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0 pointssandworm1014y ago0 comments

Like when I committed that greatest of Canadian sins: using the work 'labour' in a document read by an American client. The reaction was ridiculous.

Or the hilarious situation I had at a legal conference. I thought one of my right-wing US friends had gone totally racist. He was complaining about all the new "turbins" he was seeing while driving to the conference. I thought he meant turban, but that's just how Americans pronounce "turbine", as in the wind turbines he could see from the highway.

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Mediterraneo104y ago

I have met Americans who believe the UK spelling of words with -our instead of -or actually represents a difference in pronunciation. That is, they have the mistaken impression that Brits say /kəlur/ instead of /kələr/.

JackFr4y ago

'gaol' always throws me for a loop when I'm reading something British. I need to remind myself it's pronounced 'jail'. (A quick google tells me that all the major British newspapers switched over to 'jail' by the 1990's - score one for the good guys!)

I remember reading 'Mutiny on the Bounty' as a child and talking about it with my father and I said something about the 'boatswain', and he (a former naval officer) looked at me like I had two heads. "You mean the [BOSUN]?" "Well, no it says 'boatswain'" "Yes, it's spelled like that, but it's pronounced BOSUN. It's like 'colonel'. Don't think about the letters."

alickz4y ago

I've known the word boatswain for decades at this point and never knew it was pronounced like that!

Speaking of military terms, lieutenant as "leftenant" always threw me. I had just assumed they were different words.

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cafard4y ago

One of my father's college classmates was in Navy ROTC, and deliberately pronounce "boatswain" and "gunwale" as spelled, in order to bug the regular petty officer.

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tanjtanjtanj4y ago

As a person whose spent my entire life in the US, I've never heard that pronunciation of turbine. Looking into it, it seems like some people do pronounce it that way but typically it's tied to a specific region AND industry. It's certainly not the widely accepted way to say it here south of the border.

egypturnash4y ago

That’s how some Americans say “turbine”. I’ve never heard it said that way but apparently this is mostly used by (older?) people from the Midwest, which certainly fits with your friend being right-wing.

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