A rose by any other name (or, what a difference a letter makes)

[Guest Stompy]

Talk about a paradigm shift! I was watching TV last night (instead of flying...sorry) :-) when a commercial for Bombardier (snowmobiles, not planes, unfortunately) came on. What was special about this particular commercial is that the voice over guy actually said the name of the company. And that's when my jaw hit the floor.For all these years, I thought the name was Bombadier, bomb-ba-deer, as in someone who drops bombs. When in reality, the name is Bombardier, bomb-bar-dee-ay, as in someone who drops bombs with a French accent. :-lolThis may be ancient news for some of you, and it might even be the first time you've actually considered pronouncing it the wrong way, but for me, this was simply Earth shattering. Next someone will want to tell me there's no Santa Claus or something... :-badteeth

[Guest RobK]

I use to also think it was pronounced bomb-ba-deer until I watched a show about corporate jets awhile back and the narrarator pronounced it bom-bar-dee-ay. Rob

[Guest mikehaska]

"...with a French accent"Bombardier is based in Montreal, and was founded by a French-Canadian (Joseph-Armand Bombardier in 1937), hence the french sounding name and pronunciation.Edit- that sounds snippy, so I'll add a ubiquitious emoticon :-)

[Guest Stompy]

No, actually that's what I had assumed, so no emoticon was necessary. :-) But thanks anyway. One can never have too many emoticons. :-lol

[Mike S KPDX 597]

the one I dont know is "Philitus"Philly-tus?Phil-li-tus?other??

[Guest Stompy]

You mean Pilatus? Pile-ate-us? Pill-ah-tus? Pile-ah-twos?

[Guest mikehaska]

That sounds like the problem I had. I had always thought that the X Cessna Citation X was really pronounced X (as in the letter, x). In reality, it's actually a roman numeral.Darn was I embarrased!BTW, Citation "X" sounds very cool and futuristic for the extremely fast biz jet, no?

[Guest]

Pee-Lah-Thus is the closest I can get it in English. It's another non-English name for you guys to learn and pronounce properly :-lol