Friday's Unscientific Poll

[nanila]

Poll #15022 Semantic selections

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 49

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When requesting this operation be performed, I say

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"Close the door."
16 (35.6%)

"Shut the door."
29 (64.4%)

"Schedule" is pronounced

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as if it had no "c", e.g. SHED-ule
19 (39.6%)

as if it had a "k", e.g. SKED-ule
29 (60.4%)

Tea?

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Tea.
36 (75.0%)

Got any biscuits?
20 (41.7%)

O joy of ticky box, o rapture.
23 (47.9%)

Comments

[sfred]

"Schedule" is pronounced with a k in USA English and without in UK English, isn't it?

Oh, and I'm fairly sure that in UK English, the first sentence goes "Er, would you mind shutting the door, if it's convenient for you and only if you want to?"

[rmc28]

From parent-to-child it rapidly gets abbreviated to "DOOR!"

[nanila]

Ha, I look forward to employing this strategy.

[ankaret]

Hee!

I come from people who would say 'Bit of a draught in here' and expect the other person to pick up from the intonation whether they meant the door or the window.

[sfred]

Yes, thinking about it, maybe the formulation I suggest is just me. (Although that would be way too demanding for me: I would just smile politely while the frostbite developed.)

[liseuse]

Me too. Or, someone mutters "wood goes in holes" under their breath, expecting that the other person will a) hear, b) recognise the inference and c) be the one to get up and shut the door.

[nanila]

someone mutters "wood goes in holes" under their breath

...I get to do this now that I'm British, right?

[liseuse]

Obviously!

[antisoppist]

I come from people who said "Can't you feel a draught, dear?".

It has taken 12 years of marriage to work out that when the Finn says "Are you watching this?" he means "Is this a programme that is important to you because if so I will go and do something else while you are watching it" not "I do not want to watch this programme. Change the channel now."

[cosmolinguist]

Close vs. shut actually seems much more polarized US/UK than the pronunciation of schedule, in my experience. Andrew will say "the shop's shut!" where I'd say "the store's closed." :)

[sfred]

Interesting! Especially given that the signs on shop doors say "closed" rather than "shut".

In a very grumpy-old-person way, I think the pronunciation of schedule has become less geographically distinct because young (British) people nowadays watch so much American television...

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, every linguistic tendency Andrew doesn't like, he blames on young people watching American telly/listening to American rap, etc.

[nanila]

"Schedule" is pronounced with a k in USA English and without in UK English, isn't it?

That's what I thought, but there seem to be a number of Brits and Americans (that I can identify) on DW/LJ who don't adhere to that scheme (not pronounced SHEEM).

[holyschist]

I would not be surprised if there are some US dialects that say SHED-dule (particularly in New England). Unfortunately the neato US dialect survey map project doesn't seem to have it among its questions.

[rmc28]

Tea: sometimes, mostly not. But of course I have it to offer to others.

[nanila]

That is rather beautifully British. "I don't like this drink, but other people can't live without it so I wouldn't dream of not keeping it in my cupboard."

[ankaret]

I seem to pronounce both the k and the h as if speaking German.

[nanila]

I just tried that. I rather like the sound of it. :)

[ceb]

I am close/shut agnostic.

Tea! Right now, in fact.

[nanila]

Close/shut seems to be less polarised along regional lines and more situation-dependent.

Hurrah for tea!

[sunflowerinrain]

There's a story of some high-ranking political military USian saying that he learned to pronounce SKedule in SHool, which is amusing because School comes from Schule, so it's SKool which is off-track!

I use "shut the door" and "close the door", but with different meanings. "Shut" = do it now and quickly (e.g. the cats are escaping or the kitchen is on fire); "Close" = a request to return the door to the closed position, gently and in your own time. Not that it matters much, being all in the soft polite intonation versus a shrieked or annoyed imperative.

[azurelunatic]

Much the same on the door.

I'm SKedule most of the time (US, Alaska), but my father (US, California) was occasionally SCHedule.

[nanila]

Huh. I can't recall hearing SHED-ule before I moved to the UK, but it seems there are some Americans who do pronounce it that way, and some Brits who say SKED-ule.

[castiron]

I do somewhat the same. "Shut the door!" means the toddler's about to get out. "Close the door!" tends to mean it's less of an emergency but I still really want it done now.

I use "shut the window" more than "close the window". A box is closed rather than shut. The store is closed. The computer is shut down; the restaurant that failed health inspection is shut down; the restaurant that went broke closes down.

[nanila]

Responses and comments to Unscientific Poll would suggest that close/shut is situational rather than regional, while SKED/SHED is regional but with anomalies that the poll statistics are not equipped to define.

[nanila]

This scheme could clearly cause a schism. :P

[weaverbird]

Near as I can tell, I use shut and close interchangeably with shut having a very slight edge.

[nanila]

Unscientific Poll and associated comments suggest that close/shut is more of a situational than a regional issue. :D

[recessional]

I use both sets interchangeably.

[nanila]

Is very Canadian, going both ways. ;D

[redsixwing]

Or "CERRADO."

My family speaks English, but my mother and I spoke some Spanish together too. As neither of us are first-language Spanish speakers, that got interesting. There was a game about open and shut things that stuck around as an inside joke for a while.

[nanila]

"Cerrado" is a fabulous word. Something about the sound of it conveys, "NOPE WE'RE SHUT NOT HELPING YOU NOW SORRY IS PARTY TIME NOT WORK TIME".

[holyschist]

1. Either, depending on mood. And I'd either say 'please' or 'could you' or both.

2. Usually with a k, but my dad (raised in New England in the 1920s) said it SHED-ule and sometimes that creeps back in.

[nanila]

I'm going to have to get my mum (raised in New England in the 1940s) to say it when I speak to her this weekend. It would be interesting to see if it's generational as well as (partially) geographical.

...with our sample size of two. :P

[adeliej]

With shut/close, it's more situational, as others have been saying - I tend to use "shut" if the person's just walked through the door and is close enough they don't have to move to close it, and "close" otherwise. I think I see "shut" as the obvious result of "open", where "close" is a distinct action of its own. (I grew up with a very strong custom of leaving gates as you find them, which I think influences this.)

[nanila]

I think I see "shut" as the obvious result of "open", where "close" is a distinct action of its own.

Ah, this is a very good way to parse usage! I shall remember it. Thank you.