You pronounce it just like Nigeria, but without the “ia” part. Nai-j-er. Come on, and say it with me! You can do it. Nai-j-er. Nai-j-er. Nai-j-er. It’s easy, see? That’s the 'merican pronunciation.
Bodo[/quote]
There was a young lady from Niger,
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
After the ride
She was inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger.
(a third pronunciation possibility)
I’ve never heard of it being pronounced the anglicized way you describe; but on dictionary.com both are given. Honestly, I’ve been there, and I’ve never once heard anyone say Nai-zhe.
Btw the adjective is Nigerien with an e. Tom won’tlike that, but I bet he can guess why.
And here’s another office babble busllshit term stripped of any sincerity, “Best regards.” It should read, “Fuck you, arsehole! I’ll screw you over good and proper if you let your guard down!”
[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]And here’s another office babble busllshit term stripped of any sincerity, “Best regards.” It should read, “Fuck you, arsehole! I’ll screw you over good and proper if you let your guard down!”
[/quote]
Oh, there’s plenty of truth in that! We sign off on all of our office letters with “Best regards,”… even when we are poised to drop the hammer on the recipient…
Methinks the Comrade may have been on the receiving end of a few too many letters from legal sources…“Dear Comrade, Kindly cease and desist from further contact with…”
Ahh…that would be the “Thank you for sharing that” reply…
probably “creole”. “erb” is the exact pronunciation for herbe in french (the “h” is mute). it actually means grass but is also used as “weed” (in this case).
a very very large % of english is actually disguised french . i hate the word flirt. it comes from french verb fleureter which in the middle age meant “offering flowers to someone” :loco:
[quote=“Tigerman”][quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]And here’s another office babble busllshit term stripped of any sincerity, “Best regards.” It should read, “Fuck you, arsehole! I’ll screw you over good and proper if you let your guard down!”
[/quote]
Oh, there’s plenty of truth in that! We sign off on all of our office letters with “Best regards,”… even when we are poised to drop the hammer on the recipient… [/quote]
As much as I hate “Best regards”, if it must be used, I think it’s more polite to use “With best regards” in letters to people you have never corresponded with before, and reserve “Best regards” for people you already correspond with.
“Best regards” is up there on my list of hackneyed office correspondence speak, along with “your kind perusal”, “many thanks in advance” and “in respect of” (which is a bizarre mutation of “with respect to”).
While not a coffee drinker, I enjoy the occasional frappuccino. “Frappuccino” is a good coinage, because it’s a unique product. But I absolutely and categorically refuse to speak Starbuckese when it comes to small, medium or large. Every time I ask for a medium frappuccino the kid behind the counter will ask me, wide-eyed, “a grande?” and I respond, “no, a medium.”
Sometimes I get a real yokel who repeats, to clarify, as if the concept did not exist already in English: “You want a grande?” I then calmly confirm: “No, a medium.” They get the hint. Sometimes they smile at me knowingly, in acknowledgment: Yeah, I know the whole lingo here is pretty gay, but I work here, so what can I do?
When I got to Starbucks I ask for a zhong bei latte (I think natie is really silly, it’s not as if the sound la doesn’t exist in Chinese!). But when the Taiwanese cashier passes the order on to the Taiwanese coffee making person, they always yell “Tall latte”! It’s like those doctors tapping out diagnoses in English, or idiots saying “fanzheng anyway” or “however” in the middle of a Chinese sentence: TPE (Taiwan Prestige English)
Oh yes, another one that I’ve just spotted, have been seeing more and more often of late, and which really makes me wince: the use of “corporates” in place of “corporations”. Why, for God’s sake? Why the need to take such an excellent and unoffending adjective, pluralize it and misuse it as a noun in place of a wide selection of perfectly satisfactory words such as companies, businesses, enterprises, firms, and so on?
And then there’s the use of the word “chair” to refer to the person who chairs an organization or meeting. WTF? There are chairmen and chairwomen, or even the somewhat cringeworthy “chairpersons” for the chronically PC, but referring to a person as the item of furniture on which he rests his posterior? Spare us from such idiocy, please!
Chair is used in the UK to mean (essentially) a professorship (in the UK being a professor is an academic distinction, not a salary grade). In Taiwan the same word is used to mean a university head of department. Is the term used in the USA? To mean what?
. i hate the word 