Opening Lines
You won’t be stunned when I tell you that Steve says it’s not pronounced “GIF”. It’s ‘JIF’. ‘Jifgate’ is leaving a bitter-lemon taste in the mouths of those who have been mispronouncing it for years.
Pronunciation correction is a sure way to lose friends and alienate people.
Glance around an Italian restaurant and you will spot at least one person biting their lip. Their facial expression silently screams “it’s pronounced broosKETTA” when someone orders the popular antipasto.
No matter how much they want to, they won’t say: “I think you are probably looking for an espresso. An ‘expresso’ is a bus that makes few stops. You can’t order that here. I would suggest you leave and try and find one on the street before I accidentally spill this espresso on your head.”
That’s other people, of course — I wouldn’t dream of getting so angry about so trifling a matter. Life’s too short for that kind of rage.
In any case, we are now safely in May, far away from the most mispronounced months of the year: Jangry and Febbry.
Pronunciation is a mine-field. It is personal, it depends on accents and intonation, and sometimes the wrong pronunciation just ‘feels right’. Sudocrem might be pronounced ‘sudo-kremm’ but ‘sudo-creeme’ is far more soothing — and creamier.
Mispronunciation can be enriching. In Ireland, we have huge success in producing boy-bands — we also do very successful cover versions of words. Barack Obama is from Chicago, but a fella who left the home-place years ago, without a bob or a string to hold up his trousers, is now making big money in ‘Chicargo’. We strengthen ties to our cousins by calling them cousints. Sometimes, the pronunciation creates a new meaning. If you eat a sangwidge, you are indicating a bit of ham, compressed between two slices of white pan and wrapped in tin foil. A sandwich is one of those overpriced yokes you get in Dublin.
And then, sometimes, we just add in different words. I was in a meeting once, where someone explained that they had a number of problems on the project — with “computer software issues and others of that elk” . For the rest of the rather boring meeting, I was lost in pleasant reveries, hypothesising about the kind of problems that can be caused on IT projects by large, antlered deer and their ilk.
A friend told me her very elderly mother once asked a surprised baker for fellatio bread, instead of focaccia.
People laugh at me when I say adver-TIZ-mint.
It’s the way we tell them.
* Colm O’Regan performs his new show, Certified, at the Sky Cat Laughs on Sunday, June 2. www.catlaughs.com
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