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]

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.

[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.

[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....