interesting.

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People in lj_nifty might be interested in this too...

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I shall take that as a compliment - thank you! - though I don't think it really hangs with some of the niftier stuff I've seen there in the years.

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What is the British way of saying "7", and what is the American way without the "and"s?

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My belief is that the US would pronounce 777 777 777 777 777 as

Sev en hun dred sev en ty sev en tril li on,
Sev en hun dred sev en ty sev en bill li on,
Sev en hun dred sev en ty sev en mill li on,
Sev en hun dred sev en ty sev en thou sand,
Sev en hun dred sev en ty sev en

in fifty-six syllables, whereas in the UK, we would pronounce it

Sev en hun dred and sev en ty sev en tril li on,
Sev en hun dred and sev en ty sev en bill li on,
Sev en hun dred and sev en ty sev en mill li on,
Sev en hun dred and sev en ty sev en thou sand,
Sev en hun dred and sev en ty sev en

in sixty-one syllables. I could well be wrong, though. (It even makes no difference if you do the old-fashioned million/milliard/billion, but I doubt anyone has done for forty-five years.)

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I think it is more likely that those in the US would say tril yun instead of tril li on, and so on for the others.

Ya know.

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Yep, I say tril yun, not tril li on, bil yun for bil li on, and mil yun for mil li on. :)

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whereas in the UK, we would pronounce it

Sev en hun dred and sev en ty sev en bill li on,
Sev en hun dred and sev en ty sev en thou sand
 sev en hun dred and sev en ty sev en mil li on,
Sev en hun dred and sev en ty sev en thou sand,
Sev en hun dred and sev en ty sev en.

See, it does make a difference. (You may be right that few people have used the word `milliard' seriously within the last forty-five years, but the deflation of a billion is something that has happened much more recently than that.)

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An explanation.

Today is dancingrain's birthday. Hooray! She likes Tom Lehrer very much and introduced me to this animated version of Tom Lehrer's The Elements. Accordingly, for her birthday, I made her a new version of it, which features not chemical elements but some of the 284 names on her Friends list. (Hence the investigation - to try to work out which Friend should replace which element for maximum filkiscitudinousnesserosity.) Thankfully, she liked it.

"There's vanityfair, acadine, altricial, selene_rain,
And hermorrine and unanon and nmalfoy and fick_l_rine
And sarahtales, milenalupin, morganmuffle, psychobarfly,
And ina, amberavalon, slytherincesss, tobymalfoy,
sincelastjuly, ryokoblue, littlealex, anatsuno
And leiabelle and osanna and astolat and ari_o
And folk and psychodelica and cowlishaw and courteney
And iscaris and effervescent and keiyuki and kissaki.

"There's yasmina, t00baria, titanic_days, mark356
And black_dog, olympia_m, nefeleo, debellatrix
And chinawolf and crimson_stained and cohort and coffeesama,
And bauglir, blythely, littletort, anya_writer and alyeska.

"Isn't she popular?
I know she is.
I hope you're all taking notes, because we're gonna do the Friends-of next period.

"There's aegeus and andrewb and angiej and vinagrette
And salazaar and slytherlynx and sparkyred and think_secret
And thamiris and tradescant, samenashi, tancaliel,
dezzikitty and scribbulus and jlh and kcl
And news, machiavellian, and muffinbutt, markizafey,
maggie_malfoy, maybethemoon, mizzy2k, mawaridi,
and taradiane, the_letter_box, tolarian, trigaria,
And ask_hedwig and ashkitty and aome and arwena.

"There's kazzik, dracopottamus and dinahrae, kokopoko
And also thegraybook, emeraldsword, expetesso
And pegkerr, pylite, megd, raget, zorac, hirsch and lasultrix
And schanyl, shaylllla, slightlights, somesay, tall_man, kissed_ and potterstinks.

"These are some of the Friends of Erica who lives near Harvard,
We wish her Happy Birthday and we hope she knows she's lo-ved."

You can even listen to me singing it badly myself - which, even with the trickery, still isn't as quick as Tom Lehrer can do his version.

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA


That. Is the funniest. Wav file. I have ever heard. Ever.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah Chris Rocks!

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Isn't it the best? I thought it was pretty damn fantabulous myself, and not only that, Chris managed to time its arrival to exactly when I needed a pick-me-up.
:D

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Hahahaha. Yes. It is. =)

Happy birthday to you, by the way, even though we don't know each other =)

Also, OMFG. That icon is pure hilarity!

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Some people are very easily pleased.

Being one of them myself, I think it is an entirely good thing.

Wheeeeeeeee!

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:D Thank you.
Icon is courtesy of goats.com, specifically their t-shirts page. Which I am too lazy to link right now, but is easy to find. Be sure to also read the associate comic which is linked on the page with the shirt!

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That is absolutely appalling - well done. :-)

However, I wonder if you considered the stress patterns as well as the number of syllables. For example, vanityfair should probably be pronounced `VAN-i-ty FAIR' while the first word in the Elements song is pronounced `AN-ti-MO-ny', so the substitution doesn't quite fit.

Oh, and I always imagined hermorrine to have four syllables as it's clearly a play on Hermione* - was I wrong?

---

* which I would like to pronounce `HER-mi-own', but I would be wrong

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Thank 'ee! *doffs cap*

Other considerations and letter-pattern similarities made me pick vanityfair to go first.

Syllable patterns: there were some where I may well have erred in my pron[o]unciation (which you may have heard): for instance, I suspect selene_rain might actually be pronounced with the selene as in Celine Dion, rather than see-lee-nee.

Hadn't considered four syllables for hermorrine in the past, but now you come to mention it, you could well be right. Vicki, how do you pronounce your username?

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I have pronounced Hermorrine that way too, her-MOR-uh-NEE essentially.
Since the song is really too fast to be picky though I've no complaints :D

My brother pronounced Hermione "her-mi-own" for ages, until GoF in fact, where he experienced an utter pronunciation paradigm shift :D. Plus a bunch of "I told you so"s.

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Oh yes, and somewhat tangentially:

A couple of years or so ago I started writing a little proggy that would allow me to multitrack myself (the main thing here is being able to play one sound file while recording another, and I'm not sure if there is anything available that can do this) - with added trickery to help me with the soprano lines! However, it went the way of all my programming projects: I didn't have enough free time, so I didn't get round to finishing it. And then I stopped being single, and this is something that I will in no way do with anyone else in the house. ;-)

Looking at it just now, I'm glad I wrote the usage message listing all the options (that I haven't implemented yet - in fact, no part of it is functional at all) because by now I would surely have forgotten what things I intended to put in it.

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That is seriously one of the cutest and funniest things I have heard in a LONG while.

:D!!

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Sir,

You are the very model of a genius fandom principal,
You know how to say usernames with diction unimpeachable
In short, in matters Durendal, Peg Kerr, and Epicyclical
You are the very model of a genius fandom principal.




The "rene" in tartpants, however, is pronounced "Reh-NAY" (where really that's a schwa instead of "eh," but you know, eh). Just for the record. :D

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Those low-pitched noises you hear are Gilbert & Sullivan spinning in their graves, due to both of us.

On top of that, I appear to have transmuted tartpants into fick_l_rine somewhere along the way, presumably to help with the pronunciation. We had a character in a famous but not-actually-funny sitcom called René (the character, not the sitcom), so I should know, really. Perhaps I've been taking enough liberties already.

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I suspect Tom Lehrer would be spinning in his grave, but he's not actually dead. Perhaps he is spinning at the dinner table, to the utter puzzlement of his wife and family.

Well, to make matters more complicated Rene actually is Rene, and not Renee, the feminine version of the name, despite being a girl. That might have helped.

Ah, don't worry about it, though. She is so fick_l, after all.

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*waves white flag*

Incidentally, it has taken me worryingly long to realise that the letters g and q are (almost?) indistinguisable when underlined in Verdana at the standard size most people will see on their interests lists. Accordingly, someone who purports to have an interest in fags may well actually have an interest in faqs and vice versa.

Imagine my embarrassment!

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