Corollary
So it turns out that some people here are really amused by the way I say "corollary". Further to this, in the reports that my students got to write about my lectures, there were far more comments about my accent than I expected. Answers to the question "What are the primary teaching strengths of the instructor?" included:
"I like British accent."
"British accent made me pay attention."
"Ehh... British accent?"
"The occasional British humor lightened the course."
"She has a British accent, which is easy on the ears."
But my favourite is the student who wrote:
"She has a really cool British accent which kept me awake."
Now I know calculus is never going to be the most exciting subject to Engineers, but I would actually be worried if they really thought my "primary teaching strength" was my accent. Oh well.
posted by Claire @ 6:06 pm
11 comments
11 Comments:
I'm losing mine. It's drifting off into a generic Euro-voice. But I'm growing out a comb-over, for balance.
Who would have thought that completely mispronouncing a word could be a good thing.
I'm confused. Surely everyone says corollary the same. Tell us, `Nick', how should it be said?
Oooh, them's fighting words!
In the spirit of Peter and James:
A doctor is about to perform a coronary heart bypass and needs the help of his friend Lawrence: "Will you help me with this coro, Larry?"
So, in summary, you guys say corollary and we say corollary?
Wow, I can italicize stuff. Cool.
I thought the Americans put the stress on the first syllable of `corollary', not the third.
Another interesting example is `homotopy'. Discuss.
Ramzy's Nonce, what is generic Euro-voice?
I imagine there to be a large overlap with generic Bond-villain-voice. Is there?
Are you implying that all Europeans are Bond villains? That would explain a lot...
It clearly should be homotopy (nice because it's sort of iambic). And yet it's almost impossible not to say homotopy (nasty and trochaic). Ugh.
Apparently my accent is difficult to understand. I said: "Fuck you all!" and they heard "Suck my balls!".
That is what I mean by Euro. A tendency for all ejaculations to become sexualized.
The consonants following the second syllable seem crucial. It's difficult to iamb it with `homotopy', but much easier with (for example) `isotropy'.
I think it's just down to having `tr' instead of `t' in that case. However, there's simply no excuse with `corollary'!
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