Baader-Meinhof phenomena / Frequency illusions

Earlier on I was served an Instagram reel about Claude Debussy. I was puzzled by the narrator's pronunciation of his name.

I briefly checked the comments to see if anyone else had picked up on this. They had, but I soon lost interest and moved back to the film I'd been watching, My Dinner With Andre.

There it was again. Andre is describing a mythical faun, and Wally says "Oh the little creature, like in DEB-yousee?" - just like the narrator in the Insta video.

This was the first time I'd knowingly heard the US pronunciation of Debussy. Until then, I'd only ever heard it pronounced duh-BEW-see.

But maybe not? Maybe I'd heard the name on TV or in films countless times and it just flew over my head, or I thought they were talking anout something else.

Post here when you come across a frequency illusions and other coincidental ephemera in day-to-day life .

There's no such thing as "correct" pronunciation but as a rule of thumb every USian pronunciation of a not USian name is grossly, insultingly insane

de boo see?

xp my theory is that the misplaced confidence is what pushes it over the threshold in most instances

BYEzanTINE

XP I think that might be it tbf

Anyway I hope one day the aggrieved spirits of Friedrich Neechee and Vincent van Goh lay waste to the entire nation because yeah

Da Boozy

Neechee is bizarre. But most countries, including the UK, don't pronounced Van Gogh anywhere close to how he would have said it.

Iliman Ndiaye

This persons names is a shape-shifting disorienting auditory illusion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLuaqNoxjro

I had a good feeling this thread would get derailed, but maybe not this early on. Maybe it will generate a frequency illusion at some point if we just keep people with mixedly pronounced names.

I've always heard de-byoo-SEE. stronger accent on the DE than the byoo, strongest acccent on the -ssy.

Perhaps the reason I spotted a frequency illusion and started this thread was because My Dinner With Andre discusses the nature of coincidences throughout (e.g. Andre finding handprints in a book and seeing it as a sign that he should read The Little Prince)

Da Bussy said much like Da Bears

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgyxqJWTIoI

I've wanted this thread to exist before, for all the times Only Connect and University Challenge have similarly themed questions on a single night.

the pronunciation of debussy is a famous joke on family guy, but I'm not going to post it here, because it's family guy.

Xp, likewise the NYT crossword gets easier the more you play it because they will, wittingly or not, repeat clues or references often in the same week

The recentish trailer for the new season of Strange New Worlds was the first time I'd come across the insane way Americans pronounce 'buoy' but I've heard it about three or four times now on other shows/programmes

I guess the most common example is when you change your car and every other fucker on the road suddenly has the same model

L’assiette du crevettes

How bizarre!

As well as the pronunciation of "Debussy" in My Dinner With Andre, I was also struck by the very brief hand gesture Wally gives when he says the line about Debussy and the faun: Sticking his thumbs to his temples and flapping his hands to represent ears.

I found this part quite amusing, and vaguely quaint, as though this was a gesture I used to see people do a lot once upon a time, perhaps at school to imitate a donkey, or just as a silly face kids pull. But I hadn't seen anyone do it any time recently.

Well what film did I go to see tonight? Hee-Haw! It's A Wonderful Life

https://y.yarn.co/20670509-2710-4497-93ac-f045fd487715_text.gif

In the summer of 2024 I was laid up in this town outside Prague with what turned out to be pneumonia, and did not go out much. The only entertainment I had was a pile of books a girl had left for me to take care of, and I think five video tapes, two of which were compilations of simpsons episodes, you could get six hours worth on a three hour tape if you turned on long play, so that was something like 36 episodes. I rationed them out, just a few episodes every day, and eventually I started having premonitions of the episodes I was about to watch, lines would appear in my head when I woke up, and still not sure how much was the pneumonia, how much was some memory of watching the tape before and how much was ~~~~~MAGIC PSYCHIC SIMPSONS POWER~~~~~