Aha! X-post with Sue!

boatswain = bosn

This sounds like bo as in tae bo, and then the S-N is just two consonants smashed together, where the S sounds more like a Z than an S. Bo-zn.

Okay, you will never actually use this word outside of historical novels about the navy, but it is a neat word nonetheless.

I love it. Almost as much as I love the English penchant for inserting an invisible F into "lieutenant". It is so very Greek-sounding and counterintuitive.

Heh. I've reached the point where I use the English pronunciation for my fictional characters of that rank, but the American one for my nephew in the National Guard. It's just so fun to say. Lef-tenant, lef-tenant, lef-tenant.

Potawatomi is almost as fun to say as Titicaca.

NOTHING is more fun than saying "Titicaca."

There are the Illinois towns of Cairo and Marseilles. Out-of-staters can always be spotted by how they say these two--not pronounced like they are in Europe, of course, but "CAY-ro" and "Mar-SAILS," instead.

(I can say it--Squim, FWIW--I just can't ever remember how to spell it unless I think "see-quim", which, err, is actually kinda vulgar, now that I think about it.)

Heh. Now I'll think of it that way, and giggle like a 12-year-old. Before I'd just thought, "sequin with an M."

Alabama is short on pronunciation traps. Sylacauga is the only one I can think of off the top of my head. We have lots of long N.A. place names, but most of them have intuitive pronunciations--nothing tricky about Tuscaloosa or Tallapoosa.

I know!

Gold star for Sue.

The 'weskit' thing isn't snotty. Is it just an older pronunciation? I know people with titles who happily say waistcoat.

I first learned the mysterious pronunciation of 'colonel' whilst playing Cluedo as a kid. And then took great joy in mocking all the kids who pronounced it wrongly when I played with them. Good times.

Okay, you will never actually use this word outside of historical novels about the navy, but it is a neat word nonetheless.

You must not have any family what works on ships, else you'd hear it lots.

Heh. Now I'll think of it that way, and giggle like a 12-year-old. Before I'd just thought, "sequin with an M."

I'd never actually thought of it that way (the vulgar way--see quim was PERFECTLY INNOCENT in my head) until, literally, when I typed it upthread. Now I can't stop giggling at it.

Ah, yes, pizzicato. "Ow. Ow. Ow. Okay, boring, and also, ow!"

I still distinctly remember this thing--good Lord, I think I even remember the name, it was "Festique"--that I played in middle school where the violas repeated the same measure something like fifty-seven times. I can still hum it, fourteen years later.

I think you misspelled "The Nutcracker Suite".

Signed,
Wants to Commit Bloody Murder Every Christmas

what pronunciation bugs me? Film with two syllables. Fill-um. It's just wrong.