Funny sounding words and phrases

[Titas Aduksus]

Nuke-u-lar - Thanks Mr Bush (oh and his name, does he know it's slang for a certain patch of hair...)

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

And then, of course, Americans can't seem to pronounce Aluminium...

S'all right...y'all can't spell aluminum

Though we do enjoy very much laughing at how the rest of the english speaking world pronounces it

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Titas Aduksus

Nuke-u-lar - Thanks Mr Bush (oh and his name, does he know it's slang for a certain patch of hair...)

That is the way i prononce it.
Much to the disgust of the women in my life
I put it down to my Irish ancestry.

One malapropism that I can never get out of my head is the toast
"Let's raise our arses to the Queer old Dean"
It is a curse having a visual mind.

PS
OOPPS
The WWW says it's:-
"Let us glase our asses and toast the queer dean."
I prefer my misquote.

[Boerseun]

If you're ever in South Africa or Namibia and you want to thank somebody, tell him to buy a donkey.

I kid you not.

In Afrikaans, the term "thank you" is "baie dankie", which is pronounced, of course, "buy a donkey" - much to the confusion of tourists who can't seem to fathom why the locals keep on telling them to invest in the livestock market.

[Qfwfq]

Good one, it reminds me I heard that English languge tourists down there are often confused by the bilingual roadsigns, they read them as "slags only" and wonder if they're allowed to go that way when in fact it's the only option!!!

It happened to the parents of an old friend of mine, serious! They were told it happens to plenty of tourists.

Originally Posted by DFINITLYDISTRUBD

S'all right...y'all can't spell aluminum

Though we do enjoy very much laughing at how the rest of the english speaking world pronounces it

It's history. The dominance of the spelling used in North America has been attributed to Charles Martin Hall's mistake when advertising his new electrolytic method of production, despite he himself had usually spelt it the accepted way. There had already been a bit of discussion between the two spellings, to the aim of conformance with other chemical nomenclature but, at any rate, the 'i' remained elsewhere and not only in English, it's in Italian and I checked with French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Russian and Arabic dictionaries here in the library. The IUPAC adopted aluminium as the standard international name but also recognizes aluminum as an acceptable variant.

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

The IUPAC adopted aluminium as the standard international name but also recognizes aluminum as an acceptable variant.

........[gasp]...
So what you're saying is the rest of the world is "playing along" with us That's great "those stupid Americans are at it again sir.....what should we do?"

[Qfwfq]

nah, they simply recognized that a relevant slice o' folks are in the habit, and find it in their dics, so it ain't an actual mistake.