The American spelling of 'favourite' or 'favour'. I don't know why, I can usually handle the changes, but for some reason that one has just started to really bug me.

Okay, I ask you Brits: do you pronounce it fay-voor and fay-voor-it?
Or is it fay-vore and fay-vore-it?
Or worse yet, is it something like fay-ver and fay-ver-it?
Or can we hope that Brits actually pronounce it like their French cousins over the channel, something like feh-vwaar and feh-vwaar-eet? :p
Or is it somewhere between the Brit and American spelling, like 'soot' instead of 'boot'?

Oh, and I assign the annoyance people get over differences in the language when they are in fact fascinating developments that reveal much about the nature of speech and language.

Hehe! Being Northern, the final option! In fact, it's fay-vret.
:p

Brits don't pronounce the 'r' in favour. :)

Ever were forced to listen to tapes for hours on end to learn the exact phonetical difference between various dialects of English? :o Fun!

Then there's American southern: fie-vrit. :p Or maybe that should 'fie-vree-it' :rolleyes:

Yes we do!

And lmp I'm not sure which of your options describes how we say it, plus as Lal pointed out it's different depending on what part of the country you're from.

*argues* Not in RP you don't. :p

Rp?

Received Pronunciation... also known as BBC English. ;)

Well, some people may not pronounce them, but I do!

I'm as pure RP as they come (I've been officially told by a linguistic-type person...very typical of someone who has been reared in a middle-class English environment with non-native-English speaking parents) and I say fay-vuh.
And fay-v'rt.

But luckily you still get different answers when you ask Brits how "they" pronounce things because different regional accents still exist.
Although they are in danger of being swamped by "telly English", aka "estuary English", or "mockney", which has already taken over most of the regional variations that once existed in southern England - and has been found as far north as Edinburgh.

So I thereby assign the ersatz monstrosity that is estuary English to Mordor.

In the American mid-west it's fayverit.

By the way, I'm sure you Brits aren't getting that southern American accent right because you say almost everything in front of your molars and you open your mouth tall by comparison. Southern Americans bite everything they say, and say anything they can be said behind the molars. And when more space is needed for a given sound, they go wide instead of tall. Try it.

Makes me wonder if socio-economics has an effect on linguistics, seeing as most southerners come from stock that was once poor and desperate (after all, they were desperate enough to leave merry England).

Ummmm...... I assign ....... um ..... weird (for me) timezones for playing werewolf. :p

You people from far away can't have all the fun, you know. :p

And...uh...I assign my weird timezones for playing Werewolf. If I haven't already. :rolleyes:

Today I shall be mostly assigning to Mordor:

• A government which came into power on the back of promises to be “whiter than white” in comparison with its predecessor and to clean up the system by which political parties are funded, which purports to do so, but then sets about in earnest seeking to circumvent the rules which it introduced by procuring million pound loans which do not require to be publicly disclosed from individuals who are then “coincidentally” offered peerages and/or whose companies are awarded numerous lucrative government contracts.
  
  
• Increasing state interference in the lives of individuals, such that we will soon only be allowed to eat, drink, smoke, hunt, speak out etc when, where and what the state tells us we can (if at all).
  
  
• The growing tendency of people to insist on their rights without acknowledging that, with those rights, also come responsibilities, such that the state then considers itself justified in bluntly interfering as described above through increasing regulation and legislation, thus restricting all of our rights, rather than (as they should be) addressing issues through targeted initiatives and education.
  
  
• Proposed legislation which allows the government to amend existing legislation and to introduce new legislation with limited parliamentary scrutiny.
  
  
• Generally, the seemingly ever encroaching power and influence of the state (often ineptly and inappropriately exercised), such that it raises in my mind the frightening spectre of a prospective police state.

Just a few things I needed to get off my chest … :rolleyes:

I assign discovering prejudices within oneself. It's saddening to discover how my subconscious makes me a hypocrite.

Then again, perhaps this belongs properly in the Shire. Without knowing one's subconscious narrow-minded nature, how can one combat it? Hmm.

Okay, I will alter this. I send to Mordor the existence of prejudices rather than their discovery.

I assign trying to teach a class that is unprepared and otherwise mentally absent. You ask questions and don't even receive the courtesy of a blank stare... rather, they stare past you, making a conscious effort to avoid eye contact. Because if the teachers catch your eye, they'll know you don't know the answer because you didn't do the reading. Because we really couldn't tell by the distinct lack of communication or even curious attention.

What's the point of being there? I could understand the desire to continue the lesson if they were at least somewhat conscious, taking notes, or appearing to care even a little that you're in front of them attempting to discuss creation myths. But what is the friggin point of talking at a bunch of students that don't care? I could have had more success teaching a concrete block.

I assign hotmail when it won't let me on the site. The 'Search web, page not found' screen gets really annoying after a while!

Also, silly rules, such as the one that demands you sign out with a teacher and then have to write in the sign out book. Apparently this is in case of a fire drill as you might have signed out with a teacher but not gone straight home. Uh, well, ever think we could have signed out in the book and not gone straight home? Hmm, thought not :rolleyes:

And just to add to SpM's post, I also assign Governments which make a big noise about how many staff they have got rid of when the truth is different. They may have got rid of lots of staff but these are the low paid, junior staff who do all the work. They have not reduced the actual work. And they have since had massive recruitment and promotion drives to the most senior levels.

And on a rather girly (and some may say more important) note, I assign when you buy things at full price and then find them in the sales just a week later!

:mad:

And to add again to SpM's post (but not perhaps in a way that he would like... ;) )

- thinking that you only had 3 more months to wait before you could eat a meal or go out drinking with friends without having to wash your hair, dry-clean and/or launder all your clothes and suffer headaches and other allergy symptoms afterwards - and then realising that it was June 2007, not June 2006, that the government was planning to ban smoking from restaurants and other public places...

Don't start me on that one ... :rolleyes:

Whoops! Now you have done it ...

I assign to Mordor politicians who grab at any opportunity to exercise their power to restrict individual liberties, wholly ignoring common sense options which accomodate all concerned.

Oh, and the fact that I only have 18 months before such social life as I currently have becomes wholly non-existant ... :(

:p

"Sorry." :D

Having to write extensively in Filipino. Yes, I know it's my native language - but I just can't. It's such a torment.

Things that remind you that summer's about to start. I don't have anything against them, but how can you enjoy them when you're still stuck in school and will remain stuck through most of summer? Then again, it was my choice, anyway, so I don't really have room to complain. :rolleyes:

You're in the top ten of 'Downers rep-wise. How can you even claim to HAVE a social life? :p

Me neither. Not the native language part- just the rest of it. :p

I assign the groundhogs being wrong. It's over six weeks now, and no end of winter in sight. Oh, and with Easter coming up, we're guaranteed a dump or two yet.

What kind of a country is it that has barren Christmases and snowy Easters?

I'll be very surprised if you know of another Filipino word other than daga.


Ground...hogs? *scratches head* No such thing here in the tropics. Therefore, they don't exist. :p

I assign the fact that no hints of summer have appeared over here.... I mean, hints of melting are everywhere (namely, the suddenly swamped streets of Winterpeg) yet summer? HA! I won't get hints of that 'till late April

*gloat gloat gloat*

:p

*gloat gloat gloat*

May not be tropics...but we've hit eighty degrees and there are flowers everywhere...

This will be one of the only times you will hear this from me, but I assign snow. It snowed a couple inches yesterday morning. It seems like a great waste. It closed the roads, but since I didn't have classes anyway, it didn't help me any. It was really just an inconvenience, because it didn't even cover all the grass. Not to mention the dead flowers.

Old Man Winter, you've had your time, now lay down and die!

Actually, I think dagas and groundhogs are probably related...

Meanwhile, I'd like to assign cellphones to Mordor- though I think they're already there. I don't have one, and I'd like to keep it that way. No ball-and-chain, internet-accessible, picture-taking, accident-causing expensive little piece of technology with too-small buttons.

Give me a rotary dial telephone weighing twenty pounds any day.

Hey, not all cellphones are built with those functions. There are some of us sensible people who know what a cellphone really is for, and stick to it.

Why am I defending cellphones? I must be a werephone.

But Punxsutawney Phil is never wrong. His website says so. :p
Now don't get me started again on this. My phone is very, very basic. None of those Internet or camera functions. And I feel much, much better having it when I go to the part of town where I work. Because my car did break down there once. And it happens to be the neighborhood that's chronically in competition for the Most Dangerous Area award. The one that it's competing with for that dubious distinction is the other place I get sent all the time.

I'll happily reassign rude cell phone users.

:D Of Dr. Sigmund's actually. In about 14 months...

I couldn't be more southern and I tend to agree... but with the French I would go for Fah-voor and pray-fer-ray!

But the american pronunciation that makes me laugh is saying route as we say rout. I remember being told when I was trying to get in to the centre of Chigago from the youth hostel that the "bus had been re-routed because it was Labour day". It took a moment to realise that this wasn't some kind of historical reenactment...

Mithalwen, honey, if you were in America then it was Labor Day. Gee...get it right...;)

Y'all pronounce everything weird over there. We make sense.

The Brit-speak that makes me giggle is "Aluminium" rather than simply "Aluminum"

Do I detect that you are a smoker...? :smokin: Careful, such behaviour will have you arrested by the thought police these days, along with drinking anything stronger than tap water (which also must be filtered), eating anything which is not muesli and thinking about using a car... I think using the Internet 'to excess' will be next on the hitlist of deviant behaviour. :rolleyes:

Oh come on you two, do cheer up. What about extended drinking hours?

Not to mention being a father of young children. That's rather the point. The pitiful social life that I have at present is rather preciousss to me, and I resent having it taken away from me. :(

That's not the half of it. I am a smoker who likes the odd drink, eats the wrong kind of food and enjoys driving. That just about makes me public enemy number one. Luckily, I don't hunt. Otherwise I would have been quietly taken away in the middle of the night by now ... :rolleyes:

Surely there are more important things to legislate about? So I assign the misplaced priorities of governments and politicians generally to Mordor.

Cars! I send cars and their various malfunctions to Mordor. This the fourth time my plans have been shot to pieces by cars that don't work. And this time is the mechanics' fault!

When you bring a car in for part replacements and it comes out with the alignment off, that's one annoyance. But when you bring it back in to get it to drive straight, it shouldn't come out even more crooked with screwed up brakes!

And you can't blame your professor for being uncomfortable with the idea of driving, with a student, three hours to an event on unfamiliar roads at night with a car that doesn't stop and veers to the right.

And these were really good plans. :(

Jenny, sweetie ... may I remind you that the name of the language is English, and we had be using long before Mr Webster started omitting letters in a inconsistent fashion. I refuse to start spelling even worse than usual to pacify the natives - it was bad enough to be forced by necessity to ask for the bathroom in places where patently I would have no desire to have a bath... :p

Agreed Mith! It was said on some TV programme we watch and it took us a good minute or so to work out what the guy had meant!

Oh yes Jenny, we're the weird ones :rolleyes:


I assign nice teachers going away because they're ill :( The woman who pulled my mark up by an entire grade last year won't be teaching us again this year, I'm worried!

Oh you can blame me partly for those - I spent all last summer working on Licence (and that is Licence with 2 'c's Miss Hallu :D) applications. It was quite fun being villified by the Daily Mail on an almost daily basis :rolleyes: .

Oh, I wasn't assigning them to Mordor, Mith, au contraire.


I just wish they'd extended them a few years ago when I had the time and energy to enjoy them.
But well done, anyway. :cool: