to want to flick people in the forehead when they...

[LadyOfTheManor]

pronounce Pavlova as Pav-a-lova. Really winds me up. How dare they?

RRocks Can I ask how it is possible to saw 'law' without saying 'lor'?

I am still confused about calm too.

I am from the south and that is my accent, presumably I shouldn't have to put on another accent so people whose accent is different are not offended by mine?

I don't get the law thing either. Never heard it pronounced any other way than lor, by which I mean rhyming with saw, awe, jaw etc.

I have a 'lor' degree too so it has been a much used word in my vocabularly.

I can't see how to say calm except as carm either unless you happen to be Australian - don't they say 'cam'?

DH grandpa used to say ap-ricot instead of ai-pricot and he started doing it too but i soon flicked it out of him or is it flicked him out of it?

I hate the way everyone is always devastated about everything.'I went to the shop. It was closed and I was devastated'. It's also used too much in the media.

My mum says chimley for chimney. I was about 25 before I found out I was saying it wrong. My sister still says chimley. Arrrgh!

I think it's not so much the word law (lor) on its own, so much as when it's put in front of something beginning with a vowel; e.g Law Association, when it becomes Lor Association. Like Droring, instead of Drawing.

IYSWIM.

(That's just my take on it, anyway).

Oh, except if you say lor, how do you then distinguish between law and lore?

law and lore sound the same - don't they?

Mmm, not quite, I think. Law is a slightly shorter sound and kind of snappier.

Bah. It's so difficult to describe sounds!

My DH is a right one for pronouncing things wrong - we have hypochondriact and loads of the others mentioned above - which drives me batty

However, my biggest bug bear with him at the moment is the way he says phrases wrong. Like 'a pain in the proverbial butt'. Nooooo, it's one or the other! He also, just to wind me up, will talk about the TV programmes 'John Judge Deed' (Judge John Deed) and 'Big People, Little World' (Little People, Big World)

I have tried flicking it out of him but it just makes him worse.

Law and lore sound entirely different to me. Law is 'loh' (rhymes with paw, although you might say that differently too) and lore ryhmes with snore. It's just your funny accent that makes them sound the same when you say them.

I saw "The King's Speech" at the weekend and in it the Duchess of York says something like: "It's Ma'm as in ham and not in palm."
Same thing to me.

Heard 'lickle' for 'little' the other night. Successfully resisted urge to flick forehead, it was hard though!

What's worse is when they say 'ickle just to be cutesy - yuk!

'so' fun makes me want to commit seppuku

it's 'such,such such...'

RRocks are you Scottish? The scottish accent doesn't have the ham/palm difference. If you were / are English you would pronounce it ham (like you do I suspect) and palm so the 'a' is like the 'a' in 'arm'

OK, let's get a few things straight here folks...

'calm' and 'farm' rhyme for most RP people, and many other English speakers. Neither actually has an 'r' in the pronunciation for these speakers.

For Scottish people, and other rhotic accents (ones which pronounce 'r' before consonants and pauses), 'farm' and 'calm' do not rhyme, and 'farm' does have an 'r' in the pronunciation.

Try here - type in 'farm' and 'calm' for Alan (Scottish) and then for Nick1, and you can hear the difference.

Many of you who are saying that 'calm' does have an 'r' in the pronunciation because it rhymes with 'farm', and if it didn't have an 'r' it would sound like 'cam' - I think you are confusing the spelling with the pronunciation. 'calm' and 'cam' for RP speakers both have three sounds, a 'k', a vowel and 'm', and the only difference is in the vowel (same vowel as 'father' for 'calm', and same as 'hat' for 'cam'). Hope we've cleared that up!

I live in Wales...am not Welsh and was somewhat startled when a woman approached my son (11 mo) and said;

"Wow look at your tutty-pegs".

After asking about I realised this means teeth, so the Welsh have indeed advanced from "tuth" to "tutty peg". That't just marvellous

I'm so Scottish that the explanations of different pronounciations of 'a' in English English mean nothing at all to me. Used to find it very confusing when dictionaries gave pronounciations involving 'a', but I've learned to ignore them.

I have heard of teethy-pegs/toothy-pegs which would shorten to toosy-pegs at times but never tutty-pegs! My mothers family where i originally heard it were from ooop north!

Pacific instead of specific is definitely the worst :)

my FIL always says pacific. My dh always corrects him!

RRocks, my DD Is Scottish but I am not and I am constantly told off for the way I pronounce pretty much everything! :)

There's a girl at work that says 'arkse' instead of ask and it drives me round the bend. Terrible, eh? :)

Do you flick her in the forehead every time she does it?

I've come to the conclusion that we should do this, and prevent them from making mistakes in the future?

I work with young people in sexual health, and all.the.time they ask for comdoms.IT'S CONDOMS! CON-DOM! With an N. FFS.

It's very difficult to tell whether some of these differences is down to dialect rather than error on the part of the individual. (Not 'comdom', of course.) I wonder whether 'arske' might be an old dialect pronounciation?

The thought has crossed my mind on several occasions for several different reasons however I would probably find myself unemployed.

And then I would really be "given into trouble" as my DD would say :)

RRocks it might be but as it sometimes finds itself in the same conversation as pacific, I doubt it.