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August
Aug 16, 2023 15:39:58 GMT
Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 16, 2023 15:39:58 GMT
ASTHMA 21 people responded to my question and the majority view is that it should be pronounced ASSmuh. 17 people agreed with this. Only my Australian grandson and one other agreed with me that the TH in the middle should be voiced. One person pronounces it ASST-muh and one other 'ath sma'. No one chose the American way with a zee or a zed for the letter S.
It is interesting to me. I wondered if my preference is north country but my brother agrees with the majority and, apart from a short period in Essex, he has never lived anywhere other than in the north country.
I wonder if there is any other word in the English language where there is a silent TH ?
One of my family raised the question of the L in almond. And with regard to the D in Wednesday, I have always pronounced it. And the H in when and wherever, which I always try but usually fail to pronounce, are regarded as a GB north country, Scottish and south USA dialectal choice.
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August
Aug 16, 2023 20:51:45 GMT
Post by Verbivore on Aug 16, 2023 20:51:45 GMT
Thank you, LJH, for that report on your research. For the time being at least, I shall stick with ASS-thma.
While playing around with sounds, I realised that if using the US Z sound – AZ-ma – an inserted TH becomes more difficult to pronounce.
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August
Aug 17, 2023 13:06:02 GMT
via mobile
Post by Dave Miller on Aug 17, 2023 13:06:02 GMT
Thank you, LJH, for that report on your research. For the time being at least, I shall stick with ASS-thma. While playing around with sounds, I realised that if using the US Z sound – AZ-ma – an inserted TH becomes more difficult to pronounce. And conversely (at least for me), putting on the “tic” for asthmatic seems to make the th easier to include.
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August
Aug 17, 2023 18:56:41 GMT
Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 17, 2023 18:56:41 GMT
A friend has suggested ISTHMUS as another example of a silent TH. Some dictionaries concur but I do not.
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August
Aug 17, 2023 22:05:44 GMT
Post by Verbivore on Aug 17, 2023 22:05:44 GMT
A friend has suggested ISTHMUS as another example of a silent TH. Some dictionaries concur but I do not. Thanks for that contribution, LJH. According to the Apple inbuilt dictionary (based on the UK and US versions of the Oxford): British English: ˈɪsθməs, ˈɪstməs, ˈɪsməs (the middle example is new to me) American English: ˈis(TH)məs OTOH, no dictionary seems to give a sounded t is Christmas, even though it’s the mass of Christ. We don’t say krʌɪs but krʌɪst. Then there’s Christlike: British English: ˈkrʌɪstlʌɪk (pronounced t) American English: ˈkrīs(t)ˌlīk (optionally pronounced t). One could bang on pointlessly *, I suppose, about these and other inconsistencies and culturo-linguistic differences: glottal stops in Cockney English (and, I’ve observed, in some US speech as well); aitch v haitch (and whether an initial h is pronounced or dropped / preceded by a or an; flap-t; ofthalmology/opthalmology … And there’s the ‘silent l’ in vulnerable – ˈvʌln(ə)rəbl (pronounced by many people as ˈvʌn(ə)rəbl). … … … Perhaps I should go outside and do some weeding! (But I mull over such things while gardening, so … lol) * other than for our own amusement and validation
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August
Aug 18, 2023 11:54:31 GMT
Post by Verbivore on Aug 18, 2023 11:54:31 GMT
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August
Aug 20, 2023 22:15:44 GMT
Post by Verbivore on Aug 20, 2023 22:15:44 GMT
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August
Aug 21, 2023 17:35:27 GMT
Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 21, 2023 17:35:27 GMT
An interesting article, Vv but it needs some more citations.
My granddaughter has sent me a article about how language might change in the future. I am not sure about some of the examples mentioned but it inspired me to look at some of the words which have become part of our common lexicon but were unknown only a few years ago. I have a book published by the Oxford University Press: "20th Century Words". Here are some examples of words which are either new or have new meanings since the 1990s: website; jobseeker, homepage, golden goal, ethnic cleansing, cybercafe, book sale, alcopop, World Wide Web.
Here are some which were invented in the decade after I was born in 1940: blitz, boffin, bombsight, bazooka, bikini, beefburger, atom bomb, backroom boy, apartheid, antibiotic, acronym, ballpoint pen, carrycot, cheesed off, cappuccino, bright eyed and bushy tailed, bubble bath, and computer. The list goes on and on. You will see that I have only got as far as the letter C and only as far as the 1940s. Even terrorist was not invented until 1947. As was thrift shop.
How did we manage without ethnicity (1953), fab (1957), gross, meaning disgusting (1959), hairspray (1959), unflappable (1958), disco (1964), Down's syndrome (1961), extraterrestrial (1963), garden centre (1965), garage sale (1956), postcode (1967), prime time (1964), exit poll (1980). There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other examples in the book.
I think my grandfather from a hundred years ago would find modern English conversation almost impossible.
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August
Aug 21, 2023 21:39:55 GMT
Post by Verbivore on Aug 21, 2023 21:39:55 GMT
Interesting stuff, LJH.
I’d never encountered golden goal, but that’s perhaps because it’s related to sport, of which I am contentedly and totally ignorant, so no surprise there.
I am familiar with all the others you listed, though in my world, backroom boy carries an entirely different meaning.
I was born in ’49. Often I wonder what my pater – born in 1889 – would make of today’s language, devices, and services.
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 22, 2023 2:31:55 GMT
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August
Aug 22, 2023 6:14:59 GMT
Post by Twoddle on Aug 22, 2023 6:14:59 GMT
A word that surprised me from LJH's list was "acronym"; I hadn't realised that it was a fairly recent invention.
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August
Aug 24, 2023 13:52:17 GMT
Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 24, 2023 13:52:17 GMT
UK registration plates on cars include three letters as a distinct element. When I was a little boy, on boring car journeys, we used to pretend that they were abbreviations and try to invent meaningful expansions for any such three letters. As a separate idea, it occurred to me the other day to wonder how many three letter words there are in the English language so I Googled it and came up with this list:
phrontistery.info/scrabble3.html
It seems that these are the words approved by Scrabble. There are a great number that are not included in my lexicon. What do other people think?
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August
Aug 24, 2023 22:52:10 GMT
Post by Verbivore on Aug 24, 2023 22:52:10 GMT
Ooh, LJH – that list is a tad much for my breakfast reading, so shall consider it this evening.
Your story about car number-plates takes me back to age nine, when I was introduced to mnemonics. The chap who was my family doctor and surrogate father-figure (who taught me many things that a father might teach his sons), introduced me to the memory aid thusly:
DOC: “How would you remember my number-plate?” he posed.
YOURS TRULY: “Er … how?”
The plate on his Studebaker read ALN-089.
DOC: “A Lismore Number 0-8-9.” Lismore was our town, and 89 was our street number.
Ever since then, I’ve used mnemonics for remembering many things.
One of my early cars (a red Mazda R100 Wankel-engined pocket rocket – a teenager’s death trap) had the plate ASO-913, which I remembered as “Ah-so!” – a commonly perceived Japanese expression, and “nip” (slang at the time for Japanese), considered thusly: n for nine; 1 for i; p, because it rhymed with three). A tad roundabout, but it worked. Using similar techniques, I’ve managed to remember the plates of every one of my 74 vehicles. Birthday #74 rapidly approaches, so perhaps there’s another car waiting for me in the next year. (First one was a Fiat 500C when I was aged 13.)
In the late 1980s when I ran the regional needle-and-syringe exchange program, I obtained for the program’s work cars the number-plates HIT-222 and FIT-222. HIT stood for HIV Intervention Team, the program’s name, which I had devised because a hit was what the clients were seeking; FIT because a fit was a needle-and-syringe set; and 222 represented the then gospel (later withdrawn) of “If you can’t get a clean fit, rinse the used one twice with water, twice with bleach, and twice again with water: 2+2+2”. I also obtained the agency’s phone number of 222-222 so that the clients could remember it should they need to call.
The vehicles were otherwise anonymous 4WDs, so only the program’s punters would recognise them and approach for service, without it being obvious to the world that they were injecting drug users seeking equipment. The HITmobile and FITmobile were a success, at least in part thanks to mnemonics.
The words junkie / junky are listed in my Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (newly revised and updated 4th edn, 2005). In my experience, both spellings can mean an injecting drug user, though junky is the form used by William S Burroughs, who popularised the term.
Now there’s a whole load of useless information for you!
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August
Aug 26, 2023 21:46:20 GMT
Post by Verbivore on Aug 26, 2023 21:46:20 GMT
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August
Aug 27, 2023 16:11:25 GMT
Post by Dave Miller on Aug 27, 2023 16:11:25 GMT
Well, I’m long-time familiar with ‘brekky’ and ‘dunny’ … but had never heard of Bluey!
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