The Pronunciation

What do you see here?

Available from Bunnings.com.au

That style of structure above is a fairly common sight in homes around Australia and can be found in the middle of the garden as a freestanding structure, or it can be seen attached to houses and decks to help create shade.  They can be simple in their design like the one above, or they can be quite ornate.  No matter how or where they're constructed, they're a much loved Aussie addition.



So now that we know we all recognise the structure, let's see if you know what it is actually called.

Yes, yes, yes, very clever.  It's a pergola which has its origins in Italy and was originally designed for climbing plants and ivy.

There are variations to the pergola which can lead to heated debate as to when a pergola stops being a pergola and instead becomes a veranda, porch, arbor, trellis or gazebo. But I'm not here to debate when a pergola is or isn't a pergola. I'm here to debate how you pronounce the bastard.

No seriously, how do YOU pronounce that thing I have pictured up there?

Yesterday my bestie and I were shooting the breeze via voice message, back and forth from the east coast of the USA to the east coast of Australia.  She was telling me how her brother-in-law was building this really fantastic pur-gal-lah.

What the f*&% is a pur-gal-lah?

A pink and grey Aussie bird that sounds like a cat?

A galah is an Australian native bird, related to the cockatoo, and is also the name we give really stupid people.
They do not purr like a kitten as this picture suggests.  They squawk loud enough to wake the dead. 

I ask her again, what the f*&% on earth is a pur-gal-lah? Some sort of fancy coffee percolator?

No, a purrrr-galah. You know, like a roof over his back deck.  A purrrr-galah.  Don't you have purrr-galahs in Australia?

No, we don't have bloody purrrr-galahs in Australia. But we do have Per-GO-lahs.

And we laughed, and laughed and laughed.  I mean, we often laugh over the Aussie-isms and Americanisms and the weird way both countries manage to butcher our mother tongue, but for me the whole pur-gal-lah versus per-GO-lah takes the cake.

Which is how we started a very hefty debate about who was right and who was wrong.  I mean, for once in my god-damn-Aussie-life I was actually pronouncing all the bloody letters in the word, the way they were meant to be pronounced.

Per. Go. La.

No short cuts, no weird inflections, just pure pronunciation the way the mother-land had intended it.

So I did what any well educated woman of the world my age would do. I went straight to Google.  Of course I had to prove that we who practice the British version of the English language on a daily basis, MUST be correct.  There is no way that thing my Dad built on my first home was a pur-gal-ah.  It was a true blue and very British per-GO-lah.

Guess what.  The British call it a pur-gal-lah.  A f*&%ing pur-gal-lah.  Mind blown.  I honestly don't know who I am anymore.

So I did some more research and it turns out that we Aussies are quite well known for our weird pronunciation of pergola.  It seems we're the only country in the world that really gives the ol' pergola a really big GO.

Which has me really confused, yet also very interested, in what other words we pronounce very differently to the rest of the English speaking world.  But that's a story for another day. Today it's all about the pergola ... or per-GO-lah ... or pur-gal-lah.

How do you pronounce pergola?

Do you have a pergola?

Have you built a pergola?

When is a pergola, no longer a pergola?  When it suddenly becomes a f*&%ing pur-gal-lah


Today is Thursday which means it's lovin' life linky day.  Come and join the Lovin Life vibes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter