Baby please don't go!

Posted by Smokey Stover on December 15, 2003

In Reply to: Baby please don't go! posted by MichaelFr on December 13, 2003

: : : : : : : : : : : : : : how to pronoun ANNETTE

: : : : : : : : : : : : : Not sure where you're from, but if you leave off the last 'e', that's exactly how you pronounce it - ie. "Annett". It's a french thing - do you agree MichaelFR?

: : : : : : : : : : : : : I'd also venture to add that the question you should have asked was 'how do you "pronounce" Annette'. You omitted the 'ce' on the end of 'pronounce'. But that also could have been a typo? Where do you come from, what is your native language?

: : : : : : : : : : : : If we accept that the intended word was 'ANNETTE' and that the question was "what is the impersonal pronoun?" - as in snow and snowing - then I have to say I don't know of one. It would be bizarre to ask how to pronounce Annette but I'll try; 'a - net' There, that's my best shot.

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: : : : : : : : : : : Good thought Harold. Didn't consider the pronoun angle. OK, well now I'm confused. Deepi, what exactly are you asking here?

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: : : : : : : : : : How do you pronoun a net?

: : : : : : : : : : Do me a favour guvnor...

: : : : : : : : : : "Annette" is an elongated Gallic diminuative 'Ann' - could have used 4 letters "A-net", but oh no - had to use 7. Entirely typical of those inefficient latin types used to wasting European budgetary resources. If they had been 'prudent' in their spelling, Gordon Brown could have saved them enough letters to write "WMD", which his ami Tony (see - saved 2 or 3 letters from "Antony"/"Anthony") would like to have found.

: : : : : : : : : : If the French were not so wasteful, we'd have found WMD by now.

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: : : : : : : : : Oh Lewis you crack me up. It's because the French are so wasteful (read poetic) that they probably score more often than the rest of the Western world (or supposedly anyway). Where's the romance in WMD????

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: : : : : : : : How to pronounce Annette: if the woman named is Anglo, pronounced "a - NET", last syllable stressed, first syllable a short A as in "hat"; if Annette is French, it's "ah - NET", same stress on last syllable, but the first syllable is a more open A, and shorter, the "ah" said quickly.

: : : : : : : : Good luck, deepi!

: : : : : : : Could the answer be 'she'? Annette is a female name so it would use the feminine pronoun, 'she'. I find non-native English speakers often have trouble with the gender of pronouns because it isn't always clear whether the name referred to is masculine or feminine.

: : : : : : : Camelita

: : : : : : A lady by the name of Annette Curtin lives in my neighbourhood. And a friend of a friend has decided not to take her fiance's name after marriage because she'd be Jacqueline Hyde. And then there's the top Irish judge of pedegree cattle. His name is Willie Stroker.

: : : : : An ex of mine said she went to school with a Francesca 'Fanny' Wiper. I knew of Richard Scratcher. I don't think the American adult film-maker Seymour Butz is using his real name.

: : : : : On my recent trip to Dublin, I went to the writers' museum. It was the first time that anybody had mentioned that Bram (Stoker) was short for Abraham. One of those D'Oh! moments.

: : : : It's a dreary rainy stormy day here in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, but you guys make me laugh. Don't ever go away to another site - I'd miss you so much.

: : : I think my father visited the Blue Mountains when he was working in Oz - are there any photos of your view?

: : : My view out the window here is simply of trees in winter though which I can see bits of the village.

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: : My partner read in the RD of someone who's friend was travelling through Europe, and she was telling her about Switzerland. The stay at home friend said, it must have been wonderful travelling through all that beautiful scenery. Her friend replied, well I haven't seen much yet, can't see it for all those bloody mountains.

: : Hmmm. It's all relative I s'pose.

: Just to let everybody know that I made a quick post yesterday, it's upper in the list, some of you may have missed it.

Deepi, I trust that by this time Annette has informed you personally how she wishes her name to be pronounced. I just wanted to let you know that Bangalore is not so remote from our consciousness as you may believe. I can't say that Kipling talked about it (I don't know), but someone has, and extensively. There's at least one student at the local university where I live (Princeton U.) from Bangalore, and I've heard that some computer firms are locating there, and presumably providing the technical help that American firms increasingly avoid supplying. In this capital of Mysore State (am I right?) one can hear many of the southern Indian languages, Tamil, Telugu and especially Kannada. And of course the lingua franca of India, English. Best wishes. SS