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Clinton begs his mum to let Eyebrow Girl sleep over for the night

Clinton begs Claire, Marten and Faye to let Eyebrow Girl sleep over for the night

Clinton begs his mum to let Eyebrow Girl sleep over for the night; it turns into a longer-term thing

We cut back to Marten and Claire; Clinton's call for help interrupts a... moment

Bubbles has things to think about and notices a fire in the city... a BIG fire

We meet another of Jeph's new characters when she comes into CoD the next morning

New arc! Steve returns and he needs Marten's help for something!

New arc! Just what has Hannelore been doing with her time when she isn't at CoD?

New arc! May's probation hearing is coming up and she needs to persuade her friends to speak on her behalf

Other

[Tova]

Extravagently envisioned exposition eventually elicits elucidating exchanges.
But bloody brilliant banter's better.

[Eastrim]

For all those concerned about the clock: don't be alarmed.

Why, does the discussion tick you off?

Well, for a second there I thought that people were just trying to wind me up. 

Nah, I want to drive you cuckoo. If you already are, then that's great; you'll be grandfathered in!

Some sort of reaction, certainly, but her reaction in particular was unusual enough to spark speculation.

Except that, as some people noted, her reaction wasn't actually unusual at all. The situation is what's unusual - she doesn't have to be autistic or had past trauma for her reaction to be a perfectly reasonable reaction to this trauma. People's responses in high stress situations run the gamut, and hers is fairly well known.

It was probably her bar too, since no sort of boss or owner figure showed up to assist.

I'm confused that this is still under 'probable,' and at all the dubiousness it was treated with when it was first proposed. It was already reasonably likely; small bars don't exactly have a lot of employees, but when Kugai proposed it the possibility was treated as revelation. Once we learned a day later that she lived above it, it was confirmed; employees don't live above businesses (barring rare, old, or large company occasions), owners do. As soon as we learned she lived above the bar, there was virtually no chance she didn't own it. Did people find it unlikely that a woman would own a bar?

[Emoroffle]

Looks like mom got game and Clinton will have repressed memories. I'm all for the "You go girl!" moment on this but I do have to question her taste in men. Whatever floats her boat I suppose.

[Method of Madness]

Why? He seems nice.

[CaptainMal]

For all those concerned about the clock: don't be alarmed.

Why, does the discussion tick you off?

Well, for a second there I thought that people were just trying to wind me up. 

Nah, I want to drive you cuckoo. If you already are, then that's great; you'll be grandfathered in!

It's time we found out about the clock

[DSL]

The clock is just a complication.

[bhtooefr]

I want to escapement from this forum now.

[MrNumbers]

An amazingly acute Australian always answers alliteration ...

My usual sig, for the longest time, has been:

Amateur author, avid Australian alliteration aficionado.

[ankhtahr]

So she really does have someone to take care of this for her 

[zmeiat_joro]

Speaking of the numbers of vowels in languages: Ubykh has two vowels, and so does Mandarin in some analyses of its phonology. But I really don't want to get deep into this, unless someone wants me to go into phonological analysis and diachronical reconstruction. IIRC Swedish has the most among European languages.

[DrBear]

From the poll:
We cut back to Marten and Claire Claire's Mom and Brad; Clinton's call for help interrupts a... moment.

He seems like a nice boy.

[Zebediah]

Looks like mom got game and Clinton will have repressed memories. I'm all for the "You go girl!" moment on this but I do have to question her taste in men. Whatever floats her boat I suppose.

All we know about Chad is that he's a big ol' hunk of beefcake, that he's friendly, and that he needed tutoring from Clinton. Well, and that he likes older women. Not really enough data to form an opinion on him yet.

Anyway I doubt Mom Augustus intends this as a long-term relationship. Even if he is totally shallow, so what? They'll have a night of mind-blowing sex, and tomorrow morning she'll make him pancakes and then kick him out the front door.

[Lanika )O(]

why not push to the limits?

Well okay, if we can do it that way...

Brunhilda is a Valkyrie, come to Earth to serve beer and ale between carting off warriors to Valhalla. Since she's been around for a long time and seen a lot of stuff, good and bad, she just doesn't react to it much anymore. But what will she do when she finds... love? For while she has experienced all that humans have to offer, between the bar and her duties transporting dead people, she's mostly missed the AI revolution. When she meets Pintsize, it's love at first sight, for he has archived things she has never even dreamed of, and for the first time in a very long time, she feels alive again. Will she at last find her true love just as Ragnarok begins?

I think I love your brain.

[Emoroffle]

Looks like mom got game and Clinton will have repressed memories. I'm all for the "You go girl!" moment on this but I do have to question her taste in men. Whatever floats her boat I suppose.

All we know about Chad is that he's a big ol' hunk of beefcake, that he's friendly, and that he needed tutoring from Clinton. Well, and that he likes older women. Not really enough data to form an opinion on him yet.

Anyway I doubt Mom Augustus intends this as a long-term relationship. Even if he is totally shallow, so what? They'll have a night of mind-blowing sex, and tomorrow morning she'll make him pancakes and then kick him out the front door.

Oh nothing about him personally, just that awful haircut and boxer-briefs combo.

[Lanika )O(]

Depression is similar in that regard in that when it becomes overwhelming, just dealing with ordinary everyday things gets to be too difficult, if not impossible. It manifests differently, obviously, but I get it. I have depression linked with psychosis and when my depression gets really bad, functioning at all is a serious challenge.

Me too (depression without psychosis but with severe anxiety and panic attacks here). It's terrible that when I'm stressed I ask my family for time to calm down and recollect my feelings because my mind goes reeling and I stop thinking and just react they just keep going on and on.

Everything overwhelms me, the ambient light, the ambient noises, the interaction, the loud voice, the pressure... I just want to curl in a ball and disappear. Eventually I will have a meltdown and lash out before just crumbling to  desperate tears, feeling terribly exposed.

Some days I'm so overwhelmed that I can't function at all. I would probably be externally calm in a house fire too, and scream my lungs off when finally alone in a bathroom or hotel room.

[Lanika )O(]

Yeah, what iwdy said.

OK, I guess it's only semi-related to the comic, but I'll ask.

This might be my general weirdness, but I am always utterly baffled by the reaction, which seems to happen both in fiction and as a reaction of fans of fiction. The idea that seeing/thinking/talking about parents having sex is extremely uncomfortable. The phrase "brain bleach" is used more often than not.

I mean, I understand the part that we are wired not to be attracted to our parents. Therefore, the idea of a parent having sex is not, well, sexy to us ourselves. But at the same time, I don't understand why I would be particularly weirded out by the fact that my parents have had sex. I'm kinda a key piece of evidence that it had to have happened at some point =P no, I do not think about it actively and the thought would probably be somewhat awkward, and granted, I've never walked in on my parents having sex or anything. But I don't think I would be particularly traumatized by this. Probably not as a child and certainly not as a teenager/adult.

In this case, it's not even the reaction Clinton is having. His response makes perfect sense to me. But the ubiquity of "eww eww eww parents HAVING SEX" is utterly incomprehensible to me.

I mean, isn't it kind of narrow-minded to be weirded out by something just because it is not appealing to us on a personal level? The "parents having sex" reaction, despite it clearly being a different reason, kinda reminds me of people who seem to be homophobic mainly because they don't personally enjoy the thought of same-sex couples doin' it*. With, in some cases, a measure of ageism thrown in, due to one's parents' relative age?

Again, personal sexy thoughts and aesthetic appeal aside, I'm not sure why parents/family being sexually active would be a reason to freak out to any large extent. Is it because people don't think of their own parents (or other close family) as persons with a sex drive? Is it because we're supposed to react this way for some reason?

Help me out here, people.


* So I find the phrase "doin' it" amusing. So sue me.

It's cultural and crops both geographically and timewise.

North Americans seem to be fixated on the idea that sex is disgusting, old people are disgusting, mothers are sacred untouchable pure beings and mothers having sex is dirty because it takes them from the position of "mommy" to the position of woman. In countries where sex isn't so associated with religion the "ew" factor is lessened. The general attitude is "eh, whatever, they're married, of course they fuck" when you walk on your parents having sex. The talk is usually about privacy and respect (knock before you enter, what we do in our room is none of the outside world business etc).

There's also a psychological component at work here: little boys idolize their mothers. They are pure and perfect and unblemished and smart and beautiful. It's the oedipal complex. They must deal with the father figure that shows the other side of the mother, that of the girlfriend and the lover, the woman. Normally when a guy reaches puberty he takes these ideal images and projects on his first loves, and learns to adjust the idealization and become a good boyfriend/lover. In romantic and byronic times you have the loved woman as untouched and to have sex with her as corrupting and violating this perfection.

Again, this is rarer where sex is less taboo. I particularly think that the American attitude of "eeeeeeew sex" feels like a teenager stuff that people that already have an adult life should have surpassed long ago. Seems very manchild to me.

[brasca]

Remember, folks, this is finding this out on the same day he got rejected himself.

Damn.

Exactly.  And I totally sympathize with Clinton's earlier outburst with Claire.  I don't begrudge the people who have someone in their lives when I don't, but I get really irritated when they prod me about doing something about it. 

[Case]

I love love love the head canon cannon image. Where's it from?

Hey, person-I-assume-to-be-a-new-forumite!

You can easily get the URL of any pic you encounter-here-and-just-must-have! by opening the post in the "quote"-environment (leftmost of the 3 buttons on the right upper rim of the post-window), which gives you smth. like:

[*quote author=Zastie link=topic=33364.msg1355158#msg1355158 date=1463640093]
blablabla ...
[*img width=200]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx1auhue2M1qbcwmwo1_500.png[/img]
blablabla ...
[*quote]

Voila - there's the URL of your headcan(n)on ...

If you in turn want to have a pic in your posts, you can copy/paste that line in the middle (remove the "*"'s), paste in the URL of your pic, and adjust the width.

I took the headcannon image from a google-image-search for "Headcannon", like so ...

There's also a nice strip by Randall "xkcd" Munroe


Cheers!

[Random832]

Jeph may spell it 'Brun', but what Brünnhilde is saying is 'Brün'.  Clinton would have no trouble with 'Brun'.
Instead he tries to make it 'Broon'.

My headcanøn anyway.

Maybe, but Brün and Broon are pretty distant sounds. Wouldn't Clinton have pronounced it "Brin"or something in that case?

I think Perfectly Reasonable is assuming that "Brun" = "u as in cut" and "Brün" = "u as in flute", rather than referring to the proper German ü sound.

(Wouldn't it be so much easier if we all used IPA? /ʌ/, /u:/, and /y:/ respectively. Probably the "Broon" was intended to mean he pronounced /u:/, but the proper German vowel was /ʊ/... or, since the symbols only have so much precision, an English /u:/ isn't precisely the same as a German /u:/, it could have been a hair too long or with a close glide at the end [sometimes written /ʊw/] or something)

[Carl-E]

I love love love the head canon cannon image. Where's it from?

headcannon/canon stiff I clipped

I always liked DSL's pic for that.  I'm pretty sure it's his own work. 



Actually, it's snot the one I thought it was.  He had another I liked better. 

Oh, well...

[Perfectly Reasonable]

Jeph may spell it 'Brun', but what Brünnhilde is saying is 'Brün'.  Clinton would have no trouble with 'Brun'.
Instead he tries to make it 'Broon'.

My headcanøn anyway.

Maybe, but Brün and Broon are pretty distant sounds. Wouldn't Clinton have pronounced it "Brin"or something in that case?

I think Perfectly Reasonable is assuming that "Brun" = "u as in cut" and "Brün" = "u as in flute", rather than referring to the proper German ü sound.

(Wouldn't it be so much easier if we all used IPA? /ʌ/, /u:/, and /y:/ respectively. Probably the "Broon" was intended to mean he pronounced /u:/, but the proper German vowel was /ʊ/... or, since the symbols only have so much precision, an English /u:/ isn't precisely the same as a German /u:/, it could have been a hair too long or with a close glide at the end [sometimes written /ʊw/] or something)

Very interesting. But...
Let me put it another way. I'm annoyed that Jeph seems to be dumbing down his comic so that Americans don't have to deal with umlauts.

That's my heäd cånön and I'm sticking to it.

[Eastrim]

Let me put it another way. I'm annoyed that Jeph seems to be dumbing down his comic so that Americans don't have to deal with umlauts.

Keep in mind that he has a band named Deathmøle.

[chaospersonified]

Perfectly Reasonable, your recent use of unneccessary accent marks is perfectly unreasonable.

[Nepiophage]

Speaking of the numbers of vowels in languages: Ubykh has two vowels, and so does Mandarin in some analyses of its phonology. But I really don't want to get deep into this, unless someone wants me to go into phonological analysis and diachronical reconstruction. IIRC Swedish has the most among European languages.

Afrikaaner English has one: i. Go to SA and an Afrikaaner may well say "wilcime ti Sith Ifriki!

[chaospersonified]

Ugh, this thread, for days, has made me wish I had taken German. I feel I have a better grasp of the umlaut, but I feel that way having only heard it a handul of times, none of which I remember clearly. I can count to three, I can talk shit in the most literal sense, and that is it.

[Case]

Ugh, this thread, for days, has made me wish I had taken German. I feel I have a better grasp of the umlaut, but I feel that way having only heard it a handul of times, none of which I remember clearly. I can count to three, I can talk shit in the most literal sense, and that is it.

You could start with "ze Eichhörnchen - Test" - (10 Canadians pronouncing "Eichhörnchen" ('squirrel')).  The first one is my favorite, since she nails the 'ö' at first 2nd try, but the way she pronounces the word, she's actually saying "Gauge-chicken" (Does the word 'Eich-Hähnchen' exist in German? Well, now it does!)

EDIT:
The unrivalled winner is woman-in-stripes @ 1:23 - She's almost perfect, just a bit more confidence and stressing the first syllable instead of the 2nd - then she'd sound like a native.
The last is guy-with-glasses @ 2:39 - What he says sounds pretty much like: "I-squirrel-shit" ("OmG! Are you alright? Should we get you an ambulance?")

The vid is the "German Revenge" for Canadians forcing 10 Germans to pronounce "squirrel" - which is pretty hard for Krauts who haven't yet shaken their instinctive tendency to indicate syllabification with glottal stops.
The Germans, being too honest for their own good, haven't yet figured out that nobody actually bothers pronouncing 'squirrel' - people simply toss smth. like "skwer-rll!" out of their mouths, and crank the confidence to 11 ... 

...
Very interesting. But...
Let me put it another way. I'm annoyed that Jeph seems to be dumbing down his comic so that Americans don't have to deal with umlauts.

That's my heäd cånön and I'm sticking to it.

Your dumping on Americans' difficulties with German pronunciation would have a lot more gravitas if you stopped messing up German grammar ...
Just sayin'

(The plural of "Umlaut" is "Umlaute", not "Umlauts" - Germans might use the latter deliberately, in order to mock uneducated people ... Soooooh, actually, to a native speaker, you sound like you 'got hoisted by your own petard', but: I know, I know, your Head & it's cannon ...)

[BlueFatima]

Hmmm... I know this will come off as over-sensitive and ranty, but I can't keep my mouth shut (figuratively speaking). I find it cringe-worthy when people play armchair psychiatrist and label others (even fictional characters) as has been happening with Brun. There are a million and one reasons someone may talk in short sentences from being high-spectrum autistic, to being shy, to being a naturally quiet person, or simply antisocial/having to poop/PMSy/dog died—and plenty beyond that. I'd like to see where it goes or even *if* we find out why she is like this (I think she is plenty cool without a big backstory explaining her speech patterns).

On a different note, I really love how Jeph makes his characters with quirks that are just part of who they are beyond being something to poke fun at (though there's lots of humor around them, too). I've been enjoying the juxtaposition of Clinton's and Brun's very different personalities.

Betting Clinton ends up at Claire's place (I forgot—is she living with Marten and Faye now?). Good thing he made up with her.

[pwhodges]

(I forgot—is she living with Marten and Faye now?).

We've not been told that she is, but recently we seen her there several times (but then, we saw Dora there for ages before she moved in - which arguably marked the start of that relationship going downhill).

[chaospersonified]

Case, I thank you, but I'm about 97% sure I'll never actually do that. I appreciate German culture, I definitely appreciate the people, but I know from past history that I can't learn from internet sources, video or otherwise. I took a semester of online German. I learned to count to three, and that's it.

If I ever decide to learn German, which I might, it'll be with a tutor. I need that personal connection. True of languages, true of most things in my life.

[Persephiroth]

They're both named Chad...

Huh, you're right. That is a pretty big difference in appearance, though.

[Storel]

There does not need to be any umlaut in Brun's name to explain Clinton's mispronunciation of "Broon". When pronounced with the German u, "Brun" is fairly close to English's "Broon". The difference is that the vowel sound "oo" in Broon is a little too long. Instead of the  "oo" sound from, say, "broom" or "boot", it should actually be the "oo" sound from "book" or "took".

Your dumping on Americans' difficulties with German pronunciation would have a lot more gravitas if you stopped messing up German grammar ...
Just sayin'

(The plural of "Umlaut" is "Umlaute", not "Umlauts" - Germans might use the latter deliberately, in order to mock uneducated people ... Soooooh, actually, to a native speaker, you sound like you 'got hoisted by your own petard', but: I know, I know, your Head & it's cannon ...)

The German plural of "umlaut" is "umlaute", yes, but the English plural of "umlaut" is "umlauts". Since PR was writing in English at the time, their use of "umlauts" is correct.

Edit: Yeah, people trying to import foreign plurals into English is a pet peeve of mine. Come on, folks, English has enough crazy inconsistencies already; can we at least try not to introduce any more?

[USS Martenclaire]

Use enough and you'll have umlots of them. There's a reason you don't see too many of them together in a single word or sentence; they get quite rowdy in groups and turn into umlouts.

[Gyrre]

w/r/t language, yes English has more vowels than most, but I think that its complicated consonant clusters are its real challenge.

I mean, what other language has words (indeed, single syllables!) like "twelfths"?  The vowel isn't the problem there for second-language speakers. The unvoiced 'th' is odd enough by itself, but you can get used to it; it's not all that peculiar.  Sandwiching it between an 'L', 'F' and 'S' - that's bizarre. 

The fact that its spelling and pronunciation are only casual acquaintances is a difficulty, but mostly a product of the fact that it's among the first languages where the ideas of standardized spelling and widespread literacy caught on, and the pronunciation of words has since drifted away from  fixed spellings that actually made sense at the time.  That 'gh' in night for example is left over from a voiced guttural (descended from German unvoiced 'ch' ) that isn't part of the language any more.

Greek does. For example "phthalate".

EDIT: Then  there's Welsh, Polish, and any of the Czech languages (seems Czech has already been pointed out).

As for the silent 'th' in "twelfths", that depends on the dialect and how "lazy" the speaker is when the talk. http://gastrophobia.tumblr.com/post/141939665409/mania-doesnt-have-an-interesting-accent-she-just

[Case]

There does not need to be any umlaut in Brun's name to explain Clinton's mispronunciation of "Broon". When pronounced with the German u, "Brun" is fairly close to English's "Broon". The difference is that the vowel sound "oo" in Broon is a little too long. Instead of the  "oo" sound from, say, "broom" or "boot", it should actually be the "oo" sound from "book" or "took".

Native Kraut agrees (somewhere earlier in the thread) - though I couldn't think of a suitable English word with a "1+1/2 - length double-o".

You have no idea of the evil genius of having the Italian subtitles in "Django- Unchained" spell Brunhilde as "Broomhilda" to Christoph Waltz' immaculate high-German pronunciation - It's like Tarantino & Waltz wanted to give the tedeschi hysterical bellyaches ...

Your dumping on Americans' difficulties with German pronunciation would have a lot more gravitas if you stopped messing up German grammar ...
Just sayin'

(The plural of "Umlaut" is "Umlaute", not "Umlauts" - Germans might use the latter deliberately, in order to mock uneducated people ... Soooooh, actually, to a native speaker, you sound like you 'got hoisted by your own petard', but: I know, I know, your Head & it's cannon ...)

The German plural of "umlaut" is "umlaute", yes, but the English plural of "umlaut" is "umlauts". Since PR was writing in English at the time, their use of "umlauts" is correct.

Edit: Yeah, people trying to import foreign plurals into English is a pet peeve of mine. Come on, folks, English has enough crazy inconsistencies already; can we at least try not to introduce any more?

Aaaaaand you sprung my trap ...

From a German's POV, this is almost PoMo. Germans are certainly not above gently ribbing Americans about their pronunciation of the "Umlauts" (or rather: filming their attempts, see above) - but actually chiding them for their efforts would almost certainly be considered "being too German" - i.e. Germans would feel inclined to chastise the 'Klugscheisser' (lit.: "Smart-shitter", i.e. 'wisecrack') for embarrassing the tribe in front of a guest.

So: Stop being so German, 'Murricans!

Loanwords & plurals: We do the same with "Computer" - German plural is "Computer", just like the German "Rechner", despite the English plural being "Computers".

Question: Is it true that you write "Kindergarten" - just like the German spelling - but pronounce it "Kindergarden"? And what's the plural? Kindergartens? (German plural would be "Kindergärten")


EDIT:

Use enough and you'll have umlots of them. There's a reason you don't see too many of them together in a single word or sentence; they get quite rowdy in groups and turn into umlouts.

Can I like this twice? Why can't I like this twice?

[Eastrim]

Use enough and you'll have umlots of them. There's a reason you don't see too many of them together in a single word or sentence; they get quite rowdy in groups and turn into umlouts.

Don't use them in a coffee shop unless you want an umlatte.

[pwhodges]

Question: Is it true that you write "Kindergarten" - just like the German spelling - but pronounce it "Kindergarden"? And what's the plural? Kindergartens? (German plural would be "Kindergärten")

The pronunciation I expect to hear here is "Kintergarden" - weird, I know; but the OED gives the pronunciation as "Kindergarten" (and yes, plural with -s)

[Gyrre]

There does not need to be any umlaut in Brun's name to explain Clinton's mispronunciation of "Broon". When pronounced with the German u, "Brun" is fairly close to English's "Broon". The difference is that the vowel sound "oo" in Broon is a little too long. Instead of the  "oo" sound from, say, "broom" or "boot", it should actually be the "oo" sound from "book" or "took".

Native Kraut agrees (somewhere earlier in the thread) - though I couldn't think of a suitable English word with a "1+1/2 - length double-o".

You have no idea of the evil genius of having the Italian subtitles in "Django- Unchained" spell Brunhilde as "Broomhilda" to Christoph Waltz' immaculate high-German pronunciation - It's like Tarantino & Waltz wanted to give the tedeschi hysterical bellyaches ...

Your dumping on Americans' difficulties with German pronunciation would have a lot more gravitas if you stopped messing up German grammar ...
Just sayin'

(The plural of "Umlaut" is "Umlaute", not "Umlauts" - Germans might use the latter deliberately, in order to mock uneducated people ... Soooooh, actually, to a native speaker, you sound like you 'got hoisted by your own petard', but: I know, I know, your Head & it's cannon ...)

The German plural of "umlaut" is "umlaute", yes, but the English plural of "umlaut" is "umlauts". Since PR was writing in English at the time, their use of "umlauts" is correct.

Edit: Yeah, people trying to import foreign plurals into English is a pet peeve of mine. Come on, folks, English has enough crazy inconsistencies already; can we at least try not to introduce any more?

Aaaaaand you sprung my trap ...

From a German's POV, this is almost PoMo. Germans are certainly not above gently ribbing Americans about their pronunciation of the "Umlauts" (or rather: filming their attempts, see above) - but actually chiding them for their efforts would almost certainly be considered "being too German".

So: Stop being so German, 'Murricans!

Loanwords & plurals: We do the same with "Computer" - German plural is "Computer", just like the German "Rechner", despite the English plural being "Computers".

Question: Is it true that you write "Kindergarten" - just like the German spelling - but pronounce it "Kindergarden"? And what's the plural? Kindergartens? (German plural would be "Kindergärten")

It's mostly true. It depends on which region you're in for both spelling and pronunciation. Some say and spell it "kindergarten", some say and spell it as above. And some regions pronounce the 't' halfway between a 'd' and a 't' (like how the letter 'd' is sometimes pronounced in Cherokee).

[Storel]

Loanwords & plurals: We do the same with "Computer" - German plural is "Computer", just like the German "Rechner", despite the English plural being "Computers".

Huh, I would have expected it to be "Computern" or something like that. 

Some people like to do that with loanwords in English, too, but English has loanwords from so many different languages that it's much harder to try to remember all the different plural forms than to simply apply the standard English ones.  Plus, this seems to be a tendency with fairly recent loanwords; ones that came into English longer ago got stuck with English plurals (whether they liked it or not!), so that makes it even more inconsistent.

Question: Is it true that you write "Kindergarten" - just like the German spelling - but pronounce it "Kindergarden"? And what's the plural? Kindergartens? (German plural would be "Kindergärten")

Yes, and yes, at least the way I usually hear it around here (California). There are so many regional variations in the English pronunciations of everything that I'm sure there are other pronunciations, too.

Before I even saw your reply, I wrote up a little example for the next time I get into a discussion of foreign plurals -- and I used "kindergarten" as one of the examples:

All together now, folks, repeat after me:

English is not Latin, so the English plural of octopus is octopuses, not octopi.
English is not Japanese, so the English plural of tsunami is tsunamis, not tsunami.
English is not German, so the English plural of kindergarten is kindergartens, not kindergärten.

No English speaker ever tries to apply the German plural to kindergarten, because that's an older loanword (and because we don't do umlauts), but the other two are pretty common.

[Stoutfellow]

Question: Is it true that you write "Kindergarten" - just like the German spelling - but pronounce it "Kindergarden"? And what's the plural? Kindergartens? (German plural would be "Kindergärten")

In the interior of words, AmE typically neutralizes the t/d distinction. In most people's speech, "ladder" and "latter", for example, sound essentially the same. (People will typically deny that they do this, but the recordings and spectrograms are clear.) (And no, if you just pronounced both of them carefully and they sounded different, that doesn't count - people normally don't speak that carefully.) What sound is actually used varies; in some people's speech it's more like a 't', in some it's more like a 'd', in some it's a glottal stop or a quick, r-like tap.

[ZoeB]

Lesson for today about Life.

In the morning, you may see a polite rejection by your G/F of a date proposal to be a Big Thing.
In the evening, the Universe may have given you some perspective, the hard way. Not to mention pressing a Reset button on your own life. Twice.

Moral: don't sweat the small stuff, it just encourages bigger stuff to come along and go Booga Booga to you.

[AtomicBlueFA1]

Considering how much attention people have been paying to the clock lately, I'm quite surprised nobody has questioned Jeph's classification of it as a cuckoo clock. There really is no indication that it is a cuckoo clock aside from Jeph saying so, but as an amateur clock enthusiast, I really would like to say that I believe that he is incorrect. A cuckoo clock that anybody might recognize as such would have many carvings and ornamentations around the case that would still be visible from the back, which is the only view of it we have been given thus far. A cuckoo clock would also have a minimum of four chains hanging from the bottom (technically two chains with both ends hanging down, with a cast iron weight attached to one end of each). It seems to me that what she has is simply a small spring driven mantle clock, which of course may still be of German origin.

[jwhouk]

Well, see, I don't play armchair psychologist since a.) I graduated with a degree in Psychology, and b.) I am a counselor (a "youth counselor", but still).

The technical term we have for Brun is "somethin' not quite right there."

[Case]

Loanwords & plurals: We do the same with "Computer" - German plural is "Computer", just like the German "Rechner", despite the English plural being "Computers".

Huh, I would have expected it to be "Computern" or something like that. 

...

Actually, "Computern" is
a) The plural of the dativ-case, i.e. "den Computern"
b) A colloquial weak verb, meaning "to do smth. with a Computer"  -> German is ... rather neologism-positive. Truth be told, enthusiastically so (And "Administrative German" has mutated to the point where ordinary Germans utilize software for their tax-declaration - of course with course-material explaining what all the weird terms actually mean(*)) - to the point where Germans often don't bat an eye at encountering a word that's not listed in any dictionary.
Often, Germans start using "mock German neologisms" that later might become actual words. E.g. "computern", as a verb, could have been smth. lil' Case & friends might have used in the 80s, just for fun, and because it sounds droll - today, it's in the dictionary.

(*) For example "Garage" - there's two words for the place you put your car (into). One is "Garage" - that's what ordinary Germans use when talking to ordinary Germans. Then there's the "officious version" - "Kraftfahrzeug-Einstellplatz" - literally: Motorized-vehicle-put-into-place. A place to put your motorized vehicle into. Note that a car is an "Auto(mobile)", but also belongs to the larger category of "Kraftfahrzeug" - motorized vehicle. Office German is mostly just ... incredibly mindless concatenations of the most literal-minded and unwieldy terms one can possibly use.
That's "office German" for two of the more common German words -  that's not even the point where German Bureaucrats engage their higher cerebral functions ... 

[Storel]

Haha! Very cool, thank you Case!

[Perfectly Reasonable]

Speaking of the numbers of vowels in languages: Ubykh has two vowels, and so does Mandarin in some analyses of its phonology. But I really don't want to get deep into this, unless someone wants me to go into phonological analysis and diachronical reconstruction. IIRC Swedish has the most among European languages.

You might find this amusing: Nothing is Perfect

[Kugai]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41lZmGcRWHU

[Mad Cat]

Thought Clairemom WAS Claire for a second.

[Storel]

Thought Clairemom WAS Claire for a second.

Me too! I was like, "Who's that guy with Claire?? That's not Marten!!"

Then I looked back at the earlier panel where he detailed his options as "call a cab", or "stay at Mom's for the night", and I realized he must have gone to his mom's place.

Hey, Clinton, if you've got a cell phone on you for calling a cab, why didn't you call your Mom and let her know you were coming by? I would never have dreamed of just dropping in on my parents unexpectedly like that after I moved out.

[Kugai]

He's lost his Glasses, I'm wondering if he's done the same with his Cell while escaping the fire as well.

Either that, or he's so used to being able to pop in on his mother like that that it wasn't something he even considered.

[anahata]

I wouldn't even be able to use my cell phone without my glasses...