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Post by mickthecactus on Sept 12, 2019 20:36:37 GMT
Excellent! Viva la difference!
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Post by lagatta on Sept 13, 2019 0:11:31 GMT
Yes, except that some persons called Indigenous names, common throughout the Americas though often bastardised, "foreign". Ottawa/Outaouais (the river). Actual pronunciation by the Indigenous people more similar to Odaweh. One among hundreds if not thousands of examples throughout the Americas/America (the continent). Détroit is French, but I'd be surprised if the Indigenous people didn't call it something similar as the short river between two Great Lakes with little Lac-St-Claire is such a distinctive geographical feature. Hope Fumobici comes along (tomorrow) with names from Pacific Northwest peoples.
Oh gawd, I'm such a bluidy geek.
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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 13, 2019 3:47:33 GMT
I have heard both pronunciations of St. Louis. And there are three pronunciations of New Orleans.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 13, 2019 4:04:49 GMT
Three is a conservative estimate.
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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 13, 2019 4:59:14 GMT
The minute I wrote that, I thought about all of the extra ways to slur the pronunciation, but they all derive from the principal three, no?
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Post by mickthecactus on Sept 13, 2019 9:37:58 GMT
You say cilantro I say coriander. Is your c hard or soft?
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Post by mossie on Sept 13, 2019 10:57:49 GMT
Now there’ s a question you should not be asking, just have fun finding out
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Post by mickthecactus on Sept 13, 2019 11:07:42 GMT
Now there’ s a question you should not be asking, just have fun finding out I had a horrible feeling when I posted that...
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 13, 2019 13:59:07 GMT
You say cilantro I say coriander. Is your c hard or soft? The letter C, both in Spanish and in English, is soft before the letters E and I, and hard before the other vowels.
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Post by bjd on Sept 13, 2019 14:03:59 GMT
You say cilantro I say coriander. Is your c hard or soft? The letter C, both in Spanish and in English, is soft before the letters E and I, and hard before the other vowels. In French and Italian too.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 13, 2019 14:15:16 GMT
I should have included Y in its vowel persona, in case Mick wants to confab about coriander and cilantro with his friends Cyrus and Cyril. And I appreciate the information that the rule holds true in other Romance languages.
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Post by mickthecactus on Sept 13, 2019 14:34:04 GMT
Indeed. For some reason I have always thought of it as a hard c. Probably because I'm thinking of coriander.
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Post by mickthecactus on Sept 28, 2020 16:17:39 GMT
Aargh! It's happened again!
I was listening to an excellent programme with a woman who was the carer for 5 years of Georgia O'Keeffe.. She was in her twenties and O'Keeffe in her '90's. She was quite particular about her food and started taking about the garden and all the 'erbs. Why can't it be herbs as it's spelt? It really grates.
If you meet a guy called Herb you don't say ello erb?!
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Post by kerouac2 on Sept 28, 2020 16:39:51 GMT
The silent HThe herb problem is addressed at the end. On the other end of the spectrum, Americans tend to say "a historical event" whereas the English seem to say "an historical event." Opinion?
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Post by bjd on Sept 28, 2020 18:25:50 GMT
No need for "an" before historical since the h is pronounced. There are very few (I think only 4) words in English where the h is silent: hour, honest, honour, heir.
As for those grassy things used for cooking, I say herb,not 'erb.
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Post by onlyMark on Sept 28, 2020 19:10:05 GMT
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Post by lugg on Oct 2, 2020 8:13:54 GMT
If you use Google's ngram viewer you can see how in publications between say 1700 and present day either an historic or a historic has been used and how it has been roughly neck and neck until 1950 or so - Fascinating - I use both and I am now wasting time trying to work out if I have my own personal rule.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 24, 2021 5:27:21 GMT
The British say "jab" and the Americans say "shot" for injection. Apparently, Australians also say "shot." Both words are rather brutal -- I wonder why either was preferred to injection.
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Post by bjd on Jan 24, 2021 7:31:35 GMT
Probably in the general movement to shorten all words. I say vaccine.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 24, 2021 9:29:22 GMT
Yes, when it is a vaccine. But not all injections are vaccines.
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Post by bjd on Jan 24, 2021 10:00:20 GMT
Yes, when it is a vaccine. But not all injections are vaccines. Well,I don't know what junkies call injections. Used to be mainlining but that seems like a long word for nowadays.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 24, 2021 12:22:09 GMT
Junkies shoot up. Doctors inject things like penicillin, cortisone or insulin.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 24, 2021 18:37:34 GMT
Yes, when it is a vaccine. But not all injections are vaccines. That brings me to something I've been wondering about, but have not bothered to look up. You all can elucidate for me, please. Is the the word "vaccine" not based on the Latin word for cow, a reference to the original vaccine against smallpox, which was derived from cowpox serum? If so, that means that any inoculation not specifically against smallpox is technically not a vaccine, right? (& probably not the one against smallpox anymore, either, as surely cowpox serum is no longer used). Or have I gone down some completely erroneous etymological path here?
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 24, 2021 18:43:18 GMT
I looked it up. You are absolutely correct about the origin, Bixa.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 24, 2021 19:16:01 GMT
When the oldest known sample of smallpox vaccine was dna tested, a sample from 1902, it was found to be derived from horsepox and not cowpox. Jenner, the man credited with coming up with the smallpox vaccine said he had used horse and cow samples. Hence a tongue in cheek mention was made that these things should be called equusine instead.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 24, 2021 19:29:58 GMT
Well, thank you, Kerouac & Mark! Because of your answers, I have now looked up more: The vaccine used to eradicate smallpox—the world's oldest vaccine—is itself a living virus named vaccinia; it was first used in 1796 by Edward Jenner, a U.K. doctor. Popular accounts usually have Jenner using cowpox to inoculate people after he noticed that dairymaids appeared to be immune to smallpox. But there are also stories implicating horsepox, and the published horsepox genome looks very similar to some old vaccinia strains, bolstering the hypothesis that the vaccine was derived from horses. (To add another layer of confusion, both horsepox and cowpox may originally have been rodent poxviruses that only occasionally infected livestock.) The source of this quote is on a much broader subject, & is very much worth reading. Pox diseases in general: www.britannica.com/science/pox-disease
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 28, 2021 18:05:01 GMT
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Post by whatagain on Jun 30, 2021 17:29:32 GMT
Well. It explained a lot to me...
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Post by lugg on Jun 30, 2021 19:17:06 GMT
Well when it comes to castle, I am with the US version
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 30, 2021 19:19:52 GMT
Not surprising. That video presents the silly idea that there is only a single accent in the US, one single accent in the UK, and another single distinct accent in Australia.
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