "you say it like THIS."


Of course, English itself is fairly unique among languages in that you can totally mangle the pronunciation of almost every word and yet still be understood, although nuances can be lost. I don't mind accents much at all.

What I DO mind are substitutions that make them unintelligible. If you're using a word that I expect to mean something else, and I get it wrong because you assumed everyone knew that "in MY country we call those chips, not fries", THAT is maddening.

There was an episode of the New Twilight Zone in the 80s IIRC that had a grammar nazi get transported into an alternate world where everyone still spoke English, but definitions were scrambled. So instead of "lunch", the midday meal was "dinosaur". When he said to his wife, "don't you mean lunch?" she stared at him baffled and said "why would anyone eat lunch? It's just dinosaur."




The Jedi Master

(pronounced "Li-Kee")

Of course the Greek Νίκη (meaning 'Victory') is pronounced 'Nee-keh')

The funniest thing I've heard is a Scots man trying to say "Purple Burglar alarm"

find one and get him to say it

I keep trying to imagine that, saying it to myself over and over.....lol....
Can't even imagine how a 'REAL' Scots would pronounce it!

I REALLY like the idea of English accents, even in England they're are several variations.
How boring it would be, if we all spoke exactly the same.
For a 'life time', I'll always remember that girl from England, listening to her, was like music......

I was in an Italian restaurant one time and asked for pollo (pronounced like Marco Polo) and and the waitress corrected me that it was pronounced the Spanish way (like poyo).

That doesn't surprise me since you live in California. I think California has more Spanish speakers than even Florida.

As CA's population is much greater, that's not surprising at all.

Now if there were more Spanish speakers in Rhode Island than Florida, THAT would be amazing.



The Jedi Master