Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I could kind of see the ruling is sorbet sounds like it looks so it would be sorbet and sherbet. But sorbet is said sore-bay. So would he have gotten it wrong if he said sorbet like it looks and not like its supposed to sound?
Who gets to decide the 'correct' pronunciation? Every contestant that drops their R's is immediately disqualified? What about all the folks who don't differentiate between the pin and pen pronunciation?
Let's put in a panel of judges from Houston, Boston, and Minneapolis and watch them duke it out.
Obviously the Jeopardy judges get to decide and they did. Your examples don't make any sense, the clue in this case specifically mentioned that two words used the same final 3 letters. When you add an extra 'r', the letters of the words no longer match. For this clue, the spelling was critically important. I would say that a better example would have been the common mistaken pronunciation of the word 'mischievous', many people add an extra 'i' and pronounce it as MISS-CHEE-VIOUS.
And for the posters that point out that this is just nitpicking, well duh, it is Jeopardy. Nitpicking is the whole point of the show.
I think I saw that show and wondered why the two contestants said the same thing and one was not given the credit. It wasn't until later that I heard about the asinine decision that was made. Moral of the story is it is all right to belittle and find southerners wrong when they are more correct with a pronunciation. There are many words that we say more correctly than others that part of the country says the pronunciation is different. One that drives me up the wall is "Our." There is no A in our. Many people make it sound like the letter "R" only. There is an "OU" in front of that "R." It should be correctly pronounced like the word "hour" with the h silent. Surely that makes more sense than the way they say it.
If that is the one I saw, every letter in the puzzle had been revealed. The only thing left was to read what was there.
You are confusing Wheel of Fortune with Jeopardy.
Why the screed about southerners? If a contestant from Maine or Oregon had said SHER-BERT, the judges would have still determined that answer to be incorrect. The judges were not belittling people that live in the south. That chip on your shoulder must get really heavy.
Obviously the Jeopardy judges get to decide and they did. Your examples don't make any sense, the clue in this case specifically mentioned that two words used the same final 3 letters. When you add an extra 'r', the letters of the words no longer match. For this clue, the spelling was critically important. I would say that a better example would have been the common mistaken pronunciation of the word 'mischievous', many people add an extra 'i' and pronounce it as MISS-CHEE-VIOUS.
How is adding r different than dropping r? Neither affects the spelling of a word. Are we to assume that people who say caw-fee think there is a w in coffee?
They made an assumption that he didn't know what word he was trying to use based on his pronunciation.
If one contestant says car-a-mel and one says car-mel is that also incorrect? I think if they went back and reviewed past shows there would be many instances of 'incorrect' pronunciations that have passed without a challenge. Regional bias at play.
If the contestant was supposed to give a 3 syllable answer and said "Carmel" that would be wrong, since they said a 2 syllable word. It has nothing to do with "regional bias", it just wasnt the correct word for the clue or catagory given. "Sherbert" did not fit with the clue, so was wrong.
How is adding r different than dropping r? Neither affects the spelling of a word. Are we to assume that people who say caw-fee think there is a w in coffee?
Now you are just getting absurd. There is a huge difference between adding letters to a word that shouldn't be there and speaking with a regional accent that simply makes the same letters sound differently. If spelling is important and you say SHERBERT instead of SHERBET, you did not answer correctly.
You analogy would only make sense if the correct answer had been coffee and the contestant had responded with CORFFEE.
Why the screed about southerners? If a contestant from Maine or Oregon had said SHER-BERT, the judges would have still determined that answer to be incorrect. The judges were not belittling people that live in the south. That chip on your shoulder must get really heavy.
The contestant isn't even from the South, he is from New York. I don't think the poster even saw the episode, they just wanted to rant.
The contestant isn't even from the South, he is from New York. I don't think the poster even saw the episode, they just wanted to rant.
I don't understand how the South even came up in this discussion. I guess a lot of southerners are just looking for things to get upset about. The guy said the word wrong and the judges deemed the response to be incorrect. Any Jeopardy fan has seen this same thing happen many times.
Now you are just getting absurd. There is a huge difference between adding letters to a word that shouldn't be there and speaking with a regional accent that simply makes the same letters sound differently. If spelling is important and you say SHERBERT instead of SHERBET, you did not answer correctly.
You analogy would only make sense if the correct answer had been coffee and the contestant had responded with CORFFEE.
Austin wouldn't have given the answer he gave if he thought the two words were spelled differently at the end. Both words, sorbet and sherbet, are (or can correctly be) pronounced differently than they are spelled. Plus there is no such food as "sherbert." You will not find a container of frozen dessert labeled "sherbert." Just like you won't find a package of lunch meat labeled "baloney," even though that's how everyone I know pronounces it.
Austin wouldn't have given the answer he gave if he thought the two words were spelled differently at the end. Both words, sorbet and sherbet, are (or can correctly be) pronounced differently than they are spelled. Plus there is no such food as "sherbert." You will not find a container of frozen dessert labeled "sherbert." Just like you won't find a package of lunch meat labeled "baloney," even though that's how everyone I know pronounces it.
Whatever, the only suggestion that I can offer to you is to not be a contestant on Jeopardy. They are notoriously picky, many people have lost due to bad pronunciations and misspellings. BTW, the judges disagreed with you, that is the heart of the entire dispute. In the opinion of the only people that mattered, sherbet cannot be pronounced differently than it is spelled. Just because some people do doesn't mean that it is correct.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
