Friday, May 6

To be or to not be, is it a question?

Yesterday during lunch, my dept mates asked how to pronounce lasagne. And so it led to a whole discussion on pronouncing certain foods which are non-Malaysian. Funny how we have our own Malaysian way of pronouncing and phrasing things. Not to say that I’m perfect and have not made any mistakes, believe me, I have. But all in the spirit of learning folks!

So today I’m paying tribute to all those mispronounced words and phrases that I’ve come across. The following are the wrong ways to pronounce them, mind you.

Lasagne [la-sag-nah / lasak-na / la-zag-nia]
Steak [stik / stek]
Bolognese [bolog-nis / bolok-nis]
Fillet [fi-let / fi-led]
Pizza [pi-sa / pi-za / piz-za]
Pastry [pest-tree]
Cake [keg]
Bread [braid]
Flour [fla / flar]

Thanks god as in "Thanks god I wasn’t at the scene of the accident!"
That’s mean as in "That’s mean we have to fill out the form."

These deserve special mention, as they’ve become somewhat of an inside joke with my hubby. These two (real mistakes) are courtesy of his so-colourful friends.

I come to peace (piss?) said to mean "I come in peace."
Who’s that could be? said to mean "Who could that be?"

I’m sure we’ve all heard many and had our own experiences of mispronouncing stuff. Heard of any recently? Feel free to add yours to the list.


Thanks god it’s Friday!
Hehehe…

2 comments:

Elaine said...

Flour [fla / flar]

is pronounced as "flower" like the bunga kind of flower...

Anyways.... the lingustics classes i have taken has taught me one thing is that there are many dialects of english... while there is a "native" way of prouncing words, that also varies according to which native country the person comes from... For example, the British and Americans pronounce "tomato" and "alluminium" differently.

So i feel, we malaysian as non Native speakers of English will definitely have a different dialect of English and we also tend to use words differently (as do native speakers from different countries).

does that make sense?

mudslinger said...

you're right elaine, flour is pronounced as flower. the phonetics are exactly the same.

true that we have different dialects, but we should at least make an effort to be internationally intelligible.

thanks for stopping by.