Conference thebay::joyoflex

How about Ree-la-tor in place of REALTOR.

Marilyn

...and Lye-berry for Library..

(Everyone knows that a Lye-berry is a very basic fruit)

- dave

Almost everyone I know says Feb- u - ary...There *is* an 'r' before that
'u'.

					*** Kristy ***

Sorry, Kristy, but the "r" in February is permitted to be silent.

"Ek cetera".
I once "corrected" my third-grade teacher for putting an extra "r" into
the word "Febuary". Ever since then I have pronounced it "Feb-Rew-ary".
If you have a dictionary that lists "Feb-Yew-ary" as an acceptable
alternate pronunciation, it was probably put together by a bunch of
battle-scarred lexicographers who know a losing battle when they see one.
The dictionary I most frequently use dates from 1944, and doesn't
accept Feb-Yew-ary. 

-John

re .-1:

Thank you *very* much!

				*** Kristy ***

I forgot to mention another word that has always bugged the h*** out of me...

Spayeded...THERE IS NO SUCH WORD!!!!!!!!!!  It's spayed.  I don't know how
many times people would call up my dad to make an appointment for their pet
to be spayeded.  I cringe at the sound of it!  

					*** Kristy ***

				(a picky daughter of a veterinarian)

I cringe at ``record alblum'' (there is only ``l'' in album) and ``sherbert''
(there is only one ``r'' in sherbet).  In fact, I was in a restaurant today
that used ``sherbert'' TWICE on the dessert menu...

Jim Stratton

Another one I hear on the news a lot is "Counsulate" - presumably the place
where a Counsul works. Do the broadcast media have Style Books the way the
print media do?

-John

One word that was always mispronounced by my father is Olympics.  For years,
he always called it the Oblympics.  Don't ask me why...maybe it stopped after
I moved out of the house.

				*** Kristy ***

Yesterday I heard about somebody in Nicaragua (Eden Pastore? That's the
guy, but I'm not sure of the spelling) being tried in abstentia. I heard
it twice, so it was deliberate, not fumblemouth.
 What's really depressing is it was on "All Things Considered".

-John

"Asterik" or "asterix" instead of "asterisk."  Aargh!  ("asterix" is permittable
only if one is referring to the Indomitable Gaul...)

							-- Nina

I cringe whenever I hear familiarity pronounced as "familiararity."

JP

re .12

	Yes, the way to remember "asterisk" is the famous saying:
"I regret I have but one asterisk for my country." Also, wasn't Asterix
an unmitigated Gaul?

	/.[

It can also be remembered by a (somewhat sexist) rhyme:

Mary had a little plane,
and in the air did frisk.
Now wasn't she a silly dame,
her little *.

re .7
I always ask the vet for an ovarian hysterectomy; it sounds more
clinical than spay(ed)ing.

re .12

You meant 'permissible,' right?

Dave C.

How about "drownded" for drowned...

RE .17 -- Oops!  Yes, of course.  [blush]

						-- Nina

Kristy, when someone asks to have his or her pet 'spaydeded' the obvious
thing to do is to suggest that they (person and pet) visit a landscaper.


Cheers,
Dick

Oops, dancing fingers inserted an extra 'ed' in previous reply.


Cheers,
Dick

Another commonly mispronounced word is jewelry, usually said jool-er-ee.
The jeweler is the guy who sells the stuff. The stuff jew-el-ree.

beck

How about people who say "ECSCAPE" instead of "ESCAPE"?  Makes you want to
scream...

Mispronunciations? I got a million of 'em...

One of my housemates mispronounces a *lot* of words, though they usually
aren't your ordinary, everyday, household words. One that I constantly
corrected was "tirt-ee-air-ee" rather than "tirsh-ee-air-ee" for "tertiary".

Then there was a supervisor I once had who spoke in a language all his own.
He'd constantly be saying things like "power outrage" (instead of "outage"),
or "pre-anticipate". As one operator put it, "He uses ten-dollar words when
he's only got a fifty-cent brain."

--- jerry

Re:  #24, that is referring to Perettyisms, I have heard a lot about him and
his $10 words/$0.50 brain). 
 
Some of his former employees kept a list, filed on a system:  'Wisdom.Non' 

For some interesting mis-pronunciations, see the movie "Johnny Dangerously."
One of the characters uses some bizarre swear words...

							-- Nina

re .24:

Those mistakes tend to be pretty hilarious.  I think they deserve their
own branch.  I have known quite a few people who do this, and am 
guilty of it myself!  I think it comes from reading too much.  You encounter
words not used a lot and glean both meaning and pronunciation from context.
Then,  when you try to use the word in speech you invariably pick the wrong
pronunciation!

Re .11 The reporter on "All things considered" who reports on Nicaragua also
has an annoying tendency to pronounce the "u" with an initial "y" sound, as in
"you" (or "ewe").  This leads to my own personal opinion that all place names
should be pronounced as closely as possible to the pronunciation in the local
language (Cf. Paris, Moscow, Buenos Aires, all of which are pronounced
"strangely" by English-speaking people).

Re .16 Does anyone CORRECTLY pronounce "veterinarian"?  (I have to confess I
used to mispronounce it until someone corrected me.)

Also "barbiturate"  Does ANYONE pronounce the second "r"?

re .28 My DEC-issue "American Heritage Dictionary" lists both the five-syllable
and six-syllable punctuations of "veterinarian." (It lists "Feb-yoo-ary" too.) 

I haven't heard anyone pronounce "mischievous" correctly in a long time.

					Val

Val, just how do you pronounce mischievous?  And mischief?

re .30 The popular mispronunciation of "mischievous" is as if it were spelled
"mischevious" (look closely). Ah, but I pronounce it the right way, or
I wouldn't be complaining.

Val, I always pronounce it correctly, and if you had heard me recently, you
would not be able to say that.  I rarely notice a properly educated individual
who says 'mis chee vee ous.'  I do hear it, but not as the predominant
pronunciation.

RE .32 -- Your first sentence is a little confusing:  "I always pronounce
it correctly, and if you had heard me recently, you would not be able to
say that."  One could take that to mean that if one heard you recently,
one would not be able to say that you always pronounce it correctly.
I assume that's not what you meant....!

Also, I don't think Val meant that you, personally, mispronounce the word
"mischievous," so your first sentence seems a little defensive in addition
to being confusing.  Could you please clarify?
							-- Nina

        I have always considered "mis chee vee us" to be a regionalism.
        Personally, as technology makes our culture more homogeneous (*),
        I miss the little differences in usage and pronunciation that
        comes from language drift.

        (*) that's "ho moj' en us" as in milk.

Re previous reply:

... the differences ... that come [not "comes"] from ....

Someone please shoot me.  If this goes on like this, perhaps no one will ever
post anything.

Re:  #33,

  If you start at reply # 31, then read # 32, then you will see that 'that'
was referring to saying that it had been quite some time since last hearing
the proper pronunciation.  Sorry for the ambiguity...

Re: #34,

  Homogeneous:  ho mo ge ne ous, is the proper syllabication, which should be
followed by all words using the homo/homeo prefix, since it is actually a
seperate entity of the entire word.

Re:  #35,

  Why shoot?  Isn't out whole goal here to find our mistakes & rectify them,
thereby perfecting our English?

<-Emulp ed mon->

Re .35:

Unfortunately, I own no firearms. However, if you'll stop by my office, ZK1
1E10, I'll try to scrounge up a rubber band. ;-)

Re .36:

        Homogeneous:  ho mo ge ne ous, is the proper syllabication, which
        should be followed by all words using the homo/homeo prefix,
        since it is actually a seperate [sic] entity of the entire word.

Wrongo, Webster-breath! <oh by the way, this is a flame> If you will re-read my
note, I said homogeneous ("ho moj' en us"), like milk. *Not* homogeneous ("ho'
mo jee'' nee us") like a cluster. The proper syllable breaks for homogeneous
like milk is ho-mog-. Jeez! Don't you recognize humor when you see it?

Also, it's "separate."

Pardonnez-moi!

Webster breath?!?

Re .36:

        Homogeneous:  ho mo ge ne ous, is the proper syllabication [sic], which
        should be followed by all words using the homo/homeo [sic] prefix,
        since it is actually a seperate [sic] entity of the entire word.

'Syllabication' should probably be 'syllabification'.  I could not find
'syllabication' in my dictionary, but I did find 'syllabification', but oddly,
DECspell passed 'syllabication' and did not pass 'syllabification'.  What? 
Different authorities in conflict? 

'Homo/homeo' would be clearer if it were 'homo-/homeo-'.

'Seperate' was already corrected in .37.

Dave C.

According to my dictionary, "ho moj' e nus" is spelled "homogenous".

 -John

Re: the last six or so.... two things:

1. Homogeneous and homogenous are separate and distinct words, albeit words
   with similar meanings.

2. A clarification: The prefixes homo- and homeo- are not identical.
   The first means "the same as...."
   The second means "similar to..."

					andrew

re 39

I believe the more common term is syllabication, which is from the
verb syllabicate.  

Sally

Re: .39,.42

My (Oxford) dictionary has an entry for: syllabi(fi)cation.
From the Latin verb syllabicare.
                    
Rien.

As the tertiary person referred to in response # .24 I thought I would add a 
story about mispronunciation based on reading but never hearing a word. It 
was during an English class in High School. An argument started, one boy 
mocked the other in a way which accused him of having a inferior upbringing. 
His scathing retort was unfortunate, with a loud voice and pointed finger 
he said -

                  "YOU PUH-SUE-A-DO-INTELLECTUAL!!!"

Never was the laughter louder or a face redder. 

	In high school, I was acuused of being a suede-o-intellectual.
Since this was in the early Presley era, I told my accuser that he could
call me anything he liked as long as he stayed off of my blue sood (pseud?)
shoes.

-cjc

   Oh boy!  Mispronunciations!

   I live in Greenville, S.C.  I was was raised in Columbia, S.C.

   Pillow => piller
but pillar=> pillah

   I got an idee-ur.

   I'm gonna ax if I can go outside.

   Hand me that pin over there.  No, not the stick pin, the ink pin.
   (This last one gave me hell when I moved down from Ohio.)

   I want a grip soda (grape) and some scrawberry ice cream. 

   
I could go on for DAYS!!!  

tlh 
a transplanted yankee.

Transplanted yankee?

I went to college just outside of C'lumbus Ahia, and the accents there were
worse than those in my native New Joisey (which, by the way, I have never
heard a natvie Jerseyan say)

...diane

I am another transplanted Yankee (from Massachusetts) who lives in
                **Atlanna, Jawja**

I want to buy a bedroom **suit**, but I must **ast** my husband.
(My dictionary accepts **suit** as a second pronunciation...it drives me
crazy!)

I love **srimp** (shrimp!)

He is so **mis-chee'-vus**

...and our Bostonian accent is so pleasant...Pass the **bud-da**
My husband, a native Texan, loved my sister-in-law's (sister's-in-law?) accent.
She's from Roslindale...

                  **"Pahk yah cah ovah theyah!"**

Perhaps this has been covered in an entry I haven't read yet, but I regularly
hear people use the letters "I E" or "E G" in speech, rather than using the
phrases "that is" or "for example".  Have others noticed this?  Do you find
it as odd and irritating as I do?

What's next?  "E T C"?  Or, as covered in another note, "E C T"?  :^)

Joe

Re .49:

People may be used to using the abbreviations in writing, so they may naturally
use them in speech as well.  And they have to say "i e" or "e g" because
nobody knows what they stand for anymore; that knowledge has been lost in
history.  :-)


				-- edp

And, of course, in writing they use "e.g." when they *mean* "i.e." and 
vice versa.

Tom

RE.46

I am a born-and-raised Chicagoan who went to school in Central Illinois, (which
some people think is in the middle of the state but is actually in the
middle of nowhere).  One semester I had a roommate from Southern Illinois.
Her eccentricities of speech lead me to believe that she thought she was
from the deep south.  Her normal speech sounded like a bad imitation of a 
southern accent.  One spring day, she pointed out the window and said, "Oh!  
Look at the pine-ees.  Aren't they beautiful?"  I stared blankly out the
window for approximately 30 to 45 seconds before I realized that she was
gazing at a peony bush.


Susan

I'm annoyed by the pronunciation of "familiar" as fe-MIL-yer (reading the e's
as schwas) even though it's the only pronunciation my dictionary gives.  First,
I hear it as fer-MIL-yer, which I find irritating.  Second, I pronounce the
word fa-MIL-(e)yer, and am irritated that my own dictionary won't back me up. 
If your own reference works won't support your prejudices, what good are they? 

Does anyone else notice when a speaker swallows an unstressed final syllable?
My favorite examples are bottle and mountain, which come out more like BAH-ul
and MOW-unh.

While I'm writing, I may as well add a couple of favorite accent stories, too.

My sister had a roommate at college who said she was from NERK-a-HI.  A second
try with the same question produced NERK-a-HI-a.  She had to spell it before
my sister could understand "Newark, Ohio."  The same woman asked for the MY-nez,
which we spell "mayonnaise."  (I don't know how she spelled it, and I won't
make a guess.)

A friend of mine received a person-to-person call from what sounded like
FED-vul.  Spelling revealed it to be "Fayetteville," North Carolina.

  re .53, swallow[ing] unstressed final syllable:

  Isn't what got swallowed, the glottal stop that substitutes for the 't'?
  That is:
      bottle -> bo'l
      mountain -> maun'n

  Glottal-stop 't' is a feature of certain dialects.

--Simon

     re .54:
     
     I'd thought that Glottal-stop T was a local name for Boston's 'rapid'
     transit system.
     
     --Mr Topaz

    While discussing the "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner", I sent my high
    school English class into hysterics when I referred to the
    "al-BOTT-truss".  Always did have a reputation for being able to
    spell a lot of words and pronounce a few of them.

    There's a beautiful east-west highway in the White Mountains of
    New Hampshire, with route number 112.  It runs from route 93 to
    route 16.
    
    Would someone like to venture its correct spelling AND it's
    correct pronunciation ?  Part of the reason I'm not specifying
    it myself is that I'm not sure I can spell it correctly !
    However, it seems to me that it's spelled something like
    
    		Kancamagus Highway
    
    but almost everyone seems to say
    
    		Kanc-a-MANG-us
    
    or
    
    		Kanc-a-MANK-us
    
    What's the correct spelling AND pronunciation ?
    
    /Eric

    Re: .57
    
    Your spelling is correct, and it's Kanc-a-MAG-us (but rarely heard
    thus.)
    
    Others that stick in my craw:
    
    - Compugraphics, with an "s".
    
    	There is no "s" in COMPUGRAPHIC, where I used to work.  At least
    	half the people who worked there pronounced and spelled it wrong,
    	too.
        
    - Ven-za-way-la for Venezuela.
    
    - I used to work in Portsmouth, NH, in a store where we enticed
      customers to leave name and address.  About a tenth of them would
      write PORTSMITH.
    
    	Of course, it's pronounced the New England way: PORT-smuth,
    	and a lot of the people were short-term residents at the
    	Air Force or Navy bases there, but how can you not know the
    	name of the town you live in?
    
    - chaise LOUNGE instead of chaise LONGUE
    
    	I enter this reluctantly, because I "feel" that l-o-u-n-g-e
    	is "correct", but my dictionary disagrees.  I first discovered
    	this when I was filling in a crossword puzzle and the last
    	clue left was "long chair" -- but "chaise l-o-u-n-g-e" didn't
    	fit right.
    
    	I fired an angry letter to the magazine, asking them where they
    	had dreamed up *that* word: chaise l-o-n-g-u-e.  They printed
    	the foolish letter and humiliated me in front of millions
    	(okay, thousands?) of readers.
    
    	Of course, they sent me 5 bucks for printing my letter, so that
    	eased the pain.
    
    --Mark

    A mark of someone who has a sincere interest in our polar regions
    is taking the trouble to sound the "c" in ArCtic.  Try that test
    especially with Antarctica!

How about your Local Tota Dealer, where they sell Toyota brand cars?

Stephen

Well, since you asked: how about the forgotten aspirate H, in words 
like huge?  

"Oh, Yuey, you're a yuge disappointment."

	RE .58:

	Some of the residents of Southeastern Virginia call one of
	the cities there "Porch-mith" but spell it Portsmouth.

	Sam

    ...then there are those blissfully unaware that 'dubba-yuh'
    is actually two Us stuck together...and on the subject of U
    
    re .28  us Brits usually pronounce U as ewe, try saying 
    'unique' your way !
    
    rdp.

    Re: .63  You fail to distinguish 'u' as a vowel, and 'u' as a consonant,
    when it has a soft 'w' sound.  Hence your 'unique' example is
    irrelevant, Manuel.
    
    I am also British, but am equally annoyed when I hear Nicarag-ewe-a so
    pronounced.  Closest anglicised pronunciation is Nicarahwa.
    
    Re .28  I'm generally in agreement with pronouncing (and spelling!)
    foreign names as the natives, but stop at Paree and Maskva. Really!
    Major cities often have localised spellings (London, Londres, Londen;
    Paris, Parigi, Parijs etc.).  But why for goodness sake Leghorn
    for Livorno?  Florence for Firenze?  I think the Italians get a
    raw deal - we seem to anglicise most of their city names.
    
    Jeff.

    And how did we get Munich out of Muenchen?  (Sorry, no umlaut on
    my keyboard.)

    Pity poor K�ln. It was called "Cologne" by the Romans and has been
    stuck with it since! 
    
    	Jon

    Entire countries have been stuck with the names of one tribe, region,
    etc., but their conquerors.  Usually European.  For example: China,
    Japan, Ethiopia, and Germany all refer to (minor) tribes.  Any other
    examples?

    Asia used to refer to a small section in the west of what is now
    called Turkey.
    
    Africa used to refer to a small region on the southern coast of
    the Mediterranean Sea.
    
    �sterreich (Austria) was named to indicate its relationship
    to Germany. 
    
    England's name ignored the existence of Saxons, Jutes, and various
    other tribes.
    
    The list can go on and on....  Granted, this has nothing to do with
    mispronunciations, but it does answer Pete's question.
    
    					Andrew

    Well, the Saxons have got Saxony, the Jutes have got Jutland, why
    shouldn't the poor old Angles have somewhere to call home?  (I'm
    probably a Celt - maybe I should move to Cheltenham)..
    
    Jeff.
    

    Re .65
    Munich may not be as strange as it seems. According to my library
    it was originally a settlement started by Henry the Lion (some king
    or who knows what) in 1158 A.D. near a place called 'Munichen' which
    supposedly means 'near the monks'. So the Germans dropped the 'i'
    and made the 'u' a '�' and you English-speakers dropped the ending?
    
    Re .66
    K�ln was originally started by the Romans as a settlement for the
    German tribe of Ubii and was called 'Oppidum Ubiorum'. In this village
    was born Agrippina, later to be the wife of the Roman emperor Claudius.
    In 55 A.D. this colony was renamed in her honour to 'Colonia Claudia
    Ara Agrippinensium'. In the fourth century it's name was changed
    to 'Colonia Agrippinensis'. Cologne may be an old French or English
    word for 'colonia'? The German word for 'colony' is 'Kolonie' from
    which 'K�ln' could have evolved?
    
    Any German readers who might be able to confirm or correct this?

RE: .-1

That should have read ".... In the fourth century ITS name was changed ..."

IT'S, with the apostrophe, is a contraction for 'it is.'

ITS, without the apostrophe, is the posessive form of the pronoun 'it.'

I'm resigned to tolerating this particular illiteracy elsewhere, but NOT in
this file!

--PSW

    Sorry, you are right, of course. The only (feeble) excuse I can
    think of is that I am not a native speaker. I try not to make too
    many mistakes but this one slipped through (I usually get it right).

    This has probably been mentioned elsewhere--but check out "Tips for
    Writer's", (#185.0), in the HYDRA::DAVE_BARRY conference. 

RE: .72

It's my turn to apologize.  Non-native speakers have every right to make
that sort of mistake (I wish my French were as good as your English!).

When I complained, I assumed that English was your native language.  I should
have noticed the Valbonne net address in the header line.

--PSW

Obviously, he was being tried by a teetotalitarian government.

BU

Re: .55

That's Rancid Trap-it.

BU

    Upon hearing punk thrash for the first time, a friend was heard
    to comment,
                "..Nervic Muse-Racking."
    

    	Back to the subject of mispronunciations...
    
    	Re: .12 -- Another common mispronunciation I hear for the symbol
    of the Merv Griffin show is "asstrick".  I usually tell people that
    an "asstrick" is where a magician makes a donkey disappear!
    
    	Re: .44 -- Speaking of mispronouncing words that you have read
    but never heard, imagine my shock one day to hear a customer talk
    to me about the "print kway-wuh" (queue)!
    
    	Re: .46 -- "Let me ax you a question." is only one of the many
    things that I have found common upon moving from the Midwest to
    the South.  One that surprised me by its frequency was the use of
    "pacific" for "specific"...  "I want to make a pacific point..."
    
    	Some of these, of course, are merely "dialectic" modifications.
    There is a humorous book out, named something like "How to Speak
    Southern", which includes words such as "gummint" to refer to the
    governing body in Washington.  Many of these are "contractions"
    of their actual counterparts.  Numbers are particularly prone to
    this.  For example, 700 would be "se'm hunnert".
    
    	Re: .47 -- I'm from Illinois...  That's Ill-i-noy, not Ill-i-noiz.
    Yet if I travel to Mi-zoo-ree, most people tell me that I'm in
    Mi-zoo-ruh.
    
    	Re: .50 -- I certainly *hope* that we haven't forgotten what
    these abbreviations mean.  (Maybe that's *why* we keep using one
    in place of the other!)  I.e. is the abbreviation for the Latin
    phrase "id est" (that is); e.g. stands for "exempli gratia", or
    "for example", and etc. represents the two words "et cetera", which
    of course means "and so forth", or "and similarly".
    
    	Re: .58 -- I realize that Portsmouth may be pronounced many
    ways, but could *someone* please tell me how they get "wooster"
    out of "Worcester"??  To me, "wooster" is what Elmer Fudd has out
    in the barnyard!
    
    	These could go on, of course.  I will conclude with a few other
    examples from my past.  On a hot summer day, my father always
    appreciated an "ice cream comb".  I could never figure that one
    out, other than the difficulty of saying "cream cone" -- try it
    4 or 5 times in a row, quickly!
    
    	One that I constantly have to be careful to avoid...  The only
    "injun" on a train might be Sitting Bull, going for a ride.  The
    locomotive force, however, is an "en-jin".
    
    	Finally, I got a chuckle one day in high school as we were studying
    the Bible as Literature in our English class.  The teacher was reading
    about the Jewish leaders at the time, and told us about the Pharisees
    and the "sa-DOO-sees" (Saducees).  I'm not sure that there was anyone
    else there who knew why I was laughing, but I got a kick out of
    it, anyway.
    
    	Frank   8-|)

    Re .78 "Wooster"  (`oo' as in `good' not `food') is the correct
    pronunciation of the *original* Worcester.  Maybe New Englanders
    (sounds German - why not New English? But I parenthesise...) retain
    some of their origins :-).  It always makes me smile when I hear
    War-sester-shy-er sauce mentioned.
    
    Jeff.

    Re:  .78, .79
    
    For those having difficulty with Worcester (Wus'ter??...soft 'o',
    and 'c', silent 'r'), try 'Leicester' (Les'ter), Leominster
    (Lem'in-ster), Gloucester (Gloss'ter).  These are all town within
    the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
    
    And just for kicks, try the name of a lake in the town of Webster,
    Mass. --- Chargoggagoggmanchaugagoggchaubunagungamaug.  It's pronounced
    just the way it's spelled because it is obviously a transliteration
    of the original Indian name.  There are several variations on the
    interpretation of its meaning, but the 'experts' aren't sure if
    they are correct or are more akin to the Paul Bunyan stories.  The
    most popular translation is that two tribes on opposite sides of
    the lake agreed: "You fish on your side, we fish on our side, and
    nobody will fish in the middle." 

    Re: .80
    
    Apologies, Please...
    
    > (Wus'ter??...soft 'o', and 'c', silent 'r')
    
    This should have been:  soft 'o', silent 'rce'.
    
    I believe the silent 'r' is common to both Worcester, England and
    Worcester, Mass. and is not in the same category as the Boston accent
    which tends to swap the 'a' from 'Cuba' with the 'r' in 'here'. 
                                                            

    The pronunciation I liked best for that kind of sauce was
    worst-it-sheer-shire-shar shaush.  I think this came out of the
    mouth of one of the Warner Brothers cartoon characters.
    

re: .-1

"Wooster shester shyter shaster..."
"Rootser shester shyter sau..."

"Darn it, I never COULD say Worcestershire sauce properly!"

-- Sam

    Prolly (for PROBABLY)

    Here are some I always balk at:
    
    
    	"What's new WHICH you ?"
    
    	"Did he EXCAPE from prison ?"
    
    
    Oh, I just remembered a very funny story from my childhood.  We
    were at the dinner table, my brother Willy, who was all of about
    6 years old, my sister Emily, about 4, and rest of family.
    
    The date happened to be THE DAY BEFORE my brother's birhday.
    
    There was some guest there who asked "PLEASE PASS A tum-AH-toe".
    
    My sister innocently asked "what's tum-AH-toe ???"
    
    My brother honestly answered "Tum-AH-toe's my birthday !!"
    
    No jokes were intended.  We still laugh retelling it.
    
    Several years later, when my brother was a bit wiser, I recall
    another dinner table, at which my sister Emily made some sort of
    joke.  The guest (God help the guests that were subjected
    to US at dinner!!) said, "YOU SURE ARE WITTY, AREN'T YOU !".
    
    My brother Willy piped in "NO, SHE'S EMITY, *I'M* WITTY !".
    
    /Eric

    I've never been able to understand how
    
    Chelmsford, Massachusetts became Chehmsfuhd when spoken,
    
    and
    
    New Britian, Connecticut became New Bri'in'

Well, New London (CT) is on the Thames river.  

Unfortunately, with typical yankee ingenuity, it is pronounced with a soft
"th" (like 'the', 'though') rather than in the correct manner of "Tems".

    
    the "Thames" and the "Tems" are two different rivers with two different
    names -- so what if they are spelled the same.
    
    - chuck

    Re: .?? about Willy and Emily.
    
    That reminds of a story I heard.  A Soprano was auditioning for
    a part in a local musical and she decided to sing that Irving Berlin
    Classic, only she sang it this way:
    
    "You say Tom-AY'-to and I say Tom-AY'-to"...  

    I once had a girl in class whose last name was "Featherstonehaugh",
    pronounced "Fanshaw".  I undertstand that this is a fairly common
    Welsh name, and that is its traditional pronounciation.

    Featherstonehaugh (Welsh??!) is of the same genre as Cholmondeley
    (pronounced Chumley).  I've often thought I should pronounce my
    last name "Goff".  (I have a set of amusing anecdotes about American
    reactions to my name).
    
    There's also a parody on an old song:
    
    		The balls of O Laoghaire
    		Are massive and haoghaire,

    Jeff.

     re .90:
     
     > I once had a girl in class whose last name was "Featherstonehaugh"...

     First of all, that seems an inappropriate topic for this conference.
     
     Second, you might at least be a gentleman and not bandy her name about.

     --Mr Topaz

    Then there was the tenor (whose native language was not English)
    who sang the first words in Handel's Messiah as
    
    "Comfort ye, my pee-o-plee..."

    The Boston accent is always fun.  Such as datar, Lindar, hoppa,
    pauk, cau, and yaud.  When I travel out there it takes me a week
    to understand everyone, then I get to come home where we warsh the
    car.

    Re: .94
    
    You forgot, it's pronounced Bahst'n.  And if you can't pronounce
    it, you probably won't be able to handle driving in it.  If that's
    the case, you'd do best to 'pahk ya cah in Hahv'd Yahd'...that's
    across the Chahls Riva in Cambridge.
    
    I got smaht and moved Nawth to New Hampsha, Ayuh.

    re: .95
    
    >... New Hampsha
    
    That's NUH HAMPSHA.
    
    I've lived here 17 years and STILL pronounce it wrong (right?).

    Re: .95 .96
    
    Sorry.  But I think we were both wrong.  Phonetically, the 'p' should
    probably not appear....Nuh Ham-sha.  And we probably shouldn't forget
    our cities. Concord (Con'cud), Manchester (Man'ches-ta), Nashua
    (Nash'wa), and Portmouth (Pohts'muth).  And I guess you can't do
    too much with Keene.
    
    But if you *really* want to get into accents, you ought to "take
    a look [lu-uk]" at some down Maine fishermen from Bar Harbor (Bah
    Hah'baah), particularly in September (Sep-tem'baah) or October
    (Oc-tow'baah).

    I'm not from Dahn East myself; I'm from Rah Dylen.
    							Ann B.

re: .-1

Is that anywhere near Lawn Guyland? 

-- Sam

    I used to work in Holyoke (MA), which natives called "Hoyoke".
    
    Then I moved to Chelmsford (MA), which natives called "Chemsfud".
    
    I was afraid to move to Lowell (MA) -- when you remove the "L"s,
    there's nothing left.

        Wens-dee = Wednesday
    Mon-dee  = Monday
    Sat-dee  = Saturday    (other days of the week follow similarly)
    Feb-ree  = February
    Lie-bree = Library
    
    Etc. For some real off-the-wall ones see the Strine series of books
    by Afferbeck Lauder (stare hard at this pseudonym and say it very
    quickly to yourself several times to get a taste of the effect)
    
    - Giles

Re: MA town names - 
 In North Central Mass. (i.e. Wustah county), the natives
actually *add* letters to town names. Westminster becomes Westminister,
and Winchendon is pronounced Winchington.

Re: Illinois -
 Down around Springfield (Central Illinois, though considered Southern
Illinois, probably) the state name is "Ell'noy".

Re: Ahia -
 There is a town on Lake Erie spelled "Conneaut", pronounced "con'-ee-aht".
There is also a Versailles, "ver-sayls'". So much for fractured French.
(There's a town in Kentucky pronounced the same way).

I am from the Guylan' alluded to in .-2; we had lots of Indian names
that drove out-of-towners nuts. My favorite involves a town named
Hauppauge; one letter was addressed there as it sounds: Hop-Hog.

Bruce

Bruce,

I dint know you was from Lawn Guylan'!

Bill,

	Shoore... I lived dere (Lawn Guylan, Noo Yawk)
for 'bout two-toids of muy life.  It's soitenly a great
compliment dat youse don't tink I tawk like dis anymore.

Bruce 

    Having a college roomate from San Francisco where they "have no accent"
    (how many times have you heard that), and being from the Bahstin
    area, and going to a school in upstate NY, I was constantly teased
    about how I was "going to a wild potty on Friday", or how "my hat was
    full" whenever I felt emotionally fulfilled.  
    
    But when someone would ask me if I ever pahkt my cah in Hahvid Yahd,
    I could reply, with all honesty, that I have.  (Really, I have!)
    
    High school English class story as applies to pronouncing a word
    you've only read before:  When reading out loud (aloud? <---that
    could go in another Notes conversation.) for the class, I came upon
    the word ah-FID-uh-vits.  What's embarassing is none of my classmates
    had ever heard it pronounced either and thought nothing of it, except
    for one girl who's father was a judge.  She knew it was the word,
    AA-fuh-DAY-vids.
    
    Do any of you in Reading (UK) have to put up with hearing the name
    of that town pronounced Reed-ing?  As an citizen of Reading (sometimes
    heard as RED'n), Massachusetts (USA), I hear it all the time.  People
    see it on the Monopoly Game board and perpetuate the mispronunciation.
    
    (back to work)
    --Kevin  

I had a hahd time findin' Powkeepsee in Nooh Yowak, so I gave up and went 
sowth to Mahretta, Joejah which is righ neah 'Lanta.


One mispronunciation that drives me _nuts_ is the following response to
an ambiguous statement, "Can you please be more pacific about that?".
How I wish I could retort, "I don't _sea_ what you're confused about"!


	Suz

    
    
    .re .106

    My best friend in college invariably pronounced Wednesday as "Wed
    Ness Day."  I politely let it pass, but after a while, couldn't
    stand it anymore.  When I told her it was properly pronounced 
    "Wennsday," she looked at me in disbelief.  She said that she had 
    always pronounced it that way and didn't know any better because no 
    one had ever pointed it out to her before... 

    I had the same problem with Connecticut when I was a kid... I had
    trouble spelling it, too.

    Perhaps you've heard the story ... 
    
    A man advertised in the papers for a painter, as his front porch
    was run down and needed a paint job. A painter showed up, and the
    man, who was in a hurry, gave the simple instructions: 
    
    "I want my porch painted. You will find the paint to use in the
    garage. I'll be back in a few hours."
    
    Then he left. On returning, he found the painter sitting on the
    porch, patiently awaiting his return. The porch had not been painted,
    so he became quite angry. "What's going on here?", he demanded.
    
    The painter replied, "Oh, I'm all done. By the way, that's not
    a Porsche in your garage, it's a Mercedes."

    re:.108
    
    Perhaps a good reason *for* correcting people's mispronunciations
    (or spelling or grammar, for that matter).
    
    --- jerry

    True Story:
    
    Earlier this year, a fellow who trades currency got a phone call from
    the office in Paris, telling him that the dollar was falling rapidly
    against the Franc. He heard the news, said, "Aw, shit" and hung up. 
    
    Later that day, the Paris office called again, saying that they had
    bought a million more dollars, but alas, the dollar fallen even
    further. The fellow in New York yelled at the Frenchman, and asked why
    they had done something so stupid. The Frenchman said, "But monsieur,
    you said, 'achete!' [buy]" 
    
    The American put down the phone and thought for a few moments, and then
    started laughing. He went into his boss' office and said, "Want to hear
    the best joke of the year? It'll cost you a quarter of a million
    dollars --"
    
    	Jon 

    I LIKE regionalisms.  Neuter broadcaster-English pronounciation
    is so boring compared to a good strong regional accent.  
    
    

    I believe Strunk (of Strunk & White fame) said, "If you don't know
    how to pronounce a word, say it loudly!"
    

    My favorite mispronunciated word is "Italian" with the first "I"
    pronounced phonetically long.  If this pronunciation is accepted,
    why then is the country from which such an individual descendes
    not refered to as "Italy" with the first "I" pronounced phonetically
    long?
    

re. .-1:

"Eyetalian" has always struck me as similar to "Ay-rab", as in "Ahab the
Ay-rab, the Sheik of the Burnin' Sands"  (Novelty song, popular circa 1962.) 

I always assumed that the Ay-rab pronunciation was purely whimsical until I 
was in Alabama a few years ago.  There is a small town named Arab near 
Huntsville.  You can guess how it's pronounced...

Larry

P.S.  I shouldn't complain.  Here in Vermont the two towns of Calais and 
Charlotte are pronounced "cal'-lus" and "shar-laht'" respectively.

    My southern builder just bought, as he puts it,a big ol' "mur-say-tees'"

In the notes concerning towns in Massachusetts, I'm surprised no one mentioned 
my all time favorite, Athol.  

    
Clay

    There's no problem with Athol for New Englanders...it's pronounced
    Ath'all.  This is the same last syllable as in 'alcohol'.  If it
    was supposed to have a long 'o' it probably would have been spelled
    with an 'e' on the end.  That's when a lisper would have a _real_
    problem!

re. the last couple:

When the unalmented Chubs Peabody was governor of Mass., the standard ten 
year-old's joke went something like:

	Q.  What three towns are named after the governor?

	A. Peabody, Marblehead, and Athol.

Larry

    
    My friend Dianne Ritson recently bought an Athol High School athletic
    shirt, the kind with a box on the front for a name; in the box she
    wrote "Rithon."
    
    Perry
    

    Re .90: I have heard "Featherstonehaugh" pronounced "Fee-stone-hay"
    in England.

    With so many Britans reading this note, I'm surprized that no one
    has complained about the regular destruction of the name of that 
    small town near London which hosts the annual All-England tennis 
    championship.  My Fourth of July is just not complete until I hear 
    at least one television or radio commentator give "today's scores 
    from Wimpelton"
    
    I cringe at just the thought.
    
    

re: .123

Ah well,

The reason that the Britans (sic) don't complain about "Wimpelton" as
a pronunciation is that over many years they have heard the BBC's Harry
Carpenter strenuously attempting to remove _all_ vowel sounds from the
word !  After twenty years of Harry's "W'mbl'd'n", (without even a decent
glottal stop), _any_ other pronunciation will appear to be an improvement.

Henry Gillard - TSC Sydney

The mispronunciation which makes me cringe more than any other is one which,
(unfortunately), I hear every day.

"Message Router" usually has the first syllable of its second word pronounced
to rhyme with "shout."  The correct pronunciation would, of course, rhyme the
syllable with "loot."

I could understand the Australians bowdlerising the pronunciation: in 
Australia the verb "to root" is used as one of the many euphemisms for having 
sexual intercourse !  To my knowledge the Americans have no such problem, but
nevertheless they are the main perpetrators of this gross mispronunciation.

As for me, I'll accept this version only when Chuck Berry advises me to :
"get your kicks on _rout_ sixty-six."

Henry Gillard - TSC Sydney

    In my office edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, the
    words "roof" and "root" and "route" have two pronunciations.
    The first uses the vowel sound in "food" and the second uses
    the vowel sound as in "good" (for roof and root) or "pound"
    (for "route").  I was surprised to see that "route" wasn't
    listed with all three.
    
    The "usual" pronunciation here in New England (USA) is different
    than in Western Pennsylvania (also USA).
    
    Dan

    
    Route is pronounced 'root' .
    
    Rout rhymes with bout .
    
    
    We must root to rout these 'bout' routers .
    
    John J

    I am continually enraged by BBC sports commentators who cannot
    pronounce _any_ foreign names correctly; one brave athletics
    commentator once dared to pronounce Heike Drechsler's name correctly,
    but Coleman and Pickering beat him up so badly he reverted to their
    gobbledegook.
    
    Phirrip

    Re: .128  There are very few BBC sports comentators that can pronounce
    *anything* correctly, let alone terribly difficult things like non-
    British names.  Their pig-ignorance really makes me sick.
    
    Even the owners of these names sometimes give up: poor Anders Jarryd,
    the tennis player, now tells British commentators to call him `jarrid',
    even when one came close with `ya-rood'.
    
    Another thing that annoys me is caption machines (and teletext)
    that don't have an umlaut or accent between them.
    
    Jeff.

    .58	- yes I know it is a long way back - Chaise longue is spelt
    that way because it's French, it means long chair.
    
    .105 - yes, some Americans do refer to 'Reeding' - and they also
    struggle with:
    
    	Keighley - keeth-ly - which is in Yorkshire
    	Beaulieu - bee-yoy-ly - which is in Hampshire
    
    But there are some good ones perpetrated by natives of Bristol,
    England, which they pronounce as Briss'le.  They also tend to add 'll'
    to the end of any word ending in 'o' or 'a', hence
    
    	Alfal Romeol - the Italian car-maker
    	and my favourite, Ideal - either a concept/thought or a degree
    	of perfection.
    
    .106 and what about the Specific Ocean, to the west of the USA.
    	
    	

    Re-.1
    
    You mean , "to the west of Americal"
    
    John J
    

    Re: .130
    
    > Beaulieu - bee-yoy-ly - which is in Hampshire

    Wot??!!  It's pronounced Bewley.
    
    And there's Doublebois in Cornwall, pronounced dubbelboys.
    
    And how about Beauvoir, pronounced beaver?
    
    Jeff.

    Beaulieu is pronounced , b-yoo-lee , when refering to Hampshire .
    
    In French it should be pronounced , Bow(as with arrow)loo , but
    it probably isn't .                            
    
    John J
    

    In French, Beaulieu is pronounced Beau (as in 'beau') Lieu (as in
    'lieu').
       
    Always glad to help,

    		roger :)

    How silly of us . Of course , we should have known :^)
    
    How is it pronounced 'phonetically' ?
    
    John J
    
    Never address a question to somebody with an unfair advantage
                                                       
    

    I was trying to reply to .133 before Roger, but accidentally hit
    the EXIT key.
    
    If beau/lieu isn't much help, what about IPA?
    [bolj�], roughly.
    
    b

        I've forgotten most of IPA, but bolj� looks good;
    	the French 'eu' sound is the same as German '�'

	The French commentators on TV are generally unable
    	to pronounce any English name properly. However, they
    	don't want to sound ignorant, and rather than pronouncing
    	the French way, the use some kind of intermediate pronounciation, 
    	which can't be recognized either by the French or by the English.
    	
    	So we have: 	Neegueule Mansale
    			Madame Tatch�re
    			Ronalde R�gane
 			Elwis Pwesslay
			Bill All�e (the author of "Roc awonde ze cloc)
			etc ...
    
    		roger

    Re: .133
    > Beaulieu is pronounced , b-yoo-lee , when refering to Hampshire .

    Bewley, b-yoo-lee, what's the difference?  Or don't you read
    intervening notes?
    
    Jeff.

    This is silly .
    
    I would pronounce Bewley , boolee . 
    
    And yes , I do read intervening notes ! 
    
    Damn cheek .
    
    John J
    

    I'm sorry, I thought you were British :-)
    
    Ah well, we live and learn.
    
    Jeff.

    Apology accepted
    
    John J
    :^)
    

    re 133;
    
    If Beaulieu doesn't generate sufficient confusion, there is always
    Boileau (as in Drinkwater) which they French pronounce 'bwah-low'
    and Americans pronounce 'boil-you'....
    
    -dave

    After just a quick glance through here I'm surprised I never saw
    
    'heart attact', e.g. "I almost had a heart attact"

Re:< Note 5.102 by REX::EPSTEIN "Bruce Epstein" >
   
>Re: MA town names - 
> In North Central Mass. (i.e. Wustah county), the natives
>actually *add* letters to town names. Westminster becomes Westminister,
>and Winchendon is pronounced Winchington.

Well, I'm from Winchendon and pronounce it Winchendon, just as it's spelled. I 
suspect the people you hear mispronounce it live there, but they are _not_
natives. The town has really grown over the years and most people moving there 
don't ask how to pronounce it, they just assume they already know.

Pete

P.S. I don't usually answer notes this old but, I have to stick-up for my home 
town.

    Re: .125
    
    Being originally from Minnesota, the word "route" rhymes with "shout.
    When I'm in Minnesota, I pronounce it that way. When I'm in
    Massachusetts, I've learned to rhyme "route" with "loot". Only
    minor amounts of mental confusion when I travel betwixt.
    
    One that seems to be peculiarly Minnesotan is the pronunciation
    of "root" and "roof", both of which rhyme with "rut".

    Has the Australian pronunciation of Loughborough ("Luffburruh")
    as "loogerberooger" been entered yet?
    
    Richard

    Ahhh well er yeah, G'day
    
    
    re-.1
    
    Put your right index finger in your right ear and say the word 'red'
    backwards.
    
    Ooo yoo tryin tuh kid?
    
    derek

    How about the constant barrage of 'mnemonic' when it is:
    
    1. pronounced as 'pneumonic',
    2. used as a noun, and
    3. stands for 'acronym'
    
    as in "the mewmonic RAB stands for recod access buffer"?
    
    Arrrrgh!

re: mnemonic as a noun.

My DECStandardIssue American Heritage Dictonary lists is as an adjective or a 
noun.

Clay

    Oh, I could live with that; it is common practice in English to
    use adjectives as nouns - as in "wait till  you can see the white of
    their eyes" - it is the mispronounciation that drives me to
    distraction. 
    
    The malapropism doesn't help matters either, but I must explain
    why this hurts. I passionately believe that language should not
    be controlled, that it is a living and growing entity. Controlled
    languages decay and die. French used to be the 'lingua franca' of
    diplomacy; in Sweden business is conducted in English, whenever
    possible. Both are controlled languages.
    
    So to me an argument from a dictionary or a manual on usage reflects
    no more than what used to be the case - my dictionary being more
    out of date than yours in this matter.
    
    What I do object to is the illiterate attempt at making one word do the
    work of another, that is the path to impoverishing the language;
    look at what happened to 'intercourse' and 'gay', neither can be
    used now in its original meaning, neither has a suitable alternative.
    In a similar vein, 'alternate' now does the job of 'alternative',
    'methodology' of 'method', and we have no words for the concepts
    of 'every other' and 'the study of method'.
    
    But, it is a loosing battle. Sad!
    
    Peter

re .-1:

>    But, it is a loosing battle. Sad!
>		    ^    
>    Peter	    |


Sad Indeed!

Larry

    You're right: that's a reference to the Peter Sellers battle, not
    to the Peter Sell one.   :^)

    There are too many mnemonics around here -- it's a veritable
    mnemonic plague.

    New disease diagnosed amongst workers in the high tech field
    
    mnemonia
   

    I thought mnemonia was a cleaning fluid for high-tech offices?
    
    --bonnie

    re .155
    
    Right, mustn't mix mnemonia and bleach ... poisonous gasses ...
    or is that liguids or even solids ?????
    

    Actually mnemonia is what they use in brainwashing.
    
    	Jon

    Re .60
    
    > How about your Local Tota Dealer, where they sell Toyota brand cars?

    Yup; you shouldn't use the wrong mispronunication of "Toyota" --
    you should use the RIGHT mispronunciation, right?
    (The correct pronunciation is TOE-yo-ta.)
    
    During a meeting with a temporary visitor from the U.S. (as opposed
    to an expatriate), he mentioned a collection of systems that had
    been sold to Nikon, with the U.S. pronunciation of Nikon.  I had
    to tell my co-workers who he was talking about.
    
    Of course, Japanese treat English the same.  Complaining about
    gobbledegook English in advertisements?  Try the gobbledegook English
    in Japanese advertisements!  And when a neighbour pointed out what
    was on the news on TV at one moment, it took me a few seconds to
    figure out that he was saying "Washington."  These are the least
    of the evils....

	Well, I would like to make a distinction between mispronunciations 
and regional accents - accents are fun.  Of course mispronunciations can be
too - I have a friend who calls the _Daily Hampshire Gazette_ the _Deadly
Hampster Gazoo_.

	After over 20 years in New England I have finally rid myself of that
wonderful St. Louis-ism (or San Louie) "warsh" (I have an aunt who not only
"warshes" the dishes but goes on to "ranch" them in the "zank") but I'll
never rid myself of the Ozark Mountain long I (Ah'm going out for a whall to
buy tars for the car.)

	Missouri also has some towns with mangled French names - Chamois,
pronounced "Shamoyze", and Haiti, pronounced "Hay'- tie", as two words.

Barb

    My first boyfriend was from Saracruze.  I kept saying
    "Seer-accuse."
    
    I think this was a major factor in our eventual breakup.
    
    --bonnie

    In good old Philadelphia...as in Filthadelphia... there is a river and
    an expressway bearing the same name.  It is the Schuylkill
    river...which is pronounced--school'kill--and of course since the
    expressway is old and dangerous to drive it became known as the
    "Sure-kill" expressway.

    >>My first boyfriend was from Saracruze.
    
    I'm from Northern New York.  Everyone that I know pronounces it
    Saracuse.  I'd blame the break-up on him...
    

.160>>My first boyfriend was from Saracruze.

.162>I'm from Northern New York.  Everyone that I know pronounces it
.162>Saracuse.

I'm from Ithaca (about 50 miles away), and I was told that the standard
pronunciation is "Seh-ruh-kyoos" -- but that's very close to .162's.

Sarah Cruise probably was his previous girlfriend, and the break-up was caused
by the fact that he wasn't over her yet.

re 5.160 ff:

I'm from Syracuse, and I pronounce it with a short i.  Many Syracusans
pronounce it Seracuse.  The DEC official dictionary is totally wrong on
this, listing /s�r'@-kyooz, -kyoos/ (the @ is a schwa, the � is as in pier).

Speaking of Schenectady, I once saw a movie in which Lucille Ball plays
a dumb secretary who's told to send a letter to someone in Schenectady.
She keeps asking, "How do you spell Schenectady?" and being ignored by
her bosses, who are arguing with each other.  In the end, one of the bosses
gets fed up and tells her to send it to Troy.  She then says, "How do you
spell Troy?"

Does anyone know the name of this movie?

re: 5.164
>        I'm from Syracuse, and I pronounce it with a short i.  Many Syracusans
>pronounce it Seracuse.  The DEC official dictionary is totally wrong on
>this, listing /s�r'@-kyooz, -kyoos/ (the @ is a schwa, the � is as in pier).

    I'm from Syracuse too, thank God. Better to be FROM there than to
    BE there any day!!!
    
    I used to call it SARA-kuse until I moved out and learned how the
    rest of the world pronounced it's name. Seems now I tend to call
    it SEAR-a-kuse.
    
    Doesn't matter any more, tho, as long as it's not pronounced HOME.
    
    			=-=-=-=-=-g=-=-=-=-=

    I lived in Syracuse once, though I'm originally from Utica. In the
    office, we called it "Sheer-abuse". Actually we had affectionate names
    for many of the cities in our territory to which we spent so many hours
    traveling on the Thruway: Barfalo, Rottenchester, Yucktica and
    All-baloney. New Yuck wasn't in our terrority, but we thought about it
    affectionately as everyone in Upstate NY does.

    As a native of Utica (for those of you who don't know NY geography,
    they're pretty close to one another. Dick Cavett rather facetiously
    called Utica "the jewel in the navel of NY state"), my pronounciation
    of the first syllable of Syracuse is exactly like the verb sear and the
    noun seer. I always thought Syracuseans had a slightly different NY
    accent than Uticans, but it was such a subtle difference, I find it
    difficult to analyze or imitate. I never detected any difference
    between the way I pronounced Syracuse and natives of the city did.
    Certainly, no one from Syracuse ever expressed any objection to my
    pronunciation of the city. If I heard someone in Syracuse pronouncing
    it Saracuse, I'd assume they were not a native.

    I lived in Syracuse once ( for 4 years ), though I'm originally
    from Rochester. ( Thanks for the reminder of Rottenchester... It's
    been a long time since I've heard/seen that reference. )
    
    I've heard both version of Syracuse (Sarah-kuse and Sear/seer-a-kuse)
    which conform to the dual pronunciation of "syrup" but my own
    preference is the latter.      

    Of course, for waffles, powdered sugar is the best.
    jc

Re .80 et al...

The English town Leominster isn't pronounced Lem'in-ster, but Lem'ster.

I used to pick up a lot of hitch-hikers when I was driving lorries around the
Vale of Evesham - the foreign ones (and some of the natives) used to have
problems with quite a few of the place names (Hereford pronounced as Heerford,
Worcester, Leominster, Gloucester, Evesham as Eversham).  On one occasion I got
myself confused while looking for a road called Leigh Gardens (somewhere in
Essex, I think) - I asked people directions to 'Lie' Gardens, being used to
that pronunciation in the local village of Leigh Sinton, rather than 'Lee'.

Chris.

I knew someone who went to Pitsford Southerland High School, just outside of
Rochester who would always refer to it facetiously as Rah-cha-cha.  Then there's
the ever popular "Rodchester" version which I hear in Michigan.

Wook

    I'm a belated conver to this conference.  The discussion in the 120's
    was about "root" vs "route".  Best example I ever heard came from a
    TRAX course many moons ago (remember TRAX?).  The quote was:
    
    " there can be several "roots" in a "rouding list".
    
    			Happy New Year...-20 and counting...Keith
    

I love this just-discovered (by me, anyway) column...

Nobody's mentioned the one that's been showing up in print as well
as in conversation:

	'self-depreciating' -- as a description of a person with
	a rather debased(?) opinion of her/himself...

 

    I thought 'self-depreciating' referred to the stock price.

    The one that makes my skin crawl is when people pronounce architecture
    as ARCH-I-TECH-URE  instead of ARK-I-TEK-SHER like it should be.
    
    --  Tracy

    How about the athAletes who compete in decathAlons?
    
    Re .87 and .100, I've found that Chelmsford is sometimes
    (mis)pronounced as "Chennsfid".
    
    There's that city in Canada - Tronno, Ontario...
    
    Or Conn Cord, Massachusetts--it's not the supersonic aircraft Concorde,
    it's pronounced "conquered"!
    
    It's not Pea Boddy, Mass... It's PEE-b'dee.  Two syllables.  And Woburn
    is 	WOOH-b'n, not Woe-burn.
    
    I group these together (regional speech impediments?!): Hey DA-WAYNE,
    take a picture of that ELLUM tree if there's FILLUM in the camera. 
    Possibly in the same category, the disappearing Ls in the speech of
    South Phiwadewphians (listen to David Brenner).
    
    Leslie

    
    	Also, Leslie,
    
    	I grew up in Medford while everyone else was in either
    	"Meffid" or "Meffuh."
    
    	I love the ads which give addresses for Natick (Naytik) 
    	and call it "Nah-tick."  Or Worcester comes out "Warchester"
    	but all the natives say "Wistuh."
    
    	(Say "Hi" to all the folks in Disty.)
    
    
    	Ralph

re .174

Chelmsford is PROPERLY pronounced "Chemsfud".  That's an em not an en.

re .175

I used to work in Meffud, at the (now long gone) Stah Mahkit. 

Dave C.

    re .176  Oh, I agree, though I wouldn't go with 'fud (as in Elmer),
    preferring 'fid or f'd.  My point was that I'd HEARD Chennsfid, and I
    think it was a case of laziness taken one step further (the speaker
    needn't bother with the pesky task of closing the lips).
    
    re .175 Hi Ralph!!  I just discovered the joy of JOY (lex us give
    thanks) and have been in a dazzled read-only state til now.
    
    I thought of some other quirky New Englandisms:
    
      AcrossT the street
      The police or ambulance sy-REEN
      May I have the RECEIPT [recipe] for that sponge cake?
    
    Leslie

    
    Leslie, as I resident, I'd have to agree with you - it's "Chemsf'd".
    (Also an ex-resident of "Meffuh", "Ahhlington", and "Summavl").
    Gotta love it.  Grew up in Topsfield - pretty hard to screw that up,
    thank goodness.  8-).

    Diane

    My best friend, who grew up in Hamilton, MA (next to Wennum and Bevvully),
    was once an hour late for an appointment in New Jersey.  Seems he was
    driving around asking directions, being very "caffle" to pronounce the
    R in "Eastern Avenue."
    
    The problem, of course, was that he'd originally been told (over the
    phone) to report to Easton Ave.
    
    Leslie

    
    
    	Re: .176
    
    	Good old Stah Mahkit.  And on High Street heading toward
    	the "liberry" was the Libuddy (Liberty) Mahkit.
    
    	Boston math:  Two plus two equals "fowuh."
    
    	This rule applies to words with the same sound, for example,
    	"befowuh" (the opposite of "after," er ... "aftuh").
    
    
    	Ralph
    

re .180 (re .176)

Yeah, I was a bagga and then later a casheeya at the Stah Mahkit. 
Sometimes I even got to work in the likka department.

Sigh, now I've lapsed inta a Reveeya accent.  Shame on me, 'cuz I
come frum Evret.

Dave C.

    Re .177
    
    RECEIPT isn't a mispronunciation; it's an old variant of
    the word `recipe'. (English etymology isn't my strong
    point; if Bonnie was still around I'd turn to her for
    further elucidation. Anyone else?)
    
    b
    

    Quite simply, the original word was receipt.  If you look at old cook
    books, they are filled with receipts.
    
    from the Latin imperitive of recipere, "to receive"
    
    
    E Grace

    Re .181
    
    >Yeah, I was a bagga and then later a casheeya at the Stah Mahkit.
    >Sometimes I even got to work in the likka department.
                                                   ^
                                                   |
                                                   |
    What do you call this?  -----------------------'
    
    Is it English?
    
    
    (P.S.  What happened to Bonnie?)

    Re: .-1
    
    Correct.  He should have written "dePOTment".

Re: .173

>    The one that makes my skin crawl is when people pronounce architecture
>    as ARCH-I-TECH-URE  instead of ARK-I-TEK-SHER like it should be.


as neither is correct it doesn't really matter.


All the letters should be pronounced.

arki-tek-tyor


Ref: Oxford English Dictionary

    Re: .173
    
    	>> ... like it should be.
    
    Oh come now.  I can understand, "Winston tastes good like a cigarette
    should," but in this conference we should use "as". Or has Miss
    Thistlebottom lost out on this one, too?

    
    Re:  .187
    
     >>> I can understand, "Winston tastes good like a cigarette
     >>> should," but in this conference we should use "as". 
    
    
    	When cigarettes were still advertised on television and,
    	in fact, sponsored shows totally there was a Winston
    	campaign which purported to have people from all across
    	the country writing in to correct "like" to "as."  The
    	tag was, "What do you want good grammar or good taste?"
    
    	Winston even went one step further in language deflation
    	because they used to sponsor "The Beverly Hillbillies" and
    	the final commercial would show Jed and Granny smoking at
    	the mansion's entrance saying, "Winston tastes good like a
    	cigarette had oughter."
    	

    It seems to me that most TV and Radio announcers in the UK say
    "SE-CER-TERRY" instead of "SE-CRE-TERRY" for secretary.
    
    Anyone else noticed this, or is it just my hearing!
    

    A word that, to my ears, is consistently mispronounced in the US
    is "vulnerable."  Rarely do I hear the first "l" -- the would
    usually sounds like this: "vunerable."  It doesn't seem to be a
    variant pronunciation (no dictionary lists it).  It irritates me.
    
    					andrew

A huge irritant for me is sourced by my favourite wake-up radio station.
They have so-called weather specialists who call in from a weather forecasting
service in Montreal known as the Weather Network.  There doesn't seem to be
even one of their specialists who doesn't believe temperature isn't spelled

  temp-a-tcher

It annoys the daylights out of me! Just like pictures are pitchers.

Stuart

		Not an irritant, more a bemuser, is the American 
		pronunciation of `laboratory' (I think it is 
		spelled that way in the US?).

		What I hear is LAB-ah-to-ry.  Strange.

		Jim

    my very favorite way of getting them Freshlings to buckle down and DO
    the experiments instead of sitting around gabbing was to say, in my
    most stentorian tones, 
    
      "Let's have more LABOR-atory and less LAB-ORATORY, Please!!  :-)"

	I used to have a high school English teacher who insisted that
	Wednesday should be pronounced "wed-ness-day," not "wenz-day."
	I beat her to death with an eraser.  Because I was a minor,
	however, I never had to do time.

		-- Cliff

I am the treasurer of an organization which has a "club" account at a
local bank-like organization.  Normal account numbers at this
institution are six digits long, but club accounts are longer, so as to
distinguish them.  However, there are so few club accounts that all the
account numbers have the thousands triplet of digits all zeroes.

Say the account number is 9000876 (it isn't).  I would read that as
nine million, eight hundred, seventy-six.  Another way would be
nine, zero, zero, zero, eight, seven, six.  

However, at this institution, the personel read it as
nine THOUSAND, eight, seventy-six, as though it were written 9000-876.
They are consistent.  When I talk to them about the account in general
terms, they say, "Oh, you have one of those nine-thousand accounts."
I would have expected them to say, "Oh, you have one of those accounts
in the nine millions."

Dave C.

    And on Usenet recently someone was irritated because he used terms
    like "C thousand" to refer to C0000 instead of C000, but his victims
    interpreted them as three zeroes instead of four.
    
    Whoops.  Although numerals (hex and other) are lexical, .195 and this
    are not about mispronunciations.  New topic, anyone?
    
    As for mispronunciations, none of you can compete with what I get here.
    I could not possibly remember everything I've heard, and they would
    overwhelm this conference.  But here are two.
    
    One, which I cannot really complain about, is due to one of our employee's
    problems pronouncing "di" and "l" (which are not native to Japanese), and
    his accent with "ji" (always dropping the i, instead of just sometimes).
    When he spoke of "jijtar" I had to ask him to repeat, and it finally
    dawned on me that he was speaking about our company.
    
    The other one I can complain about, but it will never change.  I first
    ran across it in a previous employer, when a co-worker described a
    command line to type for some program.  "Dash, double."  I stared at
    him, because although I could imagine some programs having an option
    for single precision or double precision, I was not doing any floating
    point computations in this program.  I typed a dash and stared at him
    again.  "Double."  I typed "double" and stared at him again.  He said,
    "No, the other one," and I stared yet again.  He hit the backspace key
    six times and typed "w", and I stared again.  Then he understood, asked
    how I pronounce it, and I told him.  Well, ice cream cones can be bought
    in sizes "S" and "W", which I think are pronounced "ess" and "double."
    Futon sheets can be bought in sizes "S", "W", "SL", and "WL" (where "L",
    meaning "long," is pronounced either "eru" or "rong").

Same weather forecasting service is today talking about

Artic air masses

SET FLAME = THERMONUCLEAR EXPLOSION

THERE ARE 2 'C'S IN ARCTIC !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ARC-TIC

SET FLAM = OFF

Simple isn't it, but it's time these weather specialist took some
lessons in the language they read weather forecasts in!

Stuart


ps  re Wednesday

I have always pronounced this as Wednzday, as opposed to wenzday (Wenznight ?)


Another favourite ... where do you borrow books ? A lot of people seem to
have found some place called a lye-berry ... I dunno where one is though !

>>  Simple isn't it, but it's time these weather specialists took some
>>  lessons in the language they read weather forecasts in! ******************
						        ^^  ** dangle alert **
							    ******************


	Advice: never *ever* pontificate in this place about 
	the use of language unless you can do it by employing 
	sentences that the reader can be happy with the form of.

	Damn!  I did it too.   :-)

re: .194
>I used to have a high school English teacher who insisted that Wednesday should
>be pronounced "wed-ness-day," not "wenz-day." I beat her to death with an
>eraser.  Because I was a minor, however, I never had to do time.

Wiped her out, eh?

I bet she came back in spades the next rubber.

I guess this has been stretched far enough.

    I distinctly remember getting into a "discussion" with my 5th grade
    English teacher about the pronunciation of "caught."  We were
    discussing the use of rhyming schemes in poetry, and she was
    steadfastly of the opinion that "court" "sport" and "caught" all
    rhymed.  I lost, but only because she was the teacher and I was 10
    years old.  8-).
    
    -Tom

    What is that gooey, light-brown ice-cream topping?

    	karmel (two syllables) or caramel (three syllables)

>    What is that gooey, light-brown ice-cream topping?
>    	karmel (two syllables) or caramel (three syllables)

Neither.  It's spelled b-u-t-t-e-r-s-c-o-t-c-h.

Oh, yes, and it's three syllables.

Thank you ... nothing like a dangling bit of grammar!  But this is
mispronounciations (Yup I started this sentence with a conjunction!)
and ARTIC air masses and TEMPACHERS just get me hot under the collar!

Stuart

Many people mispronunce "mispronounciations".

Not really a mispronunciation, but a usage that really bothers me is saying 
"oh" for the number "zero", and leaving it to the listener to decipher 
whether the speaker means "0" or "O".  This problem doesn't seem to exist in 
other languages, such as Ascii.

Clay

Stuart:

Hey, chill out a little, willya?  My dictionary (Merriam-Webster 9th New 
Collegiate) says "art-ik" is just as good as "ark-tik."  It also has "wenz-de"
for Wednesday, along with "wed-nz-day" (though it lists the latter as Brit.).

But if you'll just listen to people actually speak the language, you'll find
that people definitely favor "art-ik" and "wenz-de."  That's for a very good
reason -- the consonantal clusters in "arctic" and "Wednesday" are very hard
to pronounce.  If people slowed down to handle stuff like this, you'd find 
some pretty unusual -- and rather soporific -- speaking patterns.

Also, don't confuse spelling with pronunciation.  I'm sure you've heard of
"ghoti" -- George Bernard Shaw's spelling of fish (the "gh" from "enough,"
the "o" from "women," the "ti" from "nation").  At one time, English spelling
*was* accurate -- "knight" was pronounced "ke-neecht" (kind of like the
German "knecht").  And "Wednesday" was once "Woden's Day" -- though we don't
worship the Norse gods anymore.  However, language does change, and English
orthography is a mess.  And you are on the other side of the pond, aren't you? 

Have you heard the story of "debit"?  At one time, English had a single word
for this concept -- "dette,"  pronounced "det-ta."  When the Elizabethans (I
believe) had the brilliant idea to change English spelling to make it look more
like Latin (an obviously superior language), they came up with the word "debt,"
which, however, kept the same pronunciation.  When people starting getting
confused and trying to pronounce the "b," however, a new word was forced into
the language, "debit," with the "b" pronounced.  Pretty user-friendly, huh?  
Why didn't the grammarians just leave the language alone?

This is probably more seriousness than the topic deserves, but that's just
the kind of person I am.

Anyway, cheers,

	-- Cliff

P.S.  Re 199: I did.

P.P.S.  Re 200: You obviously weren't forceful enough in your arguments.  You
should have tried my approach.

Hey Cliff,

>Hey, chill out a little, willya?  My dictionary (Merriam-Webster 9th New 

I am, I am ... the 'Alberta Clipper' is ensuring that we get a good dose
of Arctic air lately! :-)

>Collegiate) says "art-ik" is just as good as "ark-tik."  It also has "wenz-de"
>for Wednesday, along with "wed-nz-day" (though it lists the latter as Brit.).

I'm sorry, but I don't hold with what I call lazy pronounciation.  Just because
some sounds are difficult to get your tongue around doesn't give you license
to pronounce it the way you want.  If it were, then we should forget about
all the subtle nuances of the language.  There is a decided difference
between words like debit and Arctic.  I put it to you that there is nothing
difficult about Arc-tic or li-brary.  Wednesday is a little more difficult
I grant you, but is stil nothing like as difficult as something like diphthong.
(OK who pronounced that as DIP-THONG rather than DIFF-THONG ?)

Don't tell me that English spelling was accurate ... that's impossible ...
take 'ough' it can be 'o', 'oo', 'ow' and 'uff' to name but a few.  The fact
that English is such a hybrid language is reason enough that spelling
cannot be accurate.

>orthography is a mess.  And you are on the other side of the pond, aren't you? 

The side of the pond I'm on has nothing to do with whether I'm just downright
lazy at pronounciation.  As it happens, assuming my node list to be accurate
and you are in area 33, then we are on the same side of the pond, I'm just
north of the border.  If I was on the other side of the pond, I'd be listening
to other lazy pronounciations like the substitution of 'hv' for the as is
fahver and muhver and bruhver (father, mother and brother), 'me' for 'my'
All of which annoy me to no end.

Yes, some pronounciations are related to your heritage ... like 'erbs and
herbs (and strangely, the English actually pronouce the 'h') and 'ahnt' or
'ant' for aunt.  Those I accept ... they aren't from laziness.

>This is probably more seriousness than the topic deserves, but that's just
>the kind of person I am.

Likewise, that's why this irks me so! :-)

Stuart

ps anyone care to try nuclear ?  I know people in the industry who insist
that it is nu-ku-lar.  Again laziness ... new-cle-ar please.  Please don't
tell me that Webster accepts Nucular ... I've got enough axes to grind
with Webster already !

:-)

    Stuart:
    
    The history of language is also the history of lazy pronunciation.
    Large chunks of the vocabularies of the Romance languages are 
    "devolved" Latin words.  The Grimm Brothers were able to trace
    the changes in languages and dialect by recognizing and tracing
    shifts in pronunciation, as consonants got "softer" and blurred
    together.  Lazy pronunciation is a millennia-old tradition in 
    language, and will undoubtedly continue.
    
    Do I personally approve of the shift in pronunciation from "arc-tic"
    to "art-ic?"  No.  Do I approve of the disapperance of the first "l"
    in "vulnerable?"  No.  Does my approval or disapproval alter the
    pace of changes in the English language one whit?  No.
    
    					andrew

Andrew,
>    
>    Do I personally approve of the shift in pronunciation from "arc-tic"
>    to "art-ic?"  No.  Do I approve of the disapperance of the first "l"
>    in "vulnerable?"  No.  Does my approval or disapproval alter the
>    pace of changes in the English language one whit?  No.
>    

I put to you that your approval or disapproval does matter.  Your disapproval
makes others think twice about mispronounciations.  Remember that you can
be influential in both directions!  Think of charities trying to meet their
fundraising goals.  As an individual, you will hardly make a drop in their
bucket, but if you don't put your drop in then they'll have a harder time
reaching that goal.



Stuart -- feeling very conservative regarding language lately.

    One whit, maybe Andrew; not much more. Disapproval of slovenly
    pronunciation [there, "slovenly", I'm obviously an impartial observer)
    may slow down a change.  But `the poor are always with us' Stuart, just
    like changes in language; no matter how many people disapprove of a
    change (for example, the entire adult population of England in some
    cases, and probably thousands of expatriates) if it's going to happen
    it's going to happen.
    
    b

>    may slow down a change.  But `the poor are always with us' Stuart, just
>    like changes in language; no matter how many people disapprove of a
>    change (for example, the entire adult population of England in some
>    cases, and probably thousands of expatriates) if it's going to happen
>    it's going to happen.

Indeed, indeed ... but I don't want nobody givin me that "anything I say
or do won't make no differens" crap.  It's all real easy, all ya gotta
do is after ya notised a misteak is tell em "Why cancha lern to talk proper,
like wut I duz"

Sturat

	We're right behind you, Stuart!  Go get 'em!  Grrrrr!

		-- Cliff

    All right, I accept that I may affect things one whit; that's all I can
    do, and it's what I will do.  I love our language, and try to use it
    properly and precisely.  While I cannot directly cause anyone else to
    use "proper" pronunciation, I can, by my example, let them know what
    the proper pronunciation is.
    
    					andrew

	Even on the correct side of the pond, shedule is now commonly
	pronounced skedule...

	...whereas the most famous brand of Indian tonic water...
	Schhhhh...

	Is that a good enough mnemonic for you?

	And do _you_ pronounce that last noun as though it referred to a
	pulmonary disease?

	Delia

  Reading the last few of Stuart's replies, I wonder, how many English-
  speakers pronounce "pronunciation" as "pro-noun-ciation"?
  
  --Simon
  

    Oh my Goodness ... I have been caught red-handed so to speak.  I have
    been thoroughly put to shame be my own hand.
    
  >Reading the last few of Stuart's replies, I wonder, how many English-
  >speakers pronounce "pronunciation" as "pro-noun-ciation"?
    
    *I* wonder how many English speakers would spell "pronunciation"
    as "pronounciation" ?  Not too many, I hope!
    
    Oh shame on me .....  Stuart

    G'day,
    
    
     Ahhh but an art-ic is a long bendy lorry (truck)..
    
    
    and you find them on shedule (I learnt that at shool)..
    in Conne(c)ticut...
    
    
    8-)
    
    derek      

I agree completely with Stuart.  On the matter of what he calls 'lazy

pronunciation,' there is cause for taking a very dim view indeed.

Citing Webster's 9th to justify "art-ik," is merely to show how

influential the ignorant and the lazy have become in matters of the

language.



A dictionary is a history book and users should understand its

limitations.  The makers of dictionaries fancy themselves not as

arbiters of propriety in language, but as recorders of usage.  They

tell us little about how words ought to be used, but a great deal

about how they are in fact used, no matter how ignorant the user.

When enough lazy or ignorant people say things like art-ik, the

dictionary makers conclude (rightly) that pronunciation to be common.

The ignorant, then, looking to the dictionary for guidance, conclude

(wrongly) that art-ik is proper or acceptable or sanctioned.

Ignorance rules.



We are dealing here not so much with the broader subject of

pronunciation as with the narrower one of _enunciation_.  We are not

dealing, that is, with varieties of accent that accompany regional or

national dialects, but with clarity and distinctness of pronunciation

within those dialects.  In this context, art-ik, lye-berry,

uh-sem'-bully (assembly), and the like are wrong and should be

avoided.



Bernie

    You plum ignant, bo.
    
    Ray

    Just to let you all know that I'm standing firm on this...  I judged a
    Competitive Speech Competition last weekend (I got started as a judge
    when my two daughters joined their High School Competititive Speech
    Teams years back, and have continued out of love for it though they're
    long gone).
    
    One of the events gives contestants a sheaf of news copy and 15 minutes
    to prepare and present a 5-min newscast with world, national & local
    news, sports & weather.  Time is critical:  5 Min � 5 sec.  Judge
    listens only, does not look at contestant.
    
    I marked two out of the five contestants down at least 1 rank and 10
    quality points for pronouncing nuclear newkyoular.  I told'em directly
    so as to give 'em a chance to clean up their acts before the next round
    of competition, or to choose another news item.
    
    (-: Dan "Institute de English" Kalikow :-)

    Re .218: Oh, how jolly! Tarzan speaks Latin! Um, let's see now:
    
    	Jane:	But _my_ plum has been extinguished, Tarzan dear. Boy,
    		if you extinguish your plum as well, you may eat it.
    
    -b

    Re .219: Good for you! (You realize it's probably a losing cause,
    though.) Personally, I'd accept "nook-you-lar" in exchange for no more
    occurrances of "So he goes..., 'n' then I go..."
    
    -b

    To say nothing of: "So I'm like, 'huh?', and he's like, 'wow'...".
    
    ...Rob

    That means you care to SOME degree....
    
    Leslie

This is for Andrew:

212>    All right, I accept that I may affect things one whit; that's all I can
212>    do, and it's what I will do.  I love our language, and try to use it
212>    properly and precisely.  While I cannot directly cause anyone else to
212>    use "proper" pronunciation, I can, by my example, let them know what
212>    the proper pronunciation is.

207>    Do I personally approve of the shift in pronunciation from "arc-tic"
207>    to "art-ic?"  No.  Do I approve of the disapperance of the first "l"
207>    in "vulnerable?"  No.  Does my approval or disapproval alter the
207>    pace of changes in the English language one whit?  No.
    
I love our language too.  Its power, beauty, elegance continually amaze me.  I
too try to use it properly and precisely (what the heck, that's what I get paid
the big bucks for).  ;^)

At the same time, though, there are things about our language that I admire
that I feel that you might not ... for example, its ability to absorb and
change, its dynamism, its democratic qualities, its flexibility, its
efficiency, its pluralism.

It sounds like you understand that languages change, and that trying to stop
that change is like Canute's commanding the tide to stop.  On the other hand,
though, have you ever really stopped and wondered about the process of change
itself?  Once you get into just how language changes and works, you'd probably
find that change was, not just an unfortunate fact of life, but rather
something to admire in itself.

Okay, off my soapbox,

	-- Cliff

    >I too try to use it properly and precisely
    >(what the heck, that's what I get paid the big bucks for).  ;^)
                                                ---------
    
    Presuming that is a proper and precise use, does it refer to
    pre-1805 silver dollars (bigger than the later ones)
    or to paper money prior to some 19th century date?  ;-)

    It refers to taking his salary in wild-game meat for his dinner table.

>At the same time, though, there are things about our language that I admire
>that I feel that you might not ... for example, its ability to absorb and
>change, its dynamism, its democratic qualities, its flexibility, its
>efficiency, its pluralism.

>It sounds like you understand that languages change, and that trying to stop
>that change is like Canute's commanding the tide to stop.  On the other hand,
>though, have you ever really stopped and wondered about the process of change
>itself?  Once you get into just how language changes and works, you'd probably
>find that change was, not just an unfortunate fact of life, but rather
>something to admire in itself.
    
    Actually, these are some of the qualities I most admire in English:
    because of its ability to absorb, adapt, and accept, today's English
    has, by far, the largest vocabulary of any language in history.  In
    my lifetime I've seen words totally change in meaning, or connotation,
    or both.  I've seen the addition of thousands of new words, and the
    adoption of hundreds more, from languages as diverse as Japanese,
    Russian, Arabic, and Indian.
    
    Soemone else came closer to my objections -- it isn't bad pronunciation
    that I abhor, it the laziness (of mind and tongue) that lead to bad
    enunciation.   I don't object to language change, I just don't like
    sloppiness, in thought or speech.
    
    					andrew

Yes, I think we are in violent agreement about language change.  I'm not so
sure about enunciation though.  It sounds like you might see it in terms of
laziness, I in terms of English phonology.

For example, the /rkt/ sound in "arctic" just doesn't occur anywhere else.  It
might occur in compounds ("worktable") or in other languages (Latin? Greek?),
but not in English morphemes.  In the phonology of English, the cluster /rkt/
just does not occur, in the same way that we do not have trilled r's, Xhosa
clicks, or velar fricatives.  Except for things like /rmz/ ("arms"), /nts/
("ants"), or /skt/ ("asked"), we don't -- in fact -- have a lot of consonantal
clusters having more than 2 sounds.  That's just the way English is. 

	[When we take a foreign word into our language, we don't keep the
	 foreign pronunciation if it has non-English phonemes.  Do you trill 
	 your "r" in "opera"?  Do you give a French "r" to "maitre de,"
	 a velar fricative to "loch," an umlaut in "uebermensch"? 

	 It goes in the opposite direction too.  Japanese speakers don't
	 pronounce "baseball" as /bezbol/, but as /besabaru/.  They don't
	 do this because they're lazy (in fact, they've added syllables), 
	 but because they can't -- Japanese phonology doesn't allow it.]

This being the case, the most natural thing in the world for a native English
speaker to do is to turn this unfamiliar sound into something that actually
occurs in English.  The natural tendency is to focus on the two plosive sounds
that occur together (the /k/ and the /t/) and eliminate one of them.  

	[Plosives generally don't go together -- how many words do you
	 know with /p/ and /b/ together? /k/ and /d/? /g/ and /m/?]

This is reflected in the Middle English spelling (and pronunciation) of the
word, "artik" (it's "arcticus" in Latin, "arktikos" in Greek).  Hmm, "arctic"
is beginning to sound more and more like "debit."

I like this explanation.  It's neat, it explains what people do, it's not
value-laden, it makes sense.  What's the resistance?

I will stop now.  I could get into stuff like the idea that there is no
laziness, by definition, in language -- only efficiency.  That is, if
communication actuall occurs, anything that does not carry meaning can -- and
often is -- eliminated. 

I could also get into the sociolinguistics of the whole thing.  Who, for
example, decides who is being lazy and who is being "energetic"?  Why is one
pronunciation that does not agree with spelling lazy, and another not?  Who's
in charge here?  What's going on?

I could also get into stuff like dialect.  New Englanders and British speakers
(Andrew: are you the former?) do not pronounce /r/ in certain situations.  Are
they being lazy?  Do New Englanders make up for it when they add an extra /r/
onto words that end with /a/?  Are they being extra energetic in this case? 
Black English is famous for dropping sounds (as well as "be" verbs and
possessives) -- are blacks just being lazy??? 

Oh well, enough for now.

	-- Cliff

P.S.  226 (Tom?) was right -- I haul away a couple of male deer every Thursday.
However, this is very *large* male deer -- nothing below 10 points for us
Senior Writers.

    
    Re:.228
    
    
>>>	[Plosives generally don't go together -- how many words do you
>>>	 know with /p/ and /b/ together? /k/ and /d/? /g/ and /m/?]
    
    
    	Plosives?  I see gutterals (voiced and unvoiced) and a labial
    	thrown in there.  I wouldn't necessarily lump those together
    	under "plosive."
    
    	Let's see, /g/ and /m/?  As in "dogmatic" or "enigma" or
    	"magma" or "Six Sigma" or "pragmatism"?

    I love "So I go like huh and she's like oh sure right."  I love my
    grandma saying "his'n" and "your'n".  I love Irish idiom, Southern
    idiom, Valley Girl idiom, DJ idiom, people yelling at each other on the
    bus idiom.  I'm a hog for idiom, baby.  I love "axe" for "ask" and "duh
    tropp" for "de trop".  I love the flip, the rhythmic, the loose, and
    the sharp.  I love clarity, maundering, and uproarious incoherency.
    Even laziness can be charming.  What I hate is faux-academic prose born
    in a state of rigor mortis.
    
    Ray

    If you think /rkt/ is difficult to pronounce, send a thought to
    us poor Swedes who have to struggle with combinations like /stskt/.
    
    And that is at the end of a word, not in the middle. "V�stkustskt"
    is an adjective form meaning something pertaining to the West coast.
    But this is so tongue-twisting even for us, that we usually back off
    and try some other phrasing ;-)
    
    Hans

    re: .228
    	Many of the common words have consonontal clusters. Additions to
    your examples would (apart from "example) include "length" and
    "strength". There are more along the pattern you give of "asked";
    "marked" would be another. Even in your own note you give an example of
    two plosive sounds together where I have seen no tendency to eliminate
    either - "dialect", and I haven't noticed a tendency to drop either the
    "c" or "t" from "dictator".

    Not laziness, but efficiency -- hmm, I like that.
    
    Actually, like Ray, I accept and enjoy the breadth of pronunciation 
    that English allows; however, for me, personally, some (and only
    some) pronunciations grate on my ears.  I doubt that I'd ever say
    anything to the speaker about the "correctness" of their pronunciation;
    that's none of my business.  
    
    I prefer to celebrate the diversity of the language, rather than trying
    to force *anyone* to pronounce it "correctly."  I'm phlegmatic, rather
    than dogmatic.  The more I think about this, the more clear it becomes
    to me:  I'm not advocating "correct" pronunciation; I'm simply bitching
    about pronunciations that bother my ears.  Also clear to me is this: I
    have no intention of calling attention to "mispronunciations" to the
    speaker -- as I said before, it's none of my business.
    
    By the bye, Cliff, although I currently reside in New England, I was
    born and raised in Northern New Jersey.  The Northern New Jersey
    accent, once you get rid of a few very "hard" vowel sounds, is not too
    different from "standard" (that is, what the network newscasters use)
    American English.  However, getting rid of those vowels is difficult.
    
					andrew
                                                    

    /rkt/ is found in: marked, larked, barked, irked.
    /skt/ is found in: husked, tusked, basked.
    
    I think I could find lots of other examples of multi-plosive
    word-final consonant clusters, and even more if I'm allowed 
    word-internal clusters, like /pt/ in "raptor" or /pst/ in
    "capstan".
    
    What's your source for occurance and non-occurance of consonant
    clusters in English?
    
    			-John Bishop

    Now calm down you lot; someone's wooly's going to get torn.
    
    ��	Plosives?  I see gutterals (voiced and unvoiced) and a labial
    	thrown in there.  I wouldn't necessarily lump those together
    	under "plosive."
    /p/ /b/ /k/ /d/ and /g/ are all plosives; and there is such a thing
    as a nasal plosive - _my_ Ms aren't usually plosive, but wottheheck?
    
    ��	Let's see, /g/ and /m/?  As in "dogmatic" or "enigma" or
    	"magma" or "Six Sigma" or "pragmatism"?
    In all these examples the /g/ closes one syllable and the /m/ opens
    the next; that's no consonant cluster - it's just two consonants
    that happen to fall next to each other. There _is_ a consonant
    cluster when there's no next syllable, as in `apophthegm' or
    `syntagm' - and in those, if the /g/ sounds at all, it's exploded
    nasally. (You'll also notice that they're not the sort of word
    that crops up a lot in everyday conversation).
    
    And let's keep our eye on the ball. There's no /r/ in my pronunciation
    of `Arctic', or in the pronunciation of many English speakers; the 
    etymological and/or written R modifies the vowel and then disappears.
    The consonant cluster that's at issue here is /kt/, which is a fairly
    common one. Counter-examples of something that we're not talking about
    generate more heat than light.
    
    b

    Re .230: So could a critic's job be described as sitting on the knees
    of the corpse?
    
    The fun thing about rigor mortis is that, while it takes a lot of
    effort to break, once it's been broken, it (unlike most faux-academic
    prose!) won't recur...
    
    -b

    DAN!!!!  YOU JUDGE COMPETITIVE SPEECH???!?!?!?!?!  You're kids were
    involved?!?!?! *I* was in Comptetive Speech for 4 years!  Did pretty
    well, too.  
    
    
    E Grace

    >                    <<< Note 5.221 by DTIF::RUST >>>

    >Re .219: Good for you! (You realize it's probably a losing cause,
    >though.) Personally, I'd accept "nook-you-lar" in exchange for no more
    >occurrances of "So he goes..., 'n' then I go..."
    
    >-b
    
    
    In this instance, he should *not* be fighting a losing battle.  The
    whole point of Competitive Speech is *speaking*, and in Radio News
    Broadcasting, the category Dan was judging, that is especially
    important.
    
    
    E Grace

    Re: .235
    
    	"... in `apophthegm' or `syntagm' - and in those, if the /g/ sounds
    	at all, it's exploded nasally."
    
    I'll have to remember to pronounce these words the next time I catch a
    cold.
    
Lew Lasher

    Oh, oh -- another can of worms.  We could probably get into this pretty
    heavy (heck, we could define the phonology and phonemics of English if we
    wanted).

	[BTW, my sources are vague recollections of college linguistics
         classes -- real valuable that.]

    My only real point, though, was that there is a good reason for a lot of 
    mispronunciations -- there are a lot of words in English that are simply 
    hard to pronounce.  Perhaps I'm taking this whole note too seriously 
    though.  If you see /newk-u-ler/ as a pet peeve of yours, fine.  It's just 
    the this-is-the-end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it, you-are-bad-because-you-
    can't-pronounce-library stuff that kind of pushes my button.  Give people a
    break -- try to understand before you condemn.  Anyway ...

    	-- Cliff

    P.S.  Sorry, but I just can't resist those ratholes ...

    .229: plosives -- "Sounds which are stopped compl;etely in the oral cavity
    for a brief period are called ... stops ...  p, b, m, t, d, n, k, g, and ng
    are stops which occur in English ...  The nonasal stops are called plosives
    ...

    	Language, Fromkin and Rodman

    magma, etc. -- ditto on Mr. Knowles explanation, with this added: my
    dictionary has /apethem/ as the pronunciation for "apothegm"

    .228: length, strength -- these have only two phonemes: ng and th.  ng is a
    single sound, as is th.  I would put them in the Inter. Phonetic Alphabet
    characters, but I don't know how on this terminal (it's an n with a hook
    and a theta, BTW)

    "asked," "marked," are all good, but I remember there being something
    special about these words.  I know that's not very satisfactory, but I
    think there's actually something of a rule for this.  Anyway, can you think
    of an /rkt/ combination that's not formed with a past tense?

    The thing about eliminating the /k/ in "arctic" ...  All I was saying is
    that /rkt/ is an unusual cluster and that one of the sounds will be
    eliminated.  So, if something has to go, the most obvious choice is between
    the two plosives (/kt/), which explains the pronunciation /artik/ ... by
    the way, are you a Brit, too?  "arctic" will never be a problem for you if
    you pronounce it /oktic/ (ditto for you, Mr. Knowles)

    .234: same thing on the word-finals

    "raptor" and "capstan" divide real well over the syllables, as Mr. Knowles
    points out.  Also, even if you had /pt/ so it didn't break over a syllable
    ("apt"), it would still only be 2 phonemes.

    Oh Yah, I'm a longtime speech groupie.
    
    Both my kids started in KiddieLit, grew up, branched out, went to
    Nationals several years, and both won Mass. State competitions in OO
    and DI (though neither was an "Extemper" to my mild chagrin...) (pardon
    the speechie-ese, -- OO == Original Oratory, DI == Dramatic
    Interpretation, KiddieLit == Childrens' Literature...
    
    Gerry Dyer's fine, splits his time between Natick High and the Boston
    College Speech Team...  He's still the same talented flamer, too!
    
    Now why ain't I surprised that you were a "speechie" too?  Such hugging
    talent doesn't spring full-blown all by itself...  :-)
    
    I hope the above paragraph demonstrates a different sort of expertise
    at the use of a shovel.  :-)  Cheers, Dan K.

Re:  .234



> There are things about our language that I admire...for example, its ability

> to absorb and change, its dynamism, its democratic qualities, its flexibility,

> its efficiency, its pluralism.



Yes, English, like all natural languages, changes in order to adapt to

new demands and, with discretion, the language can be improved and

become a more powerful and efficient device for communication.  If by

its "democratic qualities," you mean to say that you admire the

propensity in our language to give equal weight to the changes

proposed by the ignorant, that is nothing to admire, but deserves to

be decried and resisted.





> Trying to stop that change is like Canute's commanding the tide to stop.



You may be correct in that analogy, since the ignorant are the most

potent force for change in the language today.  That is not to say,

however, that resistance to some change is not a good fight, nor that

the battle is not worth waging.  We properly resist changes, for

example, that rob the language of important distinctions between words

and those that broaden the meanings of precise terms so as to make

communication less exact and more difficult.  To accept change merely

because it is change, is absurd.  To do so is to admire change more

than to admire the ability to communicate our thoughts and ideas

precisely.





Re:  228



You are quite right:  when words are adopted from one language into

another, it is often the case that the pronunciation is adapted for

ease of use in its new language.  That, however, is not always the

case.  The French word 'pension,' as adopted into German, is

pronounced with its full French colors flying.  The German word

'Kindergarten,' as adopted into English, is pronounced as the German's

do, with the final 't' not slurred into a 'd'.  Such is also the case

with 'Arcturus,' a Greek word taken into English, whose first syllable

is pronounced "ark."



'Arctic,' however, is not a foreign word adopted by or taken into

English, as you suggest.  It is an English word with (as so many

others) foreign origins.  And it is properly enunciated "ark'-tic." To

pronounce it "art-ik" is either to be lazy (as Stuart and Andrew have

suggested) or to be ignorant.





> I could also get into the sociolinguistics of the whole thing.  Who, for

> example, decides who is being lazy and who is being "energetic"?



Anyone can.  All one need do is compare practice with correct

enunciation.  Assume, for example, that we encounter someone who

pronounces the word "English" as 'in-gliss.' We easily determine that

person to be be wrong (lazy, ignorant, whatever) based on our

knowledge of the word's proper pronunciation.



Bernie

Re:  .240



> Perhaps I'm taking this whole note too seriously though.  If you see

> /newk-u-lar/ as a pet peeve of yours, fine.  It's just the this-is-the-end-of-

> civilization-as-we-know-it, you-are-bad-because-you-can't-pronounce-library 

> stuff that kind of pushes my button.  Give people a break -- try to understand

> before you condemn.



You certainly are taking this note too seriously if you are

interpreting criticism of incorrect pronunciation as somehow a

criticism of the individual.  I cannot read into any of the responses

in this discussion an attack on the worthiness of individuals simply

because they make mistakes in English.  Do you react as heatedly when

a math teacher corrects someone's algebra?  No more personal affront

is intended in the former case.



Bernie

    Re .240:
    
    >.228: length, strength -- these have only two phonemes: ng and th.
    False.
    
    >ng is a single sound, as is th.
    True.
    
    Although I am not a linguist (not for human languages anyway :-),
    I have enough experience pronouncing the ng phoneme, as well as
    the pair of phonemes that is written "ngg" in some languages.
    In the American words "length" and "strength" (can't say for the
    English words with similar spellings :-) I pronounce both the ng
    and g phonemes, and the th phoneme.
    
    Re .243:
    Maybe people don't complain about corrections to algebraic errors,
    but you should see the way they complain about corrections to
    programming errors, design errors, etc.
    
    -- Norman Diamond

    As long as we are making words difficult to pronounce, try the plural
    of strength: strengths.  It also has the highest ratio of consonants to
    vowels in the English language.

"ng", as in the "ing" suffix to verbs, is pronounced as two sounds in my
original neck of the woods. people from other parts of the UK often find it
funny.

Phillip

    It's funny in this part of the USA too, at least...
    :-)
    Accentocentrically yours, Dan

	kindergarten	/kindE(r) -gart'n -gard'n/

	length		/leN(k)th/  /len(t)th/

	lengths		/leN(k)ths/  /len(t)ths/  /leN(k)s/

	Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (Mirriam Webster)

		*    E stands for schwa
		**   N stands for ng 
		***  parens mean the phoneme is optional

    .249, for shame :-)!  Or are we to assume that the "Mirriam Webster"
    edition was published in that new shiny, silvered CD format??  :-) 

    G'day,
    
     From downunder...
    
    There seems to be a trend that words such as 'shown' which end in 'wn'
    are pronounced 'wun' at the end.. thus shown becomes showun, known
    becomes knowun etc..
    
    I do not recall this in the UK...
    
    Anyone else heardit??
    
    derek

    ... and "down" becomes "dowun" and "down under" becomes "dowun under"?
    Maybe the rule is more complex than .-1 has described.
    
    Normally Aussies try to drop syllables rather than add them:
    
    septic	for 	American
    sparky		electrician
    Kossy		Mt. Kosiusco
    uni			university
    
    etc

    Re .251
    
    That must be an import from the southern U.S.

    	The Bristol dialect adds an "l" to the end of every word that
    normally ends with a vowel. For example, they will talk about taking
    pictures with a cameral. My mother taught there for a number of years,
    and always jokingly referred to her car as a Toyotal.
    
    	There is a theory that the real name of the city is Bristo, but the
    locals couldn't pronounce it.  ;-)
    
    (Actuall, I think it is slightly more complicated. I think it must be a
    multi-syllabic word).

    re .454
    
    The classic Bristolian phrase refers to " Eval Turnal, the well-known
    primal donnal....."
    
    

	Not to feel left out, here are some favorite mispronunciations of 
	mine:

	o  Gummint
	o  Bidness

	Guess where these come from?

		-- C

    re .256
    
    Texas

.256>	o  Gummint
.256>	o  Bidness

.256>	Guess where these come from?

.257>    Texas

Precisely.  Gummint bidness comes from the texas that the gummint collects.

    G'day,
    
     Welllll if you're gonna get into _that_bidness,
    
    What's 'Lust'?
    
    
    
    Lust is what y'ar, when yoo doan know where y'ar...
    
    
    leestways in Norf Carolina
    
    ('cording to mah buk)
    
    an a berrrd uses a Wang to flih!
    
    derek

    Hmmm.  In Massachusetts, "LUST" is the Lowell University Swimming Team.
    They have it in big bold letters on their warm-up jackets.

    Re .205 and vicinity:
    
    ""
    
    "Pardon?"
    
    ""
    
    "I can't hear you."
    
    "Do you want me to spell it out for you?"
    
    "Yes, please."
    
    "B as in debit,
     L as in walk,
     E as in abrasive,
     A as in diamond, and
     H as in knight.
    As I said, ''."
    
    ""

    Did you mean "B as in 'debt'"?
    
    E Grace

	Re .262's silent letters - who was it who came
	up famously with `ghoti' for `fish'?

		GH as in enough
		O  as in womyn
		TI as in position

    Re: .-1

    I seem to recall it was George Bernard Shaw, who advocated fonetik
    spelling and used "ghoti" to show how ridiculous the present system is.

    Re .263
    
    Argh!  Yes, I did.  ""

	I hope this fits in this topic.

	We are all familiar with the American use of `wala' for 
	the French word `voil�'.  But, clock _this_ from	
	a recent SOAPBOX note ...!

>>    ...... they dig holes in the ground, build houses around the holes,
>>    fill the holes with DRINKING WATER and wellah !  Lakeside Lots !
					     ^^^^^^    

	Jim

    Chimbley (cockney)
    

    A muvver was barfing her biby one night
    A poor little thing, a tiny young mite
    The muvver was poor and the biby was fin
    Only a skellington covered wiv skin
    
    The muvver turned round for the soap off the rack
    She was but a moment, but when she turned back
    
    Her biby was gorn! And in anguish she cried
    "Oh where is my biby?". The angels replied
    
    "Your biby 'as gorn dahn the plug'ole, your biby 'as gorn dahn the plug
    The poor little fing was so skinny and fin 'e oughter bin barfed in a jug
    Your biby is perfickly 'appy. 'E won't need a barf any more
    Your biby 'as gorn dahn the plug'ole, not lorst, but gorn before".
    
    ------
    I don't think I have ever seen the above written, so the transcription
    may be faulty. My daughter learnt it from my father, and can recite it
    perfickly, even though her primary language is French (I think).

    
  >>  "Your biby 'as gorn dahn the plug'ole, your biby 'as gorn dahn the plug
  >>  The poor little fing was so skinny and fin 'e oughter bin barfed in a jug
  >>  Your biby is perfickly 'appy. 'E won't need a barf any more
  >>  Your biby 'as gorn dahn the plug'ole, not lorst, but gorn before".

	Hmmm, that last line differs from Cream's version, me thinks.
	Anyone remember how they sang it?  I think it has something
	to do with "the angels above".

	Di

An' jus so no one 'ere finks yer word biby is prunnanced loyk bibby, i fought
Oy'd be'er pu' in this 'ere clareefickeyeshun ... it should be prunnanced
loyk bye-bee.

Tha' meyeks i' lo's be'er.

No'ice tha' in yer cockney, lo's of tuys, speshly a' the end of wurds or
in the middle of wurds loyk bu'er are prunnanced wivv yer glo'al stop. I'
cer'enly meyks yer wr'en cockney look steynge.

Stuart (who didn't live wivin the sound uv any uv the bells uv London
bu sure heard lots uv cockney and near cockney in Suvvern England for
many years!)

    G'day,
     But onthe other hand, even Cockneys do sometimes sound  'double 't's'
    as in Butter and they do so VERY clearly - 
    
    listen to the Minder's Denis Waterman for one....
    
    
    derek
    

    Radio listeners in and around Boston, MA, were informed this morning by
    WODS (Oldies 103) newsperson Gordon Hill that Mary Wells, who sang "My
    Guy," died yesterday after a long bout with cancer of the lahr-nicks.
    
    AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
    
    -dick

Well,it's logical ...

One asterick, two astericks.

Just heard this one!

Sheridan
:^)

Australia has a comedy series called "Hey, Dad!" which is quite clever ... one 
of the characters is a daffy redhead called Betty. She works for 'Dad', who is 
an architect. She refers to herself as a Setchetary and to 'Dad' as an 
Artchitect.

It gets worse.

Actually it's quite a good show.

Sheridan
:^)

One I LOATHE is the mangling of the word "mischievous"
"miss-cheev-ee-us" "mischievious" 
         -----

Why add an extra sillybubble to the poor thing?

     Just to be misschuvis.

	I've heard this one time too many and it's time to complain.

	"hierarctical" - no such animal.

	There.

	Thanks,
	Di

    (I've never heard the "hierarctical" error spoken, btw...)
    

 >>   (I've never heard the "hierarctical" error spoken, btw...)
    

	How very fortunate you are.  I've heard four people say it
	during the past 7 or 8 months (two of them Digital instructors,
	by the way!).

	Gross.

>>         -< re .280 --possibly related to 'Arctic'-'Artic' confusion? >-

	 I don't know about this.  Maybe.  But I also think they
	 don't know that it's spelled without a "t", for one thing,
	 and that the construct of the "k" sound coupled with "ical"
	 is somewhat foreign and doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

	 Di
    

    Then there is "higher arch ikl".

  >>>  Then there is "higher arch ikl".

	Ahhhhhhh!!!!!  Yeah, I won't be responsible for my actions
	if I hear this one.

	8^)

	Di

>    Then there is "higher arch ikl".

And the relate hie-ar-key

    I heard the word "voluptuous" pronounced as "volumptuous" the other day
    on Geraldo.
    
    Sweetpea

    Patti Smith once pronounced it as "voluptumous".
    
    Ray

	I know someone who says "volumnuous" instead of "voluminous".

	Has a sort of nice sound to it, though...


	Di

    "Aluminimum" from my wife's grandmother, and someone else innocently
    referring to a stray dog as a "poor wafer"?

    In writing:        physics
    In pronunciation:  psychics
    (by a native speaker of the language involved).

    The Boston Globe recently reviewed "Mr. Bligh's Bad Language", which
    might be interesting to JoyOfLexers (by Greg Dening (Cambridge
    University Press).  Paraphrasing from the review, Lt. Bligh, commander
    of the Bounty, was court-martialed for ungentlemanly language, which
    in his case didn't mean obscenity but his capacity for employing
    speech to scald and humiliate.  Apparently Bligh's language was time
    and again cited as his most offensive trait.  He wasn't physically
    violent; he flogged fewer members of his crew than any other English
    captain who came into the Pacific in the 18th century.  Bligh's
    bad language was the ambiguous language of his command.  It was bad,
    not so much because it was intemperate or abusive, but because it
    was ambiguous, because men could not read it in a right relationship
    to his authority.  The book casts its net wide:  For some bizarre
    reason U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett, in his resignation
    speech, announced that every American child ought to know why
    there was a muntiny on the Bounty.  Bounty was in an ambivalent
    position--a merchant vessel in the service of the Navy--and Bligh
    was unable to comprehend the theatrical nature of institutional
    existence.  He lacked an essential grasp of how he ought to act.
    
    (Yeah, that must be it!  I must not comprehend the theatrical
    nature of working at Digital...)
    
    Doug.

>    Bligh's bad language was the ambiguous language of his command. 
    
    Yeah.  Like it always bugged me how he would put "Mr." in front of a
    Christian name...
    
    Ray

    Yeah, just cos Christian was a guy who put feathers on arrows, geez...

    Re .290
    
    Of course, the proper spelling is "Aluminium".
    
    As in Radium, Uranium, Helium, Iridium, Plutonium and other elements,
    there is an "ium" at the end.
    
    As I understand it, "Aluminum" was a tradename in the USA that stuck,
    because most people here are incapable of pronouncing the correct
    form...
    
    Heh heh, I can say that because I'm layed-off tomorrow, if the little
    bird told me right, and I won't be here to read the acidic replies!
    
    Tally-ho,
    
    Ray

    	We'll miss you (and in other notes files :-{
    		Dave

    >>Of course, the proper spelling is "Aluminium".
    
    >>As in Radium, Uranium, Helium, Iridium, Plutonium and other elements,
    >>there is an "ium" at the end.
    
    >>As I understand it, "Aluminum" was a tradename in the USA that stuck,
    >>because most people here are incapable of pronouncing the correct
    >>form...
    
    My father worked for the Aluminum Company of America for 38 years,
    including a couple of years at the head office in Pittsburgh. 
    According to him, the change was because ALCOA's letterhead was
    originally created without the extra 'i'.  (Some proofreader may still
    be rolling in his or her grave!!!)  Who knows?
    

    >My father worked for the Aluminum Company of America for 38 years,
    >including a couple of years at the head office in Pittsburgh. 
    >According to him, the change was because ALCOA's letterhead was
    >originally created without the extra 'i'.  (Some proofreader may still
    >be rolling in his or her grave!!!)  Who knows?
    
    Sounds like an urban legend to me.
    
    					andrew

    	At one time there was a convention that when a new element was
    discovered (made) the name would end in "ium" if it was metallic, and
    "on" if it was non-metallic. At least one mistake was made where it was
    not possible to collect enough of the element in the first place to
    determine whether it was metallic or non-metallic.
    
    	I think the convention was abandonned when it was discovered that
    it was largely meaningless. Tin becomes non-metallic if you cool it
    down a bit, a number of things you would normally think of as
    non-metallic start to look metallic at the right temperature and
    pressure, and then there are things like selenium that seem half way
    between.

    The word "aluminum" without the stray "i" has been documented back to
    at least 1812, rather before ALCOA came into existence.
    
    Another example from roughly the same period without the "i" is
    lanthanum, named in 1841.
    
    -dick

    Re .299
    
    Yeah but when does helium become a metal?  The correct spelling would
    be helion, to match neon and all those other "noble" gases.
    (No wonder the namer didn't win a noble prize.)

    	Since it isn't chemically separable from those other gasses, and
    *awfully* low temperatures are needed for a physical separation, it
    was first identified as a separate element by its spectrum lines in the
    Sun, hence the name. People were pretty certain that it was not a metal
    at Sun temperature, but since it had never been isolated and identified
    on Earth they were not sure if it might be a metal at room
    temperatures. The theory was that it would be. The majority of elements
    are metals, so it was a good bet.
    
    	The discovery that it was a gas had to wait until they started
    putting rarefied nobles gases (in an inseparable mixture, of course)
    into electrical discharge tubes, and observed the same spectrum lines
    that occurred in sunlight. It was later still that it was actually
    separated by liquefying out all the others.
    
    	At that time spectroscopy was rather limited. You put some sodium
    chloride in a bunsen flame, put the light through a prism, record the
    results. Then you do the same for copper chloride. The common lines are
    from chlorine, and the different ones give you the fingerprints of
    sodium and copper respectively. In a mixture the intensity of the lines
    can give a rough indication of the proportions. When they looked at the
    sun as a sort of giant bunsen burner they could hardly miss the
    hitherto unknown fingerprint of helium mixed in with the rest.

    Also, the name "helium" is derived from the Greek word "helios", so the
    "i" isn't part of an -ium ending anway.

    >the "i" isn't part of an -ium ending anway.
    
    Right.  The name should have been "helion" and the "i" would not
    have been part of an "on" ending.
    
    So, does solid helium behave like a metal?  Does solid argon behave
    like a metal?

    
    I'm way outside my competence here, but I doubt solid helium behaves
    like a metal. Metals have unfilled outer electron shells which makes
    them good conductors and relatively reactive. The electron shells of
    the noble gasses are completely filled, which makes them very
    "unreactive."
    
    Hydrogen has only one electron and since the innermost electron shell
    can fit two of them, solid form hydrogen indeed behaves like a metal (I
    think there are several different allotropes of solid hydrogen, too).
    Helium has two electrons and therefore fills the electron shell.
    
    Argon is a noble gas with 18 electrons and its electron shells are all
    filled. So I don't think it behaves like a metal.
    
    If you're interested in more detail, you might try asking this in
    DECWET::PHYSICS.
    
    JP

	Re .299

>>      (No wonder the namer didn't win a noble prize.)

		Actually, he won at least one noble prize	
		(as well as several base prizes).  

		Jim

    Re .305: Has anybody been able to obtain SOLID helium yet? It is rather
    difficult to make it liquid, but the industrial process is used to
    obtain a coolant cold enough for manipulations where supraconductors
    are needed. I haven't heard of it under solid form, though. Last time I
    was interested in the process (when I was using supraconductive
    solenoids cooled with liquid helium for NMR spectrometers, about 10
    years ago), some people where even thinking that it was impossible to
    obtain it under solid form, for some obscure reasons that I can't
    remember.
    			Denis.

    I think, some of the recent contributors really deserve a
    ---> Pullet Surprise ...
    
    Regards, 
    	Walter :-)
    

    What's a pullet surprise?
    
    Meanwhile, one might think that Digital now has enough internal
    pressure to solidify anything, regardless of temperature.

    What's a pullet surprise?   ...  a Pulitzer Prize.     ...              :-)
    

    Pullet Surprise -> Chicken Salad from some company cafeterias I've
    "dined" in ;-)
    
    
    regards...
    ...diane

    Yeah, I didn't try pronouncing "pullet surprise" (nor, to suit the
    title of this note, did I try mispronouncing it :-)
    
    OK, I once fell for the "owa tafoo liam" bit too.
    
    Meanwhile, this just in from an *******-language news agency:
    >He sometimes where's a baseball hat and has been seen riding a bicycle.

    Interesting how with a Boston accent "pullet surprise" and
    "Pulitzer Prize" both end up pronounced "puhl-it-zah-prize"
    while with a midwest accent "pullet surprise" still ends
    up "puhl-it-zah-prize" but "Pulitzer Prize" ends up with a pronounced
    "r"; "puhl-it-zer-prize" (at least in my family)...
    
    Do you get extra points for a pun that works in more regional
    accents?

    Here's a "mispo" my NZ girl friend told me:
    
    There's a pygmy tribe in the African bushlands, living in grass
    6' high; they're called the "F...ahwhees" -- why?
    
    Because every now and then, prowling through the grass they're
    jumping, and exclaiming "w(h)e(')re the f... are we?!"
    
    Regards from Down Under (soon, again ...),
    	Walter :-)
    

    re .-1
    
    Remember the name of the Indian tribe on the old F TROOP TV show?  It
    was the Hekowi (sp?).  I always thought it was a cleaned up variant of
    the tribe you mention;  this tribe just jumps up and says "Where/we're
    the Hekowi?
    
    -e

    Actually, you're correct.  They mentioned in one episode how the tribe
    had been wandering for many, many, many... moons, until one day, the
    Medicine Man stopped, looked around, and said "Where the heckowi?"
    
    -Tom

    Johnny Carson used to make frequent reference to the F'gowees (sp?!),
    and I *think* he was chastised by NBC on the first occasion of his
    telling the story (in the early '70s, maybe?).  Thenceforward he took
    great glee in mentioning "a certain tribe" and the fact that he was not
    allowed to name them.
    
    Leslie

I hope that I am not repeating the following example of mispronunciation, but
what truly irritates me is when people  here in Maynard pronounce
the Latin "et cetera" as "Exsetra."

It is worse than fingernails scratching a chalkboard....


 

    I think this may be a brain-wiring thing, like the people who say "aks"
    for "ask" and "credick" for "credit".  It's sort of like having a
    foreign accent though a native speaker.  They genuinely cannot hear the
    difference, just as Japanese speakers cannot hear the distinction
    between L and R.

    Yikes -- don't even SAY these, much less write them out!!!!
    Makes me go
               completely  
                         nookyoular.
    
    :-)
    

    I've been assuming that the people who say "ecsetera" are the people
    who abbreviate it "ect.".
    
    Ray

    I couldn't decide whether this little story lives best under
    "Mispronounciations" or "Mis-spelled words" or some other topic. (Dear
    Mod please refile as necessary)
    
    My mother once went into a reputable bookshop.  She had listened to a
    radio programme that morning which described a brand new publication
    from her favourite author.
    
    The bookshop looked on their "whizzy" computer (her words not mine) and
    found a listing.  They informed her the book was out of print.
    
    Incredulous, she complained that Radio 4 (the world's _most_ reputable
    radio channel) had just told her it was new out.
    
    The assistant protested:  "Well it is quite clear here on the screen;
    look OUP - out of print!"
    
    Sigh

    Hmmm.  That's the second time OUP has appeared in the most current
    notes of today...  forcing a confession and a request...  Dunno
    whaditis, plezz to tell?
    
    Whoops, saved by a random synapse.  Must be Oxford University Press.
    
    Nat�rlich if it had said HUP I'd a gotten it in a jiffy, but that's only
    my provincialism showing. 
    
    :-)
    

Presumably HUP is Harvard University Press correct ?

Well, name a famous English University that begins with 'O' and you've
got the answer to your question.  (Hint:  It's not Cambridge)

Stuart

    Oh goody, I passed on that feeling of bewilderment...  It's moving
    westward...  is there a Tokyo University Press...?
    
    :-)
    

    Yes very :-)
    
    I dunno about a TUP, but there is a UUCP  :-)

    Re .325
    
    There are thousands, if not millions of TUPs.
    
    tup = male sheep, ram

    There is a reason for some people assuming that `OUP' can mean only one
    thing to an English speaker: OUP has been around for a long time. In
    1978 they celebrated what they called their `quincentenary' - but that
    was a bit of a con. The small print told the real story - `500 years of
    printing in Oxford'. The University actually set up its own press 2??
    years ago.
    
    Also, I don't know what OUP's biggest money-spinner is at the moment,
    but in the late 70s/early 80s it was a book called the Oxford Advanced
    Learner's Dictionary of Current English - so that most people who
    studied English as a foreign language could be almost guaranteed to
    have heard of OUP.
    
    b

    ... why the Tupperware(tm) company chose that trademark, especially
    since (as I vaguely recall) "tupping" is what a ram does to an ewe (when
    she's receptive)...  as in:
    
    "Over there -- Look at that ram tupp'er! Great show, eh?"
    
    "Tupp'er? Where?"  
    
    (Sorry...  I'll go quietly now... :-)
    

Mr. Tupper invented Tupperware.  Perhaps he grew up on a farm.

    Maybe "Mr. Tupper" was a nickname.
    

    ... he's a real buttering ram.
    
    (oo er) (are we in SOAPBOX yet?:-)
    

.59>    A mark of someone who has a sincere interest in our polar regions
.59>    is taking the trouble to sound the "c" in ArCtic. 

The Coors brewery has introduced a new product, an "ice brewed" beer with a 
brand name "Artic [sic] Ice".

I wonder if:

	- the marketing folks don't have a sincere interest in our polar
	  regions;

	- and/or they can't spell;

	- or they don't want their brand name mispronounced.

Clay

>The Coors brewery has introduced a new product, an "ice brewed" beer with a 
>brand name "Artic [sic] Ice".
                                                     ^^^^^^^^^^
The mind boggles; my impression is that yeasts don't thrive that well at those
temperatures. 

Oh well, most US beer tastes as if it hasn't been brewed at all, so ...
                                                        
                                                  - Rik -

    Re .333
    
    Coors aren't the only ones.  In 1935 Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote the
    score for a film called "Scott of the Antarctic."  He later distilled
    that score into the "Sinfonia Antartica" and was careful to specify
    the spelling of the second word in that title.
    
    Re .334
    
    Ice brewed beer isn't brewed at icy temperatures.  After it's brewed,
    it's partially frozen to extract water as ice, thereby concentrating
    the alcohol.  This is the principle used by many unlicensed makers of
    "distilled" spirits, especially applejack.

    Personally, I suspect they don't do anything to the beer, just the label
    (AND the marketing and advertising budgets).

       <<< Note 5.335 by SMURF::BINDER "etsi capularis ego vita fruar" >>>

>>    Ice brewed beer isn't brewed at icy temperatures.  After it's brewed,
>>    it's partially frozen to extract water as ice, thereby concentrating
>>    the alcohol.  This is the principle used by many unlicensed makers of
>>    "distilled" spirits, especially applejack.

The process is itself known as "jacking", and I couldn't tell you whether
applejack was named for that, or if the verb is a back-formation.

I first encountered the concept in a book by R.O. Despain, titled "The
Malt-Ease Flagon", a book about homebrewing.

For more information on the brewing process, see BOOKIE::HOMEBREW.

JPB

    Re .337
    
    The word applejack and the use of "jack" for the process of increasing
    alcoholic content both come from an ordinary meaning of the word jack,
    namely "to increase or raise the quality of."  And this meaning is a
    logical extension of the concept of raising an object by means of a
    jack, as when we jack up a car to change a flat tire.
    
    -dick

    Raising the quality?  Not always -- jacking up the price is generally
    not goodness...

    	"Unauthorised" in connection with applejack may mean different
    things in different countries. In the U.K. it is legal to make, drink,
    and even give away applejack. You only need authorisation if you wish
    to sell it, or if you wish to *also* use distillation as a step in its
    production.

    Re .339
    
    But, Andrew, "to raise or increase the quality of" can be read in two
    ways:
    
    to [raise] or [increase] the quality of
    
    to [raise] or [increase the quality of]
    
    So jacking up the price fits the definition.
    
    -dick

    Sorry, but unless you're the seller, a jacked price is never
    goodnees, no matter how you parse it!
    
    And that's the facts -- Jack!
    					andrew

    
>>    But, Andrew, "to raise or increase the quality of" can be read in two
>>    ways:

	I agree with you, Dick, but that's not what you said - you said
	to "increase or raise the quality of".

	8-) Hope this helps.  
	your friend,
	Diane

    ..and of course you are more likely to jack-knife if you are in an
    artic-ulated vehicle
    
    {to loop back to an ealier topic}

    Re .343
    
    Well, Diane, I will admit to not having returned to my original note to
    see the sequence of words.  So, let me emend my exposition.
    
    to [increase] or [raise] the quality of
    
    to [increase] or [raise the quality of]
    
    So jacking up a price is raising the price.  So *there*, Andrew!  :-)
    
    Always grateful for a correction, Diane, my dear.
    
    -dick
    

    Oh, I understand that jacking a price is raising it --
    
    It's just that the connotation of jacking the price is almost
    completely negative.
    					andrew

    Pronouncing "anemone" as "an enemy" !!!
    
    My wife does this, as do (it sometimes seems to me) half the population
    of England. If she can say "any money" why can't she say "anemone" ?
    I even heard this one on a _gardening_ programme the other day !
    

    Just give thanx that there's no such thing as an anemone powered by
    atomic fission...  because that would be a nukyoular anenemy, which
    would cause widespread enemas.
    
    jmho of course...
    

    Heard again today in the office was one that makes me cringe every
    time:
    
    "I think we need to review his renumeration"
    
    Why? What does he do while he is renumbering things?
    
    Jon

    Obviously, rechecking his results from his Pentium.
    
    Well, it's a theory!
    

    G'day,
    
     My favoured hate is 'arksed' as in "I arksed him his name"
    
    blah!
    
    derek

    A while ago I was in a garage getting petrol (gas) and I decided to get
    a car deodorant. The one I wanted was one of those that looks like a
    traffic light with a large orange blister of deodorant fluid
    representing the amber (centre) light. So:
    
    Me: ...and I'd like a [French accent on] "Feu Orange", [French off]
    please
    Him: Huh ?
    Me: One of them (pointing to it)
    Him: Oh, you mean a "Few Orrinj"
    Me:  Oh yes, silly me, etc.....
    

    My roommate in Germany was a Penns'vanian from, lemmee see I think it
    was, Polecat, Penns'vania.  (Never found it on a map but I think it's
    near Wess Virginny.)  He axed me onc't if I had an arn.  After a few
    repetitions of "Huh? Say what?" "An arn." He explained that it was for
    "Arning his close."
    
    ed

    My colleague here (England) says "summink". Now that's really summing
    kelse !
    

    Daughter's affianced relates the tale of how he and a friend were
    dining in a Mexican restaurant in West Virginia.  (Don't ask!)  The
    friend ordered arroz com pollo, pronouncing it correctly.  The server
    did a double take and said, "Huh?"  The order was repeated.  The server
    said, "You're gonna hafta show me that one on the menu."  The friend
    complied.  "Oh," laughed the server.  "You mean the po-lo!"

  I'm not one to talk so I never do but my pet is "draw".  It is aggravating
  when spoken but it shows up in memos, notes, and other written material.

  In my office I have a two pedestal desk with draws in both pedestals and one
  draw in the middle.

  It's drawer folks.

  	mikeP

    Re .356
    
    If you're in Massachusetts, it's a draw.  There is a little-known
    scientific law of Massachusetts pronunciation, called Coyle's Law of
    the Conservation of Rs.  The terminal R is dropped from words like
    drawer, and it appears on words like Cuba.  The illustration Coyle used
    in his exposition was the phrase "dater buffa."
    
    -dick

Is that considered "sharing" so that none of the words feel left out?

    Puzzled

Re: 5.357 by SMURF::BINDER
>                                               ...called Coyle's Law of
>    the Conservation of Rs.  

"So, I put the drawering in the draw", says my massachusettsian wife.

-s

    one of my *favorites* from boston:  
    
    budaydas
    
    as in....
    
    mashed budaydas
    
    
    --angela

    when we were visiting Oregon once, my wife was chastised for
    saying Oregone instead of Oregun.  A little bit later the
    chastiser say she was going to do the warsh.  We proceded to chastise,
    of course.
    
    ed

    There's a popular holiday destination for Britons, the Spanish island
    of Ibiza (pronounced Ee-beeth-a, properly) which, of course, most
    Britons pronounce as "Eye-beeth-a".
    
    And, of course, that well known French town, Boulogne (pronounced
    Bloyn). AAArghhhh!!!
    
    

    	All three of our kids are bilingual English/French, and the worst
    place is with borrowed words.
    
    	A garage is the place where you park your car, and since it is
    obviously derived from the French verb "garer" which means to park, it
    is almost irresistible to use the French pronunciation.
    
    	On the other hand, "le parking" which is French for where you park
    a car is so obviously English in origin (and therefore deplored by the
    French academy) that ...

    Ah, but, Brian, garage is one of those borrowed words that some of us
    pronounce "correctly."  In the UK it might be said "GARridge," but here
    in the USA it is said "gaRAZHE."  So who's guilty of mispronunciation?
    
    :-)
    
    -dick

    I pronounce it GARazhe, not gaRAZHE; which is "better" French ?
    

    French people pronounce it such that the two syllables actually receive
    almost exactly the same emphasis.  But given that the second A is
    followed by a sibilant, it appears to be more strongly spoken; thus,
    gaRAZHE is *marginally* closer to correct than GARazhe.

    you mean it's not gradje?
    
    ed

    Yeah .367 - that's how we say it in NZ - maybe even "grudge"
    
    Re the "proper" french way, Dick has it pretty right wrt to the
    articulated vowel sounds - almost identical in emphasis.  However there
    should be a distinct downshift in emphasis through the "r" which
    is of couse the French "throaty r" and not a rolling or clipped "r"
    as in English.
    
    More like GAyhARzhe... 
    
    /Chris.

    Re .368
    
    Sorry about that (the 'r' thing) but my terminal doesn't have a special
    character for that particular gargling sound...  :-)  Until we get ISDN
    support in Notes, we're handicapped, I guess.
    
    -dick