markonline1

Premier league coverage on NBC is all done by Brits. No more Gus Johnson screaming and missing calls.

robin1234

No, I'm not talking about regional accents in reference to primer being pronounced "primer" or "primmer." The first has a long first syllable, the second a short first syllable.

It is asserted that in standard American pronunciation, the paint primer does indeed have a long first syllable - in other words, American English pronunciation is the same as British English. But the book that covers the basic elements of a subject, also a primer, is properly pronounced with a short first syllable in American English. That is, pronounced "primmer" as in the word "prim."

Why this is, I don't know. Also, my observation is that some Americans pronounce it one way, some the other.

Here's an article from the Chicago Sun-Times that flat out states that the British pronunciation of the word, i.e. pronouncing it the same as the paint, is a mispronunciation in American English.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/bookroom/2...on_primer.html

SultanOfSwing

As Mark said, most of the commentators are British now. The NBC coverage is really quite good.

Pulaski

I have never heard it pronounced that way, but then I do not regularly come into contact with literary academia.

civilservant

So no more 'end zone' or '2-0 shutout'???

Where do I sign up?

robin1234

This ain't literary academia - mostly old lady schoolteachers

markonline1

Yeah, they use Arlo White for what they consider the big game. Don't they just take the direct BT or Sky feed otherwise? Even the anchors are all English. I think NBC need to take a lot of credit for that. With regards to Gus Johnson earlier, I remember him doing the FA cup semis and final, so if ESPN still have the rights, I suppose we will still have to listen to his god awful commentary.

Speedwell

When I first heard the word (as a primer-level piano student) I wondered the same thing and pronounced it like paint primer, and was sharply corrected by my teacher. I had come to think, since then, that perhaps the American habit came somehow from the prefix "pre-" and not from the word "prime".

"Premier" is one that I find illiterate-sounding when pronounced like "pree mere". I think it's an overcorrection to differentiate it from "premiere", which in my experience is usually pronounced (closer to) correctly.

I've never heard "affluent" with the emphasis on the second syllable. Ever.

"With au jus" is just plain ignorant.

Pulaski

Yeah, well I don't come into contact with any of those either, at least not in the US.

SultanOfSwing

Yeah, they take the Sky feed and slap their graphics and commentary over it. Once, during a match they started to have issues with their signal and it reverted briefly to the Sky graphics. That was quite funny.

By and large though, NBC shits all over FOX for BPL coverage, IMO.

robin1234

That's odd, now you mention it. Isn't it exactly the same word in French, just the difference between masculine and feminine?

I assume premier is masculine, because it's short for premier ministre, i.e. prime minister, ministre being masculine? Premiere, the first performance of a film or play, presumably goes with a word for performance that is feminine?

robin1234

You will eventually!

Steve_

They timeshift CFL coverage which is really annoying. Especially seeing as it's in the same time zones, ffs.

Speedwell

"Premier" is also used to indicate something that is first in its class, top-grade, or highest quality. "Premiere" is only used for "first performance".

Oh, and regarding all of your notes about French, that's great, but we're talking about English. Pet peeve. My mother (the daughter of two ESL immigrants) and father (whose second language was also English) used to get in such huge fights about where words came from, and I'd be obliged to research and referee. The house rule was to insist on pronouncing words in the way they were pronounced in their source language IF you were deliberately saying them as words in the source language. If the English pronunciation typically differed, then it was a different but related word.

That said, my all-time teeth-on-edge mispronunciation, from both Brits and Yanks, is the word forte. When your forte is your strength, it is the French word for "strength", pronounced "fort" if you can't manage a French accent. When your forte is compared to your fortissimo, for example, then it is the Italian music term for "loud" (played strongly, of course) and pronounced "FOR-tay". Neither have accent marks in writing. Both are written in italics because neither is an English word. For f***'s sake.

SultanOfSwing

'Premier' is the Anglicised version of the French word for first; 'première'. The two are pronounced almost the same, except the lack of the third letter 'e' in the English word shortens the second one therefore:

English - pronounced 'Premmy-er'
French - prnounced 'Premmy-aire'

Trying to get Americans to pronounce French-derived words consistently is like fitting wheels to a tomato, though.