At the age of 52 I have learned...

[lovelyweathertoday]

... that porpoises are very similar to dolphins.

For some reason I thought they were like porcupines. How was I so wrong for so long?!

I had something similar at Christmas. Forget what now.

It was just over 2 years ago I discovered I had been pronouncing Tortoise and Porpoise completely incorrectly for 3 decades

Did you make the oi sound? I do that too and my partner thinks I'm strange.

Yes! I'm from far north - maybe it's a northern thing?

Originally from the south east here !

Scuppers that theory!!

Oh dear, is the oi sound wrong then?

No one seems to know for sure what the correct pronunciation is. I avoid the whole debate and just say turtle 🐢

I think should be tortuss and porpuss but maybe there are regional differences

Age 35 I discovered that some people pronounce tortoise and porpoise without an oi sound and that makes me uncomfortable.

What?? They don't have an /oi/ sound? What sound do they have then, I'm intrigued? In my classroom they do I even have pictures on my Letters and Sounds Phonics Display of a tortoise in my /oi/ 'window' (commercially produced I hasten to add, so clearly lots of people seem to think the same as me!)

Laughing a lot at Thoosa's comment...this is my life right now (52)

Turtlesq and tortoises are two different animals though @SirenSays. One swims, the other doesn't.

If you think of Alice in Wonderland there's that whole thing of taking a porpoise when you go on a journey because

if you tell someone you're going on a journey they will ask "with what porpoise?"

though I've always pronounced the oi

It was a while (I mean, literally years) before I realised "one and done" was intended to rhyme.

And did you know that, if it gets damaged, a tortoise's shell will bleed. Found this out when I had two males who would fight and bash each others shells. The outer shell also has nerve endings, so any injuries could be painful.

This is my boy if anyone's interested. He's the one that got bullied.

It was a while (I mean, literally years) before I realised "one and done" was intended to rhyme.

Wait...what??!

Are they?
Won and done rhyme to me.

One rhymes with scone (which opens another can of worms!).

Won and one are the same sound...

@youngestisapsycho

Won and one are the same sound...

Not to me! Won - sounds like wun One - sounds like w-on (it's difficult to write how you pronounce something- but like pronouncing the w of 'wait' and then adding on to it

Just here for the pronunciation debate! One and done don't rhyme when I say it! One rhymes with con.

I'm with you, @DropYourSword!

@Sausagedogsarethebest how old is he and which species (Hermann's?) Did you have them both from eggs and, if so, when did you realise they were both males?

It must depend where you come from then

To me, one and won are the same and both rhyme with done.

My dad does speech therapy following a small stroke. One of the t gue twisters is

One-one was a racehorse
Two-two was one too
When one-one won one race
Two-two won one too

The whole point is that one and won are the same, as are two and too of course.

Tongue twisters!

Wait til you hear about Orcas...

🤣🤣

I say tor-toise (Scottish) and I saw a TikTok on this subject. It seems like more people in the south of England say tor-tiss while the other pronunciation is more northern. Although tor-tiss sounds less odd to my ear than people who pronounce forehead like "forrid"