Posted on 04/14/2014 6:30:39 PM PDT by servo1969
RUSH: I understand, ladies and gentlemen, that my occasional usage of the word "concomitant" and "concomitantly" is irritating Freepers at FreeRepublic.com. "Yes, and if I hear that word and his pronunciation one more time, I will scream!" I guess some prefer "con-com-i-TANT-ly." At any rate, I was watching a show, a BBC show -- a fascinating show, by the way. I hope it's made available in America. It's from the BBC, about Kim Philby. It's a two-parter. I think it's an hour and 45 minutes each, whatever. It's an hour, hour and a half, maybe it's two hours.
So there are two episodes of a historian/documentarian named Ben Macintyre telling the story of Kim Philby. He was a Soviet spy in the UK who got away with it for quite a few years. It's a fascinating story. It occurred informant fifties, sixties, all the way in the eighties. Hhe died sometime in the eighties, but listening to Ben Macintyre narrate this thing, he pronounced some words in ways I have never heard them pronounced. I had to rewind one thing three or four times to hear it, 'cause dovetailed with what the captioning said.
We pronounce the word "controversy." He said it "con-TRO-ve-see," as in the "controversy that Philby found himself in the midst of..." I said, "Wait. What is that?" It's just like in the old NBC days. I'm talking about the David Sarnoff days. When you wanted to try out to be a staff announcer at NBC, they gave you a pronunciation test, and if they gave you the word c-o-n-s-u-m-m-a-t-e, most people pronounce that "consummate." Ah, ah, ah! If you were taking the old NBC staff announcer test, if you didn't pronounce it "con-SUM-it," you failed. "Con-SUM-it" was the way it was pronounced then.
"Con-TRO-ve-see " is the way the Brits, apparently some of them, pronounce "controversy." There's "ad-VERT-tis-ment," and "advert" is the British word for commercial or spot. The British say everything wrong, but now people are all over me for "concomitantly" and the way I'm pronouncing it. They want "con-com-i-TANT-ly." That's the way some people want me to pronounce it. Screw all of you! You know what the word is. The thing is, when I started using it, everybody here thought I had made up a word. You Freepers at least know it's a word. (laughing) Now the staff's saying, "Gee, thanks, for making us look like idiots."
I'm just joking here, but the Freepers are really upset here, apparently, by the way I'm pronouncing it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: If you can, go back, find an old dictionary, and look up the original pronunciation the word "espionage." It used to be "es-PI-on-age." Henry Cabot Lodge even once pronounced it that way, "es-PI-on-age," to go along with "con-com-i-TANT." Is that better, folks? "con-com-i-TANT-ly"?
But then again the Brits call a car hood a bonnet and a screwdriver a spanner...
Exactly..!
Rush is indirectly TELLING us he sometimes drops in —huuugely flattering.
I can’t believe some folks here are not seeing what this really is...
I say ‘con COM i tant’ -
A spanner is a wrench, at least amongst the Brits I’ve worked with.
why, thanks, Rush !
I was there but stepped out and missed the whole thing LOL.
Wrench. Meant to write wrench.
Hey Rush, I know you were tweaking us today by pronouncing sniper with a short i.
My dad used to mess around with the renunciation of words too. Made my mom furious.
“Don’t DO that” she’d say. “People won’t know your kidding and think you’re stupid”.
I thought America closed its borders to white, English speaking Europeans decades ago?
Bloody technicians! Using my spanners to stir their tea!
No, if Rush wants pronunciation torture he just needs to listen to Jesse a.k.a. Bpearthwatch slaughter easy words like “mercury”.
Jesse pronounces it as “ murr curr ee”
In a half asleep stoner voice.
Apologies in advance for any horrific damage incurred from listening to Jesse slaughter language and reason...
Hey, I do that with a couple of words also.
Hey, I say Sangwich instead of sandwich.
It’s just a colloquial variant.
LOL!
My husband does that all the time. I tell him that he is going to embarrass the hell out of himself some day when someone thinks he is serious. And I will pretend I do not know him when that happens. Promise.
Fraggle!
Here you go.
Chic - Le Freak (Freak Out) (Lyrics) - YouTube
-PJ
I once had an Englishman ask me, “Why do you Yanks say ‘vítamin’ instead of ‘vitamin’?” I responded, “Why do you Brits say, “vítal’ instead of ‘vital’?” He turned red and shut up. ;-)
I’ve also heard the word said ‘con-co-MIT-ant-ly’ but never _TANT-ly.
Maybe it’s just his pre-Broadcast school Midwest dialect leaking through, but Rush tends to overuse & over-enunciate words like “abSSurd”, “abject” and other AB- words; don’t know why it bothers me, but it does ;). I suppose he’s just falling back on comfortable old terms…
Not as irritating, however, as the increased pronunciation of FOOD like ‘feud’, or the “Vocal Fry” speech pattern becoming more prominent even among men…
“The grammar police on this site are out of control!”
Hey! Watch it! ;-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.