Pronounciation
I heard a radio announcer the other day pronounce "mature" as "matchurrr." This is one that's always puzzled me, I'm sure there's a history behind it somewhere, but I've always pronounced it as "matoor."
Arrrghhh! Gargle, gargle! Match'rrrrrrrrr! Oh, it's not very matchurrrrr of me to make fun of people for saying matchurrr!
Labels: language
posted by paul @ 7:39 AM
6 Comments:
You're one of the three people who pronounce it with a T sound instead of the way you'd say saturate? That's okay, I won't poke fun at you. That wouldn't be matchure.
This reminds me of Arisia, the science fiction convention (convent-eon?). Most people say Ah-REE-zhah, but once in a while you get a rebel who says Ah-rees-EE-ah or even Ah-riss-EE-ah, which is fine but sounds funny to hear.
Hmmm, I've pronounced it Ah-REE-zhah ever since I read Doc Smith's Lensman series back in high school. Though back in those days I hadn't yet become fully ma-TCH'RRRRRRRR...
Another one is GROASH-ries instead of gross-er-ies for groceries. I really ought to haul H.L. Mencken's magisterial three volumes on American English down off my bookshelf. When it comes to the ins and outs of the American language, nobody else has ever come close to Mencken.
I pronounced it "a-RIH-zha" (schwa-colored a's, and a stressed short i). Years later it occurred to me that Doc Smith may have actually intended the i to be long as in "arise."
(When I was younger, I thought that a-RIGH-zha would naturally be too unsubtle, though I always took the resemblance to "arise" for intentional.)
Sadly, I never read the books. I do have one of them, First Lensman IIRC, that I bought used, uncheap, sheathed in a plastic sleeve to protect it as a collectible, but I have yet to decide it's what I'll read next. I think it's in a box, currently. A large five room apartment is not enough for all of us, office space for me, and all of our books to live on shelves. In addition to 13 bookcases having not been enough for all of them, we've had to take some down and put them in boxes to function better.
It gets better. When I pack up the old office this month, there are five bookcases there, two of them completely full of computer-related books, most of which will come home with me. If I had room, I could fill all five bookcases with what's overflow already in the apartment.
Yikes, you folks may have more books than I do... I've got a room full of bookcases downstairs, a room full of bookcases upstairs, an upstairs hallway full of bookcases, and several other bookcases scattered around. I think that's 25 bookcases total, though some of them are larger and some are smaller.
And that includes two bookcases full of science fiction, one bookcase full of fantasy, two bookcases full of books about various board games and card games, and most of an entire bookcase full of books by and about Jack Kerouac and other members of the Beat Generation (well, with Albert Camus and Walker Percy squeezed in, too).
Post a Comment
<< Home