Sorry. (But this is Pedants' Paradise...!)

Does one say "Fill in a form" or "fill out a form" ?

I always fill in a form.
But why do we hang things up as they usually hang down ?

I'm reminded of the Benny Hill song about being at sea in the bottom bunk of a bunk bed, and the chap above was feeling sea-sick.

The line went something like "Why did he shout 'Look out!' when he meant 'Look in!'

My father was not impressed with Slade's musical versatility. Every time they released a new single, he used to say, "I hear Slade have put their record out again."

I saw Slade at Doncaster Top Rank when the were still Skinheads. Brilliant.

There shouldn't be any ambiguity about IKEA. Nowadays any big firm will advertise on TV and pronounce the name the way that company has decided that it will be pronounced in any specific country. What, you think the advertising agency was guessing when they had all the ads put out pronouncing it "eye-kee-ah"

Sorry I'm late, only just found this.

Sometimes a word is not what it seems because it is acting as a label.

What do you think red is? Most people would say it's an adjective. But if you say "my favourite colour is red", it's a noun. Red doesn't suit me, red is the colour of anger - it's the subject of a verb and therefore must be a noun.

And so it is with politics. If you study it at college, you are studying something which has a name - like music. In Cambridge you can do Natural Sciences. It's a subject. "Natural Sciences is not a soft option". Similarly politics is a label.

What is Customer Services? It is a departent of this organisation. What are customer services? They are things like orders, advice, returns, exchanges, copmplaints etc etc

So if you want a definition, "what is politics?" is correct, as in "What does this label mean?"

Possibly a test to decide if something is plural or not is to try to further define it by asking "what, all of them or only some of them?"

S'cause yer norra pedent!!



Not sure that's all together correct. I seem to remember adverts on French TV where it began with an "Ee" (or something akin as it was actually the French version of "i"). Others in France may remember this?

But we're not in France. In Britain the company has obviously decided it wishes to be pronounced eye-kee-ah

That is really useful Linda. In that way you get "Natural Sciences is an interesting option" "Natural Sciences are Biology, Chemistry and Physics and their various sub-divisions, the ones you choose to study depends on the options you select" (my mum read Natural Sciences at Cambridge and I've married a Physicist!)

Maybe it felt anything else would be a losing battle ??

As when Andrex had to re-dub their adverts because we in the UK couldn't cope with their "Ahrn-drecks" after years and years of "An-drecks".

Sorry, I didn't pay enough attention to your original post and skipped the "in any specific country" bit. Of course you're right.

When it comes to brand names I detest the way the english Anglicize Michelin. It should bee meeshlin (and I can't type a nazalised vowel so I put a consonant in) not Mitchelin.

Or meesh-lahn?

(How do the Welsh, Scots & Irish pronounce it, by the way?)

That looks better

I would say they possibly don't so much "wish" it to be pronounced wrongly/anglicised - they probably gave up (or in)

Do you think there should be a pan-European, standardized pronunciation of euro?

Snap !

Nope.

My wife has for years worn mainly 'Gabor' shoes. She and her friends, and indeed most women say 'Gaborrrr' with the emphasis on the second syllable.
Not until there was a TV ad did they realise its 'Gaybor' with the emphasis on the frst syllable.

What do they say now ???? Still 'Gaborrrr' of course


(PS I have done business with Michelin, and always pronounced it the correct French way, as I also do with 'Laboratoires Garnier')

Oi-row given it seems to be propped up by the Bundesbank perchance?

But the French "in" is not pronounced "ah". For some reason English people tend to confuse it with the "on" / "an" sound, though they can usually pronounce it in some contexts (such as the word "vin").

And here I have a chance to say one of my pet hates is the word timbre being pronounced as though it were spelt tembre or tambre.

Am I right, though, that Francis Poulenc is actually pronounced with the last syllable like a French "in" and not like "an"? I do think I've read or heard that somewhere

I've never heard anyone pronounce it the same way twice. Wikipedia gives us this transcription:

Francis Poulenc fʁɑ̃sis pulɛ̃k

So it's a nasalised vowel with a hard C at the end.

I've never heard anyone pronounce it the same way twice. Wikipedia gives us this transcription:

Francis Poulenc fʁɑ̃sis pulɛ̃k

So it's a nasalised vowel with a hard C at the end.
[/quote]

Right. But Wiki makes the last syllable "bonk" rather than "bank", if you see what I mean. I'd learnt somewhere that it was an exception and was actually "bank" (these are in soft-southern-jessie English accent, you understand)

Well... I wouldn't say that it's quite 'onk'! I'm not a proper phonologist/phonetician, but I'd say it was somewhere in between ank and onk, if I were reading in standard (ahem, Parisian) French. I've never heard of it being a particular exception from the rule.

Please may we have a capital E for the "english".

Is that a question my dear stetenorve? (Sorry!)

Argh! I spelled (spelt?) your username wrong! Serves me right!

I decided to satisfy my curiosity and googled "pronunciation of Poulenc" The first three sites I came across confirmend what I thought I had heard, so it looks like it's Wikipedia that is out of step, and Poulenc is in fact, after all, an exception. Rhymes with cinq and not banc. So I hadn't imagined it

All we have to do now is get it through the EC legislative process...

Do you have the links? I'd like to see.

I don't quite see your point here, Derek. Unless I've misunderstood, you're saying that Czerny isn't pronounced the way it's written. Ignoring the fact that Czerny clearly isn't an English name and thus would be made up of different phonetics, that was exactly what I was saying in the first place.

I'd like to enter a robust plea (if that's not an oxymoron) for anglicisation of foreign words.

I've heard Beethoven pronounced by Germans and it sounds different from the received English pronunciation I use, and I doubt if I get Tchaikovsky, Dostoevsky, Machiavelli, Ueshiba or Ghandi "right" either.

French words seem to be a particular focus for this, but the "mee" in "Meeshlin", as suggested in another post, isn't really like a French "Mi" (and I don't know what we're supposed to make of the "lin"; if the suggestion for pronunciation is as in the name "Lin", then it's way off). French and English are very different and, in my experience, it requires a considerable (buccal) gymnastic effort to mix the two, usually producing what is, to my mind (ears), a pretty ugly result.

Why bother. Received pronunciation is fine. And at least it avoids interrupting the flow of a sentence in a (usually failed) attempt to get one's tongue around an alien set of sounds



P.S. I make an exception where getting "near enough" is concerned. For example, the question about "Poulenc", and the reply "ank" are OK. "######-lank" (however unfortunate it may look for the poor man in English) is near enough to be understood by both English and French speakers, whereas "######-lonk" would sound wrong. (The censored bits were like the name of the famous (Pooh) bear but without the final 'h').

P.P.S. Does this post win the award for the largest number of brackets ever used?

All this is very pedantic !

.. of course if I could have written it properly in international phonetic alphabet it would make proper sense, I pronounce French very nicely having taken a lot of time to adapt my mouth shape to suit (it's a singer thing!)

I didn't for one second intend to imply that only French folk do French properly, and the English English, the Germans German and so on, and of course you're right that some people are better at developing pronunciation than others. My "plea" was a general one.
Since you raise the point, I think the phonetic alphabet is an interesting animal: even if you'd used it, the French "i" is pretty near (or just beyond) the borders of a normal English perceptual set, which means that the degree to which an English speaker would reproduce the intended sound would still be limited by that set (+ of course, any additional linguistic experience)... Way, way back, before I requalified and got into my current field, I did a linguistics degree, so it's not just a "singer thing".....



And yet more pedantic (see post above) !!!
I think I've had enough for today !!!

It wins my award for sanity.

You are forgiven, young lady!

First half-dozen that Google threw up!

http://www.proz.com/forum/off_topic/69794-...of_poulenc.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor...s_poulenc.shtml

http://en.allexperts.com/q/French-Language...ois-Poulenc.htm

http://www.forvo.com/word/francis_poulenc/

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads...ite_id/1#import
...which gives lots of different opinions but then halofway down the page comes a reminder that en in French is not always the same sound as an: rien, bien, viens?

Right, I went to my old boss and this is what went down:



Voil?, so, 5!

But, bizarrely, not 6...

On a completely different pedantic note - I have to reply to an email from a 15-year-old pupil whose brother I also teach:

"Please could you attach the bill as next week is James and I's last lesson this term"



Now, I'm meant to be teaching him just the piano, but somehow I can't let that past!
(Think I'll preface it with about 3 lines of aaargh and ouch and eeeuw etc. And describe it as what I call a grammatical fo-pah)

Is he Jamaican?

He's never mentioned being.

Note through the door :

Childminder flyer:

All well and good until the last two lines:
"OFSTED
Raising standdars, improving lifes"