Now the dust is slowly settling over Kate’s Bush, Bob in a leotard and flag bedecked fascist emporiums perhaps it is timely to discuss the true controversy over controversy.
Is it pronounced Controv – Ersy or Controv – Er – Sy?
Controversy! Part the second.
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Stephen Fry says neither. He says it’s Con-traversy.
Con – trary git.
Con – t
It’s controv – ersy. Natur – ally.
Con-TROV-ersy.
(Pshaw, and they call it a merit-OC-racy…..)
This is the pro-NUN-ciation I use. For both of those words above.
But I also use contro-VER-sial. Because I just do.
Look, Prince said it’s contro – ver – sy, so it’s contro – ver – sy. You dig?
A Prince? I barely dig for Kings, let alone their progeny.
I’m in Liverpool this weekend and when I asked a local in a pub last night how to pronounce ‘that’ word he threatened to ‘lamp’ me!
Con TROV ersy, of course.
Controv ERSY sounds all American & wrong.
Great to see you, andielou. I hope you are going to vote in the end-of-year poll.
@tiggerlion is it possible for me to vote in 25 stages as I would like to really think hard before casting my vote or votes. I am really struggling in positions 17 to 23.
Yes you can. As long as you ‘nest’ your submissions together, I’ll track them easily.
On arrival I was scoffed at and derided for my pronunciation of (among many, many others) THAT word. Because you know, there are few things in the world more threatening to an English than different pronunciation. Now I find I have lived here long enough to hear the very BBC presenters (I’m looking at you, Today Programme) who ten years ago pronounced con-TRAH-versy now saying CON-traversy.
Lots of people though, don’t understand that language is an ever evolving thing. And it’s that kind of ignorance that cause people to say things like ‘sounds all American and wrong’. A very bigoted, small minded and hurtful thing to say.
And besides, ain’t no America pronounces it ‘Controv ERSY’. Wtaf?
Either way is fine by me. I believe the strength of English is it’s flexibility. It makes it a language of enormous subtlety and nuance. I can’t back this up with figures but I would guess that Americans have in all likelihood added more words and expressions to the language in the past one hundred years than the English. Our shared language is like us mongrel and all the better for that.
In fact it’s that in Irish accents as well. Sorry you dislike it but in the context it’s okay. In Irishman saying con-TROV-ersy marks himself as a right dick.
😉
In?
Another thing is often. For me, silent T.
But quite variable, eh?
I always sound the T in often. Never met an Irish person who does. All part of the rich variety of the English language.
Quite.