Transcription:
How To Confound A Centaur
Centaur: Hold it right there, you can’t just ride through my fields uncontested! I’ll lose my credibility if we don’t battle or something.
Me: That’s fair. How about we–
Centaur: And it can’t be a pun battle, I heard what you did to the sphinx.
Me: Darn. Okay, what if I beat you in a horse race?
Centaur: Ha! Alright, your funeral. Where’s the finish line?
Me: That tree over there. Where’s your horse?
Centaur: (gestures at horsey backside) Um…?
Me: You’re not a horse, this is a HORSE race. You have to race with an actual horse.
Centaur: You want me… a centaur… to RIDE a regular horse.
Me: That is, linguistically-speaking, what you agreed to.
Centaur: …
Me: …
Centaur: I hate you.
Me: That’s fair.
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Try pronouncing the ‘a’ in pan like the ‘a’ in large, then you’ll end up with a rather well-done pun.
I already do. Is this some weird thing only britoids or Australians understand?
RP might use a similar vowel, but even most modern British people don’t seem to pronounce these very similarly based on this pronouncing dictionary’s advice and sample clips. And I can confirm as an Australian that Australian English accents don’t pronounce them remotely similarly.
Ah, I failed to notice your instance which I why I asked about aussies.
A parn?
Got a laugh from me, but I did mean only the ‘a’, not the ‘ar’. I couldn’t think of any other English word with that sound unfortunately, do you have a better suggestion?
Unfortunately I can’t seem to get it to work for any sound with my hodgepodge of an English accent. Perhaps it could work with a very thick cockney accent, but the length of the vowel would be quite different between the two,
e.g. puhn and paahn
So if you grossly mispronounce the word, it becomes a pun? I don’t think that’s a very good pun, tbh…
To be honest, I don’t really like it either, which might surprise you considering my last sentence. I just couldn’t resist making a small pun myself.