.

Dean wrote: aginor wrote: or Nietzche   what about Peugeot, or worcestershire souce, Worcestershire sauce is pronounced "Lea & Perrins"   Exactly.   Rather than Peugeot (which will forever be pronouced "Pug", as in Pug-ugly), how about Citroën:   A colleague of mine has a house in France and can speak French fairly well, all be it with a decidedly English accent - when his car broke down he went to a small rural garage for help, where he proudly announced: "J'ai un problème avec mon Citron" to howls of laughter from the car mechanics... since it translates as "I have a problem with my lemon" Which is actually brilliant, but I don't know if you have this expression in the UK:  here a car that gives you tons of problems is referred to as a lemon.

^

Edited by aginor - January 20 2011 at 17:12

or Nietzche

CPicard wrote: moshkito wrote: mEP wrote: Like the title says, I'm not really sure how to pronounce the word genre. I used to think it was "jen-re", but someone corrected me and said it was "djaaaan-er" I got angry and came here.   Do it French style ... but then, it would still be an insult to the meaning of the word, since what we have for progressive sub-definitions, are not genres ... they are ... (not gonna say it ... and I'm gonna be nice to the musicians!) Niche markets?

Would that be like you have a great Nitch like stitch? Or like something hidden in the nitch?

mEP wrote: Like the title says, I'm not really sure how to pronounce the word genre. I used to think it was "jen-re", but someone corrected me and said it was "djaaaan-er" I got angry and came here.

 

Genre is a sacred word that should never be pronounced.

mEP wrote: Like the title says, I'm not really sure how to pronounce the word genre. I used to think it was "jen-re", but someone corrected me and said it was "djaaaan-er" I got angry and came here.

Pretentious, is how it's pronounced.

But seriously, I just say jenruh.

Or Jean-ruh (the French Jean).


Edited by James - January 18 2011 at 20:35

Ooops, I mean "if German were the official language.." and it was already quoted.. but you understood anyway.

Formentera Lady wrote: Dean wrote: Rivertree wrote: Atavachron wrote: I think the US Continental Congress was but a few votes away from making German the national language if that would have come true ... then we probably had to post in German language here? well, that could make things much easier for me ... the PA is Canadian That does not count! If English were the official language of the USA we would call Microsoft "Winzigweich" and we would all speak German!

Nah - far to consise for German - it would be "WinzigelektronischegeräteProgrammieranleitungcodierungsprache"

Noak wrote: In swedish it's spelled ''Genre'' but pronounced ''Schanger''. It's f**ked up.

In Swedish the Danish word "tale" (speak) is called "tal" (Danish = numbers), which is very annoying when reading Swedish texts on phonetics/phonology.

About languages being f**ked up, or not making sense:

It's a weird stand. To assume that there is some 'sense' in the form of some logic governing language use is a false assumption. Few languages are phonemic and none are entirely. Surely, one can think of many good reasons why it should be so - but language is immune to such deductive reasoning. Language doesn't make sense - that's the only conclusion linguistics can reach at present stage. Linguistics is dominated by severe disagreements that has to do with the very core of the discipline - what is a language and how can we describe it? The answers to such questions vary considerably, and the definitions applied are theory-dependent. The most applied and accepted definition is that a language is "a system of symbols". It's okay - but for the layman quite useless. It inevitably begs the questions what kind of system? and what kind of symbols? Those questions are still the challenges for linguistics.