#usenglish — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #usenglish, aggregated by home.social.
-
@yvanspijk I've been enjoying your language infographics!
Here's a puzzler: do you have any idea where the pronunciation in some US English accents of the word "across" as "acrost" comes from? As in "I haven't come acrost that before?"
What drives such a pronunciation to occur? Is it an #eggcorn? "I haven't come a crossed that before?" (Maybe borrowing from archaic "I'll go a-walking"?)
-
"Her name is Gretchen. That's a German name, right?"
No.
"Gretchen", while totally archaic, is based on a German name, yes.
But this "Krettshn" thing Americans mutated it into is definitely not.
This is the original German pronunciation:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/2a/De-Gretchen.oga/De-Gretchen.oga.mp3
Also, keep in mind that "-chen" is a diminutive suffix, "Gretchen" literally means "little Greta". It feels very strange for us when the person is an adult.
-
A fb thread made me pull out this SNL clip and I thought I'd share here, too. 32 years old and still lolsob hilarious and brilliant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWMp_z7Jnxw
"NBC News Personnel really emphasis the pronunciation of Spanish words, while the new Economics Correspondent does not. Aired 11/10/90"
#sociolinguistics #linguistics #loanwords #USEnglish #Spanish #pronunciation #awkward #soawkward