148: Mispronouncing

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Mispronouncing

Title text: My pal Emad does this all the time. 'Hey man, which way to the airpart?'

Explanation

This is the sixth comic in the My Hobby series. His "hobby" in this one is deliberately mispronouncing words while talking. Hobbies in the My Hobby series are generally annoying or weird, but with an element of cleverness. Here, Cueball persists in mispronouncing his words despite the second character's attempt to correct him. Interestingly, when Randall started the xkcd blog in October 2006, 6 weeks after the publication of this comic, he named it "Blag". He has used that name in several other comics, such as 181: Interblag and 239: Blagofaire. Today, if someone visits https://blag.xkcd.com they get redirected to blog.xkcd.com, but the slogan at the top still says "xkcd - The blag of the webcomic".

In the title text, Randall explains that he got the idea for this comic from one of his friends; it's unclear whether the friend's mispronunciations are purposeful like those in the comic.

Transcript

[Caption at top of panel:]

My hobby:

Mispronouncing words

[Cueball and a friend are talking:]

Cueball: Yeah, did you see what he said on his wobsite?

Friend: ...his what?

Cueball: Wobsite.

Friend: ... I think you mean "website."

Cueball: Why don't you write about it in your blag?

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Discussion

The "airpart" could be referencing a Saint Louis accent, rather than intentional mispronunciation. 130.160.145.185 19:48, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that Emad is supposed to refer to Ahmed, and is some sort of joke about Muslim terrorists.GallantChaos (talk) 18:08, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, and it's written Emad because he's deliberately mispronouncing it. 173.245.52.203 02:23, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

No, Emad is the online name of one of Randall's friends, look it up at http://wiki.xkcd.com/irc/Emad_%28Explanation%29 173.245.55.73 05:31, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Man goes into a shop. "Half a pound of kiddleyes, please" "Don't you mean 'kidneys" "That's what I said, diddleye" 141.101.99.217 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Isn't the whole joke on 'blag' that 'blog' and 'blag' are homonyms according to the wonderful English orthography *unless* one is aware that it is originally portmanteau of words 'web' and 'log' and by convention it is pronounced with 'o', but think for a minute: if one would never have seen nor heard that word ever before, would they not pronounce it something like... blag? 108.162.231.67 23:42, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

No. Examples to disprove: flog, clog, nog, bog, tog, cog, fog, etc. No reason why they would not pronounce blog in the same manner.108.162.237.191 15:27, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

For what it's worth, an Emad is mentioned here 108.162.215.178 01:39, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Unforgotten Officer Crabtree's accent (and all that bad “French” of the underground British) in BBC's 'Allo 'Allo series. “Good moaning, I have a massage for you!” etc. 172.68.110.16 21:58, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Can you get me some malk?

Before I saw this comic, I thought Randall's "blag" was a portmanteau of "blog" and "brag". Danish (talk) 16:42, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

OK, is "slogat" in the article a deliberate attempt to misprononce a word? Because, personally, I'd have mangled "slogan" as something like "shlogan". Nitpicking (talk) 13:06, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Note: yes, "misprononce" was on purpose. Nitpicking (talk) 13:06, 15 October 2023 (UTC)