wal-lla! vs Voila!

[RR88]

My pet peeve is "Lip Singing."

I see that one so much that I wonder if I am wrong for using the term "lip syncing".

[Sola]

My daughter does have a disability which affects communication so her pronunciation is frequently off. We always giggle whenever she says 'aeroplane'; she pronounces it 'hairy plane'. Another one is 'triangle'; she says 'tanglewangle'.

[SpeshulTaterTot]

I LOVE it, why? Because wallah in Arabic (Syrian way of saying) means I swear on god's name

LOL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallah

I never even made the connection to French because where I live, you constantly hear people say wallah, the Arabic version.

What drives me nuts is CARR-mel. No, it's ca-ra-mel.

[apple1]

... to "keep their whodeanie dog from getting out of its pen". :doh:

/I wanted fo facepalm, LOL and cry all at the same time.

Thanks for posting this. It made me laugh out loud - really out loud - this morning. :D

[Deleted03]

I never even made the connection to French because where I live, you constantly hear people say wallah, the Arabic version.

What drives me nuts is CARR-mel. No, it's ca-ra-mel.

took me some time too when I saw it for the first time... lol

[Conuly]

I love word nerds.

Yeah, it's, um, it's hard to get me to shut up once I get started! Any excuse to log onto the OED. Sorry about that!

Incidentally, the two-syllable pronunciation of caramel is a perfectly valid pronunciation. It's actually the primary one listed in Merriam-Webster.

[SquirrelySquirrel]

Except that when you say "lazy", that's a value judgment. At least, that's how it sounds. It's okay to not like certain ways of speaking, but it's factually incorrect to say that one way is better than another so long as everybody can understand what is being said, and it's not true that people from one area are more inclined to be "lazy speakers" than from another. We ALL are. That's one major reason language changes.

I think you're taking my statement a little more seriously than it's meant. I often see posters here talk about how the Duggars speak, call them lazy talkers and mush mouths, and that is how a lot of the people around me sound. That's where I got the "lazy" adjective, and please show me where I said Midwest folks are the only ones.

I'm not saying it's a fact that wash is better than warsh, FFS. I'm giving an opinion on what is more pleasing to my ear, since I thought that's what we were doing here.

[icecreamycakeycake]

I have a co-worker that says, "supposebly", and it makes my brain bleed.

And for the love of Gawd... it is "CONVERSE", not "CONVERSATE".

[Conuly]

I think you're taking my statement a little more seriously than it's meant. I often see posters here talk about how the Duggars speak, call them lazy talkers and mush mouths, and that is how a lot of the people around me sound. That's where I got the "lazy" adjective, and please show me where I said Midwest folks are the only ones.

I'm not saying it's a fact that wash is better than warsh, FFS. I'm giving an opinion on what is more pleasing to my ear, since I thought that's what we were doing here.

I tend to think that what people say they're "joking about" is more important than what they say they're saying seriously. Jokes indicate what we're really thinking, but want to pretend we're not, if that makes sense. Even the self-deprecating ones.

You didn't say "only Midwesterners talk in a lazy way", what you said is "I'm a Midwesterner, and heck, a lot of us are lazy when we speak!" By singling out yourself there, it kinda sounds like you're saying "and nobody else is" even if you don't use those words. And a lot of times when people *say* "They talk in a lazy way" or, like the Duggars, "they have mush mouths", what they *mean* is something more like "They're ignorant and stupid". Which, when it comes to the Duggars, I very much believe everybody here is really saying when they criticize how that family speaks, or dresses, or prays, or eats. I think every mention of how they do anything is very much a value judgment. They're not very popular in this forum, have you noticed? And mostly that's with good reason, but with my back against the wall here, yes, I think it's a bit much to criticize their speech if it's in line with how other people in the area speak. I know that speech is very much used as a marker of class and education, but it's intrinsically no more a valuable judge of a person's capabilities than their clothes or hairstyle. It's just not a valid criticism. (Unless your criticism is "By not teaching their children to codeswitch they're limiting their potential employment opportunities" which is almost certainly the case.) And when there's so much to justifiably criticize them on, picking on language seems... pointless.

I don't know if that's what you thought you meant, or what you really meant. I do know that comments like that are factually inaccurate (or, at least, they're only sorta accurate) and that they really bug me, especially when it's less "This pronunciation really annoys me" and more "This pronunciation is wrong, and I had to work to teach myself the right way to say it". It might be financially and socially advisable to change how you say certain words, but a widespread pronunciation of a word is not really "wrong". Nonstandard, maybe. Less prestigious, quite probably. Wrong? Language doesn't work like that, no matter what we're all told. And it's interesting that everybody's complaining about pronunciations that bug me, but nobody is saying that "nucular sounds better than nuclear" or that "warsh sounds better than wash". No, they're all saying that the standard pronunciation is better than the one they consider nonstandard. This isn't a coincidence, and it's not because the standard really is more aesthetically pleasing either.

Maybe you don't think this is important or interesting. I think it's BOTH, very much so. I think the choices people make when speaking are important, and I think that why they make those choices is fascinating, and I think discussion of peeves is enlightening if looked at from the right angle. But it's not any of these things if we all just agree with each other and do nothing more than recite a litany of pronunciations that really bug us for no apparent reason (even though that reason is readily apparent when you think of it).

[Spider Burps]

Like I sad, I haven't done much research. It's like warsh to me. Hearing that added -r is like nails on a chalkboard to my ears for whatever reason. And many Midwesterners are lazy speakers, myself included!

"My kids do NOT eat sorbet. They eat sherbet, and they pronounce it sherbert, and they wish it was ice cream!" - Homer Simpson

[Minerva]

I have a co-worker that says, "supposebly", and it makes my brain bleed.

And for the love of Gawd... it is "CONVERSE", not "CONVERSATE".

I once babysat a girl (with a nasty attitude), who said "whatevers" instead of whatever. And she said it a lot.

[darareaksmey]

I have a co-worker that says, "supposebly", and it makes my brain bleed.

And for the love of Gawd... it is "CONVERSE", not "CONVERSATE".

And likewise, it's AGREEMENT, not AGREEANCE. I have heard people say "agreeance" so many times in the past month and I don't know what that's all about. Have they just never heard of the word "agreement"?

[Coconut Flan]

They probably watch too much Judge Judy. Conversate and agreeance seem to be staples of the complainants. Speaking of probably, prolly gets on my last nerve especially when it's typed.

[terranova]

I see Bethany has removed Wallah from her post but hasn't posted any comments about it.

[divadivine]

I have a co-worker that says, "supposebly", and it makes my brain bleed.

And for the love of Gawd... it is "CONVERSE", not "CONVERSATE".

OMG!! I hate when stupid ass people say "conversate" I totally busted a girl down in Panera for that one day. I think she was Fundie LIte. Stupid people irritate me!

[divadivine]

I see Bethany has removed Wallah from her post but hasn't posted any comments about it.

Makes me want to punch her for not publishing my comment. Just own up to the fact that your (Bethany) SOTDRT experience was a big, fat fail and you didn't know the correct spelling of the word. Next time, don't use words you can't spell. Deuces, Diva

[Boogalou]

Both agreeance and conversate are words. According to dictionary.com agreeance first appeared in the 16th century but has now fallen into disuse, although it appears people have started using it again. Conversate is in Merriam-Webster as non-standard. Just because people don't talk like you it doesn't make them wrong or stupid.

[Someonetocall]

I apologize for resurrecting this thread but I was looking for Noah's wife's name and came across this on Wikipedia and immediately thought of FJ.

According to George Sale's Commentary on the Quran (1734), some Muslim commentators asserted that Noah had had an infidel wife named Waila, who perished in the deluge, and was thus not aboard the Ark.

(http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wives_aboard_Noah's_Ark)

Every time someone mistypes voila, they are calling to mind Noah's heathen wife, Waila? From now on, this will make my day.

[Sola]

SOTDRT strikes again.

Damn her and her comment moderation. I just left a comment asking if she meant 'voilà". Who wants to bet the comment never makes the page but the word is changed?

On which post? I can't find it so she must have already changed it.

[Black Aliss]

Not to be a bossyboots, but I think it's "chaise longue," not "lounge." I've been schooled on that before, so I share my edfication with you. :D

Yes, you can call it a "lounge chair" or a "chaise longue", but you shouldn't mix them.

My kids and their friends always suffered from what we parents called "readers disease". They learned a lot of their advanced vocabulary from books so had no idea how certain words were pronounced and it sometimes required real effort not to laugh when their pronunciation was horribly mangled. My husband and I both had the same malady when we were young but our parents didn't bother to stifle their laughter.

In general, fundy kids don't get exposed to that superset of their native language, but they probably hear a lot of words that they've never seen in print. Add in the mangled vocabulary that they acquire from reading other SOTDRT blogs, and you get non-words like "wallah" ,"definately", and "alot". Not to mention nonsense phrases like "for all intensive purposes. . . " In fairness, plenty of non-fundy bloggers use those words and phrases too. In fact, back when the internet was a very small place, one person's inadvertant misspelling or typo would become part of the in-group-speak for a particular newsgroup. "Viola" for "voilà" and "cow orker" for "coworker" persist to this day in certain dark corners of the internet.

[asinglevoice]

As a French teacher, the "walla" thing makes me nuts (duh) particularly because my own mother types it that way! :)

But what really turns my crank is "could of/would of/should of." DOESN'T EXIST. Gah.

[gibbsgirls]

I have a friend (who homes schools her children) who pronounces "c'est la vie" as sest (rhymes with test) la (as is the pronouncing the "la" of last) and vi (long "i"). Also, she pronounces "coup de grace" as coop de grass!

I corrected her every time.

EDITED: because I do know how to use tenses.

[divadivine]

On which post? I can't find it so she must have already changed it.

She removed it completely. She couldn't admit she was wrong.

[Free2BeMe]

And likewise, it's AGREEMENT, not AGREEANCE. I have heard people say "agreeance" so many times in the past month and I don't know what that's all about. Have they just never heard of the word "agreement"?

Do they mean the word "grievance"?

[latraviata]

I LOVE it, why? Because wallah in Arabic (Syrian way of saying) means I swear on god's name

LOL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallah

Was it you who called me a boar? Boar as in 'sanglier' or 'geignard' or both?