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

[badbadbookworm.livejournal.com]

Option five: Kill it with fire. I'm clawing my own eyes out here.

[wonderlanded.livejournal.com]

Whereas it took me at least two years of living here not to have the same reaction to the British pronunciation of "forehead", "yoghurt" and "vitamin".

[cellardor.livejournal.com]

Please describe to me how you would pronounce those. How can forehead be pronounced any other way? Am intrigued. :)

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Forr-ed?

[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.

[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'.

[wonderlanded.livejournal.com]

Forehead is really the weird one for me. For Australians, it basically rhymes with "horrid" if the word was spelt "horred". Think it was an earlier pronunciation from some parts of the UK that changed here but not in Australia.

Yoghurt is YO (the first half of yo-yo)-ghurt.

And vitamin is VIE-ta-min.

Autre pays, etc...

[cellardor.livejournal.com]

That's closer to the way I would say it if I was in Yorkshire I suppose (the forehead one).

The yogurt and vitamin sound like the American way I think.

[tabouli.livejournal.com]

According to my chemist father, VIE-tamin is the correct way to say vitamin, because the word's a contraction of "vital amine". No idea on yoghurt, though.

[cellardor.livejournal.com]

We don't really do the 'correct' way in Yorkshire, it's said however we feel like it, usually in the shortest way possible. :)

[wonderlanded.livejournal.com]

That's usually the way the Australians do it, too....

[badbadbookworm.livejournal.com]

But we INVENTED foreheads, yoghurt and vitamins. (Ok, we didn't, but you know what I mean).

[wonderlanded.livejournal.com]

And we invented a very useful usage of "confronting". So, there we go.

[badbadbookworm.livejournal.com]

Touche.

For the record I say for-head and lay-bia and am not posh.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Now I'm worrying about how I say "forehead". I think I say "fore-head". Do I? I sometimes say "fore-'ead", I think, but I think of "forred" as Northern English.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Option five to what? The question's about whether or not you've heard the word used before, not people's reactions to it!

I quite like it myself though. As wonderlanded's helpfully pointed out above, it doesn't fulfill the same function as confrontational, and when I've heard it used it's not in a situation where I can easily think of a synonym. And I'm all for increasing vocabulary - though as a descriptive grammarian rather than prescriptive (...most of the time...) I would say that.

[badbadbookworm.livejournal.com]

Nyeah...I TRY to be descriptive not proscriptive, and I'm forever lecturing my dad about assimilation being the greatest strength of the English language, but certain neologisms make me want to go and have a little lie down.

Sorry to invade your LJ, by the way, I just thought this looked like an interesting thread.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Not at all - all welcome! And it's nice to have all views.

Yes, a more accurate description of my stance is "trying" as well - I do have my blind spots of rage. But I think because I see confronting as filling a gap that no other word adequately covers, and not taking away from anything, I'm okay with it.

[badbadbookworm.livejournal.com]

I'll have a little lie down and a small glass of water and see if I can come to terms with it.