strangulated girl

[calimac]

No human females are harmed in this post; the reference is to the word.

I've seen it noted that people not native to English often have particular trouble attempting to pronounce the word "squirrel." I would like to suggest a companion in that misery, and not just for second-language speakers: the phonetically slightly similar "girl."

I had noted how Prince Harry, with his cut-glass upper-crust British accent, sounded strangulated when trying to tell Oprah the (putative) sex of his then-impending child. The word didn't seem to fit his manner of talking.

But it was more recently when I was on the phone with a service representative who had, I think, some form of South Asian accent that I really began to wonder. He was reading an alpha-numeric code off to me, and for one letter said "G as in grr." "G as in what?" I asked, not sure if I'd heard the letter correctly. He repeated it. It took some time to establish that the word he was trying to say was "girl," but that neither the vowel nor the final L seemed to exist in his phonetic vocabulary. Possibly he should have picked a different word, but maybe the company had a required list.

Comments

[sartorias]

I've heard "gel" from speakers of that cut-glass posh accent.

[ethelmay]

Someone whose accent doesn't much distinguish between R and L could easily end up saying something like "gurr," with a schwa for the U.

Scotland?

[lsanderson]

I was amazed when I heard it in Scotland the first few times.

[cmcmck]

The Scot as with most Scots pronounces it gair-ul

[armiphlage]

The NATO alphabet was selected to avoid issues with pronunciation; I don't understand why companies don't use it.

[wild_patience]

I told him that I had a nun in high school who told us to "set-uhl down, gels."