Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Langguage changes through usage anyway so spelling may be out of step with current pronunciation, it's happened before and it will happen again.
The fact that a large number of people don't pronounce the first r means that there is a usage of the word that pronounces it that way.
I'm not sure about word roots as to whether that was the coming together of a few root words hence the spelling being what it is.

Would just think that language fluidity means that there is currently a disparity which may or may not mean a spelling change at some point in the future.

lot of rhotic discrimination itt jist sayin thats a class thing

I don't think I even noticed the first 'r' in 'turmeric' until well into adulthood. I certainly never heard it pronounced with an 'r' before then. My own speech is sprinkled with regional variants left over from a childhood of endlessly moving around the US, so I try not to be too prescriptive. Although 'cyoo-pon' is just unforgivable, let's be real.

hmm but not pronouncing the Rs in non-rhotic accents doesn't mean the vowel sound is different (usually). I might not pronounce the first R in turmeric but I don't say tumour-ic, I say it the same way a rhotic person would say it just without the pronounced R sound.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/turmeric

turmeric (n.)

pungent powder made from the root of an East Indian plant, 1530s, altered from Middle English turmeryte (early 15c.), of uncertain origin, perhaps from Middle French terremérite "saffron," from Medieval Latin terra merita, literally "worthy earth," though the reason why it would be called this is obscure. Klein suggests it might be a folk-etymology corruption of Arabic kurkum "curcuma, saffron."

explains why the r was there probably but words change a lot and only tend to remain the same because of printing etc.

I'm not sure I've ever said the word 'turmeric' out loud before, I don't see how you can avoid the first R though.

http://lazenby.tumblr.com/post/109628210407/list-of-shibboleth-names

* the film "Carnival of Souls" is a low-budget horror movie from the 60s, not a sophisticated foreign film from the 80s as i assumed from how it was mentioned in video-store vignettes in Understanding Comics

Tbf I always make it a point to pronounce foreign names as correctly as possible out of respect. My own name is mostly unpronounceable to English speakers so while I'm neutral towards people who adapt it to their own parlance, I'm always appreciative of those who make an effort. So chalking it up to class arrogance is facile imho.

xp

If anyone can tell me how Sofia Coppola pronounces her first name I’d welcome the opportunity to lord it over the hoi polloi

SOfea, SoFEEa or SoFIRE

Carnival of Souls definitely has art movie aspirations tho - it's clearly influenced by Bergman, and parts of it seem to anticipate the David Lynch of Eraserhead. It's not quite a cheapo exploitation pic like an HG Lewis or Andy Milligan atrocity.

i think the 'by which the privileged judge their inferiors' part is mostly a joke, but either way it's an interesting list. i probably knew about 20%

.. and with a seriously fantastic organ score to boot. xp

CoS definitely punches above its weight, it's a great little film.

It's not particularly shocking but I did just learn that gerrymander was originally pronounced with a hard 'g'

Alba I've always said it the second way but now I wonder if I've been wrong the whole time.

I've known people who went by Gary, spelled "Gerry".

It was based on somebody's surname originally but has been reshaped to a more common way of pronouncing the spelling or something.
Was thinking that the mander was something to do with the act of manipulation that Elbridge gerry performed. Instead seems to come from the 2nd part of Salamander which the district notoriously created by the process had been compared to, may be based on its abstract shape.

It's not particularly shocking but I did just learn that gerrymander was originally pronounced with a hard 'g'

― Number None

the living descendents of elbridge gerry are still trying to get people to pronounce the word with a hard 'g'

i admit i have a desultory crusade to get people to pronounce "dr. seuss" the way geisel did but i don't seriously expect anybody to change at this point

Animated image files should also be pronounced with a hard "g".

How is Seuss supposed to be pronounced? Looks like I'm about to learn something else at my shockingly old age.

"shoosh"

I've known people who went by Gary, spelled "Gerry".

― pplains, Tuesday, October 23, 2018 7:24 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d1/Jerry_Gergich.jpg/220px-Jerry_Gergich.jpg

“Soice”. “eu” as in Freud.

You're wrong as the deuce
And you shouldn't rejoice
If you're calling him Seuss.
He pronounces it Soice.

I went through all eight seasons of '24' without knowing that Kiefer Sutherland is Donald Sutherland's son.

That's just slightly over a week, in your defence

lol

xps My mother pronounces it as German (Zoyce) in a kind of off-hand "oh, who's that American children's author, I don't know how to pronounce his name" way which I find kind of pretentious like she's showing off her rad German skills and affected ignorance of popular American authors whose books hadn't really reached the UK in her generation - but now I shall admit she's more or less right and maybe do the same too (quietly, among friends)

British* people now grow up reading Dr Seuss too and call him Syooss rather than the American Sooss

in further late realisation news, last time I thought about this I got to thinking about the character Soos in Gravity Falls and from there realised that the X album Hey, Zeus is a pun on the Spanish name/pronunciation Jesús (which had not previously occurred to me because in the UK* Zeus is pronounced Zyoos not Zoos)

and this is also why tumeric/turmeric is not that close in UK* English despite non-rhoticity and even apart from the vowel sound, because we* pronounce tumour as "tyoo-muh" not "toomer"

sorry for no IPA, IPA fans

* regional differences may apply

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

I just learned today that early '80s AOR dude Billy Squier is American, and not Canadian, as I had always thought for some reason.

How old were you when you figured out gaol is pronounced the same as jail? I was 49.

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) October 25, 2018

I was 43, which is coincidentally how old I am right now.

I've known that probably since my 20s, but some part of my brain didn't get the memo since I still always subvocalize it as 'gowl' ('gowler').

I learned when I got the Lamb Lies Down On Broadway LP.

born knowing it, ethnically ingrained cos of what they done on us the brits

I learned when I got the Lamb Lies Down On Broadway LP.

I remember learning this from my "A Trick of the Tail" CD while reading the lyrics to "Robbery, Assault and Battery"

I probably should read To Kill A Mockingbird.

Today I learned that that concrete bunker at the end of the Mall is not the Cabinet War Rooms, it's the Admiralty Citadel. 25 years I've lived in London.

Yeah, they're at opposite ends of Horseguards.

I learned when I got the Lamb Lies Down On Broadway LP.
- me

I remember learning this from my "A Trick of the Tail" CD while reading the lyrics to "Robbery, Assault and Battery"

― silverfish, Thursday, October 25, 2018 7:23 AM

Oops, likewise for me, just remembered it was a Genesis LP.

When I was a wee innocent I believed that, as befitted their power, swear words all must have complicated, difficult spellings, like fuocq and shieght.

When I was little I thought all swear words had 4 letters, and got in trouble for saying piss and bloody in public (I thought piss was spelt pis) because I thought if they didn't have 4 letters they weren't swear words. I was 6 though so probably not shockingly old.

I remember thinking swear words were all fairly recent inventions because people in the "olden days" would never say fuck or shit.

that’s great

GODDAMMIT it has just occurred to me right now, whilst I am in laid in bed pondering other matters, that guy in that house I wasn't meant to hang around about as a child... that long nail was A COKE NAIL! This was deep south of Italy, early '90s, my father told me to keep away from him, cos he was clearly in the mob, "you can tell by his little finger nail, it means he doesn't have to do any manual labour"... NO I get it now IT'S A DRUG THING!

That 'Fugazi' isn't just a proper noun…

slang term for fucked up situation, does it double as a verb too?

I don't think so. Anyway, I thought it was a made-up proper name or an Italian word.

IT's a term that was popularised during the Vietnam war, though I've got it running through my head that it might make an appearance in Catch 22. KInd of hyper-portmanteau shortening of a couple of words.

you are thinking of FUBAR, no? ("fucked up beyond all recognition"?)

"The group still needed a name, so MacKaye chose the word "fugazi" from Mark Baker's Nam, a compilation of stories of Vietnam War veterans, it there being a slang acronym for "Fucked Up, Got Ambushed, Zipped In [into a body bag]"." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugazi#Formation_and_early_years_(1986%E2%80%931989))