Engineering Origin of a Common Phrase?

There is one word in the Engish language that Americans are universally totally unable to pronounce correctly.

I have spent many years in the Caribbean and east coast US and NEVER found a yank that can say it properly even when told how.

Any guesses as to what it is?

Two good phrases;

'Stone deaf' from stone masons hammers ringing in the closed quarries at Beer, Dorset.

'Not worth the candle' again stone masons had to pay for the candle used to cut blocks by and when the foreman hit the block at the end of the day and it did not 'ring' thus showing a fault or crack they did not get paid.

Martin

Can any one answer why the Americans call a 'tap' a 'faucet' or how it originated. If you look at it from the engineering POV... screw down valve = globe valve, lever or rotational type = ball valve

George.

Faucet maybe this is correct ...

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=faucet

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=faucet

Regards
John

Edited By John McNamara on 02/06/2016 15:25:13

There is one word in the Engish language that Americans are universally totally unable to pronounce correctly.

That would be Laboratory

Iain

The problem with English is like all modern languages it evolves with time. Ian SC mentioned Afrikaans, which originally was high Dutch, but today it has moved considerably away and has many other words adopted/made from other languages. Similarly true English is a mixture of many other languages, and new words are added on a regular basis. If we could go back 500 years and hear English as she is spoke then hardly anybody would be able to comprehend what the person was saying. And dialect and accents play a huge part. For a southerner to try and understand a geordie speaking is comical.

When I first emigrated to South Africa I had to get my head around some of the words used. And these were so-called english speaking people. I was directed to find a place and I was told to go up the main road to the first robot and then turn. What the hell is a robot? It is what British call a traffic light! Roundabouts are called circles, which when you know that makes sense.  In Yorkshire traffic lights were known as "To-go-stops".

Then there was the predominance of posting everything in English and Afrikaans. The most famous was "Slegs-Only", which until you learn a little Afrikaans is truly puzzling. Slegs in Afrikaans means Only.

The company I worked for made radio equipment for the local defense force and everything had to be in both languages. This meant that all instruction manuals had to printed twice. Typically the English version would be compiled and then the Afrikaans version would be translated from that one. In the Afrikaans language certain words don't exist and have to be "invented". We had a Prof at Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) who was the official government language consultant and he invented new words when needed. As he was appointed by the government then whatever he deemed the new word was law. It so happened that the Afrikaans for Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR) didn't exist, so he was asked to invent the new word. When it came back as the literal translation is was about 50 letters long and sounded like the railway station in Wales. Thankfully it was discarded and the troopies had to learn the English word.

Edited By John Fielding on 02/06/2016 16:58:05

Iain, Your are right, another good word they do not do!

My word is Squirrel, they cannot EVER make it right and always say Squirl !

Martin

Martin, I do admit we sometimes get lazy ans omit the last vowel in squirrel. On the other hand, when a Scot says that word he puts far too many R's in it.

I often notice US sources saying sol-dering when everyone I know in the UK does soul-dering.

Different pronunciations isn't uniquely a transatlantic problem , for instance there doesn't seem to be a standard UK way of saying scone. On a bad day I want to vapourize people who pronounce it Skon.

Got me beat. Surely not Cholmondeley. Borough perhaps? Please put me out of my misery.

I'm not too sure about how to say New Orleans or Maryland even though I watch a lot of telly. The Wire had me speaking street like a drug dealer for a month or two.

Cheers,

Dave

Another word our US cousins have got 'wrong' is Regular.

The claim for All-Bran was that it keeps you regular. No, it doesn't, it keeps you frequent.

The tick of a clock is regular. A proper bus service is regular. A coffee each day at four o'clock is regular, whatever the size of the cup. A small cup is not regular, it is small, but they just cannot bring themselves to say it. It's not as though small is difficult to say or spell - it only has one syllable.

Please, chaps from over the pond - how do you describe the tick of a clock?

Tim

Nuclear

Sold'ring over here...

Neil

Not just the US. On the news on telly over here it's almost always Nucular

Rod

""Not just the US. On the news on telly over here it's almost always Nucular

Rod"

This only started at the time of the Minnellium !

.

'Off the rails' ......... As in e.g. "He's gone off the rails"

What is the origins of that.???

Nick

I my part of Yorkshire a skon (I've no idea how you spell it!) is is a slice of potato on top of a slice of fish deep fried in batter. That definitely is a skon! Fishcake is completely different.

I used to work with two Cornishmen, who came from the same village but on opposite sides of a river, literally within a (long) stones throw. They used to say that they both had different accents/dialects!!

What I would hate to see is English becoming so precious that it becomes stultified, and immobile, like some European languages.

Having lived in 'Straya for the last 36 of my 68 years I find that I now need subtitles to understand some English TV programs.

I've just realised that this is about dialects rather than the thread title.....sorry!

cheers

Bill

p.s. When I was doing my apprenticeship on the Isle of Wight, a chamfer at some angle other than 45 degrees was called a "snape". When I put snape on a drawing over here ('Straya) the whole workshop came to a halt laughing.

Yes, mostly in the US west it is "sah-dering" with no sign of an L. Yet they pronounce salmon as "sall-mon".

Go figure, as they would say.

One word they can never pronounce properly? That would be "ar*e". They either try to put the full American rolled R in there, which ain't right, or just dump the R altogether and go with the American "ass".

They just don't get the way "furrners" mess up the English language.

Edited By Hopper on 03/06/2016 06:19:50

Bill Pudney: even British-born residents requite sub-titles these days, the diction of many so-called actors is so poor. Don't misunderstand me, it's good to hear regional accents on TV, but that's no excuse for mumbling. Perhaps I shouldn't complain because, having lived in Scotland for the last 20 years, I tend to use Scots phraseology spoken with a Lincolnshire accent. Or is my complaint brought about because, at 75, I'm a deaf old git?