Pronouncing Words "Correctly" in English

Two months ago, I came across an LP video in which the player was playing as the Iroquois. I forget what game it was but it's entirely inconsequential to this post. In the video, the commentator was pronouncing the name Iroquois as "ir-ro-koi" which a lot of people do... but I tend to look at that as the wrong pronunciation. The name Iroquois is French and thus takes the French pronunciation rules; under which it would be pronounced "ir-ro-kwah". It's how it was taught in my school and by the word's origins, the correct way to say it. I left a comment about how it's pronounced the latter way instead of the former and the commentator responded to me with a "I know, I speak French." I did not further comment on it as I wasn't about to get in his face about it. After all, a lot of people DO pronounce Iroquois with "koi" rather than "kwah".

Then recently I got a reply on my comment which made me return to that video and those comments. I won't get into the reply I got as it turned into a mess of stupidity on which I do not care to longer dwell than I already have. In any case, I saw that someone had replied to the commentator's claim to speaking French and asked him, "then why do you pronounce it wrong?" to which he replied, "I'm speaking English so I will say things with English pronunciation." That is the topic of today's post.

His response kind of baffled me. It seemed rather... ignorant. Take some other words in the English language that have derivatives in other languages for examples. One such word is the word "debut". If you were anal in your insistence in pronouncing things purely in English, then that word would have to be pronounced much like the word "rebuttal" is pronounced: "dee-butt". Now doesn't that just sound silly?

What about the word herb? In England people DO pronounce it with the H but in North America it is pronounced "erb". In fact, I've seen plenty of people be very particular in this regard... almost to the point of making themselves look like an ignorant dumb ass. So does that commentator pronounce herb with the H? Seeing as how he's from North America, I kind of doubt it. How about the word milieu? We do not pronounce that "mil-li-u". Genre is not "jen-re". Lingerie is not "ling-ger-ee" or "lin-ger-ee". Chalet is not "cha-let"... and so on and so forth.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not all worked up or anything... nor am I really arguing that everyone should pronounce Iroquois as "kwah" and not "koi". Sure, *I* think "kwah" is the correct way but if thousands of people pronounce it "koi" then whatever. My problem however was his response of "I'm speaking English, therefore I will say things with English pronunciation." That is truly a dumb thing to say when EVERYONE who speaks English goes out of the true English pronunciation for certain words. That is.. everyone who is not an idiot. So if "chalet" is to be pronounced "sha-leh" in English, why not "ir-ro-kwah"?

Fallout: New Vegas Troubles

My Fallout: New Vegas LP has been put on pause momentarily due to the fact that I cannot seem to get the game to load properly. It's very odd; it worked just fine then a week later I go to play it again and it will not work. First sign of something wrong was when it would not load my mouse once I launched the game. If you own FNV or FO3 then you know that if you click during the intro it skips forward to the menu screen. Well I could not do that which puzzled me. Once it got to the menu screen itself it didn't load the actual menu for a long long time. Just sat there with that picture of the character with the gas mask and revolver. Finally it loads the menus so I press continue and it takes me to the loading screen. Round and round the roulette goes, where it stops.... who the fuck knows. It just kept going for SO long that I ended up having to force exit the game. Even THAT was hard to do because it refused to minimize the game so I had to put my computer to sleep, wake it up, at which point it froze for a while then exit the game in the processes.

I am by no means a techie person but I doubt that I'd be able to figure it out even if I was. I replicated the above three times. No changes whatsoever. I know they say it's stupid to try the same thing over and over again but I find that an exception exists with computers... especially after rebooting the thing. But no, not this time. After some google searching I've got a couple things that I might try out but not at the moment. I just don't feel like messing with the damned thing right now. I'm just in that kind of mood where the prospect of dealing with something like that makes me just feel exhausted already.

I already liked Fallout 3 over Fallout: New Vegas but the number of glitches, bugs, and now this that I have to deal with with FNV makes me kind of tired of it and biases me against it more. Don't get me wrong, I'm still enjoying the game and think it's a good game... but it's raising Fallout 3 more in my eyes.

I guess the biggest issue I have with FNV right now is that I feel completely... objective-less. Fallout 3 at least still had a over arching motivation for my character: finding her dad, then fulfilling her parents' dream of pure water for everyone. But FNV? What the heck is my character doing? Gaining power? For what? The starting motivation of finding Billy who "killed" me is long since dealt with since I punched him to death in front of Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky.

Maybe I'll feel differently once I get further in the main quest or do some of the DLCs.