Actually, the story behind the "lieutenant" pronunciations is pretty twisted. From the OED:

The origin of the βtype of forms (which survives in the usual British pronunciation, though the spelling represents the αtype) is difficult to explain. The hypothesis of a mere misinterpretation of the graphic form (u read as v), at first sight plausible, does not accord with the facts. In view of the rare Old French form luef for lieu (with which compare especially the 15th cent. Scots forms luf- , lufftenand above) it seems likely that the labial glide at the end of Old French lieu as the first element of a compound was sometimes apprehended by English-speakers as a v or f.

/scholastics
>> ^lampishthing:

Cos, you know, lieu IS a French word and is NOT pronounced 'lef'.>> ^EvilDeathBee:
>> ^Fade:
Come to Europe. All American accents sound stupid over here. I mean you Americans can't even pronounce aluminium or lieutenant correctly...

Lieutenant is the one Americanisation I'm for. There's no F there! "Leftenant" just sounds silly

This week I taught my first classes with a new set of Thai HS Seniors (the semesters start at a different time here). I always start out by getting a roster with the students' full names in Thai and having them write their nicknames in English, then taking roll call to make sure I am pronouncing the names correctly. There is no set way to write Thai sounds in English, so there is a lot of variation in how to spell things.

Anyway, one boy on the list wrote his nickname as "Kok". I correctly assumed that he wanted that to be pronounced "Coke", but then explained to him that if he goes with the other spelling an average westerner will probably call him "cock" which is rather unfortunate...

In 5 years of being here I've seen a lot of semi-unusual or unfortunate names and nicknames.

Odd: Dollar, Bible, Bird (hordes of those), Blue, Oil, Dump, Bomb, Gun, Nuke, etc.
Unfortunate: Fook, Fluck ("fluke"), Gook ("guck"), Poo, Poopae, Dodo, Porn (loads of this one also), Titee (girls name)

The worst and/or funniest one I've seen was a girl who converted her full Thai name into an English spelling of "Titteeporn Suksonmanee". Considering Thailand's ... reputation, that one is particularly unfortunate, although the actual pronunciation of the surname is more like suke-sawn-MA-knee.

On the flipside many western names translate phonetically into rather unfortunate things in Thai, or are commonly mispronounced into something bad in English. For example, Jim means "pussy" in Thai, Chris will usually be pronounced by Thais as "Clit", etc. etc.

Just to add to the commentary; pronunciation of Lamborghini Gallardo here.

>> ^Quboid:

I don't mind most Americanisms, I see them as the evolution of language. However, in the case of proper nouns, it does bug me; if it's a British word, they are as objectively wrong as language can be.
Jag-u-ar. Ir-aq. Ir-an. Al-u-min-i-um. Car-i-bbe-an.
Edit: Oh yes, spelt is valid English. Only US English does away with it in favour of "spelled".


Except aluminium was called aluminum by the chemist who discovered it, Humphry Davy, in his 1812 book which publicized the metal. It was some anonymous jackass writing a review of Davy's book who decided to change it to aluminium because he didn't like the sound of Davy's choice.

Jaguar is a Portuguese word and I believe their pronunciation is closer to "jag-war" than "jag-you-are".

But generally, I agree with you. I still say catch myself saying "eye-rack" and "eye-ran" instead of "ee-rock" and "ee-ron". I go back and forth on the emphasis on Caribbean. It's hard to break old habits.

http://videosift.com/video/Ryan-Reynolds-Im-a-Horrible-Driver-but-hes-very-funny

Jaguar pronunciation discussed in this vid. If you are interested @Ryjkyj

That hurts.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love the Gallardo. It's one of the most beautiful cars I've ever seen. And it's a crappy Lambo that's been redesigned by German engineers, so like they put it on Top Gear: "It's like a Lamborghini, but the air-conditioning works."

However, I love the fact that it's properly pronounced: "gay-ardo." I just picture all these macho dicks, driving around in their yellow sports car, showing off, yet trying desperately to ignore the fact that when they were at the dealership, everyone kept saying how great they would look, "In your new 'Gay-ardo!' That 'Gay-ardo' looks great on you! It's like the 'Gay-ardo' was made for you!"

In fact, I'd bet that at dealerships here in America, they're probably forbidden from using the proper pronunciation. Can't you just picture it? "I know guys, but if we pronounce it that way, we're never going to attract the macho-dickhead customers that keep us in business..."

Some guys will argue to the death about the proper pronunciation of "Jaguar", but there seems to be an unspoken agreement among most Lambo fans that a Gallardo is a "Gall-ardo".

I would've given anything if they drove by the accident in the video and said: "Man, that's a shame, it's such a beautiful 'Gay-ardo'." Of course, for all I know, the guy is comfortable in his sexuality, but I doubt it.

They abbreviated thou as y^ou. The pronunciation changed over time to the familiar "u".

That's why many people (e.g. the amish) refuse to use the new-fangled you and always use the correct (i.e. old) thou.

Juggy Brodaltine approves this pronunciation.

>> ^Phreezdryd:

What's with the narrators pronunciation of "Karateka"?


Typical yankee.

What's with the narrators pronunciation of "Karateka"?

>> ^deathcow:

i'll take some fresh spring rolls, crispy spring rolls, pad ped kai, pad thai, basil chicken extra spicy, kang karie and some chicken satay


Since you clearly like your Thai food, I thought I'd reply here with some pronunciation and literal translation quirks about those menu items -- the staff at a Thai restaurant (assuming they are Thai anyway) will get a kick out of it if you play up the right angles. This gets long (sorry), so anyone not interested skip to the next post...

Spring rolls - "bpo bpeah" in Thai. The bp is a phoneme that we don't really have in English -- try to combine the two sounds but err on the side of sounding more like "p" than "b". The second word sounds sort of like "bpEEE-uhhh", or like how somebody with a thick Massachusetts accent would say "beer" or "peer". For crispy spring rolls, you would just add the word "toht" to the end, which means "fried" or deep fat fried -- "bpo bpeah toht".

Pad Ped Kai - Pad means "fried" also, but more like pan fried. Ped (sounds more like "pet") means "spicy". Kai means "egg". So all together I would think that would mean "stir-fried spicy egg", but it isn't a menu item that I have heard of before. I think that maybe the Kai should be Gai instead -- Gai means "chicken". The "g" sound in Thai is sort of halfway between a g and a k, so sometimes things get phonetically translated in different ways. But if it is chicken, make it sound more like a g; like "guy".

Pad Thai - sort of indirectly translates as "that fried dish that is famous/popular in Thailand", which is descriptive but not in a content / culinary way like most Thai food.

Basil Chicken Extra Spicy - the most popular Thai dish that is heavy on basil is Pad Kapow (sounds like the word for hitting someone; ka-POW). So, I bet that the Thai name for your Basil Chicken would be Pad Kapow Gai. Throw a "Pet Maak" on the end to specify extra spicy -- "pad kapow gai pet maak".

Kang Karie - I usually see this one romanized into G's instead of K's. Usually "gaeng gallee" (I'd argue that is the best phonetic guide also). "Kang"/"Gaeng" means "curry", and "Gallee" is a specific type of curry. However, point of interest, "gallee" also means "whore". This Thai homonym is responsible for menu translations like the one you can see here. To explain that link, "gallee" curry comes in powder form. The Thai word/phrase for gallee curry powder is "foong gallee". Run that through google translate or the like, and instead of getting "gallee curry powder" you get "whore dust". This is a source of great amusement to Thais, making fun of their friends when ordering, etc.

Chicken Satay - not originally a Thai thing (loooong time ago), but it is very popular here now. In the US I always heard it said like "saw-tay", but in Thailand it sounds more like "SUH-tae". Chicken satay is available, but generally more popular among foreigners here. In areas without a large farang (western foreigner) population, 99% of the time satay will be pork. I actually like the pork version better now. Anyway, in Thai chicken satay would sound like "gai suhtae" and pork would sound like "moo suhtae".

Thanks for the education!

I did notice that they sounded exactly the same. I just didn't know it could be spelled differently.

I am off to google ozzie land right now, to see what I can see!

In reply to this comment by oritteropo:
I'll let @<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/kymbos" title="member since October 13th, 2008" class="profilelink">kymbos answer for himself, but... if I say "Aussie" and "Ozzie" I'm saying exactly the same thing twice, there is no difference in pronunciation. I put it to you in fact that if you say them differently, you're saying one of them wrong :

The top level internet domain for Australia used to be ".oz.au", but no-one outside our shores got it, so it was changed.

p.s. The google search to do for this would be "ozzie land" (no quotes). I tried it, and it worked a treat.
In reply to this comment by bareboards2:
Isn't it Aussie?

I googled to see if Ozzie is an alternate spelling, but I couldn't find anything. @<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/kymbos" title="member since October 13th, 2008" class="profilelink">kymbos? A little help here?

it's clearly a parody of turkish star trek. you didn't put emoticons, so i can't tell if you're ribbing me or not. There is no arabic(squint your eyes) or hindi in the video. neither is there anything explicitly turkish. (but i guess they might be speaking turkish words with an english pronunciation. Any turks on the sift? Just do a asterix +discuss) It's not the Australian comedian that did this and this

instead some guy on b3ta.com is taking credit for it
clearly the same guy does a dr. who parody
http://www.b3ta.com/links/Doctor_Hooey

feel free to sift dr hooey, i will upvote

>> ^cracanata:

How in the name of all it's good you didn't smell the Arabic/Hindu nature of everything in this video is beyond me.
Shame for the lack of basic language skills. Shame!

For those who do not already know, this is a parody of the YouTube channel Pronunciation Book, specifically this video: http://youtu.be/qhTSFdjVf14