Re: OT - Jeopardy: Did anyone hear what I heard?

From: Chris L Peterson (clp_at_alumni.caltech.edu)
Date: 07/22/04 

Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 00:21:49 GMT

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 23:45:16 GMT, John Steinberg <seesig@bottom.net> wrote:

>I haven't watched Jeopardy since Art Fleming was replaced by the ever
>so smarmy Alex Trebek, but tonight my wife said you just have to watch
>this kid play.
>
>The kid is Ken Jennings, a 30-year-old software developer from Salt
>Lake City, who has so far won over a million samolians on the program.
>
>One of the questions on tonight's episode was about cities in Belgium.
>Young Ken buzzed in and stammered out an answer that sounded like this:
>
>``What is Broo-sells?''
>
>No, says Trebeck, the correct answer is Brussels and it's not even
>pronounced as Broo-sells over there....
>
>Did my ears deceive me? Am I having flashbacks to Charles van Doren?
>How could young Ken pronounce it as he had UNLESS he had crib notes and
>just blew the pronunciation!?

The guy reads a lot. Sometimes people like that know what a word looks like, but
not necessarily how to say it. I'm guessing he was going for "Bruxelles", a
bizarre looking word to most English speakers and one that might well come out a
lot like what I heard him say.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com