Things you were shockingly old when you learned

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxxSIX3fmmo

“You’re putting me on,” etc.

that the uk has the third highest population in europe after russia (which i somehow don't think of as in europe given it's width) and germany.

it also has 11m more people in it than when i was in school and learnt these things.

all those immigrants innit

Most of Russia isn't in Europe but most of its population is.

> all those immigrants innit

dad, is that you?

At least one student a year will say 'look, it's Je/Kyll - like the French, I kill!' and think they've cracked the whole case wide open.

When the Roy=King discussion was going on upthread, I was thinking that Leroy then must be French for The King.

Violent J(ekyll)

Le roi is my mojo man

I thought Leroy was etymologically from The king. is it not then?

what ius the story on Dauphin, does it translate to dolp[hin?
I know there was a myth about France deriving fro Merovinigian beginnings and that being probably from a seamonster.
Alternative being they were derived from trojan extraction.
BUt is the first in line to the throne derived from the same aquatic mythos?

well no wonder they became a republic

Per wiki the origin is heraldic.

Dauphin of France originally Dauphin of Viennois (Dauphin de Viennois), was the title given to the heir apparent to the throne of France from 1350 to 1791 and 1824 to 1830. At first the heirs were granted the County of Viennois (Dauphiné) to rule, but eventually only the title was granted.

Guigues IV, Count of Vienne, had a dolphin on his coat of arms and was nicknamed le Dauphin. The title of Dauphin de Viennois descended in his family until 1349, when Humbert II sold his seigneury, called the Dauphiné, to King Philippe VI on condition that the heir of France assume the title of le Dauphin. The wife of the Dauphin was known as la Dauphine.

I thought that "window sash" meant the drapes. Because a sash is a long piece of cloth, right?

Whatever it is, it's always seemed like a painful thing for the narrator of A Visit from St. Nicholas to vomit out.

Handkerchief is a kerchief for the hand. I guess I didn't know the word kerchief til I was shockingly old and so then took even longer to reevaluate handkerchief.

An errant sash also caused the circumcision of Tristram Shandy.

Dusty Springfield was 5ft 3 always pictured her taller but she was shorter than Warren Mitchell.

that that one bee gee's name is pronounced 'morris'

!!

but some people call him Maurice

Do Americans pronounce it "mo-reese dancing"?

No, we rhyme Morris with Boris. Maurice rhymes with more fleece.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Frobertwimer.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F06%2FLakinis-Juice-Live.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

MORE FLEECE!
Such a dirty haaaabit

and we're back to the juice

We're back at my theory that US pronunciation often shows a notable French influence.

right, but the causality is backwards. Britishes have a long and well-established tradition of anglicizing loanwords. RuhNAYSance. Don JOOan.

USians tend to pronounce French loanwords more like they sounded in French. We're not consistent in that (cf. lawnJOOray) but it is comparatively our habit.

British English has an insular tendency, driven by geography, economics, and (of course) longstanding tribal/national antipathy to the French.

You may remember there was a war a while ago

I quite like UK English in general and it sounds more Frenchified to my ears than NA English in some ways (queue, courgette, aubergine, autumn, post, telly, etc.), but 'garadge' drives me up the wall.

You mean GA-ridge? Not everyone says it that way. I think there’s probably two other UK pronunciations: ga-RARGE (which sounds comically posh) and GA-rarge, which is what I say most of the time I think.

I (a Canuck) pronounce it the Nestea80 and islandgirl way:

https://forvo.com/word/garage/#en

Garage d'or
How many puns in that?

I used to work on reception in a recording studio, and there was a session once with a fairly well-known US actor doing vocals on a dance track. He could NOT pronounce the line about "garage DJs" - every time it came out as ga-rarge. I think they had to rewrite the lyrics in the end.

Yeah, I’m an English accent that sounds stupidly posh, hence the lolz here:

What Matt Hancock thinks he hears Skepta play ... pic.twitter.com/3u6Y85CxHH

— Katie🤍 (@Katiejsmithx) December 22, 2020

in an

'GA-ridge' sounds like mangled French, which is harder to pull off when it's one of your main languages. Conversely, when I'm in France, I can't, for the life of me, pronounce 'tupperware' the French way except with a scathing smirk on my face. See also: 'speeder man' (spider man) and 'ee clood' (iCloud).

This is all highly irrational and unfair, of course. Prescriptivism can go fuck itself.

Eheh, some of us even pronounce it "speedairrr man" !

lol, that is indeed a more accurate approximation.

Confession: I have a Dutch friend who pronounces WiFi as VeeFee and it makes me so happy. Like, I sometimes try to get her to say it just because it's so fun to hear

We probably should be saying it "Why-fih" now that i think about it

Oh no, you've just opened up a whole new 'gif pronunciation' can of worms.

Technically, the French pronunciation (wee-fee) is half correct and hence on par with the English one.

My ears over-accomodate my Australian wife. She was recently asking me to buy a product, and I was all, "DORN? DARN? DORN?"

And she finally sighed and said, "Like the time of day when the sun rises!" DAWN. Which she had been saying correctly, but I'm so used to her rhotic accent, I just assumed...

Like the time she said she liked going into pawn stores and browsing around, and I was all O Really, eh? Heh Heh, and she was all What is wrong with you.

I've been known to pronounce it 'whiffy' on occasion but then I've also been known to be a total dumbass.

xpost

I had never heard "Last Christmas" before, erm, last Christmas. When it was new I was following The Minutemen and The Meat Puppets, and Wham! was really not in my orbit at all. I also amazingly never encountered in in a supermarket or elsewhere in the years since, so Taylor Swift's 13 year old cover version was my first exposure to what is now apparently an overplayed holiday classic.

Gertrude Jekyll pronounced it Jee-kill, I think. I had a conversation this summer with my neighbour about his wonderful Gertude Jekylls and we settled on Jee-kills.

I think UK English is becoming more frenchified. You don't hear people talking about Nessles chocolate much these days, and I think "Marsails" for Marseille has disappeared. We'll be saying Paree by 2050.

Pronouncing Racing Club - two English words - as Rrrra-seeeeeeeeng Cloob has been popular in the football/rugby world for a while

'Rrrraaaa! Sing! Club!' is a solid war cry.

Also pronouncing Milan (also an English word) as Mee-lahn when it comes to the football club but not the city.