Beverly Hills Chee' WOW wa and rat-a-too-ee

So here's a new phenomenon: film (movie) posters that include pronunciation guides.

Over on the right you can see part of a poster for the current release Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which helpfully points out that 'chihuahua' should be pronounced chee' WOW wa.

Is the apostrophe indicating stress on the middle syllable? Surely putting 'WOW' in caps is sufficient?

The only other example of this phenomenon I can think of is the poster for the children's animated fim Ratatouille (2007), as shown below.

Here the pronunciation guide is rat-a-too-ee – the syllables are separated by hyphens but this time there's no indication at all as to stress.

So how do you feel about these pronunciation guides – are they an example of dumbing-down and declining standards in education?

Personally, I applaud the film-makers for not shying away from using 'difficult' words in the titles of children's films.

And can you think of any other examples? Maybe it's not a new phenomenon at all...

Portmanteau: chat + banter = chanter?

Gingerous – who in the past has asked us such questions as 'can you really have an all-day breakfast?' and 'how heavy is the Apple MacBook Air?' – has emailed us in the following:

In our flat we were frequently using the words 'chat' and 'banter' for similar situations and so to save time we created the portmanteau 'chanter'.

There is a Facebook group we created to try to promote it, just for a bit of fun and to prove to couple of friends that this new word could take off.

We are aware that there are other uses for the word 'chanter'; see the definitions at www.yourdictionary.com/chanter.

I'm not sure, Gingerous, but I suspect that your 'chanter' has a slightly different pronunciation to the other types of 'chanter', at least in our home counties accents.

I assume the first syllable of your 'chanter' rhymes with 'ant' (following 'banter'), whereas the first syllables of the other types of 'chanter' rhyme with 'aunt' – again, at least in our accents. In many other British accents, however, all those 'chanters' would be pronounced identically.

Actually, I don't know about the pronunciation of the chanter that is "that pipe of a bagpipe with finger holes on which the melody is played" as it's a new one on me. And is this where I should mention the Great Vowel Shift?


My question to the floor is: have you coined a word and tried to get it into wider circulation?

Pronunciation: regular Tory!

Here's an email that Sarah sent to the blog today. As Sarah is from the Midlands, please read it with a non-rhotic accent:

I overheard a conversation one of my colleagues was having on the phone this morning that made me giggle. She was ordering a book and getting a bit stroppy because the person on the other end didn't quite understand what she was asking for.

She kept saying what sounded like 'regular Tory, regular Tory!' and the guy thought she wanted a book about Tories. She felt a bit daft when she realised she was pronouncing 'regulatory' wrong!

Although I personally pronounce 'regulatory' with the stress on the third syllable (reg-yoo-LAY-tor-ee), I believe the 'regular Tory' pronunciation is quite common. Is this a British English / American English difference?

Sadly my Concise OED is too concise to provide me with an answer and the jumbo office Webster's is buried in a cupboard somewhere. Can anyone help?