Things you were shockingly old when you learned

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I think Moss Bros was a fixture of most high streets at one point.
& I'm seeing that people are wondering about the pronunciation.

Would recognise they were brothers but not sure if bros(s) is an immediate formulation you get to as anything other than a total abstraction without there being a cultural signifier which was around. So can see them seeing Moss bros and thinking of themselves as the Goss Bros otherwise would think they would have the other pronunciation.

Stevolende, Wednesday, 3 October 2018 20:24 (five years ago) link

smh at the Stalinists itt erasing Ken

Stab my hinge, get hit (sic), Wednesday, 3 October 2018 20:39 (five years ago) link

I think they called themselves Gloss before they became Bros.

Tim, Wednesday, 3 October 2018 22:09 (five years ago) link

That 'cockpit' originally referred to a space reserved for cockfighting and was adapted to denote the area of a ship where injured crewmen were taken (and which was often a bloody mess, resembling its linguistic forebear).

Mummenschanz in a Metal Mood (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 3 October 2018 23:13 (five years ago) link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-operative_Party

Zach Same (Tom D.), Thursday, 11 October 2018 09:12 (five years ago) link

^ third biggest party in British politics

Zach Same (Tom D.), Thursday, 11 October 2018 09:13 (five years ago) link

https://twitter.com/i/status/1050819794285580289

real size of countries distorted by Mercator projection. wtf, this should have been covered in first form geography!

calzino, Saturday, 13 October 2018 20:55 (five years ago) link

This video shows the size bias caused by the (very common) Mercator projection of the entire planet. #gistribe #gis #maps. From https://t.co/sFvqaFOmSR pic.twitter.com/fdnNRjuoOD

— Guillaume Larocque (@GuillaumeLarocq) October 12, 2018

calzino, Saturday, 13 October 2018 20:56 (five years ago) link

Susi Grant isn't an Irish teacher.
Only found that out today

Stevolende, Saturday, 13 October 2018 21:09 (five years ago) link

I *knew* Russia couldn't be that big!!
tiny losers

kinder, Saturday, 13 October 2018 21:33 (five years ago) link

they are taking the piss tbf!

calzino, Saturday, 13 October 2018 22:07 (five years ago) link

I don't mind Greenland doing it.

calzino, Saturday, 13 October 2018 22:08 (five years ago) link

Bob Grant got his dick cast by Cynthia Plaster (????????)

flappy bird, Monday, 15 October 2018 20:28 (five years ago) link

THis Bob Grant?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Grant_(actor)

Stevolende, Monday, 15 October 2018 20:39 (five years ago) link

No the conservative talk radio host

flappy bird, Monday, 15 October 2018 20:48 (five years ago) link

I finally remembered to look up what double parking means today (parking beside a parked car in a traffic lane, not taking up two parking spots)

vote no on ilxit (Will M.), Friday, 19 October 2018 13:45 (five years ago) link

Jefferson Airplane was the US West Coast Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention was the English Jefferson Airplane

Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Friday, 19 October 2018 14:16 (five years ago) link

Bob Grant got his dick cast by Cynthia Plaster (????????)

I went to an exhibition of her collection of casts many years ago, and Bob Grant's was there.

tokyo rosemary, Friday, 19 October 2018 14:32 (five years ago) link

The pronunciation of the word "gazebo," which I thought was pronounced "gays-bow" until at least the 8th grade.

Plinka Trinka Banga Tink (Eliza D.), Friday, 19 October 2018 14:32 (five years ago) link

Sympathetic lol. If I had a nickel for every word in my vocabulary whose pronunciation I had to learn the hard way...

Extra Shprankles (Old Lunch), Friday, 19 October 2018 17:23 (five years ago) link

I read 'determined' as 'deter-minded' when I was a kid.

Found out yesterday that Cartesian geometry was named after Descartes...

koogs, Friday, 19 October 2018 20:46 (five years ago) link

recently I had the blinding insight that Pekinese dogs were named for Peking/Beijing

Brad C., Friday, 19 October 2018 21:08 (five years ago) link

oh i thought that said "weren't named for" for a second and had a heart flutter

macropuente (map), Friday, 19 October 2018 21:17 (five years ago) link

i was shockingly old when i really thought about why people mispronounce words. it’s because they learned them by reading, and that is cool, not dumb. if you grow up in a place with no gazebos or people talking about gazebos then of course you pronounce it gaze-bo, because the actual pronunciation makes no sense.

still kinda bitter about my parents laughing when a wee me brought up the ancient greek philosopher So Crates

mookieproof, Friday, 19 October 2018 22:22 (five years ago) link

that is otm

Dmac TT (darraghmac), Friday, 19 October 2018 22:23 (five years ago) link

xp So Crates, the mentor of Play-Doh

Brad C., Friday, 19 October 2018 22:24 (five years ago) link

Aris-Toddles

Ludo, Saturday, 20 October 2018 10:39 (five years ago) link

Epic Wheatus?

illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 20 October 2018 11:01 (five years ago) link

I think I was lucky enough to never have to say the words epi-tome and hyper-bowl before learning how they were actually pronounced, but I did think they were pronounced that way

Colonel Poo, Saturday, 20 October 2018 11:10 (five years ago) link

lol

This is the thread we tend to use for youthful misreadings of words not heard aloud, yes? I was thinking the other day about how when I was a kid I always used to read the word bedraggled as “bed-raggled”, which made sense to me as it meant looking like you’d just got out of bed


^posted this the other month but fwiw this feels like something that should have a thread of its own (and surely does?)

coetzee.cx (wins), Saturday, 20 October 2018 12:26 (five years ago) link

I surely mentioned 'froot-eye-on' (aka 'fruition') itt. Surely I did.

Extra Shprankles (Old Lunch), Saturday, 20 October 2018 12:29 (five years ago) link

When I was a kid I would get puzzled by the use of the past participle of the unfamiliar verb “infrare”

coetzee.cx (wins), Saturday, 20 October 2018 12:29 (five years ago) link

Neneh (Cherry) is pronounced Neh-neh not Nayner.

Dan Worsley, Saturday, 20 October 2018 14:04 (five years ago) link

Barfly was my favorite of this particular type of misunderstanding

I would go to the video store and wonder would you call a movie Barfly? Is it about barf?

weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 20 October 2018 14:20 (five years ago) link

it's a syllable boundary mistake more often than not

weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Saturday, 20 October 2018 14:21 (five years ago) link

I just realised that the cover of Bowie's Tonight is a nod to Gilbert & George, duh x infnity

MaresNest, Saturday, 20 October 2018 14:27 (five years ago) link

I don't know if this is actually true, but it recently occurred to me that the Elton John "Empty Garden" John Lennon tribute song ("Won't you come out to play in your empty garden") is a reference to Lennon's last stage appearance with Elton at Madison Square Garden.

Hideous Lump, Saturday, 20 October 2018 16:04 (five years ago) link

a couple of days ago i encountered the word "misled" and after many years of knowing otherwise my brain still automatically reads this as "miss-eld".

visiting, Saturday, 20 October 2018 16:08 (five years ago) link

me too

the "never make fun of someone for mispronouncing a word because that means they learned it through reading" is a semi-new greeting card / social media thing... I don't know what to make of it... because yes, on the one hand, I grew up near a park with a gazebo, so I knew how to pronounce gazebo at a very early age. at the same time, should we really be congratulating people... on knowing how to read

flappy bird, Saturday, 20 October 2018 16:21 (five years ago) link

The only thing I disagree with is the idea that the correct pronunciation of gazebo “makes no sense”, I feel like as pronunciations of words go it makes an unusual amount of sense. Just three syllables doing exactly what they should imo

coetzee.cx (wins), Saturday, 20 October 2018 16:34 (five years ago) link

it could just as easily be pronounced ga-zeb-o.

visiting, Saturday, 20 October 2018 16:41 (five years ago) link

That’s true

coetzee.cx (wins), Saturday, 20 October 2018 16:48 (five years ago) link

years ago, someone i didn't know well was telling me about a writer i should check out, whose name i heard as "ka-moo". i had no idea who they were talking about. only afterwards did i realise they were talking about albert camus, which was embarrassing as i'd read several of his books but had never thought of his name in its correct french pronunciation.

visiting, Saturday, 20 October 2018 17:07 (five years ago) link

same here with Gerter
I also thought determined was deter-minded!

kinder, Saturday, 20 October 2018 18:31 (five years ago) link

lol yeah once when i worked in a bookstore a customer got annoyed with me when they asked if we had any "gerter" and i didn't get who they were talking about.

visiting, Saturday, 20 October 2018 19:08 (five years ago) link

What's the excuse for people who pronounce "turmeric" like "tumour-ic" or, worse, like it rhymes with "numeric". (I heard both this week.) They clearly weren't reading closely.

The nexus of the crisis (Sund4r), Saturday, 20 October 2018 19:16 (five years ago) link

Builder at a job interview asked if he could explain the difference between a joist and a girder: "Easy. Joist wrote Ulysses, and Girder wrote Faust"

the Warnock of Clodhop Mountain (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 20 October 2018 19:16 (five years ago) link

although that's really more for a "disgusting savages" thread xp

The nexus of the crisis (Sund4r), Saturday, 20 October 2018 19:26 (five years ago) link

Jealous, I’ve never heard the word turmeric twice in one week

coetzee.cx (wins), Saturday, 20 October 2018 19:43 (five years ago) link


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