Decals

OldManModeller

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Aug 25, 2024
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So, is it pronounced "deck-alls" or "dee-cals"?

I guess it's like aluminum. Pronounced alum, Inium or alum-inum.

Lol

Be Well. Model on.

Eric
 
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/decal said:
Pronunciation
(UK) IPA(key): /ˈdiː.kæl/
(US, Central Canada, General Australian) IPA(key): /ˈdiːkæl/, /dɪˈkæl/
(Western Canada) IPA(key): /ˈdɛkəl/
 
I am currently not pleased with the "dee-cals" on my 1/35th Academy M18 kit. I think the clear dee-cal backing may have ruined this kit for me.

I will try a flat clear coat base overall and get into weathering but the large clear backing on the deck-alls has me wishing for something better. Kit is near end of completion... Guns not mounted, etc.

I use Micro-Sol and Mark Fit interchangeably. I used Micro Sol on this kit and I am stumped. It always works well for me.



deckalls.jpg
 
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I first heard "deckles" from Scott Girvan when he started the predecessor to this forum, the Nerd Herd. It seemed to be more common in the other parts of the Anglosphere, while we Americans tended to say, "dee-kals".
 
Quite a lot of Dutch modellers for some reason also say /ˈdɛkəl/. Long before I ever heard anyone say the word, I figured the pronunciation must be along the lines of /ˈdiː.kæl/ — but maybe that's just because my English is rather better than that of most people I meet :)
 
Quite a lot of Dutch modellers for some reason also say /ˈdɛkəl/. Long before I ever heard anyone say the word, I figured the pronunciation must be along the lines of /ˈdiː.kæl/ — but maybe that's just because my English is rather better than that of most people I meet :)
Very true :)
 
Whoa!! hang on a minute!!! this decal, deekal, came from across the Atlantic and slowly worked its way into the lazy Brits language who were too lazy to keep calling them Transfers.... Transfer - as in transferring the image onto the subject through the use of water, and only clean water, none of that yellow stuff you see in the snow, that your mommy told you not to eat when you were out there making your snowmen (persons of indeterminate sexual orientation). And what I often wonder is that water evaporates, turns into clouds and then comes back to the earth as water droplets... So if we have yellow snow where does it go? and why do we never see yellow snow falling. And the other thing that can keep me awake at night is how does that fly land on the ceiling??? Does it fly along and then suddenly flip onto its back and land, does it reach up with its front legs and hook itself onto the ceiling to land. I have spent hours chasing a fly around a room without success as the damn thing kept landing on the wall!!!
So you see you can only do this with a transfer, e.g. you have transferred from one subject to another, now you cannot do that with a decal....
 
Well...I'm always willing to step in it...soo...

Do not ask a Brit how to pronounce English.

I know the origins enough, but I'm not met one yet who can pronounce the alphabet. If the letter Z is pronounced Zed, why is B or D (or a dozen other letters) not pronounced Bed or Ded?

They are decals...DEE-KALZ!

It is not spelled deckles, chuckles.



(running to my safe place to hide for a bit)
 
Ah, ya know, it's a non-issue. Sort of. Watched YouTubers say deckles and I was asking, "What ' in tarnation' It's he talking about"?

Brought back memories of hearing a Brit say Alooo-min-Eee-um.

There is a small learning curve and being a scandinavian - american... midwest USA boy... there's inflection I sometimes don't understand. Give me a minute and I will usually figure out what you are saying.

But in Wisconsin, we've got accents down tuu, don't cha know.

Sh-# howdy.

Is all in good fun.

Be well. Model on. God Bless.

Eric.
 
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Well...I'm always willing to step in it...soo...

Do not ask a Brit how to pronounce English.

I know the origins enough, but I'm not met one yet who can pronounce the alphabet. If the letter Z is pronounced Zed, why is B or D (or a dozen other letters) not pronounced Bed or Ded?

They are decals...DEE-KALZ!

It is not spelled deckles, chuckles.



(running to my safe place to hide for a bit)
Right. Lol. Hide with your model stash.

Had a calculous math teacher in the 70's, he said zed, and he was from Texas. M and I, no wait, it was A and M, I think. Lol. The college he was from... A&M.

Anyway, I asked him once, "Do you mean to say zee"? He said no, it's Zed.

I called it "zed" thru the class and passed. Somehow.
 
Well...I'm always willing to step in it...soo...

Do not ask a Brit how to pronounce English.

I know the origins enough, but I'm not met one yet who can pronounce the alphabet. If the letter Z is pronounced Zed, why is B or D (or a dozen other letters) not pronounced Bed or Ded?

They are decals...DEE-KALZ!

It is not spelled deckles, chuckles.



(running to my safe place to hide for a bit)
That is because we were taught the alphabet by the Romans who in turn were taught it by the Greeks, and then we had those people from Scandinavia come across and mess up the whole of our teachings and we got Geordies, who are the decendants of wayward Scots who escaped over the border... And on the other side of the country we had the Irish educating (trying to) the Liverpudlians and Mancunians and when they came south they met the Yam Yams from the Black Country and they all clubbed together and came south to meet the Cockneys... And so once they all understood each other, they decided to expand and sent some West where they missed Ireland and Iceland and bumped ashore where they met another race that they had to educate again... But not only that they sent some South, the idea was to teach the Onions (French) the language of the day, but they missed that bit of land altogether and just kept going untill they bumped into a land where the natives had short arms and jumped up and down a lot.... But getting back to the letter Z - Zee is the sound the arrows made as they passed by you in the battle of 1066 and Zed is the sound the arrow made when it hit you, so Zed became the adopted sound of the end of the alphabet as in Zed Dead.....
 
I know the origins enough, but I'm not met one yet who can pronounce the alphabet. If the letter Z is pronounced Zed, why is B or D (or a dozen other letters) not pronounced Bed or Ded?
When you get right down to it, North Americans are the ones with the odd pronunciation of the letter Z:

LetterGermanDutchFrenchUK EnglishUS English
B/beː//be//be//biː//biː/
D/deː//de//de//diː//diː/
Z/t͡sɛt//zɛt//zɛd//zɛd//ziː/

The etymology of the non-US pronunciation is that the letter z goes back to ζ, the Greek letter zeta. However, in the USA the pronunciation is based on dialectic English pronunciation from the 17th century, where it got put into the same "category" as B, D, P, T, etc. (The change in pronunciation from /e/ to /iː/ is because of the Great English Vowel Shift, BTW: until about that same 17th century, the letters' names would have been /be/, /pe/ etc. in English too.)
 
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