Things you were shockingly old when you learned

the first three were syndicated on local stations when I was a kid. apparently gilligan’s island still was at a price premium

the channel 5 vs channel 11 dichotomy steered my syndication experience strongly in favor of addams/bewitched/gi line-up. When i would encounter munsters i still recoil with ‘the hell is this crap!?’ And yet tolerated gi.

I was curious because I was watching Addams and Munsters in tandem and while I knew that they had debuted around the same time, I didn't realize that they'd debuted six days apart from one another. They're similar enough in those early stages (although Addams has a leg up in being run by a Marx Bros. writer) that one suspects a bit of tomfoolery.

And yes, Gilligan is trash.

Always assumed The Munsters was a crude rip-off of the AF, which always felt older and more sophisticated to me. Did Bewitched come before I Dream of Jeannie, or after?

Speaking of learning things about the Munsters, I was in my late 30s when I heard about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZSWim3kvsE

That's not colorized. The pilot was filmed in color.

that looks... very wrong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dlVA2M07pQ

Yeah, I watched that Munsters pilot last night. It was weird. I kinda liked the original Eddie, though, presented as like a legit feral child.

Bewitched, Addams, and Munsters all debuted within the same seven-day span. Jeannie was a year later.

I also was shockingly old when I learned that Munsters was a Universal show, which is why they were able to utilize the Karloffian makeup design on Herman.

Bewitched was a hit in 60s Japan and heavily influenced the creation of the Sally The Witch manga, a story about a magical princess who lives on earth but has to keep her identity secret. This in turn became a massive hit when it was animated and practically invented the "magical girl" genre that is still going strong today e.g. Sailor Moon, PreCure, Madoka Magica etc.

I always assumed Bewitched was a rethinking of the situation at the end of Bell, Book and Candle. Like what happens next in a way that would work as a tv sitcom.

The other grandmother who appeared less often in the Addams Family was played by Margaret Hamilton!

Bombay is now called Mumbai

wow -- i remember learning that in 1997! i was at my job processing visas for other people's overseas travel and i learned that Bombay is called Mumbai by a disgruntled customer.

lol would a strong cockney accent preserve the rhyming i dunno englishes

yet they still call the popular snack Bombay Mix.

Congrats to you all for learning that the former Bombay changed its name.

I can't mark the year, but it was pretty late in life that I realized Bombay and Mumbai weren't two different cities.

I mean, there's no catchy song about it like Istanbul has.

Constantinople?

now picturing bewitched reboot cast with s. asian dr. mumbai character, or did they actually do this already.

i learned it as part of my job at the time, not sure how i would have found out otherwise
you know they don't say Calcutta anymore too right?

Kolkata

that one only changed in 2001, though

No one in France got the memo. It's still Bombay, Pékin, Calcutta. I think the assumption is that most foreign place names are 'wrong' anyway, so why bother.

that's very french of them

Indeed it is.

you should hear how we pronounce “orleans.”

Or, God forbid, Des Moines.

Black holes are named after the Black Hole of Calcutta Kolkata!

Madras is now Chennai, Bangalore is now Bengaluru, there's lots of others too, not just British colonial names being changed. This is an interesting piece on the Hindu nationalist motivations behind some of it I posted in the South Asia news thread: https://scroll.in/article/902177/no-hindi-hindu-hindustan-implemented-fully-bjps-hindutva-renaming-will-wipe-out-a-lot-of-india

Chennai was the one I was most shockingly old to learn about. Cricket is useful for this sort of thing.

wow -- i remember learning that in 1997! i was at my job processing visas for other people's overseas travel and i learned that Bombay is called Mumbai by a disgruntled customer.

The name was only changed in 1995 so you did OK.

Oh wait, I think that was your point.

Or, God forbid, Des Moines.

― pomenitul, Wednesday, September 18, 2019 10:39 AM (twenty-three minutes ago)

this one hit a little close to home

Had an argument with the wife once about whether it is in fact correct to pronounce Notre Dame the university differently from Notre Dame the cathedral.

I'm at a point where whatever people from hood x or y say is correct as far as I'm concerned. I struggled for years before embracing the French pronunciation of 'tupperware', though:

https://forvo.com/word/tupperware/#fr

(leyana's, that is.)

Also, I still vaguely cringe when I hear Spider-Man pronounced 'speeder-man'.

John Fahey a similarly juicy example

I have no idea how you pronounce John Fahey's name. Is this about to become a thing I was shockingly old when I learned it?

Sund4ar, what side of the argument were you on?

there are a ton of midwestern towns that have messed up pronunciations and eventually you just have to roll with it

Nevada (nuh-VAY-duh) and Madrid (mad-rid) come to mind

Locals pronounce Prescott AZ as "Press-kit". Guy fixing my computer was adamant it should be "Press-cot" because that's how the guy it was named for pronounced his name. Pick your battles man! Just made him sound like a pompous tool.

Is someone about to blow my mind by suggesting that 'Fahey' and a popular brand of Greek yogurt are homonyms, is that what's about to happen

As a general rule, no speaker of English should ever defer to the way Americans insist on pronouncing words. It's just bad form.

I can't deal with Coeur D'Alene being pronounced "Cortle Lane" but I do it anyway

I draw the line at Louisville's preferred pronunciation as being "Lowvull" I will call it "Lew-i-ville" so the rest of the world doesn't look at me like an insane person

It's the same name; I can pronounce them the same. She was probably right. xp to mh

Residents of Windsor, ON, even ones who can speak French, are bizarre with the many French names in the city: "Pierre St" is pronounced "peery" even though no Windsorite would pronounce Pierre Trudeau's first name that way. The common surname "Dupuis" = "doopy"; "Ouellette Ave" = "oh-let", etc.

Shit like 'maudlin' for 'Magdalen' in Oxford comes across as a snobbish shibboleth. Maybe I'm being uncharitable.

Cache le Poudre River is my local fave, you could get almost anything even locally. Usually just “Pooder River.”

My pretentious father had a predilection toward pronouncing certain European city names with exaggerated local pronuciation-- Paree, Praha, Veen, Köln. I started reciprocating by going all-in when talking about Göteborg and Linköping and Firenze and he eventually got the hint and stopped doing it.

road names are fun. Fleur Drive -> floo-er drive

I draw the line at pronouncing Milan - the football club - as Mee-lan because Milan is an English word, the club having been founded by Englishmen who used the English name for Milano.

Likewise I'm not pronouncing Racing Club, Rah-seeng Cloob, or PSG as Pay-Ess-Zhay.