(Judges 12:5-6) . . .“Are you an Ephraimite?” When he would say: “No!” 6 then they would say to him: “Please say Shibboleth.” And he would say: “Sibboleth,” as he was unable to say the word correctly. And they would lay hold of him and slay him at the fords of the Jordan. So there fell at that time forty-two thousand out of Ephraim.
Butchered pronunciation
by road to nowhere 30 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
-
exjwlemming
I had one elder that pronounced hyperbole as "hyper bowl" as he was reading directly from the public talk script.
-
carla
If I had heard gee-hovah I would have thought the person was making fun. I think my jw would have thought the same way. Long ago I called jw's "jw's" and he thought that was disrespectful, now he will use the shortened version as well. He has no memory of it being 'disrespectful'. That's a cult for you.
-
zachias
Yes the murdering of the English language has always bugged me.
One elder referred to Alexander the great having his soldiers in a parallax, (optical term) he meant phalanx.
another referred the Peter outside warming himself by a brassiere (a bra) when he meant brazier.
when meetings had a break between talk and wt the elder said "we will now have a 5 minute intercourse"...not one sister moved!
These are a result of ill educated giving voice to their ill education. Project this level of ignorance accross the jw experience and it is no wonder there are some fairly horrid experiences reported here..
-
FFGhost
One of my all-time favorites was when the heavy elder (in more ways than one) was reading for the book study. The lesson for the week was on Jeremiah and his secretary Baruch.
Baruch, based on the punctuation marks in the text and the way it is read on the WT website, is pronounced BEAR-uk.
This guy somehow got it into is head that it was Bear-OOK.
There were a few paragraphs where Baruch's name appeared 6 or 7 times. So it was a constant stream of Bear-OOK, Bear-OOK, Bear-OOK, Bear-OOK.....
So, now it's time for the conductor to ask the question on the paragraph, which, naturally enough, included the name Baruch.
What to do? If he pronounces it the right way, it will publicly "show up" Brother Heavyweight. And then he'll get a firm scolding after the meeting about the proper time and place to give counsel, "Don't you dare ever correct me in public ever again", etc. etc. etc.
Ugh, he thinks. So what does he do? He reads the question referring to Bear-OOK.
Now, the audience. Many / most folks know it's pronounced BEAR-uk, right? Right? Well, um, now two elders are pronouncing it Bear-OOK, they're more spiritual, they must know better, so here goes my comment: "Well, you see, Bear-OOK being Bear-OOK, Bear-OOK decided to...."
The whole #$%#%FF! night. Bear-OOK, Bear-OOK, Bear-OOK, Bear-OOK......
-
punkofnice
I have no problems with Americans pronouncing words differently. However, I used to get marked down at school for my spelling things ALA Watchtower, without the 'U' EG, in Colour.
Try Worcestershire sauce.
-
FedUpJW
One I used to hear repeatedly was Capernaum (Ca·perʹna·um) being pronounced as Capper-Num'
-
road to nowhere
Dead people are unconscience. My old favorite, liberry.
-
FFGhost
Oh yeah, we had one could who would always say "Crishendum" instead of "Christendom". Drove me nuts.
-
Anna Marina
We were given a talk about orgies. But the elder pronounced it with a hard 'g' as in 'organization.'
Sounded like corgies without the 'c'.