Well, this is my first post and I'm going to start as I mean to go on by posting a rant about something that has annoyed me today.
Why do advertisers not check their adverts before they put them on TV? There was an avert for a car rental firm earlier (god knows I'm not going to provide them with free advertising by mentioning their name here). This advert plays off UKisms vs USAisms. In it, they make light of such amusing differences as us driving on different sides of the road, American extroversion versus British introversion, and many more hilarious differences between our cultures. (As a side note, I'm British but I don't think this has coloured my opinion of the advert.)
One of the differences they mention is our pronunciation of "Aluminium". In the advert, the American salesman says something along the lines of "Look out for the Aluminum signs." The British salesman then replies "No, it's aluminium. It has a 'U' in it." Hilarious... However, it has annoyed me because the difference in the pronunciation of Aluminium isn't in the 'u' sound. Had the people who produced the advert actually listened to their actors while the advert was being recorded, they'd have realised the American pronunciation differs from the British one in that the Americans don't pronounce the "ee" sound (i.e. al-you-min-ee-um versus al-oo-min-um).
This is a fairly trivial mistake to be worrying about, I know. However, it has wound me up, and I needed something to use as a first post on this blog.
It's a hard life.
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