Surf Advert

[Tuvok]

Does anybody else find the current Surf adverts anoying?

Whos says "perf"

She can't even pronounce Surf - she pronounces it "serf"

Another add that anoys me is the Car Gurus advert - I hear it as "car ger oos"

[Tuvok]

Must be an English thing - just like the English can't pronounce loch - its not lock - as in canal or in a door!

Will ask English work colleagues tomorrow (and French colleague if not on holiday). Also going to ask Welsh friends - just out of curiosity!

[JimF]

Doubtless, yes.

[tonyav]

Definitely an English thing is English.

[THECORBYLOON]

No doubt the folk who hear no difference between "serf" and "surf" think "whales and "Wales" sound the same.

[tonyav]

Or wails, THECORBYLOON.

[douglas9401]

On everybody hears the difference, some just like to set themselves apart.

Not sure why yet.

[JimF]

Agreed, Corbyloon.

[sanmac]

This thread reminds me of the old standard:

[THECORBYLOON]

I've said before that a London colleague was helping me look for papers for someone with the surname Almond. I found them but she had been looking for Hammond...

[Old_Geezer]

Strange how local dialects/accents can go their own way from the mainstream.

[Calibax]

I think it is mainly a Scottish thing. English speakers would pronounce Perth like Purth but Scots would pronounce it more like Pairth.

[Georgiesmum]

Surf and serf sounds the same to me too.

[Tilly2]

I used this a lot, when teaching. Good fun!

Hints on Pronunciation for Foreigners
By Anonymous

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through?
Well done! And now you wish perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird;
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead —
For goodness sake don’t call it ‘deed’.
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose —
Just look them up — and goose and choose.

And cord and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart —
Come come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive,
I’d mastered it when I was five!

[gingejbee]

It is a Scottish thing...Scots pronounce many words differently.
Nothing to get "anoyed" (sic) about.

[nightmare]

Tilly,
then there is The Chaos - a much longer poem.
Hopefully, this link should work
http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html

[Tilly2]

Thanks, Nightmare. Yes, I know that poem as well but it would have been too much to use with ten year olds. :-)

[Tilly2]

There's also another one which has the word 'terpsicore' in it but I have forgotten what it's called.

[Prudie]

I hate not being able to understand these threads - serf, surf, smurf and I guess perf (what's that?) all sound exactly the same to me still even after reading all this

[Tuvok]

Tilly2

"And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead —
For goodness sake don’t call it ‘deed’. "

Dead IS deed (or deid) in Scotland

[nightmare]

Tilly,
Terpsichore is in The Chaos, in verse 7