I have not heard that, but increasingly often ... rarely correcting mis-hearings by reading (well-edited) texts. I completely agree with the curmudgeon, yet another manifestation of the prevalence of televison over reading. It even extends to ...

Afrikaans only became an official language in the 1920s, and trek entered English long before that. Of course, but it didn't come from the Dutch spoken by academicians in the Netherlands; it came from the Dutch spoken by farmers in South

On 28 Aug 2004 08:35:31 -0700, R H Draney Jon Miller filted: * I assume Sara meant to write "pooberty" there. I've never had much occasion to use the word, but it would not have occurred to me to pronounce it any other way than

And in Spanish "Usted" is often abbreviated "Ud." When I was in high school (and the1st year of college), it was abbreviated Vd. (or vd.). Has that changed? (It's been 40+ years.) The fairly recent (1998) Oxford Spanish

Huh. In the early part of my life, before Laura became as common a name as it is now, I ... correct people who wanted to call me Gloria) and explain that my surname (Frank) had no "s" on the end. When I was a child, I dreaded the first

In Devon (UK), there is a town called Topsham. The locals (and those in the know) pronounce it Tops-um, others call it Top-sham. See: http://www.topsham.org/ The town of Horsham in Sussex is properly pronounced "Horse-um" or even

I have been worrying overnight whether I am a construct ... genuine independent person. This will help me sleep at night. Professor John Lawler, of the University of Michigan's Linguistics Department, posts from that university at Ann Arbor,

"Molly Mockford" (Email Removed) a écrit dans le message de : Why is it a university, but an umbilical cord? Because of the pronunciation, not the spelling. University is pronounced Yooniversity (i.e. a consonant-sound rather than a

: So how does the rule on "u" and "a" or "an" work (or all the vowels for that matter)? Why is it a university, but an umbilical cord? Because of the pronunciation, not the spelling. University is pronounced

AUE Apocrypha Update... We've long sought a solid attribution of "ghoti = fish" to George Bernard Shaw: . Various cites have turned up from 1938 onwards, though nothing ties "ghoti" to Shaw until 1961 (more than a decade