The Ugly Canada Thread

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by Xelebes

When a cow lows, the low and the cow rhyme.

When a cow is low, that there low rhymes with her toe.

No, the verb for "low" rhymes with "toe." Even so, cows don't have toes, they have hooves.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by circle33

Keeping with the mispronunciation theme, I cringe every time I hear someone out this way pronounce "Marquis" "Mar-kiss".

This just triggered a question that's always puzzled me: Why is a "Marquess" a guy?

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by rousseau

No, the verb for "low" rhymes with "toe." Even so, cows don't have toes, they have hooves.

Yes. And yes ...

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Acajack

This just triggered a question that's always puzzled me: Why is a "Marquess" a guy?

Why is a "marquis" a guy?

[MolsonExport]

This just triggered a couple of questions that have always puzzled me: Why is Nickelback popular? Why is Ben Mulroney still on television?

[SignalHillHiker]

Snapped a couple of our hideous suburbs on my way back from Saint Vincent's.

Town of Paradise:



City of Mount Pearl:



And until you get closer, all you can see of St. John's from the highway is the uglier modern buildings downtown.

[Architype]

^ It won't be that bad in those suburbs in 50 years when there are some trees, but there isn't much hope for the downtown.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by circle33

Keeping with the mispronunciation theme, I cringe every time I hear someone out this way pronounce "Marquis" "Mar-kiss".

How do you guys pronounce it then? "Markee"?

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by lio45

How do you guys pronounce it then? "Markee"?

Marquess is an English hereditary rank, very similar to an Earl (Count), the main difference being that the lands of a Marquess are found on a borderland (or march), and as such, a Marquess has the additional responsibility of being in charge of border security for his area. For this reason, the rank of Marquess is slightly higher than an Earl (because of the additional military responsibilities).

A French Marquis is pronounced "Mar-key"
An English Marquess is pronounced Mar-kess"

The wife of a Marquess is referred to as a Marchioness.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Why is a "marquis" a guy?

Still makes more sense for a guy than marquess.

Le Marquis de Montcalm sounds masculine.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Marquess is an English hereditary rank, very similar to an Earl (Count), the main difference being that the lands of a Marquess are found on a borderland (or march), and as such, a Marquess has the additional responsibility of being in charge of border security for his area. For this reason, the rank of Marquess is slightly higher than an Earl (because of the additional military responsibilities).

A French Marquis is pronounced "Mar-key"
An English Marquess is pronounced Mar-kess"

I would have said mar-kwess.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

How do you guys pronounce it then? "Markee"?

En anglais c'est ça oui.

[SignalHillHiker]

I didn't realize this wasn't normal everywhere until our Attorney General recently called it out as something government must stop doing. Apparently it's yet another of our developing world traits. I'm not sure if you could call it corruption as such, but it's very easy here to find the border between provincial electoral districts if one hasn't voted for the government side in a while...



It's sometimes even expressed openly,

[kwoldtimer]

Isn't that common throughout Atlantic Canada?

[SignalHillHiker]

No idea. Could be?

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by Architype

^ It won't be that bad in those suburbs in 50 years when there are some trees, but there isn't much hope for the downtown.

You can count on one hand the number of trees planted anywhere in those suburbs, even areas decades old. But the City recently changed the rules that all but require a tree every such distance. But that won't impact most suburbs, which are mostly separate municipalities.

[vid]

Though (ending in an "oh" sound) comes from Proto-Germanic *thaukh. (thoke)

Through (ending in an "oo" sound) comes from Proto-Germanic *thurkh. (thurk or thuhk)

Rough (ending in an "uff" sound) comes from Proto-Germanic *rukhaz. (ruckaz)

Cough (ending in an "off" sound) comes from Proto-Germanic *kokh-. (cawk)

Bough (ending in an "ow" sound) comes from Proto-Germanic *bogaz. (bawgahz)

Borough and burgh (ending in an "uh" sound) come from Proto-Germanic *burgs. (burgz)

Most of the "gh" sounds in English are descendents of aspirated dorsal stops in Proto-Indo-European. None of those sounds exist in English, but they existed in the languages we got our words from. It's noticeable if you know a lot of German vocabulary. (Nacht, nicht, licht, doch).

There is a similar effect with some other sounds, like the ps from Greek or ts in Japanese. We just pronounce them bith as an s, but the proper pronunciation of ps is like an X but with a p instead of k sound at the start. We make that sound in words like "eclipse" and "cyclops" but for some reason struggle when it's at the start of words. We make the Japanese ts sound at the end of cats but again, struggle to start a word with that sound. It's just an s sound where the tongue actually touches the roof of the mouth but I guess people find it hard to do.

English R vowels are pretty fun too. Ever notice have very few foreigners can make those sounds? They get lost in the accent but once you learn how unique it is to English (specifically American English) and some Chinese languages, you start to notice it. Very few languages end their consonant with r, and languages that do (German) pronounce it differently than we do (kindah instead of kinder even though it's spelled kinder).

English also has a stupid number of vowels compared to consonant than most languages. If you include the diphthongs and r-coloured vowels they actually equal our consonants. (25 of each)

[Architype]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

You can count on one hand the number of trees planted anywhere in those suburbs, even areas decades old. But the City recently changed the rules that all but require a tree every such distance. But that won't impact most suburbs, which are mostly separate municipalities.

St. John's is possibly the only city in North America without city owned and maintained street trees; in many places in Canada even small towns have them. However, in the 50s & 60s, the city used to provide the trees which are planted along the streets on private property.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by vid

Though (ending in an "oh" sound) comes from Proto-Germanic *thaukh. (thoke)

Through (ending in an "oo" sound) comes from Proto-Germanic *thurkh. (thurk or thuhk)

Rough (ending in an "uff" sound) comes from Proto-Germanic *rukhaz. (ruckaz)

Cough (ending in an "off" sound) comes from Proto-Germanic *kokh-. (cawk)

Bough (ending in an "ow" sound) comes from Proto-Germanic *bogaz. (bawgahz)

Borough and burgh (ending in an "uh" sound) come from Proto-Germanic *burgs. (burgz)

Most of the "gh" sounds in English are descendents of aspirated dorsal stops in Proto-Indo-European. None of those sounds exist in English, but they existed in the languages we got our words from. It's noticeable if you know a lot of German vocabulary. (Nacht, nicht, licht, doch).

There is a similar effect with some other sounds, like the ps from Greek or ts in Japanese. We just pronounce them bith as an s, but the proper pronunciation of ps is like an X but with a p instead of k sound at the start. We make that sound in words like "eclipse" and "cyclops" but for some reason struggle when it's at the start of words. We make the Japanese ts sound at the end of cats but again, struggle to start a word with that sound. It's just an s sound where the tongue actually touches the roof of the mouth but I guess people find it hard to do.

English R vowels are pretty fun too. Ever notice have very few foreigners can make those sounds? They get lost in the accent but once you learn how unique it is to English (specifically American English) and some Chinese languages, you start to notice it. Very few languages end their consonant with r, and languages that do (German) pronounce it differently than we do (kindah instead of kinder even though it's spelled kinder).

English also has a stupid number of vowels compared to consonant than most languages. If you include the diphthongs and r-coloured vowels they actually equal our consonants. (25 of each)

I think the history of the language, having taken so much from contributing languages, may make it unique(?). This history explains why so much of the spelling makes no sense in terms of pronunciation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

[vid]

Every language has sound shifts, that's just our sound shift. That's not even the only one we've had, there have been a few.

Our spelling makes no sense, but look at Japanese (which uses Chinese characters to represent polysyllabic words alongside two syllabaries). Over time, the word has changed but the Kanji has remained the same. Tibetan orthography is a total — mess, roughly half of the letters in any word is silent, since they've maintained their orthography as it was 1,300 years ago. Imagine if English did this? "What" would be spelled "hƿæt" but pronounced "wut", there would be spelled "þāra" but pronounced "thair", "king" would be "cyning" but pronounced "king", "evil" would be spelled "yfele" but pronounced "eevul". It is essentially as difficult as learning Chinese or Kanji characters, but unlike those, the Tibetan language is building its symbols out of individual pieces that have meaning and the urge to pronounce them as they appear probably interferes with the ability to actually read the language since half the information the word gives you has to be discarded. At least with Chinese, the entire character is the meaning (none of it is redundant) and in many symbols, you can sort of see the idea it represented in pictorial form (like their words for tree, river or mountain) and how they get combined with other symbols to make new, more complex symbols.

So we're not too bad. And look at French orthography—that's been reformed and it's still pretty confusing to pronounce! The end of a word changes how the next word starts, few languages do that the same way French does and their orthography doesn't indicate when and how that happens which makes actually speaking it quite a bit more difficult than just reading it. It's almost like an agglutinative language.

And then the agglutinative languages, like Ojibwe or Finnish, while their words look really difficult, that's actually very easy to pronounce because their writing systems are pretty much tailored to the pronunciation (especially Ojibwe). Seitsemänkymmentäseitsemän looks intimidating but it's pronounced exactly as it looks except that their y is an oo sound.