My mouth doesn't want to cooperate.

I know it's the big problem. Trust me, I was the one, after 10 days in the U.S., with an aching jaw from the muscles I pulled trying to pronounce stuff right. So really - I understand. The right r sound is very difficult to pronounce for English speakers, just as it's hard for me to pronounce some sounds in English correctly.

I was pronouncing your name "sheer"

When I'm tired of people asking how to pronounce my name, I tell them to go by this.

I was pronouncing Shir as "Shur" in my head

Again, something I hear a lot from the English speakers.

So apparently the silent r stands for looking around to see if anyone caught me.

The deadly, silent r.

Crap!! The system ate my post.

Alas, it was a good one.

(Goes off to mope)

OK. I searched the YouTubes, and all I could come up is with this: [link]

For the record, I hate the song. But, It's clear from it how to say my name, and it's all over the chorus. Just start from about 1:00.

Edit: also here [link] from 0:31.

Also, I needed to share this: [link]

ha. figured out how to average --which was where it was hard.

D'oh I use my bank card so I wnet through 2 months of bank statement and just pulled together the three stores we shop from. Turns out, quite pleasantly, that my grocery store estimate was too high. Eating out might not be as much fun

wow... happened again. Good thing I did me a "control/c" there first.

Third time is the charm:

Most of the Buffistas call me Katie after I mention that I picked Katerina to be a unique board name, since there was already more than one Katie around when I joined up. Nobody here has any trouble with the concept, so there’s one of the pleasures of hanging out with smart people.

I do like being called Katie Bee. It’s a pleasure every time I hear it.

I’ve been budgeting my keeping receipts together and occasionally adding everything up, but I always stop when the numbers get large and scary. I am so Not A Math Person. I can’t exist without the support of my little basic calculator to add and subtract for me. Too bad the calculator has been no help at all when I mix up things like calendar dates and flight times….

Sigh… stranded again without a ride today. It’s been difficult acclimating to being car-less on a daily basis. If I had wheels, I could pop down to The Book Shop and hang out admiring my exhibition. But no, I get to stay home again.

I have heard a lot of lame-o excuses in the past few months: it’s too far for me to drive, I’m too busy, the weather is too bad, I have to deal with something else right now, can’t it wait until tomorrow, why don’t you rent a car. And this after all the times I leaped into my car and drove to San Francisco on a moment’s notice to answer someone else’s need-of-the-day.

At least when I lived in San Francisco, the public transportation was always workable for me. Grump.

Can you give me a pronunciation example of an aspirated "t"? I'd have described it that way, but I think I also pronounce it the same way as the ts in butter. I did have a friend who said I pronounced both ts in "little" so it's possible I just speak funny.

An unaspirated "t" pretty much sounds like a "d." Or a single rolled "r" in Spanish, Italian, or Romanian. Technically it's an alveolar tap. The aspirated "t" is formed with the tip of the tongue just behind the front teeth, the tap a little further back.

The difference between "ee-tah" and "ee-dah." From what you said about how you pronounce little and butter, I suspect it's the former.

From Wikipedia:

The voiceless stops /p t k/ are aspirated at the beginnings of words (for example tomato) and at the beginnings of word-internal stressed syllables (for example potato). They are unaspirated after /s/ (stan, span, scan) and at the ends of syllables.

Okay, maybe it's hinging on emphasis. Do you place equal emphasis on both syllables of your name? I think I've been placing the emphasis on the first syllable (EE-tah).

Yeah, the linguistic geek tag never closes.

The t's definitely aspirated--are you saying you don't aspirate it in "butter"?

There's more stress on the first syllable--it's the Spanish pronunciation which stresses the penultimate syllable of words ending in a vowel.

They are unaspirated after /s/ (stan, span, scan) and at the ends of syllables.

Yeah, see, aspirated when I say them, I think. At least, I'm sure there's a blast of breath in stan.

I'm sitting here at my desk muttering to myself. Crazy points +1.

No one ever mispronounces my name, it's just too easy. My stepdad's name however is very difficult to pronounce, and it was easy to tell if it was a telemarketer on the phone when I lived there. TCG's name is also very easy to pronounce, but his family usually uses full version of his first name instead of the shortened version, which sounds weird to me because he uses the shortened version for everything, even his voicemail at work.

And in proof that it never closes... Shir, that "r" sounds similar to a French "r," which is formed with the tip of the tongue low in the mouth and the rear high, almost touching the soft palate.

Wikipedia seems to bear me out that both are (well, can be) uvular fricatives. [link]

I would pronounce "butter" and "budder" as basically the same, yes. If we ever share meatspace again, I shall demonstrate. It's a fairly common phonetic shift in American English, I'm pretty sure.

I'm sitting here at my desk muttering to myself. Crazy points +1.

Is it your new location? I don't know, could be useful to keep New Guy guessing.

Anyway, thanks for the clarification and I shall modify my internal and external pronunciations accordingly.