By superminty - 04/12/2012 08:12 - Canada - Hamilton

Today, my boyfriend and I had a disagreement over the pronunciation of the word "train." It turned into a heated debate that lasted all night and ended with us sleeping in separate rooms. FML
I agree, your life sucks 13 827
You deserved it 20 755

superminty tells us more.

It was "ch-rain" versus "t-rain".

Top comments

How many ways are there to pronounce the word train..?

That's just loco. What were you trying to achieve?

Comments

That's just loco. What were you trying to achieve?

I mean, it obviously wasn't just the pronunciation thing. He must've made choo mad about something else.

perdix 29

I don't know whether the argument is loco, per se, or whether one or both of them has a loco motive to fight so strenuously over such a trivial thing.

You're on the right track with those puns; clearly OP's relationship has derailed.

17- I'm with choo on this one, no need to boiler over such a small disagreement.

27- yea, I guess they both just need to blow off some steam; there's no need for them to Rail at each other and get carriage away.

This is certainly not going to caboost their friendship.

And 44 derailed it. Dont let the fork in the track keep you from making it up the moutain. Remember these famous words "I can do it."

There's two things a guy can be in a relationship.... He can be correct or he can be happy...

Steve95401 49

Those two need to conductor themselves like grown-ups.

Just make sure you guys don't ticket too far, OP.

Agreed, certrain things just need to be let go.

I agree with 9 and 3/4 of you about this. They just need to coal down for a few days and just shovel their problems aside to keep the wheels turning on the relationship. Go on a picnic fur-a-nice day!

Haaaaaaaaa! A Harry Potter train joke. Nice.

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OP and her boyfriend are both idiots for arguing over something like this

37 Threadjack. 2 I would say it chugged along rather slowly.

#54 act like you've never done that before

2, it happened quite slowly. The fml said all night..

How many ways are there to pronounce the word train..?

I was trying to come up with more than 1 pronunciation but failed. It would have been much more understandable if they were arguing over how to pronounce 'potato'.

Maybe they have different accents. I get made fun of all the time for the way I say anything that has that "ai" sound such as eight, train, pain. I allso get made fun of for my pronounciation of poor and shower. I'm from Northern Ireland so basically it's like they don't understand at all or they piss themselves laughing. FML.

there's one that sounds more like "tryin" like an Australian accent. And then just straight up train, with an American accent. Lol

Basically train sounds like "Tree-an" pronounced very quickly. Poor sounds like "purr" and shower sounds like "shar." And a whole lot of other weird accent nonsense that confuses people. Fire being one syllable like "far" or "u"s sounding more and more like "o"s is just the tip of the iceberg. For any and all interested.

Dude. I'm Australian. I don't pronounce train as tryan it sounds more like tray-n another example. Os stray Lee ya. Though I suppose it depends where in Australia you are. I'm from Adelaide which has proper English as opposed to castle in Victoria being said like cassle, or graph being said in Vic and Nsw as graff. Also melbournites. It's MELbourne. Not Malbourne. And stop trying to sound like Tom cruise also saying melBORN.

weeabaka 6

What about the fact that we often opt for saying something more along the lines of 'chrain' because its easier to say than 'TRain'? That could have been it. But, it's still no excuse.

Tidus I'm curious as to how you say graph and castle and melbourne because the pronounciations you deem wrong are the only ones I've ever heard. What other ways are there to say them?

unknown_user5566 26

3- OP posted further down (#51) saying the other way was "ch-rain". o.O

55 I know graph can be either grahf or graff and castle can be cahsel or casel, that what some british accents are like...

I'm from Melbourne Victoria and we use British pronunciation of words mostly, not the American way.

There is no 'British pronunciation' per say the accents here are so varied...

I don't mean in terms of accents, but more in terms of examples like castle, graphs, dance ect where there are two distinct pronunciations, the american way, and what I meant by the British way

but there isnt distinct pronunciations... i say graph but some british people say grahph, it depends where you live!

Spottedfeather 7

You DO say castle "cassle." That's how it's pronounced.

There is only one way. Op is a dumbass, the bf is a dumbass, and so is the fact that they slept in different rooms. Honestly, what the hell? Being mad about something shouldn't prevent you from sleeping in the same bed. It is where you sleep.

Well, the FML is from Canada, so there is/was probably some accented pronunciation involved.

157, in Canada we have one pronunciation of 'train'. It's 'tray-n', unless you're from a different country, or spoke another language, then the accents apply when learning, but it doesn't change the pronunciation much with the people I know who have foreign accents.

How many ways can "train" be pronounced? :/ unlucky op. Sometimes it's better just to agree with the other person..

riseagainstbabyy 4

I know tons of people who pronounce it more like "chrain" instead of correctly pronouncing the T. Same with the word tree.

Well are you saying we should all say Tah-rain and Tah-ree then? TR said properly make a CH sound

I'm with 120 here. 126, not ta-rain, just train. Use your tongue against the roof of your mouth to pronounce the T sound as opposed to the Ch sound like in cheese. Train, Trade, Trash. Still 1 syllable.

"CH" said properly makes a "CH" sound. "TR" said properly makes a "TR" sound. Just like "GH" said properly makes a "GH" sound. I am not sure where you ever picked up the idea that using two completely different letters became "proper" for one random case. Unless "proper" just means "this is the sloppy pronunciation I am accustomed to and therefore call proper". Are you seriously unable to see how "TR" can be a single syllable?

Who really cares about pronunciation that much?

The answer to that question is pretty much in the FML.

Hee riole cers ebut perncieeshun 'at mush. I suppose a lot of people do; it has to be consistent with what everyone around you is used to hearing, to a certain degree, or else we will have misunderstandings in the best case scenario, or arguments like in OP's case in the worst.

As a trainee teacher I can tell you that bad pronunciation completely ***** up children's ability to spell correctly. It's actually really distressing to see bright children fall so far behind just because their parents couldn't be asked to teach them how to say things properly.

why can't the parents be asked to teach them how to say things properly?

88 - It's an expression...but most of the time the parents can't pronounce things properly themselves...so that doesn't really help.

I'm honestly stumped trying to come up with more than one possible pronunciation!

51 Didn't you know it's obviously "ch-rain." Haven't you heard it in slow motion, while Peter is running from it?

unknown_user5566 26

OP, I sincerely hope you did not think the pronunciation was "ch-rain".

it is pronnounced chr-eyn. At least thats how I say it and I don't think im that stupid.

Nothing spelled with a T is pronounced CH... TU can sometimes sound like 'Chew' depending on the accent but TR is never pronounced like CH

It just depends on your accent, it can be pronounced either way, I say ch-rain.

missnuthin 10

dictionary.com has this little feature, where you click on the speaker icon next to the word, and the audio clip reads the pronunciation to you.

Arguing about pronunciation in cases like that is really.... just stupid. That's just a regional difference. Both pronunciations are correct. The only case in which it would be a valid debate would be if he thought it was "trah-INE" or something like that. Otherwise it's obviously going to vary from place to place. In my area, a lot of people say "chrain" because 1) the parts of your mouth that articulate "tr" are the same parts that articulate "ch", just slightly differently, and 2) IIRC, German influence. We also tend to pronounce "str" words as "shtr", like "shtrong".

#93, I'm sure you unconsciously do it, especially if you're an American. I think "train" varies from region to region, but certain "tr" words tend to be pronounced more as a "ch" in American English. Think about the way you say "matriculate" or "trepidation". Even the dictionary.com pronunciations for words like these sounds like a "ch". After all, the "ch" sound is really just a "t-sh" sound said quickly, and it's easy to make a "sh" sound when your mouth is in an "r" shape. Sorry if that's poorly phrased! I'm passionate about language, and it's hard to explain these things without using technical terms. :)

Maybe one of them was pronouncing it in French? Train is almost the same in French and English.

I pronounce it "chrain" as well. If I say "t-rain" it sounds like I'm saying 'terrain'. (I'm from U.S.A. West Coast)

#103: Yeah, I thought about the way I pronounce those words. And it is not with a CH sound at any point. Because there is no CH in them. At all. Nor, in fact, does dictionary.com use a CH in "matriculate" or "trepidation" - I checked. The pronunciation key only lists a dental T sound, and the speak-aloud function backs that up. At any rate, a sufficiently large number of people having mush-mouthed enunciation doesn't automatically make them right, any more than those who never read and thus don't know the phrase is "for all intents and purposes", not "for all intensive purposes". Dental sounds are confusing as well - some people have trouble enunciating a D versus a T - but it doesn't make the two into the same letter.

akinsel2 6

@#125: Do you say "chry" as well instead of "try"? it's the same opening consonant sound as "train"...it should also be mono-syllabic in both cases with no separation between the "t" and the rest of the word. Another example is "to" versus "cho"...if you are pronouncing all these wrong, maybe you should see a speech therapist because many in society see people who fail to pronounce words properly as less educated. I know I had to change the way I pronounced certain words when I went to university and found that some people didn't appreciate my "hick" dialect that I used back home.

#142: A speech impediment might also explain hearing the non-existent "CH" in the Dictionary.com audio pronunciations. To people with language deficits, it's not just that they say words incorrectly. In some cases they actually sound that way coming from other people as well.

"I chried to catch up to the chrain on my chractor. But a chroupe of military chroops cut me off in their army chruck. So I chraveled home to eat a bowl of chrifle instead and lament my chroubles. Present someone with this mini-paragraph spelled correctly. Nobody will pronounce it like this.

those are both wrong. train has only one syllable.

in that case 98, take speech therapy and learn how to pronounce it properly. please. children will never learn how to spell, if the people around them mispronounce words constantly.

#159... I'm right there with you XD I was raised in the south, and I'm well educated, but my accent makes me say "chrain." It's just how I grew up saying it, and hearing it said around me. I think, like some other people that have posted, neither are wrong; it just depends on where you're from and how the people you grew up around say it. As for #145, I do indeed say it like that with the proper spelling. Every last one of the "t"s made into "ch"s.

Shadow9876 19

Oh my god. I wish I didn't vote for both options now.

secretsymbiote21 5

train should only have one meaning!!!! ahhh

It has nothing to do with the meaning of train it's how you say the word train.

crazytwinsmom 25

Or the train of a wedding dress.

Or train like in training someone for something.

chinchily 12

Homophones! Well idk would they be? Considering they are same spelling?

perdix 29

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crazytwinsmom 25

Or the train of a wedding dress.

but for all the meanings of train, the pronunciation stays the same in Canada (where I'm from, and where the FML is from)

coolboy675 16

Trainers gonna train. Now tell me how many possible combinations there are to pronounce that statement.

59- going to... Ain't nobody got time fo' dat!

"Gonna" is a widely accepted vernacular form of "going to". It can be found in the Collins English Dictionary as well as in the Dictionary of American Slang.

RedPillSucks 31

Which one of you pronounced it to rhyme with crayon???

Wait it's not supposed to sound like crayon... damn it now I feel stupid.