Just realised bork is not spelled bork

[merryhouse]

Meandering mind suddenly put two threads together.

The word "balk", frequently encountered in my reading, which indicates a feeling of revulsion is not pronounced like a slightly-mangled "bulk" but actually rhymes with walk and talk.

The word "bork" which I have heard in various places is not, as I had assumed, dialectal and is not actually spelled that way.

I've been reading for 48 years

I don’t rhyme baulk with walk or talk either. I pronounce baulk as ball-k. But nor do I spell it, balk.

No, I don’t get chaos and patio either although I am laughing at this thread. Never heard the word bork.

...if you ask the average English person to write a phonetic rendering if the word 'bath', they might write it as 'barth'. But that's because to most English speakers from England, 'AR' represents the sound 'AH', i.e. a long Aaah sound, rather than a short A sound (as in 'cat').

Why not use AH to represent that sound? Why do non-rhotic speakers assume rhotic speakers understand the R isn't pronounced? Why not use an approximation that would be universally understood?

(And there are random Rs inserted - at the end of words ending with a vowel.)

Walk and talk are wok/tock
"No, they’re very much not."

They are in Chicago.

"No they dont [rhyme], unless you're pronouncing the L in walk and talk"

Or not pronouncing the L in any of them.

"the average English person"

for accents, dialects and intonation, that mythical beast does not exist.

There are numerous variations.

For example, I pronounce "bath" as "bath" and "scone" as "scone."

I even say "piano."

Everybody else can say the same.

I have a friend from near Aberdeen who was amazed that fork, talk, pork and walk all rhyme for me, because they're all completely different for her.

But baulk wouldn't rhyme with any of them for me.

On the subject of long and short vowels and rhotic accents (and I do feel bad for this, my only defence was that I was only 18 at the time) I had to leave an Edinburgh library before I started laughing when I heard the toddlers storytime, and the poor lady reading taking about six attempts to try to rhyme giraffe and scarf. I know I'd probably be just as bad given something written for a Scottish accent, but it was the change from her "aren't we having a lovely time" tone of voice to one of panic as she tried to get them to sound even close.

@merryhouse

You no know about the doggo bork?

@lazylinguist

I find that English people often insert random Rs in to words.No idea why

No English people insert random Rs into words. They just represent things phonetically in a different way in writing because they speak with a non-rhotic accent instead of a rhotic one.

So if you ask the average English person to write a phonetic rendering if the word 'bath', they might write it as 'barth'. But that's because to most English speakers from England, 'AR' represents the sound 'AH', i.e. a long Aaah sound, rather than a short A sound (as in 'cat'). We don't actually make a rrr sound. So we don't say barrrrth, we say baahhhth. But we write it phonerically as 'barth' because 'ah' and 'ar' sound totally identical in our accents.

I've explained this eleventy billion times on MN. It's almost as though no rhotic speakers (i.e. mostly Scottish/Irish/Americans) have ever heard an English person speak, or vice versa.

Yeah... except English people or at least those with non-rhotic accents DO insert random Rs. This occurs when two words ending and starting with a vowel. It is called the intrusive R.

For example, how would you say "That idea annoys me?"

Most English would say "that idear annoys me?"

Or if you said "the cinema opens at 10". Most likely it would would be pronounced "the cinemar opens at 10".

Which is funny because the English also tend to drop Rs where the shouldn't - like dinner (pronounced dinna).

This was all I could think of when I read the OP

I was well into my twenties when I idley wondered why I had never heard the word Cha-ohs (to rhyme with patio) out loud but it was used so often in books?

What?!?!?! @GinAtMerlottes.

@MrsEricBana

Smol puppers do borks

^ I met a "smol pupper". I misheard and called it Porky for ages. It was called Borky, because, well, you can guess the rest.

That's cute!

@Kleptronic

In my work (IT) we use bork when something's fallen over. Then we bounce (restart) it.

'Oh no SharePoint's borked again'. 'Bounce the VM' (virtual machine).
'Oh no the VM hasn't come back up.'
'Call the army.'

We're really fun honest.

@Gatekeeper

I've heard of baulk but that means reluctant/hesitant

Yes. A horse will baulk at a fence it doesn't want to jump.

OK obvs haven’t explained myself well here. I read the word chaos as a “Cha-Ohs” to rhyme with Cheerios, in my head. But I never heard the word cha-ohs in real life, even though I read it so often. Unusual.

Literally woke up one morning and lightbulb went off. Cha-Ohs was not a word!! The word was chaos!!!

It seemed vaguely relevant to the thread when I wrote it, but it’s probably better off ignored.