Commoners guide to avoid those mess-ups...er...faux pas, when travelling in F
#107
Join Date: Jun 2017
Location: MidSouth
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This is a great thread!
We flew into Dublin once and were headed to Drogheda. Now clearly I mangled the pronunciation to the cab driver who stared at me as if I must have two heads. So I pulled out something and pointed to where I needed to go. (Yes, it was a costly cab ride, but that's an entirely different story.)
Long story short - the entire three days we were in Drogheda, I kept asking - as the American - and how DO you pronounce the name of the city? I swear, no two people ever gave me the same pronunciation.
So heads up if you ever come to Nashville and need to go to Lafayette Street. While we honor the French general Lafayette, the street in Nashville is pronounced L' FAY - ette.
And back to flying first class/business class. I generally point (politely, I hope) and smile. It makes my life so much easier when I know that I can't pronounce something to someone else's satisfaction.
We flew into Dublin once and were headed to Drogheda. Now clearly I mangled the pronunciation to the cab driver who stared at me as if I must have two heads. So I pulled out something and pointed to where I needed to go. (Yes, it was a costly cab ride, but that's an entirely different story.)
Long story short - the entire three days we were in Drogheda, I kept asking - as the American - and how DO you pronounce the name of the city? I swear, no two people ever gave me the same pronunciation.
So heads up if you ever come to Nashville and need to go to Lafayette Street. While we honor the French general Lafayette, the street in Nashville is pronounced L' FAY - ette.
And back to flying first class/business class. I generally point (politely, I hope) and smile. It makes my life so much easier when I know that I can't pronounce something to someone else's satisfaction.
#111
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#112
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And let me know what airline you are flying, because BA did not have any caviar in F between LHR and PEK and back.
#114
Join Date: Nov 2014
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Your F suite is better than my wife's flight on the BA Concorde where no caviar was to be found. However, when my mother-in-law was flying in F on Air France, they had caviar "a volonte" (with the accent on the "a" and the accent on the "e" but I cannot find how to do those).
And let me know what airline you are flying, because BA did not have any caviar in F between LHR and PEK and back.
And let me know what airline you are flying, because BA did not have any caviar in F between LHR and PEK and back.
#117
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"WOO-stah," she announced. Nobody stood.
"WOO-stah!" Still nobody rose.
"It's printed on your ticket as 'War-chest-er'" she added with sarcasm, and half a dozen businessmen jumped up raising their hands.
#118
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All of Massachusetts seems to be like that. You might as well be in England for the lack of correlation between spelling (or even number of apparent syllables) and sound.
#119
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For the most part, pronunciation is just tied to regional dialects. There are many words that Americans and Canadians pronounce very differently, like foyer and roof. A person is not necessarily mispronouncing something just because they aren't saying it like the locals do. In fact, tourists often sound ridiculous trying to sound like a local - you're not fooling anyone. If you're not from Boston, don't ask for "chowda" - you'll just sound pretentious. Be yourself. Unless you are a pretentious jerk, and then try to be someone else.
#120
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I think I reacted more strongly than I normally would because she'd spent a week in Italy a few years earlier and for some reason I thought she'd learned the very simple rules of Italian pronunciation.