Random Thoughts

[amatara]

#1 Purely hypothetical (naturally! *g*) question. Say you're Googling the keyword "G'Kar", to get some vital piece of information for a fic perhaps. Say you're scrolling through the results, and that during that process, you spot an entry titled "G'Kar Teaches".

HOW BAD IS IT if you think, for two entire seconds, that it says "G'Kar - Tentacles" instead ???

Seriously. It seems my subsconscious needs to find itself some tentacle pr0n. *g*

#2 On a completely unrelated note. Why is it that so many people speaking a foreign language don't even try to get their pronunciation right? Like yesterday I had to follow this course, given in English by a French-speaking lady. Grammar and vocabulary wise she did pretty well, hence it couldn't have been lack of knowledge of the language... So can anyone tell me what makes it so hard not to pronounce:
- "hybrid" as "eebreed"
- "available" as "ava-lábel"
- "et cetera" as "exetera" (this one cracked me up at first, but at the end I just wanted to punch her for it)
AND THEN USE THESE WORDS A FRAKKIN' 10 TIMES PER MINUTE! As an aside: I'm not a native speaker myself - so if this rattles even me, it's BAD, people. *g*

Comments

[maspalio.livejournal.com]

1. That’s perfectly normal. Why do you ask? *g*

2. Well, “Exetera” is how we actually pronounce the word in French, so I would forgive that one. As for the others… either she isn’t used to speak English and learned it by writing and reading, or she just didn’t care. Or she has a very, very think accent.
Unfortunately, that she didn’t care seems more plausible. Some people are just annoying like that.

[amatara.livejournal.com]

1. Oh, I didn't ask for myself, no no no... It was just for this friend of mine, who put the question to me the other day, and of course I wanted to help her out so...
I'm perfectly believable here, right? ;-)

Thanks for the support! I feel relieved already. *g*

2. Had no idea about the "et cetera"/"exetera", really! Is it just this one word that gets pronounced like that, or is it the "ts" combination in general? You live in Switzerland, don't you? How about the "tz" in that one?
Anyway, hope I didn't accidentally insult all of the French-speaking population now, it wasn't my intention to pick on any language group specifically. *blush* It's just that where I live (I'm a Dutch-speaking Belgian) it's often the other way around: most people's pronunciation is a lot better than their vocabulary... So I'm always surprised when I meet people who speak near-perfect English (which was the case with this lady), except for the accent. Could be just a cultural difference, I dunno... :-)

[maspalio.livejournal.com]

I think it is just this one word. Weird, now that I think about it. The « tz » in Switzerland is pronounced « tz », but then it is an English word. In French, the country is called « Suisse ».
And no, you didn’t offend anyone :) It’s true that English pronunciation is hard for native French speaker, but most of us at least try to get it right. It doesn't sound like this lady was trying very hard.

[amatara.livejournal.com]

En fait, le Français est un de ces langues où ma prononciation est infiniment mieux que ma vocabulaire! ;-)
(The fact that it just took me over two minutes to type that one sentence testifies to the truth of that. *g*) But you're welcome anytime to try some French on me, if you want. It'd even be good for me to get some practice again.
Incidentally, is Swiss French as different from "official" French as "Schweizerdeutsch" is from German?

[maspalio.livejournal.com]

Swiss French is mostly the same as "official" French, except for a few words. And apparently, we have a silly accent.

Your French's quite good, btw.