The Official Pet Peeve Thread

She’ll probably get to keep half, so she’ll have a quarter-ass British accent.

Or is that quarter-arse?

Ooooooh why I oughta /shakes fist

LOL you are bringing back memories of a linguistics class I took…

And I don’t have an ‘accent,’ I just speak quickly :wink: No really, my accent is what passes for neutral newscaster speech mostly… usually… is what I’ve been told…

That’s what people in Cleveland say, too. Even though they sound like Chicagoans. And, General American is still an accent to someone’s ears! :stuck_out_tongue:

A lot of those regional issues are so ingrained that even people who should know better don’t realize their lack of flexibility. I had a linguistics class in college where half the class got the same question on a test wrong. The exercise was to represent common words in IPA. The one that so many had an issue with was the word “garage”. The teacher insisted that the final g was pronounced with a j sound, although roughly half of us pronounced it ʒ (like the middle sound in “pleasure”). One student even stressed the first syllable, as in the British pronunciation. It took a lot of arguing to convince her that half the English-speaking world wasn’t just completely and utterly wrong. :slight_smile:

Linguistics is something that totally fascinates me. I love regional words and expressions. My co-workers all think I’m nuts when I say things like nib-nose (a nosy person) and devils strip (the strip of grass between the sidewalk and street) and dippy eggs.

I read about the “problem” with the word garage in a linguistics textbook once. Here’s the thing: all three pronunciations are technically right, they merely represent different stages of assimilation into the English language. The students were closest to the original French, the teacher was halfway assimilated and the one guy with the British pronunciation was furthest away from the French.

It’s good to know that Poofy speaks IPA. Maybe that could be our code language?

Thank you, Armando and family, for not making me elbow you painfully on the Metro system!

Everyone needs to go listen to this one. It made me cry and has stayed with me since it first aired almost a year ago. It’s Act I of Episode #340.

…and liberry and nucular and Sandy Claws? Well, there isn’t anything wrong with Sandy Claws, but the rest of em are JUST NOT RIGHT, I tell you.

Ummm… wtf is a dippy egg? I hope it’s as hilarious as it sounds!

My family moved from New Jersey to the land of the Penn Dutch when I was a baby, so my parents had a lot of adjustments to make. In addition to “dippy eggs” (which I’d never heard anywhere else), there were the words “outen” (as in to turn off a light) and once pronounced with a “t” at the end, not to mention the odd practice of ending questions with the word “ain’t”.

One time we were in a restaurant when the waitress commented on how thick the fog was outside, to which my mother responded, “it’s like pea soup out there.” The waitress said that they didn’t serve that there. She was completely unfamiliar with what we considered to be a very common phrase.

Technically, everyone speaks IPA. They just don’t know it. :smiley:

Maybe that could be our code language?

Do we need one? Besides, the gutter transcends language. :wink:

Not really. Most people would call them sunny-side-up. I guess the idea is that you can dip bread in the yolks, since they are still pretty runny…

Speaking of weird accents, I was forced to move to the only part of Germany where they NASALIZE vowels…

Hmmm. I am dissappointed.

I actually had the impression that all German was kind of nasally. Not sure what I had listened to that made me think that, but it was the deciding factor in deciding to study Spanish. Turns out I was wrong, I know.

Freaks. :wink:

My work here is done. :slight_smile:

I actually had the impression that all German was kind of nasally. Not sure what I had listened to that made me think that, but it was the deciding factor in deciding to study Spanish. Turns out I was wrong, I know.

I always thought of French as more nasal. German always seemed more guttural.

Like Klingon. :rolleyes:

Which is a pretty accurate description of both languages. Ever heard Swiss German, though? Pinnacle of guttural.

Which is why I chose Spanish. Throaty without being guttural; lyrical without being sing-songy; totally sexy.

Hm. In terms of sexiness, Italian probably beats Spanish. Not much, but it does.

…I say none of those thank you very much. Nor do i say Idears. You’re mixing up your accents methinks

What’s pissing me off today: the roundness of Earth. This time zone thing is very confusing. I miss the days when Earth used to be flat.

For those of you are avid enthusiasts of frak parties:

Western (US): GMT -8 (-7 DST)
Eastern (US): GMT -5 (-4 DST)
UK/Ireland: GMT +0 (+1 Summertime)
Germany: GMT +1 (+2 Summertime)
Korea/Japan: GMT +9 (No DST)
Australia: GMT +10 (+11 Summertime)

Summertime in Europe has ended. DST in America end Nov 2, Sunday. So for this week:

10PM Eastern in the US is the same thing as:
7PM Pacific in the US
2AM (Next day) in UK/Ireland
3AM(Next day) in Berlin and other part of Western Europe
11AM (Next day) in Korea, Japan
1PM (Next day) in Melbourne, the home of giant bird-eating spiders.

So, this changes next week.

Now I must go investigate why my boss looks like he’s about to pop an aneurysm. BRB.