Really trivial stuff that bugs you

[pzkpfw]

All the pronunciation differences are why English spelling reform won't work.

Clearly the answer is metric spelling.

[Trebuchet]

It amuses me that I thought I'd throw something out there quite a few years ago and there are now 12212 posts in this thread. Counting this one.

[Noclevername]

Clearly the answer is metric spelling.

01101111 01101011

[Swift]

But then the argument will be whether it is "zero" or "naught".

[Jim]

I think it's "naught" when you're talking about spies.

Gee, I hope someone gets the reference.

[profloater]

But then the argument will be whether it is "zero" or "naught".

OH!

[Extravoice]

I think it's "naught" when you're talking about spies.

Gee, I hope someone gets the reference.

That you, Jethro?


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[KaiYeves]

I think it's "naught" when you're talking about spies.

Gee, I hope someone gets the reference.

Agent Naught Naught Seven?

[grant hutchison]

OH!

I see what you did there.

Grant Hutchison

[DonM435]

A naughty trick.

[Extravoice]

I found a video of what came to my mind:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1MWq6L19eNo


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[Jim]

That you, Jethro?

Agent Naught Naught Seven?

Double Naught.

[profloater]

Double Naught.

Ooh!

[Delvo]

It's generally true, I think, that American accents have lost the rounding on the vowel represented by "o" which is preserved in most British English.

Not before R. You're describing a "short" O sound here (which of course has nothing to do with length anymore but did once), so I suppose another way to put it is that our letter O is nearly always "long" before R. Exceptions include "worry" and "word" and sometimes "for" if it's rushed (schwas), and "sorry" (close to the standard "short" O before other letters, as if it were spelled "sarry/sari"). Offhand I can't think of another exception in which it's ever unrounded before R.

This brings to mind two examples I heard years ago, in which I did hear people doing the rare (outside "sorry") /a/-type O before R, in words where it had never been before or since in my life, and they sounded so deeply weird and unnatural that they've stuck in my memory ever since then as some of the oddest bits of mispronunciation I've ever encountered. One was a woman singing "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town" in a style that sounds like it came from the black-&-white era, who turned "be good for goodness sake" into "be good faa goodness sake". But she also dropped the R entirely and strangely emphazied & elongated that syllable, so I thought it could be a side-effect of how much she was opening up at that moment for that musical reason rather than how she actually intended to pronounce it. And the other was a narrator in a commercial for something he called "Flarida Arange Juice", who made me wonder where in the world the accent he was faking was supposed to be from because it certainly couldn't be anything real. Both were so rare they were jarring.

[SeanF]

Not before R. You're describing a "short" O sound here (which of course has nothing to do with length anymore but did once), so I suppose another way to put it is that our letter O is nearly always "long" before R. Exceptions include "worry" and "word" and sometimes "for" if it's rushed (schwas), and "sorry" (close to the standard "short" O before other letters, as if it were spelled "sarry/sari"). Offhand I can't think of another exception in which it's ever unrounded before R.

Work. Worth. World. Mirror. Color. Major. Minor. Motor. Mayor. Actor. Doctor. Effort. Color. Prior. Rigor. Arbor. Victor. Flavor. Favor. Savor. Sensor. Honor. Terror. Horror. Savior. Glamor. Cursor. Harbor. Rumor. Professor. Succor. Memory. Editor. Record (not that one, the other one). Senior. Sector. Factor. Gorilla. Calorie. Auditor. Advisory. Director. Creator. Visitor. Comfort. Correct. Stubborn. Detector. Behavior. Rhetoric. Bachelor. Thorough. Governor. Interior. Exterior. Emperor. Borough. Projector. Navigator. Successor. Inspector. Indicator. Corporate (second "or"). Categorize (but not category). Decorate (but not decor). Perforate. Contemporary.

Okay, I'm tired now.

EDIT: Wait, one more:

And the other was a narrator in a commercial for something he called "Flarida Arange Juice", who made me wonder where in the world the accent he was faking was supposed to be from because it certainly couldn't be anything real.

[Extravoice]

Double Naught.

On a slightly more serious note, I’ve always pronounced the symbols for permittivity and permeability of free space as “epsilon naught” and “mu naught”, but I had a British expat as a professor for my introduction to those terms. Do most Americans use those terms, or do they say something like “epsilon sub zero”?





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[Delvo]

SeanF's post reveals a new pattern: those are mostly de-emphasized syllables, whereas I had been thinking of OR in emphasized syllables without noticing that myself, and it turns out that O before R is usually "long" when emphasized and "short" when not... which is even consistent with the two pronunciations of "for" depending on its relative emphasis within a whole sentence, and explains why it's "long" in the American version of "laboratory", where the syllable before the second R tends to get a secondary emphasis in American, just like in the American versions of words that end in "-ery" or "-ary".

(That and the British loss of the same syllable to become just "-ry" serve the same purpose: avoiding ending with three consecutive unemphasized syllables... which "laboratory" tends to hide because there's also another difference in syllable emphasis before that ("lábratóry"/labóratry"... maybe also "lábratry" for some?), but it's easier to follow in examples where we otherwise emphasize the same syllable, like "sécretáry/sécretry".)

[grant hutchison]

That and the British loss of the same syllable to become just "-ry" serve the same purpose ...

More Southern English than British, I think. When I was a kid growing up in Scotland, omitting the last vowel of words like laboratory and secretary was considered a mark of slovenly speech, like omitting the first "r" in February. It was something that effete southrons did, not gritty northern folk.

Grant Hutchison

[Jens]

On a slightly more serious note, I’ve always pronounced the symbols for permittivity and permeability of free space as “epsilon naught” and “mu naught”, but I had a British expat as a professor for my introduction to those terms. Do most Americans use those terms, or do they say something like “epsilon sub zero”?

I don’t understand where the “sub” comes from, but I do think a lot of Americans would say “epsilon zero” and “mu zero.” Of course, the majority of Americans, including me, never have the opportunity to use those terms anyway, even considering the small possibility that they have any idea of what they mean.

[profloater]

More Southern English than British, I think. When I was a kid growing up in Scotland, omitting the last vowel of words like laboratory and secretary was considered a mark of slovenly speech, like omitting the first "r" in February. It was something that effete southrons did, not gritty northern folk.

Grant Hutchison

Hey I may live in Norfolk now where whole junks of words get hidden, (Happisburgh is pronounced “Haysbro”) but I was educated near London, which is in the South of England and February was taught as in the famous rhyme about how many days. But then that was before TV ruined the language with vulgar soap operas.

[Extravoice]

I don’t understand where the “sub” comes from, but I do think a lot of Americans would say “epsilon zero” and “mu zero.” Of course, the majority of Americans, including me, never have the opportunity to use those terms anyway, even considering the small possibility that they have any idea of what they mean.

The “sub” is short for “subscript”, and was commonly used back when I was in school. Although it may not have been in common usage elsewhere.


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[KaiYeves]

(Happisburgh is pronounced “Haysbro”)

Do they make toys there? ;-)

[Extravoice]

Do they make toys there? ;-)

You’re thinking of Pawtucket.


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[pzkpfw]

01101111 01101011

Mysterious link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Whn0YzNG4s

[KaiYeves]

You’re thinking of Pawtucket.


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There’s a toy company whose name sounds as much like “Pawtucket” as “Haysbro” sounds like “Hasbro”?

[The Backroad Astronomer]

There is a robo-caller that when you pick a rather obvious robot voice gives a message from service Canada saying there is a judgement against you, they call about twice a day with a different number on the caller id. So not only are they are probably trying a lot of numbers, then the change their number to spoof another phone and go all over that again. Infinite loop, heck.

[Extravoice]

There’s a toy company whose name sounds as much like “Pawtucket” as “Haysbro” sounds like “Hasbro”?

No, you asked where they make toys.
(Although I suspect that the Hassenfeld Brothers don't make many there, anymore)

[grant hutchison]

When did my life change from trying to make computers do stuff I wanted them to do, to trying to stop computers doing stuff I don't want them to do? How did that happen without my ever passing through a "sweet spot" between these two extremes?

No, I don't want you to run on start-up. No, I don't want you to run in the background. No, I don't want that strange floating toolbar on my desktop that gives access to "common" tasks I never perform. No, you're not getting to access the internet and my camera unless I say so, and you're certainly not getting to automatically copy my stuff to "the cloud", whether or not you've given a happy name to a server farm in (at best) Gibraltar. No, I don't want to receive your alleged "tips" on how to do straightforward things, and I don't want to have to edit the freakin' registry in order to get rid of those tips. When I do want to know how to do something, a paragraph of text will suffice, thank you, and one that is already present on my hard drive - I have no interest in watching three on-line minutes of a curiously coiffed and over-excited young man "explaining" something that turns out to be very slightly different from what I want to know. And I certainly do not wish to interact with you socially, on any level, so please stop trying. That was bad enough when you were a perky little paperclip, but now that you're a sinister facsimile of a cognitively impaired person with a neurological illness, we're just not going to get along at all. The sooner you understand that, the better.

Grant Hutchison

[Hornblower]

When did my life change from trying to make computers do stuff I wanted them to do, to trying to stop computers doing stuff I don't want them to do? How did that happen without my ever passing through a "sweet spot" between these two extremes?

No, I don't want you to run on start-up. No, I don't want you to run in the background. No, I don't want that strange floating toolbar on my desktop that gives access to "common" tasks I never perform. No, you're not getting to access the internet and my camera unless I say so, and you're certainly not getting to automatically copy my stuff to "the cloud", whether or not you've given a happy name to a server farm in (at best) Gibraltar. No, I don't want to receive your alleged "tips" on how to do straightforward things, and I don't want to have to edit the freakin' registry in order to get rid of those tips. When I do want to know how to do something, a paragraph of text will suffice, thank you, and one that is already present on my hard drive - I have no interest in watching three on-line minutes of a curiously coiffed and over-excited young man "explaining" something that turns out to be very slightly different from what I want to know. And I certainly do not wish to interact with you socially, on any level, so please stop trying. That was bad enough when you were a perky little paperclip, but now that you're a sinister facsimile of a cognitively impaired person with a neurological illness, we're just not going to get along at all. The sooner you understand that, the better.

Grant Hutchison

Amen! Once again it appears that we have software developers in their own little world, who cannot resist showing off their virtuosity regardless of whether it is suitable for ordinary users like you and I. In my fantasy world I would wash their mouths out with a greasy sample of the soap I made in high school chemistry. I don't want to hurt the poor schlubs with a caustic sample, just make it unpleasant.

[Trebuchet]

We had a new house built last year. That made me happy.
We had a propane-powered generator added to it for backup power. That made me more secure.
Winter is coming, so I'd like to get it serviced and checked out. That made me frustrated yesterday.

The company that installed it specializes in new construction and doesn't do service.
The Generator is from Kohler. There's a tag right on it saying go to kohlersmartpower.com. When I do that I get a page about toilets, showers, and sinks. Try it.
Ok, kohlerpower.com gets you generators. Just leave out the "smart", because what comes next is dumb.
Click on "Find a Dealer". It takes you to this page. Which doesn't work. At all. No matter what you put in the search box it just reloads the page.

Here's a challenge for you: Find me an authorized Kohler dealer to service my generator. Location is Port Townsend, WA, 98368.