Words, usages, and phrases that annoy the shit out of you...

OTM. I can't stand people who say KRAHFT-VAIRK and BYERK.

From the Onion: "I'm Like a Chocoholic, But For Alcohol"

i say "krahft - verk," cuz that's how it's pronounced, and cuz i HATE the americanized dumbing-down of it ("creeeeeyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaft - work" with a nasal short "a"). i say "byork," one syllable, rhymes with "new york." can't stand it when people pronounce it as "beeeee - york." why is the "byuh" sound so difficult? i get annoyed when people say "kuh - nish" instead of "knish" as well.

n/a, language is fluid, but that doesn't excuse people from being dumb.

I just feel like this is a little silly. Like when someone's speaking English and they say the word "Guatemala" but they do the guttaral 'g'/hard 't' "correct" pronunciation, it seems way more affected than just speaking with an American accent (oh no, Americans with American accents!).

"Muslim" is a word in the English langauge, yes, it was originally from Arabic but it's now an English word - like Kayak or something... and you don't pronounce that with an Inuit accent

So why don't you pronounce Bjork like it's pronounced, too? (Rhymes with "work.")

xpost, first of all, it's not "dumbing it down," that's what I'm trying to say. Secondly, what's gained is not having to overanalyze and correct how people naturally speak and just letting them communicate, which is what language is for in the first place.

So why don't you pronounce Bjork like it's pronounced, too? (Rhymes with "work.")

i don't wanna overdo it. plus, i hate bjork. fuck her.

French people don't say "hamburger," they say "'amboorgare." Is that 'incorrect'?

yes.

Or a French version of an English version of a German word.

Errrrrrrrrrrr, not really how these things work you'll find

Yeah, it's stupid and annoying. It's like spelling crazy with a k.

Whereas with Kraftwek you are kind of asked to make some unusual sounds -- and, in the case of the "kraaaft-vairk" types Jaymc is talking about, to affect an unfamiliar method of pronouncing familiar phonemes. So I tend to say "craft - verk," which, when pronounced American-English style, is almost completely indistinguishable from "craft - work."

I.e. rule = if you can say it naturally in your normal English-based speaking voice, then do it. If you can't, don't sweat it. (Though I'm never particularly annoyed by people who know how to say things "right," unless they seem to be making a big show of it.)

(This reminds me of my high school civics teacher, who'd get on all the Mexican students' cases about Americanized pronunciation: "Your name is not Flow-rez, it is FlorES!")

NB my rule on this is informed by the fact that there is a hard S sound in my name that I can successfully pronounce on maybe 10% of attempts, and even then only if I let myself sound like a total jackass trying. I certainly can't expect other people to say it properly, so the most I ask is that people say things as well as they can within their usual phonetic sets.

Haha, see I totally say Vim Venders, because I've never ever heard anyone pronounce those W's Anglo-style.

TORTURE.

twelfth is the only word that has ccvccc, i think. (/th/ is one phoneme)

"Schmo" is good. Amanda, I said "five-letter words." The thing that's interesting about it to me is that the vowel is at the very end and nowhere else.