Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Lara Croft Toom Raider

I just saw a promo for "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" on Czech TV and - as always - the word "tomb" was pronounced "thomb" as if it rhymed with "bomb", while it should in fact be pronounced as "toom" (rhyming with "room"). I find it rather fascinating that no one in our country ever pronounces this simple word right. Even I instinctively use the "thomb" version because otherwise people wouldn't understand me. I don't know of any other such word...

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Many people in IT pronounce "javascript" in a wrong way.

Anonymous said...

What about famous Linux? or TeX, LaTeX... And I still use "dungeon" in place of "danžn"...

Anonymous said...

You can't blame people for such a thing. I've been learning english for bloody long time and I admit, that I hadn't known this fact. I would have never said, that "Tomb" would be pronounced this way... But nevermind, english is a really funny language...

Anonymous said...

Its like buing a Levl.

Anonymous said...

I believe the people at Nova actually know the right pronounciation, but they have used the version people are familiar with instead. Computer players usually have their own versions of game titles or other term, such as "adventura" instead of adventure.

Anonymous said...

I'm not aware of any mispronounciation of Linux... it's simply "linux"

"TeX" is [tech] and "LaTeX" is [lejtech]?

Besides the correct pronounciation of toomb sound quite silly when surrounded by czech language.

Anonymous said...

I'm not aware of any mispronounciation of Linux... it's simply "linux"

"TeX" is [tech] and "LaTeX" is [lejtech]?

Besides the correct pronounciation of toomb sound quite silly when surrounded by czech language.

Anonymous said...

LaTeX is definitely "latech"...I wrote my diploma work in it... so I hope so;-)

Anonymous said...

It is the same with word "wolf". Wolf (as golf) vs. wolf (woolf)

Anonymous said...

The most commonly mispronounced word is 'cancel'. I don't know any (czech or slovak) person that would pronounce it correctly. Most people say something like 'khun-zell'.

I guess it's because all the people had started using this word before they began to learn english.

Anonymous said...

LaTex is really pronounced [latech], not [lejtech], because it's named after Lamport, not Lameport. These are words of Mr. Olsak, so watch it! ;-)

Anonymous said...

And how should be pronaunced Cancel?

Anonymous said...

j.r.: "käns@l". (@ = neutral vowel, a.k.a. "schwa")

Anonymous said...

Another typical czech mistakes are for example "path" pronounced like "patch", or saying the letter X in english words as "iks" instead of "eks" (e.g. [iksbox]).

Anonymous said...

Another great example... preface. In Czechia, it's [pre][face].

Unknown said...

Well, thats the problem with english language. Too many phonemes for so few letters. If you just make it simplier it would be really easyer to spell. But then to have spelling contest would be nonsense.

Anonymous said...

You know how to pronounce level. But lever (packa nebo tak neco in Czech) is like lee-ver. Strange.