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Now You're Speakin' My Language (or Dialect)
Karin: 😄 Yes, Austrians aren't German. But to me, the bread is more of a regional thing than a national one, there. Compared to other places. They have the same influences. I considered the kinds of dark breads and so on I could get there as European or Germanic, rather than specifically Austrian. If I were Austrian, though, I'm sure I'd see many more differences. The German bakery is the closest you can get here to Austrian bread, and they offer similar types. I've never come across an Austrian bakery here, but German ones are available, perhaps because a lot of German people immigrated here originally (especially to South Australia). Germany is also a major/popular destination for backpackers from here, so there's perhaps a bit more call for something German.
I grew up saying aunt to rhyme with ant, and my kids make fun of me even though they don't say aunt to rhyme with haunt when they talk about their aunts. They just like to have fun with that stuff.
I've heard "roof" said so that it rhymes with "hoof" as well, but not here or where I grew up.One of the discussions in my house is "mush" which I rhyme with brush, but my kids rhyme with bush like locals here do. Both of us can back our pronunciations with multiple rhymes.
I also say rout like out
route like boot
but roof rhymes with spoof
root/hoot/boot don't sound like runt when we say them and I haven't heard that one, but I have heard people say root to rhyme with foot.
I have said brassiere out loud, but only in fun. I also remember when my friends and I used to laugh about "over the shoulder boulder holder" from Bette Middler singing that song from Beaches. With the z sound (and as a Canadian first I say that zed)
BRA-zee-air, though.
Jacqueline wrote: "I just say bra."Sure, but if you're narrating an audiobook and there's the word brassiere, you can't say bra :) Altho that would be much less confusing than saying bra(ssiere) when the word is brazier.
Which just goes back to the narrators need to be taught how to say certain words for the market they are flogging the audiobook to. I'd rather not think about brassieres as they are fair dinkum torture devices. Nasty horrible things.
Yes! I should probably take this to the audiobook thread, but I really wish that authors, producers and narrators communicated more during the process!
I used to do some work on UNIX systems and was amazed the first time I heard someone from the midwest pronounce ROOT as RUT.
actually, even though I say rut for a tree root, I do say root like boot for computers. I worked with Unix as well as DOS systems and provided software support, so clarity was crucial. Plus I worked with a lot of people who did not have English as their native tongue so rut would have been more confusing
Those two words mean exactly the same thing in Australia, but... erm... VERY different context.
Growing up in the NW corner of rural NJ, we didn't speak the same acceent as the city people south of us or the New Yorkers. Then I moved to Houston, Arizona, and Wisconsin as time went by. In Arizona, it's a military town with people from everywhere.For me, generally speaking, the accents that grate on my ears seems to be Southern Gulf states. I am referring, of course, to American accents only. I have never had that much exposure to other countries speaking American English to judge any of them.
Adrian wrote: "Those two words mean exactly the same thing in Australia, but... erm... VERY different context."😂😂😂
Leonie wrote: "Adrian wrote: "Those two words mean exactly the same thing in Australia, but... erm... VERY different context."😂😂😂"
Yeah it still makes me giggle (at 58) when Americans are "rooting" for whatever lol Anyhoo......
Jacqueline wrote: "Leonie wrote: "Adrian wrote: "Those two words mean exactly the same thing in Australia, but... erm... VERY different context."😂😂😂"
Yeah it still makes me giggle (at 58) when Americans are "rooti..."
It just sounds so...wrong...when they say it.
Leonie wrote: "Jacqueline wrote: "Leonie wrote: "Adrian wrote: "Those two words mean exactly the same thing in Australia, but... erm... VERY different context."😂😂😂"
Yeah it still makes me giggle (at 58) when A..."
Yes.....yes it does.
It does sound funny but then I believe the rest of the world laughs at us when we talk about thongs.
Karin wrote: "I grew up saying aunt to rhyme with ant, and my kids make fun of me even though they don't say aunt to rhyme with haunt when they talk about their aunts. They just like to have fun with that stuff."Well now the correct one would be aunt haunt for the female relative to be honest with you.
We grew up with the Ant, but down here they say Aunt like haunt.
Adrian wrote: "Those two words mean exactly the same thing in Australia, but... erm... VERY different context."Ha ha.. some American homes have what they call a root cellar :)
That would be the bedroom in our house Andrew 😂🤣😂🤣Well both thongs rub somewhere. The ones on your feet hurt between your toes and the others…yeahhhh
Growing up in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, I also remember calling flip-flops "thongs" (and with my short toes, always had problems wearing them).
I spent summers in Washington state with my father and he called flip-flops Zorries. I may not be spelling that right, but that's what all my cousins and their friends called them, too.
Zoris is what my mother called them - I think it's supposed to be the Japanese name for them
Leonie wrote: "Brazier - BRAY-zee-urBrassiere - Braz-ee-AIR or Braz-EAR (have heard both in Australia)"
Mispronunciation of these could be dangerous, unless you're Joan of Arc...
Too soon?
Kandice wrote: "I spent summers in Washington state with my father and he called flip-flops Zorries. I may not be spelling that right, but that's what all my cousins and their friends called them, too."In New Zealand, thongs (flip flops) are called jandals.
Adrian wrote: "Leonie wrote: "Brazier - BRAY-zee-urBrassiere - Braz-ee-AIR or Braz-EAR (have heard both in Australia)"
Mispronunciation of these could be dangerous, unless you're Joan of Arc...
Too soon?"
😂🤦🏽♀️
AndrewP wrote: "Adrian wrote: "Those two words mean exactly the same thing in Australia, but... erm... VERY different context."Ha ha.. some American homes have what they call a root cellar :)"
Never heard the basement called the "root cellar" before.
root cellars are usually not underneath the house in my experience, but are underground. My grandfather's house in Maryland had one
My mother has a basement, under the house, of course, a storm shelter underground, but accessible from the side yard, and a root cellar, accessible from the yard, but behind the house. The ground under her property must look like a rabbit warren!
My aunt and uncle in the family farmstead in Iowa hat a root cellar. It was not accessible from the house, but was underneath it. There was a raked double door (like a slanted trap door) and stairs.
My grandmother in Pennsylvania had one of those, too.
Under my childhood house here in Australia we had a cellar not a basement. It was mostly for junk my father wouldn’t throw away but yeah it was known as the cellar. Had been for over 100 years. You accessed it through a door on the side of the house. The front of the house was two story and the back was one. It was on the side of a hill.
in the US we differentiate between a root cellar (used to store potatoes, other root vegetables, apples and some other fruits) from the cellar to the house. A root cellar does not have enough space to be turned into a man cave
Ours wasn’t high enough to convert it into a man cave. You could stand in it but here in Australia we have height limits on rooms that you live in or use other than for storage. You could probably have used it as a wine cellar or a root cellar (I remember using an ex boyfriend’s grog cellar for that….). Basically we call places that you would call basements cellars.
I like the French term: sous-sol (subsoil) or cave (actually a storage room is a cave in an apartment building).
Adrian wrote: "Those two words mean exactly the same thing in Australia, but... erm... VERY different context."Haha! Also saying 'rut' for 'root', as CBRetriever mentioned... This would lead to a very different interpretation here/in some places...
Basements are really uncommon in Australia. Here in Queensland, the traditional house form is raised on stilts (although many have built their understorey in - nice for living space, but not nice for flooding and breeze purposes), or the later variation of slightly-raised houses. So that we not only don't have basements, but not even a ground floor. For climatic reasons. They're not so great in winter, though.
Then again, you have the strange exception of Coober Pedy, where everyone lives in underground caves/cellars....
Cellars seem like a wise idea for food storage - something I guess most people don't do anywhere near as much as our recent ancestors.
The French term 'cave' reminds me of the I-think-80's US term for loungerooms - 'den'. Was that very common?
Dens are family rooms in this area. I remembered up north the formal living room was called the parlor. It always made me think of the spider and the fly ;)
Den was quite common until the rel estate industry took up with Family Room, Man Cave, Media Room, etc. and some parts of the US don't have basements either (the South and Southwest mainly), Houston, Texas has no basements because of the flooding and the water table height. It does have tunnels downtown, but those have flooded a few times.
Jacqueline wrote: "I just say bra."That's what we say, of course.
Jacqueline wrote: "Leonie wrote: "Adrian wrote: "Those two words mean exactly the same thing in Australia, but... erm... VERY different context."😂😂😂"
Yeah it still makes me giggle (at 58) when Americans are "rooti..."
Okay, what are the meanings of rooting down under? Or do you mean if it's prounced rutting, which I've never hears?
If you mean when it is pronounced "rutting" then I understand completely. Not if it's pronounced like boot, though (which has more than one meaning--rooting--but nothing like rutting!!!)
CBRetriever wrote: "in the US we differentiate between a root cellar (used to store potatoes, other root vegetables, apples and some other fruits) from the cellar to the house. A root cellar does not have enough space..."In the states, what you call the basement varies regionally as well.
When I first moved to this state people would use the words parlour and pocket-book, but it's changing due to social media--my kids don't hear those terms. I'd thought they were completely archaic. Everywhere else I've lived in Canada and the States it's been either purse or handbag (but here purse used to mean a type of what I'd call a wallet--not a billfold which is what I grew up calling a wallet.)
I think the confusion about the various pronunciations of root (and other words with double o) comes in the alliterative spelling that’s been used: “rut”, which has a completely different pronunciation to either of the possible pronunciations of “root”; one which has a long [u] as in zoom or loom, the other a short [U] as in book or foot. There are a lot of words that no one would dream of pronouncing the double o long (like book or look - that would be weird with a long u!) or short (like food - even weirder!). But to use rut to describe the short [U] sound is just wrong (because it has a completely different pronunciation) and creates more confusion. But what are you going to do when no one is familiar with IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet)?Can you tell I’ve been sitting in that for a while? :-) Rant over.
Karin, in England they call a wallet a purse. I don’t think anyone calls what I would call a living room a parkour here though. For that they use lounge.
DivaDiane wrote: "I think the confusion about the various pronunciations of root (and other words with double o) comes in the alliterative spelling that’s been used: “rut”, which has a completely different pronuncia..."We like a good rant ;)
Diane, I am nodding faster and faster as I read your post.They say Finnish is one of the hardest languages to learn (I don't know if that's true, I didn't have to study it), but at least our pronunciation is super simple! Everything is said exactly as it's written.
DivaDiane wrote: "no one would dream of pronouncing the double o long (like book or look - that would be weird with a long u!..."It does sound weird to my ears, English from the Midlands, but there are regional accents, Lincolnshire I think, that pronounce ‘look’ and ‘book’ with the long u sound as in luke and buke.
I don’t know how any non native speaker copes in this daft country.
SciFi and Fantasy Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language (other topics)A Clockwork Orange (other topics)
On the Road (other topics)
Villains in Venice (other topics)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (other topics)
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Brassiere - Braz-ee-AIR or Braz-EAR (have heard both in Australia)