Cato's Grammar Grumble

[Ten thumbs]

Yes, Huey, Dewey, and Louie always said "Unca Scrooge." 

Child ducks have problems with "-le" ?

I think the point is that when recording speech, one will come up with all kinds of weird and wonderful spellings, especially in dialect (one can start with ya and yer for you and your). This seems fine to me and is in some way essential but does not in any way justify inclusion of all these multifarious variations in the dictionary. The result can only be chaos.

[eyeresist]

The speech - now 52 years old - became famous for calling television "a vast wasteland."

Now it's also a vast waist land  0:)

[Cato]

Now it's also a vast waist land  0:)

Especially with shows where you watch people lose weight!  Imagine pitching such a show 30 years ago or more to a network!  Now with so many channels and the balkanization of the audience (The Golf Channel - watching little white balls fly through the air or roll around the grass??? - or The Pawn Shop Channel, where you watch people buy or sell junk???) we are due for The Toothpaste Channel or The Lawn Channel.

[Wendell_E]

I think the point is that when recording speech, one will come up with all kinds of weird and wonderful spellings, especially in dialect (one can start with ya and yer for you and your).

Especially in a language like English that has weird pronunciation vs. spelling to begin with.  "Uncle" is "oncle" in French, "Onkel" in German, but they pronounce them as they're spelled.  We spell it "le", but pronounce it "el".  No wonder the poor baby ducks are confused!

[kishnevi]

Especially in a language like English that has weird pronunciation vs. spelling to begin with.  "Uncle" is "oncle" in French, "Onkel" in German, but they pronounce them as they're spelled.  We spell it "le", but pronounce it "el".  No wonder the poor baby ducks are confused!

Semi random observations:

1)Last night, while praying the Selichot service (a set of prayers for the period immediately preceding and following the Jewish High Holy Days), I encountered a pair of litanies in which the word "answer" featured very prominently, being repeated altogether perhaps a hundred times--the basic lines of the litanies being "Answer us, o Lord, answer us" and "As He answered X, may He answer us"--X changing from line to line, but always being some Biblical figure who prayed and whose prayer was answered.

All those repetitions of the words (and why I'm posting about them here) brought to my attention how non-phonetic the word "answer" is spelled.   At least in my "dialect"--New England based American--the w is completely silent and the word is pronounced "anser". 

2)Here in South Florida, we have essentially five main demographic groups in terms of linguistics.

1)Native US Southern pronounciation
2)Native US northern urban pronounciation (I'm in this group)
3)Native Spanish whose English fluency ranges from minimal to the level of "mother tongue" fluency.
4) Native Haitian Kreyol, with same range of fluency as the Native Spanish speakers
5) Native British West Indians (including Jamaica, Bahamas, and other Commonwealth Caribbean nations) who nominally speak  English as their native language, but often speak patois or have an accent heavily influenced by patois.

Interestingly, it's only the accent of the latter group which interferes with comprehension to any considerable degree--sometimes (especially in the case of Jamaicans who use patois far more frequently) to the point of being completely unintelligible. 

[Opus106]

All those repetitions of the words (and why I'm posting about them here) brought to my attention how non-phonetic the word "answer" is spelled.   At least in my "dialect"--New England based American--the w is completely silent and the word is pronounced "anser".

Does any group pronounce it in a way which would suggest that the W is not silent?

[Ten thumbs]

Answer is certainly an oddity but it is not in general pronounced 'anser', which has a hard 's', but 'ancer' (as in 'dancer'). The answer does of course lie in the word's derivation. No doubt long ago when an answer was an 'andswaru', the w was pronounced.

[eyeresist]

 
And of course it goes without saying that [goes on to say the allegedly unsayable] ...

[kishnevi]

Answer is certainly an oddity but it is not in general pronounced 'anser', which has a hard 's', but 'ancer' (as in 'dancer'). The answer does of course lie in the word's derivation. No doubt long ago when an answer was an 'andswaru', the w was pronounced.

Hmm....around my way there's no difference between "anser" and "ancer"--for instance, the initial syllables of serpent and certain are pronounced identically.   The "s" in sure and the "c" in conquer are both entirely different from each other and from the sound in "answer"/"dancer", of course.  But the distinction you're pointing to I don't recall ever hearing.  Perhaps it's something confined to British English?

[eyeresist]

Answer is certainly an oddity but it is not in general pronounced 'anser', which has a hard 's', but 'ancer' (as in 'dancer').

Those two S's sound the same to me - where do you hail from again?

[DavidRoss]

And of course it goes without saying that [goes on to say the allegedly unsayable] ...

not unsayable, but unnecessary to say (at least among relatively sane, educated, adult human beings familiar with the general context of the indicated remarks)

[Ten thumbs]

Those two S's sound the same to me - where do you hail from again?

I dare say things are strange round your way, but do you really pronounce 'cans' like that?
Whether or not an S is hard or soft depends on its position in the word. An opening S is soft, so cannot be compared an S following an N, compare 'pansy' for instance.

[DavidRoss]

cans = kanz

do you really say, "anzer" for "answer"?

[Cato]

cans = kanz

do you really say, "anzer" for "answer"?

I would like to know the answer or the anzer also!

In Latin, "anser" (AHN-ser) means "goose" and gives us "anserine" for certain people!   0:)

[Karl Henning]

By soft, do you mean unvoiced? One finds unvoiced S in all positions of words: sick, answer, backs. Many instances of voiceless S follow N, too: inside, onset, rinse ....

[DavidRoss]

By soft, do you mean unvoiced? One finds unvoiced S in all positions of words: sick, answer, backs. Many instances of voiceless S follow N, too: inside, onset, rinse ....

...answer....

[Karl Henning]

...answer....

Oh, indeed. I thought that ground had been covered already! ; )

[Ten thumbs]

I would like to know the answer or the anzer also!

In Latin, "anser" (AHN-ser) means "goose" and gives us "anserine" for certain people!   0:)

Indeed not. That is probably why answer still has a W in it.
The answer to these pronunciations is not as simple as any of us here thinks, myself included.
I'm not going to do a full appraisal, or is that an appraizal?

[DavidRoss]

Indeed not. That is probably why answer still has a W in it.
The answer to these pronunciations is not as simple as any of us here thinks, myself included.
I'm not going to do a full appraisal, or is that an appraizal?

uh-pray-zul

[eyeresist]

not unsayable, but unnecessary to say (at least among relatively sane, educated, adult human beings familiar with the general context of the indicated remarks)

I can't figure out if this is an attempt at an insult. All I'm saying is people should think about the literal meaning of what they're saying, or else we get logical monstrosities like "I could give a damn" (meaning "I couldn't give a damn"), as well as my previous example.