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Comic 761 – “You Say Turquaws”

DAE_131016_761_YouSayTurquaws

Errol: We had a listening party last night. We spent two hours talking at you, but I had a great time! I hope you guys did too! We should have taken a screenshot to see how many people were in chat! ^_^

17 Responses to Comic 761 – “You Say Turquaws”

  1. I had a great time 🙂 I even managed to get a bit of novel planning for NaNo done whilst I listened. Although with the live stream, the chat, another chat I was participating in and my novel-planning document, a screen the size of Aaron’s would have been helpful!

  2. Debs still seemed unconvinced by the end of the evening, so perhaps she should go here:

    http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=turquoise

    This second site offers an alternate pronunciation, but it’s nothing like Debs’s:

    http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=turquoise

    This British guy agrees with the other British guy in the first link:

    http://www.macmillandictionary.com/pronunciation/british/turquoise

    I suspect that the pronunciation in the first and third links is the standard British (and Canadian) one, while Americans tend to favour getting rid of the “w” sound, for some reason.

    However…you know what? French people actually agree with Debs. Scroll down this page to hear the French pronunciation:

    http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-french/turquoise

    So Debs is not wrong; she’s simply using a different language.

  3. Had a great time last night- and it wasn’t as if I had to be up early this morning so I joined in (all the while continuing with Pokémon Y as I listened.

    I did wonder whether Debs was using French pronunciation for turquoise, but since my own knowledge of French as a language ranges between shockingly bad and non-existent, I kept quiet on that.

    Edit: Also, Debs’ pronunciation was more like Turquahs than Turquaws… just saying.

  4. Sorry, mav.weirdo, but the origins of the word “turquoise” are (wait for it) French, and it is very much a French word as well, now, as an English one. It comes from the Old French “pierre turqueise,” or “Turkish stone” (though the whole “Turkish” thing is a misnomer). In fact, the Middle English version of the term was “turkeis” or “turtogis”; the French term “turqoise” came to replace these words in the early Renaissance. All these references were to the stone, not the colour; the word was attributed to the colour as of the mid-nineteenth century. More information is available via the Online Etymology Dictionary and other sources. Long story short: as the word is only English because it started as French, it is, in fact, a French word.

  5. I’m still trying to figure out why Mercenary Pen pronounces “tortoise” with an “oy” sound…

    Last night was a blast! A couple of the songs from the new album have come up on my music playlist the last few days as I’ve been helping my dad with extra work in his blacksmith shop, and I am just loving it.

  6. Wow Debs actually said that didn’t she… (I’m listening to the party now!) Oh hey I’ll open gmail too. Maybe there’s a group chat going on!