More about Yeosemite

[micky]

Yosumight.

Someone wrote that actually that pronounced name dates back to the early

1940's when the last of the Dixie Class Destroyer Tenders were built. The last of the 5 ships was the USS Yosemite AD-19. The commissioning crew used that pronunciation as a joke and it stuck. I myself was stationed on the USS Dixie AD-14.

So after trump mispronounced it, they probably assigned 3 people to find some basis for his mistake, and if they came across this, they'd claim trump had known about it and was honoring the crew of the destroyer for saying it that way .

[A noiseless patient Spider]

Lots of words are not pronounced like they are spelled.  Only a moron would be amused by such silliness.

[T]

Trump can be forgiven for mispronouncing Yosemite. He is from New York. He had trouble pronouncing HUGE, which he pronounces YUGE. At least he pronounces Nevada correctly.

It is somewhat amusing that a lot of people do not realize what the word Yosemite means:

Those who kill

It was the original tribe's name for the US soldiers that came and murdered virtually all of them. Not our finest hour.

Folks say the word Yosemite and think beautiful national park, but do not realize the word was not the original name for the area, but for the murders that cleared out the park of the original inhabitants who were completely defenseless.

Those same ass holes that did that tried it on the Apache a bit later and got their asses righteously handed to them. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of guys.

[T]

A lot of words are also not pronounced the way they are spelled. This is because we borrow from so many other languages and why English is so hard to pick up as a second language.

Remember this rule from Publik Skool:

"I" before "E" unless it is the word "received" or the word you are trying to spell?

This is because IE and EI are pronounced in reverse in German and other language we borrow from.

But, what the heck, I believe Mark Twain hit the nail on the head:

“Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.” -- Mark Twain

[Ralph Mowery]

American English has many words that are pronounced the same but spelled differently and other words that are spelled differently but pronounced the same. Then it can depend on the part of the country you are in as to how to say the same word.

Where I worked there was an engineer that came from Germany. We had trouble understanding what he wanted. He said he spoke perfect English. One fellow told him he may speak perfect English, but needed to speak Southern. For example he said he wanted a torch so the mechanics drug some acelean and oxygen bottles and accessories up to him. Turned out he relly wanted a flashlight.

I never learned to spell very well. Had it in my head that if I got a very good job the secetary could take care of all the small stuff and if not much of a job, I would not be doing any writing. Now we have spell checkers and they sometimes use the wrong word or spelling.

I have seen many examples where if you get most of the letters right anyone with an IQ that I want to deal with can understand it.

Here is a good example of technobable.

[T]

Chuckle. Torch is Brit for flashlight. And Germans learn Oxford English.

Here is a couple of good ones.

Pants: American: trousers Brit: underwear

Pissed: American: angry Brit: drunk

Wazoo American: abundance Brit: they are complete baffled

I have yet to get a Brit to confirm for me if "pissed off" mean you are sober. :-)

[rbowman]

That's why I really like German. The compound nouns can be clunky but there are no surprises.

I was curious about Yosemite. I never thought about it but it doesn't work in Spanish. Supposedly it's a pejorative Miwok term for Paiutes up the line of Navajo which supposedly was derived from the Hopi word for 'head bashers'.

[rbowman]

That's what happens when you learn English from the English.

My brother couldn't spell or type but he never needed to. He didn't know squat about computers either. That's what secretaries and young engineers are for. When he started out it was all slide rules and by the time the technology changed he was too high up the food chain to be bothered.

His wife sussed out computers enough to find recipes on the internet.

[rbowman]

I expect what I learned is formal Hochdeutsch circa 1929. In high school we used 'Emil and the Detectives' which was a 1929 kids' book. College German was more about reading German technical papers before the Germans stopped writing technical papers in German.

These days, I mostly cope with Schwedenkrimi. Germans love the stuff and unlike 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' many of the Swedish crime novelists get translated to German before they make it to English, if ever.

[rbowman]

The story I read it was the Paiutes that were doing the killing and the Miwoks the killees. The indigenous peoples were peaceful, nature loving folks. Don't forget it.

One of the local features is Hellgate Canyon. That name came from the French trappers who found all the dead Nez Perce that had wandered into the Blackfeet's favorite ambush site on their way to the buffalo supply.

[T]

It is the politicians that come to our state and tell us that Nev-odd-da is their favorite state.

[invalid unparseable]

They still do, particularly with chemistry.

[rbowman]

Not surprising. One of my chemistry classes was taught by Herr Doktor Bernhard Wunderlich and he was more comfortable in German. His specialty was high pressure crystalline lattices and I'm not sure I would have understood it much better in English.

[rbowman]

Ne VAD ah works for me although just where the V hangs out is moot. For me it sort of bridges the two syllables.

[invalid unparseable]

That’s not accurate, it also means casual trousers in british english.

Also means angry in british english.

[T]

Chuckle! You can't get any more casual than walking around in your underwear!

Here are more of them:

15 American English Words that British People Don't Understand College and university are good ones.

[T]

Interesting, all the native Spanish speakers I come across pronounce it correctly

[gfretwell]

My high school science teacher was German but we went along with his story that he was really Swiss and that scar on his cheek was a bike accident ;-)

The Chemistry teacher was a retired US treasury chemist who worked during prohibition. He had lots of stories about that. He did tune up my moonshining skills tho, a skill I still have but seldom use.

[Cindy Hamilton]

My high school chemistry teacher was Polish. She was in the Resistance during WWII.

Unsurprisingly, she didn't put up with any bullshit from the students.

Cindy Hamilton

[gfretwell]

That was an interesting thing about going to school in the 50s and early 60s. There were quite a few teachers who were around in the Depression or WWII. They could put a little different spin on things. Our main high school math teacher was a West Point instructor during WWII. He did Geometry and Algebra. There was another guy who did general math and trig. He was a grad student at Georgetown picking up a few extra bucks. I always thought that was a strange mix tho.