Siri thought I was an Aussie yesterday

[Guest]

"Chris" and I were watching Norma Rae last night and one character called the other a "kike." Neither of us was sure what that meant, so I asked my phone "Hey, Siri! What's a kike?". The response was "a form of sweet food made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients, that is usually baked." I commented "Oh, dear. Siri thinks I'm an Aussie!" 😁

Edited December 17, 2021 by Unicorn

[+ poolboy48220]

Hahaha.  That's one of those ethnic slurs I haven't heard in ages.  A few weeks ago, a lady at the dog park referred to another person there as "that spic" - another word I haven't heard in a long time.

[MscleLovr]

1 hour ago, poolboy48220 said:

one of those ethnic slurs I haven't heard in ages

I thought it was only current around 1910-1920 (at least that’s what my father told me). When did you hear it @poolboy48220? And I assume @Unicorn has figured it out now

[Guest]

Yes, we figured it out. I guess if an Aussie went to North Carolina in the 70s and said he wanted some cake for his birthday, he might get a pleasant surprise, like Rafael Alencar. 😉😋 One of my most memorable hires of all time. In another string, someone posited that porn stars are too into themselves to perform well, but this man gave me a time to remember. It looks like he's still in the biz. Interestingly, on his own website, he lists his birthday as 7/17/78:

http://www.rafaelworld.com/page1.html

But on his rentmen page, he lists his age as 38. Not good at math?

https://rentmen.eu/RAFAELALENCAR

 

Edited December 17, 2021 by Unicorn

[Guest]

Actually, I know of a specialized cake that doesn't even have sugar in it, unless one counts honey as sugar. The cake of Dinant is made of only flour and honey (it's made mostly for decoration, though, not for eating, though they are edible):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couque_de_Dinant

"The Couque de Dinant (English: Cake of Dinant) is an extremely hard, sweet biscuit native to the southern Belgian city of Dinant in Wallonia... Couques are made with only two ingredients: wheat flour and honey, in equal amounts by weight, and nothing else at all: not even water or yeast. The dough is put in a wooden mould made from wood from the pear tree, walnut tree or beech tree. The moulds have a wide variety of shapes, which include animals, floral motifs, people or landscapes."

[Guest]

 

[MscleLovr]

After numerous extensive vacations in Australia, and repeated trips to excellent cake-shops in Melbourne and Sydney, I can confidently say that I’ve never heard an Aussie pronounce ‘cake’ as ‘kike’. 
 

Now I’m not sure whether historically ‘kike’ was used as an anti-Semitic slur in Australia (as it was in the UK a century ago) but I feel that any visitor should best avoid saying it. 

[mike carey]

5 minutes ago, MscleLovr said:

After numerous extensive vacations in Australia, and repeated trips to excellent cake-shops in Melbourne and Sydney, I can confidently say that I’ve never heard an Aussie pronounce ‘cake’ as ‘kike’.

I would pronounce them differently, and have difficulty understanding why someone would hear it that way. That said, I know some Americans misunderstand Australians saying he letter A. I recall a colleague who worked at our embassy in Washington say he had been spelling something out over the phone and in exasperation say it was A as in Alabama, to be greeted with a pause and response, 'But there is no I in Alabama.'

[+ WilliamM]

16 hours ago, Unicorn said:

Yes, we figured it out. I guess if an Aussie went to North Carolina in the 70s and said he wanted some cake for his birthday, he might get a pleasant surprise, like Rafael Alencar. 😉😋 One of my most memorable hires of all time. In another string, someone posited that porn stars are too into themselves to perform well, but this man gave me a time to remember. It looks like he's still in the biz. Interestingly, on his own website, he lists his birthday as 7/17/78:

http://www.rafaelworld.com/page1.html

But on his rentmen page, he lists his age as 38. Not good at math?

https://rentmen.eu/RAFAELALENCAR

 

Perhaps "Chris" would like to meet him.

[Deadlift1]

I think Jessie Jackson s use of "hymietown" in 1984 NYC is  similar to "kike." However I have no idea of the history of either words.

[Guest]

10 hours ago, mike carey said:

I would pronounce them differently, and have difficulty understanding why someone would hear it that way. That said, I know some Americans misunderstand Australians saying he letter A....

Well, I'll be the first to admit I've never been to the ACT (my travels limited to the Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart, and Cairns areas), but every Aussie and Kiwi I've ever met (here and over there) pronounces the long "a" the same as the long "i" (I've never met someone from Canberra--full disclosure). There's nothing wrong with this, as the meaning would virtually always be apparent from the context when speaking (except, of course, if one were simply asking for the meaning of the word, as I was asking Siri). If an Aussie asks for a slice of Black Forest cake, I can't imagine anyone would believe he's an antisemitic cannibal with a penchant for people from southwestern Germany. 

As I said, there's nothing wrong with pronunciations which can be ambiguous. For example, I, along with most Spanish speakers, including essentially all Mexicans (the country with the most Spanish speakers, and the type of Spanish I speak), do not distinguish between the "ll" and "y" sound. This is a phenomenon known as "yeísmo." So if I say "Mi amigo se calló," without context, there would be no way for the hearer to know whether I meant "My friend became quiet," or "My friend fell down," since I pronounce it the same as "mi amigo se cayó," which means he fell down. Someone from Bolivia or Paraguay would usually pronounce "calló" as "cajo," so the context would not be needed. 

The meaning can usually be established with context. So if I say "Mi amigo estaba gritando y luego se calló," it's understood I mean "My friend was yelling and then he kept quiet." If I say "Mi amigo estaba corriendo y luego se cayó," it's obvious I mean "My friend was running and then he fell down." 

I realize that there are regional differences even within one country, but if you pronounce the word "cake" the same as most Aussies, you pronounce it the same as "kike." It remind me of the old joke which ends up with the Aussie doctor saying to his patient in the hospital: "Did you come to this place to die? Or did you come here yesterday?". 😉

[Guest]

Edited December 18, 2021 by Unicorn

[Guest]

16 hours ago, mike carey said:

... I recall a colleague who worked at our embassy in Washington say he had been spelling something out over the phone and in exasperation say it was A as in Alabama, to be greeted with a pause and response, 'But there is no I in Alabama.'

Your colleague sounds like he may have been acting a bit difficult. Living in Washington, he must have realized that to an American, he was saying "I as in in Alabama." For the purposes of being understood, he could have simply just said "A" in the North American manner for just that moment. 

I met a woman at a party last night who was from Leeds in northern England. To me, her accent sounded like half-way between RP (BBC) English and cockney, and I understood everything she said. I told her I was relieved to hear her talk and that she was so easy to understand, because "Chris" and I have plans to go to Britain in June, and I had been worried that I wouldn't be able to understand the people in northern England. 

She then told me that when she goes back to Leeds, her friends and family think she has an American accent! 😮 She said that when she first came over to live in the US, no one could understand what she said, so she just adjusted her speech accordingly (more towards the British RP pronunciation than to US, in my view, but RP can be understood by almost all English speakers). No need to make things difficult.

If I were in Bolivia, Paraguay, or northern Spain, and I said ""Mi amigo se calló" (meaning he stopped talking), and I received the response "¿Se lastimó a sí mismo?" (meaning "Did he hurt himself"), I could understand that the listener thought that I had said "My friend fell down" and could have repeated my sentence saying "Se ka-joe" (without the yeísmo), to remove the ambiguity. That being said, a good 90% of Spanish speakers use yeísmo, so confusion would be less likely. (Since only 25 million of the world's 379 million native English speakers are Australian, confusion outside of Australia is more understandable)

[BSR]

On 12/18/2021 at 12:21 PM, Unicorn said:

Well, I'll be the first to admit I've never been to the ACT (my travels limited to the Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart, and Cairns areas), but every Aussie and Kiwi I've ever met (here and over there) pronounces the long "a" the same as the long "i" (I've never met someone from Canberra--full disclosure). There's nothing wrong with this, as the meaning would virtually always be apparent from the context when speaking (except, of course, if one were simply asking for the meaning of the word, as I was asking Siri). If an Aussie asks for a slice of Black Forest cake, I can't imagine anyone would believe he's an antisemitic cannibal with a penchant for people from southwestern Germany. 

As I said, there's nothing wrong with pronunciations which can be ambiguous. For example, I, along with most Spanish speakers, including essentially all Mexicans (the country with the most Spanish speakers, and the type of Spanish I speak), do not distinguish between the "ll" and "y" sound. This is a phenomenon known as "yeísmo." So if I say "Mi amigo se calló," without context, there would be no way for the hearer to know whether I meant "My friend became quiet," or "My friend fell down," since I pronounce it the same as "mi amigo se cayó," which means he fell down. Someone from Bolivia or Paraguay would usually pronounce "calló" as "cajo," so the context would not be needed. 

The meaning can usually be established with context. So if I say "Mi amigo estaba gritando y luego se calló," it's understood I mean "My friend was yelling and then he kept quiet." If I say "Mi amigo estaba corriendo y luego se cayó," it's obvious I mean "My friend was running and then he fell down." 

I realize that there are regional differences even within one country, but if you pronounce the word "cake" the same as most Aussies, you pronounce it the same as "kike." It remind me of the old joke which ends up with the Aussie doctor saying to his patient in the hospital: "Did you come to this place to die? Or did you come here yesterday?". 😉

Huh, you learn something new every day.  It's been 33 years since my year in Salamanca (Spain), yet I had never heard of yeísmo & had always thought the Y and the LL had identical pronunciations.  I even found a YouTube video on the subject to hear the difference, but it's so subtle that I'll never pick up on it.

The only differences I hear are between countries.  (Some) Spaniards pronounce the Y & LL more like the J in English, Mexicans like the Y, and Argentines like ZH or SH.  If a handsome Argentine speaks with that melodic porteño lilt and all those drawn-out zzzhhhh's, I melt like butter on a hot summer afternoon.