It's just like regular bocce ball, except you play in parkas with snowmobile boots and sunblock . . . it's a wonder it hasn't caught on more places. March up here is amazing - you can sit in a Muskoka chair (adirondack is the translation, I understand) in jeans and a tee shirt and have your frosty beverage in the snowbank beside you. We have three or four days like that most Marches, and we try to think of fun outdoor sports to accompany the inevitable barbecue gathering. Ice golf also had a little white ball problem . . .

Sounds fun. It's nice to visit places with weather, but I think I'll leave living there to people with stronger constitutions.

Hehe, now ice golf I'd love to try, being a big golfer myself. I'd cheat though and use orange or yellow balls, or any other color other then white.

I think with pronouncing words like Ikea and Bocci ball, we tend to just pronounce them as we see it since most of us are not fluent in either language. We tend to hack words to their simpliest form. I'm sure there are a whole host of other words we desecrate!

I'm in the A-V-camp.

In our language, our vowels are pronounced EH (as in bay); EE (as in me); eye; oh; you. In just about every other language they are pronounced: letter A is AH (as in wad); letter E is EH (as in bay); letter I is EE (as in keep); oh; and UE (as in sue).

That's why IKEA is EE-kEH-AH, rather than EYE-kEE-UH.
That's why Antonio Bandaras pronounces congestion as cOHn-jEHs-tEE-OHn, rather than cuhn-jest-shun.
That's why Mitsubishi is mEEt-sUE-bEEsh-EE
That's why Daimler is dAHEEm-ler (the AH and EE form the diphthong "eye"), and not Dame-ler.

Oh sure, you COULD break it down and make it all intelligible.

And the companies play right along with cultural differences (as well they should, I suppose). The Ikea TV commercials have spokesman "Ingmar" saying the store name with the American inflection. He doesn't sound comfortable, though.

I always thought it was funny that Americans drive "Mahzduhs" while Canadians drive "Mazzduhs".

Well I was a Speech/Telecommunications (pretentious word for "broadcasting") major in college. I'm amazed I still remember anything. After all, it was sometime last century ya know.

Man, did my thread get hijacked. Where the heck is grammarbot or spellingbot when you need it? Actualy the jerk is PM'ing me and I'm about sick of it...

Do most of the video test patterns supplied on the new Avia disc have an explanation of what the pattern should ideally look like and what setting to adjustment on the display (in my case a projector) to get it there? My one quibble with the original disc is that an explanation was only provided for a handful of the many test patterns on the disc and I had no idea what to adjust or look for with the rest of them.

Haven't received it yet.