Let me confess up front that my hearing is not the best in the world. Having said that, I heard a brief interview with Elon Musk on the radio, and it sounded to me that he was pronouncing the word Tesla as Tezz-luh. I had assumed it was Tess-luh.
Anybody know for sure?
The company was named after Nikola Tesla, who was a Serbian immigrant.
So the name should be pronounced the same as it would be in Serbia. Têsla Tess-luh.
English football commentators pronounce every 's' in an Eastern European name as 'sh', so they would pronounce it 'teshler' ;-)
AJ
English football commentators pronounce every 's' in an Eastern European name as 'sh', so they would pronounce it 'teshler' ;-)
... if it is an S-with-caron.
... if it is an S-with-caron.
While punditing on a match between an English team and an East European team, a famous English manager (and IIRC, ex-England manager) got so carried away that he even pronounced English players' names with 'sh' where they were spelt with 's'. And we Brits don't have s with caron ;-)
AJ
Well, since they can't tell the difference between football and soccer, is it any wonder they're confused about lots of other things?
Dayum, that explains why only the US plays American Football. The rest of the world has been doing it wrong for a couple of centuries ;-)
AJ
I've never understood why the American version is called "football." The majority of the game is played without utilization of kicking a ball. Kickoffs and field goals are the only time a foot touches the ball.
It is much more logical to call soccer football, as it's the majority of that game.
I've never understood why the American version is called "football."
Because the balls are oblong and approximately a foot long (approximately 11 to 11.25 inches in length)?
https://static.nfl.com/static/content/public/image/rulebook/pdfs/5_2013_Ball.pdf
Why isn't soccer called kickball rather than football?
Why isn't soccer called kickball rather than football?
Presumably that is the same reason a similar sport is called handball rather than throwball? :)
Presumably that is the same reason a similar sport is called handball rather than throwball? :)
1. That link provides no explanation for the name.
2. This is what most people in the US probably think of when you say handball. Not throwing the ball, but striking it with the open hand, kind of like racquetball or tennis but without the racquets.
Not throwing the ball, but striking it with the open hand
That sounds similar to fives, although the latter requires the ball to strike the wall above a line. And there is a backhand, but it's a desperation shot.
AJ
Why isn't soccer called kickball rather than football?
It could logically be called either of those terms.
Why isn't soccer called kickball rather than football?
Because that would lead to confusion with the female response to being groped.
AJ
It's the same reason that "foot soldiers" aren't soldiers that kick the enemy.
I heard of that before but I don't think it works. The reasoning "because it is played on foot rather than horseback" fails to account for the fact neither polo nor pato, which were the only equestrian team sports using a ball at the time, would not have reached the English-speaking world until much later.
Sport wise you may be correct, but in military terms, the distinction between infantry(foot soldiers) and cavalry is older than the Roman Empire.
The explanation I heard, not sure whether it is actually true or not, is that before the Victorian era "football" didn't have well-defined rules and varied from one town to the next. So for example, some allowed kicking the opponent (hence the "foot" in their version of football) and punching the ball with the fist or carrying the ball around. Of course kicking your opponent isn't allowed in any offshoots of football nowadays, but that is why we get rugby-like sports also calling themselves football.
AJ, thanks for taking my comment in the spirit it was intended. To help make that spirit clear, I had placed "grins", "ducks", and "runs away" on separate lines in open and close brackets, but I see now they didn't show up. Must have run afoul of some html thing. I have only the barest smattering of knowledge in that area.
So, again, thanks - especially since you did it without the aids I intended!!
I had placed "grins", "ducks", and "runs away" on separate lines in open and close brackets, but I see now they didn't show up.
It might be a forum 'feature'. Some types of brackets get gobbled up.
AJ
It might be a forum 'feature'. Some types of brackets get gobbled up.
Yep, Angle brackets (used for html coding) and curly brackets used for the forum's original native format coding.
A note on angle brackets: only certain HTML tags are supported/allowed, everything else is stripped out.
IIRC, angle brackets will not strip out if there is a space on both sides. Test: < foo >
only the US plays American Football
There is a version is Canada, different but uses a very similar ball not a soccer ball. And there are versions in Australia that aren't "soccer". American Pro football teams played in Great Britain. This is from Wikipedia so take it for what it is worth: "The sport of American football is played in the United Kingdom in domestic and international levels. Domestic games in England. Scotland and Wales are operated by British American Football Association who run the BAFA National Leagues for Adult Contact football and British Universities American Football League for the University contact game. Games in Northern Ireland are structured by American Football Ireland who are based in the Republic of Ireland. The UK has played host to games in association with the Americans' National Football League (NFL), including four regular-season NFL games, as of 2021."
You're pissing up a rope on that argument. They may have a few teams but the only real football in Europe is of the soccer variety.
but the only real football in Europe is of the soccer variety.
Well there is Rugby from which most of the football games that don't use round balls are derived (sort of) from.
Here is some information from Wikipedia:
"Rugby football
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rugby football is a collective name for the family of team sports of rugby union and rugby league, as well as the earlier forms of football from which both games, as well as Australian rules football and gridiron football, evolved.
The two variants of gridiron football — Canadian football and, to a lesser extent, American football — were once considered forms of rugby football but are seldom now referred to as such. In fact, the governing body of Canadian football, Football Canada, was known as the Canadian Rugby Union as late as 1967, more than fifty years after the sport parted ways with the established rules of rugby union or league.[1][2][3]
Rugby football was thought to have been started about 1845 at Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, England although forms of football in which the ball was carried and tossed date to medieval times (see medieval football). Rugby split into two sports in 1895, when twenty-one clubs split from the Rugby Football Union to form the Northern Rugby Football Union (later renamed the Rugby Football League in 1922) in the George Hotel, Huddersfield, over payments to players who took time off from work to play the sport (known as "broken-time payments"), thus making rugby league the first code to turn professional and pay players. Rugby union turned professional one hundred years later in 1995, following the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa.[4][5] The respective world governing bodies are World Rugby (rugby union) and the Rugby League International Federation (rugby league).
Rugby football was one of many versions of football played at English public schools in the 19th century.[6][7] Although rugby league initially used rugby union rules, they are now wholly separate sports. In addition to these two codes, both American and Canadian football evolved from rugby football in the beginning of the 20th century."
You're going to offend some folks if you ever visit the Têsla museum in Belgrade and use the zz pronunciation. I was promptly educated when I made that mistake.