Pilates?

[Gowron]

If Pilates is pronounced pill art ays, then why isn't Pirates prounced pir art ays?
Important question I'm sure you'll agree!

[Gowron]

posh people live in Hices don't they?

[chelle7272]

lol

[follyfancier]

Pilates is named after the person who invented it

[wildwood]

Maybe the pilates exercise is so pronounced to differentiate it from small piles.

sorry..... lol

[gollysailor]

Pontius Pilates??

[ll_billym]

Around here people ironically refer to the town of Yate as 'Yah tay'.

[Quizmonster]

For much the same reason as laughter doesn't rhyme with slaughter.

[jomifl]

Dr. Pilates was a johnny foreigner.

[Ankou]

yes, unlike pontius pilate who was a cockney from bethnal green.

[boxtops]

Isn't/wasn't Pilates a Greek (like Prince Flipflop)?

[utepoot]

Is isn't pronounced pill art ays, it's pill ah tees

[grasscarp]

you may as well ask why cough, dough and bough are all pronounced differently.

[Haymoon]

If the people from Poland are called Poles, why aren't the people from Holland called Holes? And if a bricklayer can lay bricks, why can't a plumber lay plums? and BTW there is no "r" in Pilates. As someone else pointed out, it's pronounced Pill-ah-tays. Happy Christmas to all.

[heathfield]

The sounds we utter in speech can only be written with an alphabet of 26 letters. This isn't enough letters to cover all the sounds we make, and one letter may have to represent more than one sound, e.g. the letter 'i' in the names Mick and Mike. George Bernard Shaw recommended the use of a 44-letter alphabet that would have solved this problem, but had no takers. We're stuck with our 26 letters. If we think that it makes life difficult for us, think of the stumbling block it presents for foreign students trying to learn English!