If you care to, can you check your Google Maps and see what Gulf of Mexico brings up for you, especially if you are in the Americas. Here is what I see in Australia. Place name changing is a bit topical in North America at the moment. If it is hard to see, my view says Gulf of Mexico and in brackets, Gulf of America.
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The first limerick I think I heard was by my father, 'The boy stood on the burning deck, his pocket full of crackers...", you know how it goes.
The next I can remember was in a book I was reading, "Doctor Foster went to Gloucester in a shower of rain. He stepped into a puddle, right up to his muddle, and never went there again". This puzzled the very young me for two reasons. I must have known by the then how limericks should be constructed, and Foster could not possibly rhyme with Gloucester, which of course it does. The second issue being muddle, clearly meaning middle. Was muddle ever an alternative word for middle? Now online, I see the word middle is used, which makes it wrong as a limerick. I suppose you could say, 'He stepped into cow piddle, right up to his middle'.
I had to look this one up as I had forgotten the main verse. This is also my father's quoted version.
"Not last night but the night before,
Three little monkeys came knocking at my door.
One had a fiddle, one had a drum,
And one had a pancake stuck to it's ???
Don't be mistaken, don't be misled,
One had a pancake stuck on it's head.".
I assume everyone who knows this verse also knows this version? Maybe that was my first introduction to word play.
I'm sure I could do much better than this off the cuff limerick, but;
There is a cat we know as Jass,
who could behave like a bit of an ass.
While she seems rather gruff,
she is not really that tough,
in fact she is just a bit sass.
Yesterday's post was updated with a photo of Jass in her cat house.
Young people will not hesitate over whether to use who or whom, and in my opinion it is good thing that they probably just use who.
I didn't get a great lotta learnin' about grammar, but I've kinda picked it up along the way. Don't end a sentence with it, which I frequently do. Probably don't end a sentence with 'do' either, which I just did. Don't end a sentence with did...etc.
At times a suspicion comes to me that the word I am typing should be whom and not who. EG; Who did you go with, or, with whom did you go. If spoken, the latter sounds pompous because of the rephrasing. Who did you go with, is a perfectly clear question.
Understanding the rules of object and subject about who and whom are beyond me. I've read them but I can't absorb them.
I believe among my senior readers are some excellent grammarians, so can any of you simplify when who or whom should be used?
Or, should I just see whom as legalese and forget about ever using whom?
Speaking of words, I heard or read in media somewhere whereby someone referred to a forty oneth birthday. I must have heard the word, because if I read it, I would know how to spell oneth, and I don't.
This doesn't feel quite finished but I wrote it some time ago, and I don't want a backlog of unfinished posts.
At times I hear a song I like coming through the car's sound system being played by Phyllis' phone. I don't really expect most of you to like the music.
My first discovery, and I am repeating a previous post, was Dua Lipa. I'd never heard of her until I heard Phyllis play her music. I love hearing Phyllis singing along when he is in the shower.
Always learning, as I composed this post I came across a Japanese word that is often used to describe sex or rather lack of between married Japanese couples. Yep, I feel rather mendokusai about 'the biz'.
It was a tragic case a couple of years ago when a man who was losing access to his children after a marital sepa took his infant on to a very high bridge and threw her over the edge, with very unhappy ended. He was convicted and gaoled but it was recently in the news again as the criminal had been assaulted in prison.
The point of mentioning it is that the tv reporter said the crime happened at 9.15am in peak hour traffic on the West Gate Bridge. No, while the time can be argued about peak hour, but it certainly not after 9.00am. Why do we call in a one hour when it generally accepted as being two. 7.00 to 9.00, but that depends a little on the area where you are.
It could be said that the evening 'peak hour' is from 3.00pm to 7.00pm from school pickup time at 3.00 onwards. I think in America it is called the rush hour, although if like the traffic here, in peak travel times you won't be rushing anywhere. The roads nearby in red as I write this post are stationary traffic.
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Happy hour at pubs and bars where priced drink are reduced in price and can be for anything up to five hours, and rarely one hour.
A place I patronise at least once a fortnight has a happy hour, and believe me, 6pm is the cut off time, and not a minute later.
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Funny, not funny. An Australian Rules footballer has been suspended for nine matches and fined after it was found he offended for a second time by calling an opponent a faggot. His defence was that he called the player a maggot, not a faggot. There is some history to football and maggot. Umpires used to dress in white and might be called a white maggot or just maggot when someone didn't agree with their umpiring decision. Lance Collard was not believed and suitably punished. Photo from The Guardian Australia.
When governments, or even private developers, used to talk about the cost of projects, they once, and it seems like just a few years ago, spoke of millions of dollars or hundreds of million dollars. Nowadays such projects are spoken of in billions of dollars, and I think we are now conditioned to hearing billions of dollars and no long gasp for air in shock.
But what is a billion dollars? Billions was an unimaginable amount to me as a child and teeenager. Apart from the obvious that it was a massive amount of money back then, the definition changed.
When I was young, a billion dollars was a million million dollars. Unknown to me, Australia changed to the US billion dollar definition, a thousand million dollars. I think I discovered that in the eighties. The world followed the new definition but there wasn't a date announced for the change. It was a slow dawning.
I can't put a photo of a billion dollars laid out with notes, more is the pity if it was mine, but can I write one billion dollars in numerals (I just amused myself by accidently typing numberals).
One million is $1,000,000. One billion is just an extra zero? $10,000,000? No, that is ten million. One hundred million, two zeros. $100,000,000. One hundred million equals one billion. That must be correct. I is a maths genius.
What a boring post. I continue to be surprised at how long it takes to get from street level to the platforms of our new Metro Tunnel train. I had plenty of time today at Town Hall Station today after getting my hair cut, with an un asked for eyebrow trim, but after holding a lift for a woman, her two young children and their dog, and again gesticulating to her for the lift to travel to the platform from the concourse, I just missed my train, and so did they. She spoke Spanish to her children and her dog, and was carrying a crudely drawn Aboriginal flag on a piece of cardboard. Spanish speaking woman had been supporting Aboriginal rights and indoctrinating her children. I liked her. I went back to the street to what I could see. With another plug for our ABC TV, and the government of NSW, what a terrific music concert from Sydney Harbour, as I am about to hit publish.
The pro white Australia march had broken up earlier as I observed in Elizabeth Street, carrying their flags wrapped around their sticks, trying to hide their symbols of white power. I stared into a number of eyes, in a stupid attempt to get understanding. They all had dead and unseeing eyes, staring straight ahead.
With another plug for our ABC TV, and the government of NSW, what a terrific music concert from Sydney Harbour, as I am about to hit publish.
Today I must go out in 43/110 degree heat for a medical appointment. The obvious is to catch a a tram, but there is no guarantee of one with aircon. I will drive, after calling reception to get the car park access code.
I am still working on my next Sydney post.
Ray arrived in Australia in 1970, just at an age when he would not be called up for war service in Australia. He made the acquaintance of one Jock McGregor, whose Scottish accent was so broad and thick, he was unintelligible to me, and almost everyone else.
Ray also met Agnes Peaston when he arrived Melbourne, and Agnes went on to be our friend. She lived in Punt Road, Richmond and when we helped her move to her first Australian property she owned in Anzac Street, Murrumbeena, we realised she was a terrible hoarder, with trees of books stacked next to her toilet. Agnes, older than us, had certainly lived an interesting life, which I might expand on in the future, but Agnes was very well educated and spoke with what I describe as a posh Scottish accent. Her diction and voice were perfect, in spite of being a heavy smoker. Yet she still had strong Scottish accent. Is there such a thing as a posh Scottish accent? A genuine question.
That would be my favourite accent in the world. What is yours?
I am not making my splendiferous return to the world of blog. I just want to write a little rant, after hearing weirdness on one of our commercial tv news bulletin. I call it the car crash news, and there was ripper tonight whereby many cars were damaged and the driver of an unmarked police car accidently gave the miscreant a bump with the police car, with him receiving multiple bone fractures, and he is under police guard in hospital.
The incident was also covered by the 7pm ABC TV News, somewhat less sensationally than the Channel 7 news.
Then came the pre ad promotion for a following story by Channel 7 newsreader, Peter Mitchell.
How to reduce your risk of dying by 40%!
The 40% odds for perpetual life is quite good. The detail was made clear in the story. I calmed down, until this...
Reduce your mortality by 25%.
In spite of my poor lifestyle choices, isn't that something for me to grasp at too?
PS For those who follow Elephant Child's blog, I am sure we are all wishing her well as she recovers from serious surgery. I think she is the most caring person I've come across on the internet, and that is quite a statement. Be well, EC.
Have you noticed comments on your blog written by AI? Or have you recognised AI writing?
Melody Jacob is one such person but I can't get my head around her purpose. While her blog has advertising, it does seem like a personal blog. I am sure the comments she sprinkles around on blogs are AI written, and perhaps her posts are too.
Those of you who are quite literate can probably pick AI writing...at the moment. It will get better, until we won't know the difference between what the human brain writes and what AI writes, and it won't take very long for this to happen.
Evan Edinger is a very accomplished YouTuber. I am not so keen on his rapid fire delivery but it is clear he puts a lot of work into his clips. He's from New Joisy (😉@Boud) Jersey but has lived in England for many years.
I would not normally watch a fifteen minute clip about something like AI, but this was well worth my while, and it may be for you too to get a better understanding of AI writing.
l found this interesting and surprising as I headed down a rabbit hole. Although Australia is more inclined to British English, it is changing.
Great Niece: Auntie Andrew, I've pressed the button for the elevator.
Me: It's called a lift here in Australia, dear child.
Great Niece: The elevator is here.
I felt like a bag of wheat being transported in the elevator.
What has surprised me is how many American pronunciations I use, and I guess most Australians do too. It is fairly quick from the list below to list the American pronunciations I use.
Adult
Basil. I don't use either pronunciation. I say it like the name, or can the name be said differently too.
Buddha
Esplanade
Evolution
Falcon, but I can remember using the English pronunciation too
Garage, but see above
Often, neither. I say orfen.
Pasta
Privacy
Stance, I go either way, actually right in the middle.
Yoghurt
My car understands the navigation order "Home', but it can't understand me giving an address to travel to. I gave up on that.
On the home front, of course I am constantly dealing with accents. Phyllis and Kosov began by respectfully speaking only their fluent but slightly quirky English in my presence, but over time, they slipped more to using their own language, which is mostly fine with me. I've only chipped them once when we were at bakery seated at an outdoor table and they weren't speaking English. Guys, it's the three of us sitting here for brunch together, English please. It is weird how they switch from their language and English, talking together in English at times, and even to their parents on the phone.
This post explores British and American pronunciation differences through the lens of AI speech recognition, offering new insight into how we speak and how machines listen.
As someone who teaches English phonetics in Singapore, I’m constantly navigating the subtle differences in pronunciation across accents. But nothing has opened my eyes to those differences quite like trying to get AI to understand them. Training language models has become a new lens, a strange and fascinating window, into how speech works, and where it breaks down. And although we take a deep dive into the research in this post, it’s important to appreciate how difficult this challenge really is—I know firsthand as a teacher.
You: “Set a timer for my next shed-jool.”
Siri: “Searching the web for… ‘shuttle?’”
From shed-jools to vitamins, even the smartest AIs struggle to keep up with how English is spoken around the world. The reason? Speech models aren’t trained on all English equally.
Speech AI now powers your Zoom meetings, call centers, captions, classrooms, and health apps. But these tools are overwhelmingly trained on standard American English and it shows. A Stanford-led study found that African-American speech had nearly double the word error rate (35%) compared to white American speech (19%). A separate global benchmark showed that accents from India, Britain, and France had up to 49% more errors compared to American-accented input.
Even OpenAI’s Whisper, one of the best available today, still performs better on U.S. English than on British or Australian. Meanwhile, platforms like Siri and Alexa have long struggled with Irish and Scottish accents, prompting users to change how they speak just to be understood.
This isn’t about funny mishearings, it’s about fairness, inclusion, education, and opportunity. When your accent isn’t recognized, your message often isn’t either.
And the systems aren’t being rude. They’re just undertrained.
Until models are exposed to a wider range of global speech, millions of users will keep getting subtly sidelined by systems that just don’t “hear” them.
Even today’s most advanced speech systems struggle to understand all accents equally well. Despite impressive improvements, multiple studies show consistent accent bias, particularly against non-American and non-standard dialects.
As mentioned above, a Stanford-led evaluation (Koenecke et al., 2020) of five major ASR systems—Google, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon, found that transcripts for African American Vernacular English had a 35% word error rate (WER), nearly double the 19% for white American speakers.
In a larger audit spanning 2,700 speakers across five continents, DiChristofano et al. (2023) found WER gaps ranging from 2–12% for non-American accents, translating to up to 49% relative error. Indian, French, and Southeast Asian-accented English were among the hardest hit.
Even among native speakers, bias persists. OpenAI’s Whisper performs far better on American English than on British or Australian varieties (Graham & Roll, 2024). UK studies show that “prestige” accents like Received Pronunciation are recognized more accurately than regional dialects (Markl, 2022).
Most speech models are trained predominantly on American data. As a result, the burden of intelligibility often falls on the speaker not the system.
Speech recognition models work by breaking down audio into phonemes and matching them against statistical patterns. But those patterns reflect the training data. And when that data skews heavily toward a single accent, everyone else is left misheard.
Certain phonetic shifts are especially tricky for ASR systems:
/æ/ becomes /ɑː/ in words like advertisement, patent, and pasta. Vowel shifts are unevenly represented across training corpora.
/aɪ/ vs. /ɪ/ in words like either, neither, and vitamin. Models often guess based on spelling alone, lacking contextual accent knowledge.
Non-rhotic /r/ drops in British English words like parliament, wrath, and version, leading to alignment errors.
/ʃ/ vs. /sk/ in schedule (shed-yool vs. sked-jool). This cluster confusion breaks decoder predictions.
/ɪə/ vs. /ɛ/ in leisure and niche. American decoders often miss the glide.
T-flapping vs. T-holding in tomato and route. American English flaps the /t/; British English pronounces it clearly—confusing the ASR.
These sound mismatches often trip up models in real-world use. For instance, schedule, vitamin, and mobile are common stumbling blocks for AI depending on whether it hears British or American pronunciation.
This isn’t just theory. Users have long reported needing to “code-switch” or Americanize their speech just to be understood:
Siri and Alexa had well-documented trouble with Scottish and Irish accents.
Google Assistant often mishears British time phrases due to differences in /t/ pronunciation.
Contact center pilots have shown customer satisfaction increases when using accent-neutralizing AI layers.
Reddit users frequently report toggling between British and American spellings or pronunciations to get accurate results.
Until these solutions become standard, speech recognition remains biased. For teachers, students, and users with regional or global accents, the experience can still feel exclusionary. The irony is sharp: the AI that talks back still doesn’t always listen properly.
What confuses humans also confuses machines. Below is a table of over 50 words with distinct British and American pronunciations, many of which AI often misunderstands, especially when the user’s accent doesn’t match its assumptions.
| Word | 🇺🇸 American | 🇬🇧 British |
| Advertisement | AD-ver-tize-ment | ad-VER-tiss-ment |
| Adult | AD-ult | uh-DULT |
| Aluminium | a-LOO-min-um | al-yuh-MIN-ee-um |
| Amen | AY-men | Ah-men |
| Asia | AY-zhuh | AY-shuh |
| Bald | bold | bawld |
| Basil | BAY-suhl | BAH-suhl |
| Buddha | BOOD-uh | BUD-uh |
| Clique | clik | cleek |
| Crescent | CRES-uhnt | CREZ-uhnt |
| Data | DAY-tuh | DAH-tuh |
| Dynasty | DIE-nuh-stee | DIN-uh-stee |
| Either | ee-thur | eye-thur |
| Envelope | EN-vuh-lope | ON-vuh-lope |
| Esplanade | ES-pluh-nard | ES-pluh-nayd |
| Evolution | EH-vuh-loo-shun | EE-vuh-loo-shun |
| Expatriate | ex-SPAY-tree-ut | ex-SPAT-ri-ut |
| Falcon | FAL-kun | FOL-kun |
| Garage | guh-RAHZH | GA-ridge |
| Herb | ERB | HERB |
| Laboratory | LAB-ruh-tor-ee | luh-BOR-uh-tree |
| Leisure | LEE-zher | LEZH-uh |
| Medicine | MED-i-sin | MED-sin |
| Meter | MEE-ter | MEE-tuh |
| Mobile | MOH-buhl | MOH-bile |
| Missile | MISS-uhl | MISS-eye-ul |
| Neither | nee-thur | nigh-thur |
| Niche | nitch | neesh |
| Oregano | uh-REG-uh-no | or-uh-GAH-no |
| Often | OFF-en / OFF-tuhn | same |
| Parliament | PAR-luh-ment | PAR-li-ment |
| Pasta | PAR-stuh | PAS-tuh |
| Patent | PAT-uhnt | PAY-tuhnt |
| Patronise | PAY-truh-nize | PAT-ruh-nize |
| Privacy | PRAI-vuh-see | PRIV-uh-see |
| Produce (noun) | PROH-duce | PROD-juice |
| Progress (noun) | PROG-ress | PROH-gress |
| Project (noun) | PROJ-ect | PROH-ject |
| Route | ROWT | ROOT |
| Schedule | SKED-jool | SHED-jool |
| Scone | skohn | skon |
| Semi | SEM-eye | SEM-ee |
| Stance | stans | starns |
| Tomato | tuh-MAY-to | tuh-MAH-to |
| Vase | vays | varz |
| Vendor | VEN-door | VEN-duh |
| Version | VER-zhun | VER-shun |
| Vitamin | VAI-tuh-min | VIT-uh-min |
| Wrath | rath | roth |
| Yogurt | YOH-gurt | YOG-urt |
| Zebra | ZEE-bruh | ZEB-ruh |
I am not sure where I was going with this old post draft.
About twenty years ago while driving Mother somewhere on one of our motorways, a driver did something bad in front of me and in the presence of Mother, who had slapped me as child for saying bloody, I dropped the c word. You c***. It is not a word I normally use. I can't remember using it since. I immediately apologised to Mother, who continued on telling me about her medical woes without seemingly to notice. Nearly twenty years later, Mother was correct and her medical woes proved to be fatal, with a lot of medical woes along the way.
While I've never mixed among the lower classes in England, apparently they use the c word without abandon. The word becomes boring with overuse and loses its effectiveness. But like gay men embraced homophobic terms, so too are women embracing the c word. I recall a beggar calling me a fucking old poof. He stated the obvious. His insult was a fail.
I am never sure if is appropriate to describe a black American as being black. I think the preferred term is African American. That's fine with me. Whatever. But I laugh when I hear stories of Americans who visit England describe black English people as African Americans, even though the black English have no connection to America. In Britain, you are British, and your colour and racial heritage is not so publicly important. You are British first. The plight of disadvantaged African Americans in the US is the equivalent in Britain of the plight of the disadvantaged British.
It is a queer thing that so called African Americans, many who have been in the US for far longer than their British counterparts have been in Britain, yet they need to be distinguished as Afro Americans, and not just Americans.
Whatever, black American, black British and black Australian, they all face discrimination. It is just not so in your face in Britain and Australia, and there are programmes to promote an inclusive workplace. That has just disappeared in the US. This Afro American term is very queer. The first black slaves arrived to America in the early 1600s, yet they need to be name qualified beyond just an American by the colour of their skin. I am not naïve enough to suggest your best mate is a black person, yet here, I do see socialisation between the Indian immigrants and white Australians, through work, neighbours and of course food.
The leader of Australia's His Majesty's Opposition Party is one Peter Dutton, an extreme conservative, and he would like to do many of the things that #47 has been doing in the US. I gave some thought to a insulting adaption to his name and the best I could do is Duttrump. Yes, the wrongly named conservative Liberal Party leader is Peter Duttrump.
The longer I am a blogger with US blog mates, the more I learn but what I never expected was such difference in our common language of English. I knew the basics like tyre/tire, bonnet/hood, boot/trunk. Why are these so car focused? I can't remember the US equivalent of glove box.
From blogging, I learnt mould/mold and various other different spellings. I even learnt about Sterno stoves yesterday, and what Sterno actually is. Most interesting and I don't know why we never had the ultra safe Sterno here.
However, our grammar almost always matches, yet I've been jarred by one difference. Take a bow Steve.
I am a poor old age pensioner, so the government gives me $450 a week to support myself. This is not enough. I need to inform our Prime Minister that this is not enough. I need to write the Prime Minister, and I will have wrote the Prime Minister. Do I have that right for how it would be written in the US?
No matter, whatever is written like that just smacks me in the head like no spelling difference ever has. I will write to the Prime Minister, I will have written to the Prime Minister and I wrote to the Prime Minister.
Given how US, UK and Oceanic English grammar matches, this is one mighty big difference. Steve is an American and was a professional writer, so I am quite sure he uses correct grammar for his US readers, but isn't it remarkable that this is the only grammar difference I've noticed. Aside from my own grammatical errors. Maybe you know more?
I think the New Jersey Boud is UK or Irish born? I hope I am correct about that. But she has difficulty understanding the speech in Downton Abbey. Their accents aren't mine, but I can understand them perfectly well. The world is a strange place in so far as the English language goes.
Last night I took Phyllis and Kosov out for dinner. They shared a pizza and ate some of my chips, and souvlaki bread. The bulk of the bill was my two glasses of wine and an affogato with Scotch whisky. If you don't know, affogato is strong Australian style coffee poured over ice cream and with whisky poured over the top of that.
Kosov's English is quite good, but you may remember me mentioning the way he pronounced margarine, as marg, as in Margaret, arine. Given he has to drop his résumé into to many places to find work, I insisted on him learning how to pronounce resume. This night I've learnt the difference between resume and a CV, Australia, US and Canada are in agreement. But is does strike me as odd that we have a choice between French and Latin for a job application, and not English.
My hearing aid batteries will be changed today, as I do every Sunday, but this Saturday night, one is already warning me, baddery and not battery.
I'm not done yet. With one day of 40/104 degrees, media warned us of a heat wave. One day of extreme heat is not a heat wave. Media shot itself in the foot, as what superlative can it come up with for a real heat wave, such as today, tomorrow and the next day, 38/100, 39/102 and 36/97?
Do you know the word? I didn't.
To my shame, I've practiced malaphores in public. I wasn't arrested.
No one has ever remarked on my I think my sole malaphore that I've used on my blog more than once, it being, "And what really gets up my goat".
It is a combination of two expressions, being "What really get up my nose is...", and "What really gets on my goat is...".
Have you ever malaphored? Do you mangle our beautiful language in a deliberate manner? I do like a bit of word play.
After today's heat and stress over will writing, I am going to bed now with a bit of a migrant. I'll feel better tomorrow.
Not my strange accent but the Australian wog accent. Yes, wog and I use the word in a respectful manner as this post would be lacking without the word. You could call it an Australian Mediterranean accent. Think Greece and Italy. It is delightful and I find it rather stimulating, if you get my drift. It comes with promise of exciting times.
The accent is dying out and not heard so often now. Nowadays the newborn of immigrants speak with an Australian accent by the time they become adults. It wasn't so with the Mediterraneans. The first Australian generation developed their own accent. If you memory is first class, I did mention about hearing a school student from a lower socio economic area on a tram saying, 'And he arsed me to give him the answer'.
This clip is just a bit amusing but the performer gives a great example of the Aussie wog accent.
Australia has unfortunately picked up the American phrase, passed on, and that has religious connotations, as passed on to a better place, perhaps heaven, maybe hell, but is there anywhere for we who are at times good and at times bad?
In response to someone who uses passed, I will use the word passed, but for me the words are dead or has died. In my personal life, I have not said passed.
Passed sounds gentler, softer, less confronting. But my Ray did not pass. He died suddenly, with some pain as his guts filled with blood from his ruptured aorta. He passed nowhere. He died while unconscious from blood loss. He's gone. Completely dead.
I know I am out of step with society on this one, and if you say passed on, that is fine with me, but in my life, people have just died and they are dead.
My old blog had a about thirty unpublished posts, and this is the only unpublished post I have, written either on July eleventh or November seventh. I can't tell from 11/7/24 with Blogger inconsistent dating system.
Here is a photo for you. It isn't fake. Apparently you were given time for shopping in Vienna along the way. Would you like to take the trip? The fresh fruit in Vienna is rather good, imported from somewhere, along with apple strudel with vanilla sauce (custard).
"Darling, an omnibus to Calcutta? What fun!"
Do I need to explain what is obvious to me? Staffers monitor Metro movements at the Tallawong control centre. Why doesn't the control room just have staff, who control things? Staff sound cheaper to employ than staffers.
Station Controller Riva Shaheen, Chief Controller Daniel Merlino and Station Controller Nicole Radakovic. Australia has changed. No longer are station controllers called Mr Smith, Mr Jones and Miss White. This is good as it is a representation of modern Australia. But I would guess any Australian shareholders in the in the international company that runs Sydney Metro, are called Smith, Jones and White.
I made a comment on someone's YouTube clip. I didn't expect two kisses in the reply, Thank you Andrew xx.
Do we root or rowt?
In Australia we used to pronounce the word route as root, and I still do. But from somewhere, you guess and I'll point, the rowt pronunciation has come to the fore.
I've just said the words route as as a path on a map, and root as in a tree root and my mouth movements are different. Root v. route, it is different, disregarding rowt.
Have I breached your boredom threshold yet? I expect so.
That's so ambiguous isn't it. I am talking about about time dates and the US using a different general date system to the rest of the world.
Published on the 11/24/23 is clear but not what I am used to. If it was 09/10/23, Houston and Blogger, we have problems.
Mondegreen comes from people hearing 'laid him on the green', as 'Lady Mondegreen'.
While I know I am wrong, I still hear Macy Gray singing in her hit song I Try, 'I try to say goodbye my old chook' instead of 'I try to say goodbye and I choke'. I think this happens because of her pronunciation of choke. I simply can't unhear chook in the song line when I hear it. I don't know if the word chook is known around the world but it means a hen, of the common variety that give us eggs to eat.
I saw something this day (I've just been reminded by a television commercial that's using the song) as I write this reminded me of another of my Mondegreen moments when I was very young.
It is not,
My body lies over the ocean
My body lies over the seas,
My Bonnie lies over the ocean
My Bonnie lies over the sea.
My extensive one minute research indicates a capital B for Bonnie, so she is not a bonnie (good and nice looking) lass but her name is Bonnie.
I'm sure I have other Mondegreens, but what are yours?
This seems to a modern image of a bonnie lass. (I can't find who created this image)
A motorist yelled at me today. I was crossing a street illegally against a flashing red man. However, it should have been quite safe to do so as turns from the cross street are banned, with flashing no left turn and no right turn lights. I hesitated as I was half way across as from the corner of my eye I saw a threat. A car was illegally turning right. I turned around to him and held the palm of my hand upright, to suggest what was he doing? The left hand passenger window came down and I received a mouthful of abuse.
It's funny how people react when they are challenged over something they are doing wrong. They abuse the accuser when the person himself or herself have done the wrong thing. My illegal crossing inconvenienced no one and was quite safe. He had traffic banked up behind him as he waited to make the illegal turn.
Does abusing an accuser mean anything to you? It can often be political tactic.
As has happened around the world, Australia is dangerously close to a swing to the extremist far right, with our political party One Nation....
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