Acronyms and the strong emotions that pronunciations inspire

[DEATHMASTER]

Scuzzy - ****.

 

[Raziaar]

Thats how I say it too. I would just be confused if someone told me to look at the fack.

I just never heard anybody call it anything other than a fack. Nobody I know is confused by that... except for you!

 

[15357]

What?

You heathen savages. Who pronounces acronyms as words unless they've been made to be like words, like K-SPARTAN or laser, or scuba, or ROM. Or ENIAC. JPG? JAY PEE GEEaskjlfghasjf like FBI isn't Foo-bee.


I bet you people pronounce USA as ooh-sah. :frown:

Of course, I've never been educated in the art of English acronyms, so I suppose I might be the uneducated barbarian here.


Edit: After 40 seconds of reflection, I have realized that I have no idea what I was talking about, since I'm confused on how to pronounce stuff as well. So, as a rule of thumb - pronounce stuff with 3 letters by their letters.

 

[Raziaar]

like FBI isn't Foo-bee.

Oh my god you don't pronounce it Foo-bee? You're so weird!

 

[dfc05]

^lol

I say Eff Ay Cue.....

 

[Stylo]

There has only ever been one pronunciation like this that has ever annoyed me and that is with the Ford Ka car.

It is pronounced as it looks, "KAH". But a lot of people I know keep calling it a "KAY AY".

1. It is not an initialism or an acronym therefore should not be pronounced "KAY AY". This is essentially like pronouncing the word 'bun', "BEE YOU EN"

2. It is advertised and always has been advertised (to my knowledge) as the Ford Ka, pronounced "KAH"

Advert:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59v9CGaf9hQ

This is only annoying because people take it as an acronym / initialism when it isn't one, Ford intended it to be pronounced "KAH".

 

[Krynn72]

Speaking of Ford cars, I'm hoping to get a Ford eff you ess eye oh en some day.

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

"Eye dee software." I know it's wrong but despite my knowing better I am going to say it that way for the rest of my life.

Wizzy-wig.
Scuzzy.
Fack.
GIF = Gift - T.
I used to say Ess-cue-elle but my new coworkers have converted me to saying "sequel."

Have you ever heard somebody say URL as "oorl?" It's mind-bottling.

 

[Krynn72]

GIF = Gift - T.

wat?

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

Meaning sounding like the word "gift" but minus the T at the end.

 

[Acepilotf14]

Have you ever heard somebody say URL as "oorl?" It's mind-bottling.

I don't think the average person knows what a URL is.

 

[Bad^Hat]

It's mind-bottling.

This isn't the first time I've heard this but what does that actually mean?

 

[Krynn72]

This isn't the first time I've heard this but what does that actually mean?

Its a mis-quote. The actual saying is "mind boggling" and basically means "bewildering" or "astonishing."

The mis-quote is kind of popular now too because it was a joke in one of Will Ferrell's movies.

 

[Stylo]

Wait, people actually say 'mind bottling' as a mis-quote?

Holy shit! I've only ever heard that in said film, I didn't know it was an actual thing...

Also, on that note, people who say "duck tape" instead of "duct tape" and "brought" in place of "bought" - Get out.

 

[Raziaar]

Wait, people actually say 'mind bottling' as a mis-quote?

Holy shit! I've only ever heard that in said film, I didn't know it was an actual thing...

Also, on that note, people who say "duck tape" instead of "duct tape" and "brought" in place of "bought" - Get out.

Duck tape and duct tape are both valid. Duct tape used to be called Duck tape. It was made by Duck Products.

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

Just for the record, I was making a specific reference to the movie and also didn't know people actually said that. Please excuse the pitiful attempt at obtaining some "I TROLL U" lulz.

Would definitely enjoy derailing this thread to discuss eggcorns but at the same time I was reminded to look at the OP and wanted to add my two cents.

I think that when a speaker deviates from a word's pronunciation as the listener believes it has been established, it can be distracting to the flow of the conversation. I also think technical people might be less tolerant of those deviations when compared to "regular" people, as we tend to be a lot more nit-picky in general. I have the same unpleasant flinch hearing the engineer next to me say "oorl" as I do hearing someone mispronounce non-technical words, and I don't think I discriminate between the two cases. Differences in vernacular are everywhere, and even when we are as connected as we are today we still create new ones, so it's a little depressing to me that there's always gonna some new bullshit pronunciation people come up with that I'm going to have to tolerate.

 

[Krynn72]

Would definitely enjoy derailing this thread to discuss eggcorns but at the same time I was reminded to look at the OP and wanted to add my two cents.

lol at spurt of the moment instead of spur of the moment. I don't see how people can actually get upset over people saying an acronym wrong. I mean, if there was an actually correct way of saying it, thats one thing, but Acronyms are not meant to be pronounced as words, so chill out mayne. It does indeed disrupt the flow of a conversation though, because if someone told me to "check the fack" I'd have to stop them to say "check the wha?" Like when my friend said he sent a Jiff to someone at work, it took me a minute to understand he was talking about an animated .gif file. Also, I was talking about this to my cousin today, and he agrees that saying Fack is weird, and that he's never heard anybody say it like that before.

As for eggcorns, yes, you should get agitated when people continuously muck up phrases/words like that. I still hear people saying irregardless all the time, even after I correct them, and thats just annoying. I guess they just get caught up in the spurt of the moment and forget the right way to say it.

 

[Raziaar]

lol at spurt of the moment instead of spur of the moment. I don't see how people can actually get upset over people saying an acronym wrong. I mean, if there was an actually correct way of saying it, thats one thing, but Acronyms are not meant to be pronounced as words, so chill out mayne. It does indeed disrupt the flow of a conversation though, because if someone told me to "check the fack" I'd have to stop them to say "check the wha?" Like when my friend said he sent a Jiff to someone at work, it took me a minute to understand he was talking about an animated .gif file. Also, I was talking about this to my cousin today, and he agrees that saying Fack is weird, and that he's never heard anybody say it like that before.

As for eggcorns, yes, you should get agitated when people continuously muck up phrases/words like that. I still hear people saying irregardless all the time, even after I correct them, and thats just annoying. I guess they just get caught up in the spurt of the moment and forget the right way to say it.

See i'm the opposite... if somebody said check the "EFF AY CUE" i'd be confused momentarily. Same if somebody said check the "ess cue ell". It's sequel dammit!

 

[Krynn72]

The main problem with pronouncing Acronyms is that they often sound like actual words. Fack sounds like someone trying to be polite while cursing. Scuzzy, Gooey, Sequel, they're all already words, and they don't make any sense when you say them in this context, which then means I have to try and decipher what you mean. The whole point of Acronyms is that you don't need to say words, so it seems redundant to truncate words into an acronym and then expand it back into a brand new word.

 

[dfc05]

As for eggcorns, yes, you should get agitated when people continuously muck up phrases/words like that. I still hear people saying irregardless all the time, even after I correct them, and thats just annoying. I guess they just get caught up in the spurt of the moment and forget the right way to say it.

Yep, irregardless is annoying. Same with "could care less." Once I said "couldn't care less" and some dude actually decided to 'correct' me by saying, "it's 'could care less'." Umm, no, I meant couldn't care less, because that's the only way it makes sense :|.

I also hate when people use "you and I" when they should say "you and me," as in "for you and I" instead of "for you and me." Maybe grammar nitpicking, but it happens all the time, especially in song choruses where you have to hear it repeated and emphasized and rhymed with other words that shouldn't even be in the song because it should've been "you and me."

[edit] Just remembered an eggcorn-ish story. Someone thought the term "fate and transport" (a common environmental engineering term, describing how chemicals move/where they end up in the environment) was "faten transport," and she was baffled for years about what these mysterious "faten" things were and why we were so worried about them getting into the environment, until a prof wrote out the words on the board.
But I can't really judge because in 10th grade my math teacher kept saying "x-sub-zero" for x0 (zero as a subscript), and I didn't know wtf she was talking about because it sounded like "x of zero". Not to mention "x-nought" sounding like "x-nod."

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

x-sub-zero just ends up making me think of Mortal Kombat for the next five minutes.

 

[Stylo]

Duck tape and duct tape are both valid. Duct tape used to be called Duck tape. It was made by Duck Products.

Yes, I know Duck Tape actually existed, but it was a brand of tape and didn't refer to duct tape in general. This is like referring to all washing up liquid as 'Fairy Liquid'.

 

[Raziaar]

Yes, I know Duck Tape actually existed, but it was a brand of tape and didn't refer to duct tape in general. This is like referring to all washing up liquid as 'Fairy Liquid'.

Existed? Exists. It's duct tape, and the brand is Duck Tape.

Duck and Duct are both acceptable in my world.

 

[Stylo]

I was supposed to put 'knew' but meh, exists, existed, both are acceptable in my world.