I may watch too much television

[slemslempike]

[Poll #1084483]

I think the main thing that would make teaching immeasurably better is if the students didn't. to a woman, have much better skin than me. I demand a return to spotty eighteen year olds!

When I was younger and watching Fist of Fun on TV, I thought Stewart Lee was the most beautiful man who ever lived. Then a few years later, watching This Morning With Richard Not Judy, I still liked him (obviously) but decided that it must have been a childish infatuation and he was perfectly normal looking. In the last few weeks I watched the FoF live video, and I wasn't wrong, I wasn't. He was heavenly.

Comments

[cellardor.livejournal.com]

But that's how I would pronounce it. Only posh people say for-head...don't they?

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I say for-head! I am not very posh though. Just southern. But then I recently found out that I've been mispronouncing "labia", so I am not the best judge of body parts.

[cellardor.livejournal.com]

Ah, I am Northern so therefore my language is corrupted (or best, depending on which side you're looking at it from). And go on then, how should I be pronouncing labia, just in case?

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Well, I think it's supposed to be lab (like laboratory, rhyming with crab [that's an unfortunate link]) - ear (like the ears on your head).

I have been saying lay (like lay-by) - bee - a (short a. bee+a is a bit like saying beard but stopping before the d).

I am going to have to find out properly now.

[cellardor.livejournal.com]

That's the way I think of it as I've been reading this (the lab one). Yes, to Google! Or Dictionary.com, or something.

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

The OED prefers lay-bee-um for the singular.

Caveat: the OED reflects popular usage not necessarily correctly Latinate pronuciation.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I am mostly interested in popular rather than Latinate!

Which does it prefer for labia? (I haven't got access at home, and also find the pronunciation guides beyond me!)

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

I can't be arsed to sign in to the online OED but my most recent paper edition gives lay-bee-uh for the plural (in both cases the emphasis is on the first syllable). It'd be interesting to look the word up in a standard medical dictionary which gives Latinate pronunciations though because, if it's not an Americanisation, a change in pronunciation might reflect a shift in the balance of popular usage from the conversational (where I reckon slang is more likely) ro the medical (because women are now allowed to discuss their anatomy with professionals without resorting to euphemisms).

I ♥ phonetic renderings.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

I've never encountered “labia” pronounced to rhyme with “crabbier”. I’ve only ever heard it said the way you’re used to.

(Citation: When Club 18-30 ran their oh-so-wearily-provocative “Beaver Espaňa” campaign in the early 1990s, the best—in fact pretty much the only—example my flatmates and I could be bothered to come up with in response was “Saudi A-Labia”.)

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Oh, good! Because I don't actually like the sound of labbier, and would much rather say laybia. I've only heard other people say labbier though (and people say it so rarely it's hard to get a good sample), and I thought it was one of those things where having read it I have the wrong idea in my head.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

> people say it so rarely it's hard to get a good sample

Maybe you should instigate more inappropriate conversations.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

It's getting the exact tone right that's the problem - so often inappropriate conversations head stright for "flaps".

[wonderlanded.livejournal.com]

I don't hear anything but "fore-head" which I always just assumed was an American pronunciation til I moved here, maybe it's regional?

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

Yes, ditto - I've never met an English person who says 'forr-ead', whereas both English and Americans say 'fore-head'.

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

English nursery rhyme:

There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead,
When she was good
She was very, very good
And when she was bad she was horrid.