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From: gdmr@cstvax.UUCP (George D M Ross)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Pet Peeves(really: "British" English)
Message-ID: <23@cstvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-Nov-85 06:48:16 EST
Article-I.D.: cstvax.23
Posted: Mon Nov 18 06:48:16 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Nov-85 06:55:46 EST
References: <747@cyb-eng.UUCP> <1900005@datacube.UUCP> <558@utflis.UUCP>
Reply-To: gdmr@cstvax.UUCP (George D M Ross)
Organization: Comp. Sc., Edinburgh Univ., Scotland
Lines: 34

In article <558@utflis.UUCP> chai@utflis.UUCP (Henry Chai) writes:
>It is my understanding that while Americans tend to pronounce each 
>syllable of a word distinctly, British practice is to drop or glide 
>over some syllables.  Other examples I can think of are
>
>   particularly -> particuly
>   awfully -> awfly
>
>Also the British practice of adding an 'r' to the end of a word when
>the word ends in a vowel and the next starts with a vowel, what's it 
>called in linguistics?  Examples are
>
>  law and order -> lawrand order
>  idea of -> idearof      (similarly Nyssarof Traken !)

You mean ENGLISH, as in that country south of the border with SCOTLAND.
Even within ENGLAND there are so many variations that sweeping generalisations
aren't particularly useful.  Scottish pronunciation, typically, doesn't mangle
the words nearly as much.

Incidentally, the practice of calling the inhabitants of a country by the
name of one of its constituent units definitely qualifies as a pet peeve.
For example:  "Holland", "Russia", "England".  And in the case of "Britain",
do you mean the "British Isles" (inclusing Ireland) or the "United Kingdom"
(not including most of Ireland)?

[Just as an aside: although the Britons lost out to the Scots and Picts
in the North and the Angles in the South they managed to give their name to
the whole group of islands -- rather a nice trick...]
-- 
George D M Ross, Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Edinburgh
Phone: +44 31-667 1081 x2730
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