What are we talking about today?

I'll get back to theme days once I find a groove of posting regularly. In the meantime, most of my posts are about some variation of books, bikes, buses, or Broadway. Plus bits about writing, nonprofits, and grief from time to time.

This blog is mostly lighthearted and pretty silly. It's not about the terrible things happening in the world, but please know that I'm not ignoring those things. I just generally don't write about them here.

26 April 2011

V is for Vicar

Because I want to tell you an an amusing story.

This is not the church from the story,
but it is only a few streets away.
When I first moved to Scotland, I would see the word "vicar" around, but for some reason never caught the pronunciation. I told you once before about my difficulty with new words and how I inevitably pronounce things so horribly, laughably wrong that I should probably just stick to words I know and never try to increase my word power (many apologies, Reader's Digest). So one day, I was waiting with a friend to pick up her daughter after school. We were standing outside a church across the street from the school, and there was a large notice board outside with the usual things you see on church notice boards: Sermon title, Jumble Sale, etc., and at the bottom it read, Vicar Whatever His Name Was.

So, seeing an opportunity to find out what this mysterious word meant, I asked my friend, "What's a vie-car?" She almost fell over from laughing (I'm not kidding-- I was worried for a second), and once she recovered, she explained that it's pronounced vick-er, and it's the Church of Scotland word for minister. Mystery solved.

And this is probably as close as I'll get to blogging about that little event happening across the pond on Friday (of course, it's an Archbishop, not a vicar, doing the honours that day). And since I'm sure you're all dying to know: Yes, I'll probably get up and watch. It's a bit far south in the country for me, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

Are you going to be watching TV Friday morning? Do you have an amusing story of a time when you pronounced something badly? Are you a vicar?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not likely that I'll watch that certain event on telly but there will be lots of news clips.

Trisha said...

LOL, vie-car. I like it!

J E Fritz said...

So it IS vick-ar. I've always wondered. I already told you about my horrible pronunciation skills--it still feels strange to say "herth" instead of "harth." The planet we live on isn't called "arth" is it?!

Su said...

@mybabyjohn: It's on at a slightly more decent hour for you than for me, isn't it? Aren't you on the east side of Canada?

@Trisha: Yeah, me too, once I got over being embarrassed! ;)

@JE: It is indeed! And I'm sticking with "harth". English is weird.

Raquel Byrnes said...

Oh...that scene in Bridget Jone's Diary finally makes sense. The Tarts and Vicars party...duh!
Edge of Your Seat Romance

Anonymous said...

When I first moved to Oregon no one ever corrected me on how to pronounce the Williamette River. I read it as a French name so I would say "william-may" when it is Will-am-it. Needless to say everyone knew I wasn't from around these parts. I prefer my fancy French pronunciation.

John Teal said...

Vicar being taken from the word Vicarious, meaning working on behalf of others (in a religious sense)

We bought a TV once that was made by "Pacific" my then 6 year old asked what does Paki-fic mean ?
We all fell about as though as a family we are not racist, in the UK Paki is considered a racist name for a person of Pakistani origin

RJRdaydreamer

Su said...

@Raquel: Hee hee, yeah, that's it. It's not just the Church of Scotland, of course, the Church of England has vicars too (and probably other groups I don't know about), but we were standing outside a C of S at the time.

@Charlie: I like your fancy pronunciation, too.

@RJR: Oh, my.

Mary@GigglesandGuns said...

When you pronounce something and people laugh or correct you at least you know someone is listening.

Su said...

An excellent point! :)