Linguistics!

[reebty]

I used to fall victim to Recency in regards to music when I was a kid. Losing My Religion must be REM's first release, right? Am I to believe that this "Chronic Town" EP's alleged release when I was three could have snuck past me?

[milesofsparks]

what is the deal with sherbet?  I grew up saying sherbert, and most everyone I know (with one notable exception) says it that way, but every dictionary I look in says the only acceptable pronunciation is sherbet.  is it a regionalism?

[ellaguru]

Lotsa people on the west coast when I was growing up called it sherbert. I think it might be just a "Febyoowary"/"nukular" kinda thing.

[coldforge]

I think I was first alerted to the fact that my pronunciation, being the only one I'd ever heard, was nonstandard by British TV. The OAD (mac dictionary) offers a surprisingly strongly worded ruling:

USAGE The tendency to insert an : r into the second syllable of sherbet is very common. Frequency of misuse has not changed the fact that the spelling sherbert and the pronunciation are wrong and should not be considered acceptable variants.

[milesofsparks]

I don't know if the word just doesn't come up much, but I, too, never heard it pronounced the 'correct' way until my big city friend moved to the boonies of Alaska and started saying it all funny. I had never heard anyone say it without the second R before that.  and even now, many, many well-educated acquaintances (who would never mispronounce nuclear) are shocked to find out the dictionary says they're saying it wrong.  is it only Americans that want another R in there?

[Good Intentions]

No, I remember as a kid in South Africa hearing (and saying) 'sherbert' all of the time.

[clare]

Weird. The only time I've ever heard it as 'sherbert' was Christian Slater's cameo in the first Austin Powers, and I thought he was just being a dag and saying it wrong to be funny.

[jm]

I heard "sherbert" a lotlotlot growing up, but was set straight by my mother very early on.  But yeah, I generally count it among "nucular", "febuary", "fermiliar".

[jm]

GOSH I would like to learn some East/Southeast Asian languages, but so many are tonal and I think that's straight up beyond my ken.

(also I think I should learn something more useful to my not-living-in-East-or-Southeast-Asia ass instead)

[alex]

Yeah, I find the idea of learning a tonal language very discouraging. Even the very limited tonal properties of the Maastricht dialect goes over my head. I can usually understand what people are saying when I hear in the shop, bus, etc., but that's more because of similarity with Dutch and German, not because I've actually figured out anything about the dialect.

I'd like to learn another language. But I'm not sure I have the time, nor have I decided what I'd like to learn most. (I know what I'd like to be able to speak and read the most, and that's Hungarian, but there's NO WAY I'll actually put in the time and effort required to learn it.) French would certainly be the obvious thing to do from a practical perspective, but I'm still scarred from French lessons in school, and ultimately also just don't like the sound of the language all that much.