Wednesday, October 06, 2010

#1326 Mispronouncing Pronunciation, Grammaropolis, Santa-free Christmas, Pernickety



Hi, I’m Sarah, welcome to The Daily English Show.


I don’t agree with all of them, like it says that you shouldn’t pronounce the “t” in often.
But I would say that both ways are correct. You can say often or often. And that’s what it says in the Concise Oxford Dictionary too.

One thing I do agree with, is the mispronunciation of pronunciation. As they say, it’s quite funny that pronunciation is one of the most commonly mispronounced words.

Please listen carefully:

pronounce
pronounceable
pronounced
pronouncement

But pronunciation.

It’s not pronounciation, although you can see where the mistake comes from.

I actually saw a TV news story once where they were interviewing a woman who was complaining about bad pronunciation, but she said the word pronounciation.


click here

Today I recommend a game called Word Sort which is on a site called Grammaropolis.

I think this is a very cool game. In the game, words fall from the sky and you have to move them into the right categories, like: noun, verb or adjective.

So if you can’t remember the difference between an adjective and an adverb, this could be a fun way to learn.



STICK NEWS


Santa is a legendary guy who is said to bring presents to the homes of good children in December.
Apparently the legend starts in the 4th century with a guy called Saint Nicholas who was famous for his generous gifts to the poor.
These days Santa is generally depicted as a plump, jolly, white-bearded man wearing a red suit.
A group in Germany wants Santa to be replaced with St Nicolas. They say Santa is
an invention of the advertising industry designed to boost sales and has little to do with the historical figure of St Nicolas.

And that was Stick News for Wednesday the 6th of October.
Kia ora.


Remember, honey, Santa only visits children who’ve been good.
Oh puh-lease! Trying to blackmail me with materialistic mythical bollocks!


Wasn’t Santa invented by Coca-Cola?
Nah, Wikipedia says that’s a myth.


Why do they still use those old photos? I’ve lost heaps of weight since then!
You’d have to ask the marketing department about that.


He represents consumerism!
And he’s creepy!
And I hate shopping.



Word of the Day

Today’s word is pernickety.

adj. (informal, disapproving) worrying too much about unimportant details

It’s like the word fussy.

And apparently in America it’s usually said persnickety.

It’s another word from the list of mispronounced words, because I guess whoever wrote the list doesn’t like the American pronunciation.

Are you from America? Or do you live there now? Do people usually say pernickety or persnickety?



conversations with sarah
#851 Are you pernickety?

Step 1: Repeat Luke’s lines.
Step 2: Read Luke’s lines and talk to Sarah.

Luke Are you pernickety?

Sarah Um, it’s not really a word you’d use to describe yourself.

Luke You’d call other people pernickety?

Sarah Well, I wouldn’t personally. But yeah, it’s an insult. So if you think that what they’re worrying about is unimportant, then you might call them pernickety. But they probably think what they’re worrying about is important, so they wouldn’t think that they’re being pernickety.



links

today's news

music

show start
artist: Kevin MacLeod
track: Future Cha Cha
from: Brooklyn, NY, United States

click here start
artist: #NarNaoud#
album: Green Vision
track: Oriental Standing
from: Gironde, France

WOD start
artist: DJ iPep's
album: Home Mix 2007
track: Game Toy
from: EVREUX, France

cws start
artist: Kevin MacLeod
track: The Jazz Woman
from: Brooklyn, NY, United States

qa start
artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
track: triptrack2
from: Saint Raphael, France

qa bgm
artist: Rivers
album: House Juice
track: De funk
from: La Rochelle, France

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