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Then on the other hand, when people do bad grammar things and I get corrected for saying it right I get pissed ("Marsha was mean to Adam and me" ALWAYS gets corrected even though it's right). :-/
So I guess people Anglicizing foreign words just doesn't bother me because it's a natural part of language and ALL languages do it. But people proposing that the rigid rules of grammar should change does anger me. Aren't I such a walking contradiction?
Make sense to me. Word-bendings are OK; wrecking the whole structure isn't.
And PS -- one of my pet peeves is when people can't tell whether they should use "mean to Adam and me" (the correct thing) or "mean to Adam and I" (the wrong thing) ... so they fudge it by using "mean to Adam and myself" (which is both wrong and laughably pompous).
Make sense to me. Word-bendings are OK; wrecking the whole structure isn't.
And PS -- one of my pet peeves is when people can't tell whether they should use "mean to Adam and me" (the correct thing) or "mean to Adam and I" (the wrong thing) ... so they fudge it by using "mean to Adam and myself" (which is both wrong and laughably pompous).
This isn't a surprising mistake.. all my life, in school, they have taught me to use I whenever this situation occurs.
It's tricky using foreign pronunications of words that we use in daily american english. When I go to my local french bakery, run by native french speakers, and order a "kwasson" my kids die of embarrassment. But I cannot say it any other way.
When I lived in Hoboken I would order this amazing fresh mozzerella at these local places, and if you didn't order it as "mutz" the people behind the counter would show a noticeable drop of enthusiasm for filling your order.
So let me get this right. If enough people do something incorrectly, it becomes correct? What awesome logic.
Sometimes, yes.
Think of the noun "loan". It was used as a verb for so long ("I am going to loan him money" instead of "I am going to lend him money") that it became acceptable through common usage over the past couple of decades.
I'm still not over that.
I guess with the food words the point is to be understood. If you are pronouncing an originally-foreign food name correctly and no one understands you because the majority pronounce it differently, what good does it do?
It just dawned on me how much this thread is a Seinfeld episode waiting to happen, lol.
All I can say, is that my family is Greek, and everyone in my own family and all our cousins pronounce the food "yee-ro", so take it for what it's worth, coming from a member of an actual Greek family.
This isn't a surprising mistake.. all my life, in school, they have taught me to use I whenever this situation occurs.
Yeah, I was taught this wrong in school too. I don't think I knew the rule until I took Latin in high school. It took studying Latin for me to really get a good lesson in English grammar
You think that's bad, how about this, I was in Jamaica a while back and met some folks from Texas. They start an argument with me over why we say Houston st. and that we butcher it. I just looked at them and said Houston st. was there before their Houston city was! They just looked at me like I had two heads.
So let me get this right. If enough people do something incorrectly, it becomes correct? What awesome logic.
To be honest, this is what happens to some extent when languages evolve. For example, many modern Spanish and French words come from an older, but corrupted Latin word. When people adopt a new term, etc, inevitably the pronunciation is corrupted since it's not a term that's in their native language. Over time, this 'weird' pronunciation of the word, becomes a new word in a new language, perhaps with different pronunciation or even meaning from the old one in some cases. This has happened all over the world, ever since people began using language and intermingling with others who spoke a different language.
So let me get this right. If enough people do something incorrectly, it becomes correct? What awesome logic.
Mod cut: not necessary
I've eaten a gyro, or a heeee-ro, or a heee hawww once in my 39 years of life. I've never heard it pronounced any other way than how it appears, and until seeing this thread, no one ever attempted to correct me.
I do, however, really enjoy "b-a-g-e-l-s"....is there a different pronounciation I should know about other than "bay guls"?
Last edited by Viralmd; 10-12-2009 at 07:27 AM..
Reason: Not necessary, thanks.
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gyro
