Huldra Forsvant (Theodor Kittelsen)

Huldra Forsvant (Theodor Kittelsen)
Huldra Forsvant (Theodor Kittelsen)

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

..And While I'm Hating..

You know what else I hate?

When people pronounce the word 'genre' without the soft 'g' sound, so it sounds like 'john-ra'.

I'm not asking you to wear a red and white striped top, grow a goatee and carry a bread stick, but just at least give me that soft 'g' sound. That's all I'm asking.

14 comments:

RodeoClown said...

zshon-rah

RodeoClown said...

There's not really a nice way of writing that soft g sound. :S

ALaird said...

Don't get me started on this one...

Ra-search not REEEE-search
Ra-view not REEEE-view etc...
Copen-HAY-gen not Copen-HAR-gen

Ok I'll stop now

ALaird said...

Oh and I'm with you on genre Ben:)

Ben McLaughlin said...

yikes, I say Reeeeeeeeeeeeeee-search. I wonder if we can still be friends. I wonder who is the weaker brother in this situation.

Ben McLaughlin said...

If I have a son, Rodeo, I'm going to push for him to be called John, but spelt Zshon.

RodeoClown said...

The worst mispronunciation is for "advertisement".

It is not said "advertise-ment".

It is "ad-vertis-ment".

It's not that hard.

onlinesoph said...

Oh no, I say all the things that annoy Ben and everyone else! Except for Ree-view.

But I do work next to a french girl. Maybe that's why.

onlinesoph said...

or advertisement.

Ben McLaughlin said...

phew, I'm glad I got advertisement right, I was sweating there for a second.

Don't beat yourself up, Soph. Baby steps, starting with zshon-ra.

Don't worry about all of Lairdy's ones, he's taking things too far.

ALaird said...

;) Perhaps...

Although I think you'll find though the whole REEE thing is more the way Americans pronounce those words and Aussies have started saying it that way because we have so much American TV.

Copenhagen though I'm sticking with:)

And yep totally with RodeoClown on advertisement

Stuart Heath said...

A number of 're' words shift their emphasis depending on whether it's a noun or a verb. (If you're confused, think about 'record' — for some reason, no one seems to get this one wrong.)

And the way we write that 'g' phonetically is /ʒ/ (here's hoping that comes out right). It's actually a pretty rare sound in English. (It's in 'measure' and 'pleasure'.) So I'm not surprised people don't make it out the front of 'genre'.

But then, if you want to pronounce it à la française, then you won't pronounce the 'n', either ('en' makes a distinctive vowel sound in French), and you'd better work on your 'r'.

Strange place to set your tolerance threshold, Ben :P

Kutz said...

//There's not really a nice way of writing that soft g sound. :S

Spare a thought for those learning Russian. They have individual letters for:
zh
sh (hard)
sh (soft)(I'm half Russian and find the difference undetectable)
ch
and some weird throatie sound that's almost like some Hebrew gutterals but a bit more 'sh'ish. More 'wet', if you will.

and a bit easier:
ts

And then you can crash most of those suckers up against each other just to make it more fun.

Laetitia :-) said...

Pet peeve: "next jeer" instead of "next year" - what is this? Sneering at the calendar?