Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for September 01, 2024

Uhhh . . . this wasn’t the Sunday LUANN I saw at the newspaper I work at this week.

Love seeing Punk

suck it up, buttercup!

“New York” isn’t a verb.

That had to sting.

Punk is adorable here. I wonder if he met Puddles yet (I wouldn’t introduce him to Monstro, LOL).

so much beige. So bland. Am sleepy now.

Wow! Goback and graduate from high school?

As the late Peter Schickele once pointed out, both “piano” and “piccolo” are adjectives.

Punk really grew between the second panel and the fourth.

This sounds like “Pearls Before Swine”.

Les?

Go back to school and get your G.E.D. son.

And Gunther?

That band you’re describing in the 1st panel sounds a lot like Blood, Sweat and Tears.

Or Chicago.

Or The Specials.

Speaking of the Specials, their UK hit “Ghost Town” would be very appropriate for Halloween. ;-)

I love this crowd!!!

Including you, Les. It’s “anomalies” not “anemones” and “perfectly” not “perfect”. But then, perhaps that panel was the purpose of the entire strip.

Because who would want to admit to being a Trumpist?

If Les and Gunther were not having this conversation in the gulag under the “supervision” of Uncle Al and Irma, I would be looking for the hookah as back in my university days, such conversations usually took place during sessions when the hookah was involved and/or after a night out at the local pubs near the university. Being that the lads are likely in SoCal, the possibility that Les visits the local dispensary is something to consider and perhaps Gunnie accidentally ate one of those brownies or gummies which Les left on the kitchen counter but I suspect Uncle Al would frown upon such behavior though it is legal in many parts of America……

Roseanne Roseannadanna hated violins on TV

Fiddler and violinist fit Gunther’s pattern; sing and vocal aren’t instruments, so they aren’t really part of this. Now, harp is both a noun and a verb, but we usually say harpist, though harper is also used.

Brooding man and total dork, they’re a crazy pair, but they make it work. It’s the Les and Gunther Show!

Old REO Speedwagon, “You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish”

And a flute player is a flautist. Just to confuse everything.

So by Gunther’s logic, that would make me a Jokester as opposed to a Jokeist

Are all the comics today trying to see who can use the most big words?

If you say Dearest Ann❤️Eiffel’s name three times into a mirror maybe she will come back. Let’s all try… Ann❤️Eiffel…Ann❤️Eiffel…Ann❤️Eiffel

Perfectly. And… “anemones”???

Great pun!

But sing and fiddle are verbs; vocal and violin are not. So what’s the inconsistency?

Do Les and Gunther ever wear t-shirts and blue jeans?

And we drive on the parkway and we park in the driveway. I think that was from a stand up set from the great George Carlin who had some thoughtful insights into our language.

I’m my own worst anemone.

I really like Les and Punk!! Wish we saw more of them.

Anemones?

Then what if…tromboner???

Why do I read Luann?Redundant question?To be educated, by the educators. Now, I’ll go back to sleepy time.

Dreaming of my punky faced Pyrenees. Her nicknames Included Monster, Beast, and Punkeyface. But she was truly my Sasha Girl.

And then there’s ‘bagpiper’. While it’s true that you can bagpipe, using the word as a verb has nothing to do with music…

When I want to be an anemone, I act like a flower and leave

I love to see how Punk let Les do anything to him. The symbiosis between human and cat is perfect. I’m sure Punk never stops purring. Also, i like a lot how friendly Gunther and Les are since them become cousin.

Great, another visit with the Boring Bros. They’d get booed out of a nursing home dining hall.

Have the Evanses been reading ‘Frazz’?

But a lute player is not a lutist. He’s a “lutenist”. And a flute player is a “flautist”. Go figure.

Then there is the old joke about the hard of hearing genie giving the man a 9" pianist.

Well that was some useless information.

Perfectly.

Anemone??

Which is NOT to say I didn’t enjoy it.

All this grammar talk has got Les reaching for the snacks for Punk, and, himself, if for no other reason than to drone out Gunter. (And, why he is hanging around the house, when he’s got Betts to be with?)

It’s about time Gunther made an appearance! As for English, it can be weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.

Anybody else hear Leo Gorcey’s (Slip Mahoney’s) voice?

Nice to Les and Punk.

Maybe a malaprop for anoesis

I like Les and the cat! And Hendrix could Guitar all he wanted and no one complained! ;-)

That cat needs exercise. (And does anyone remember the old Gasoline Alley sequence, when the vet told the kitten’s owner it needed more exercise—so he started going jogging while holding the kitten?)

“They can’t all be gems…” (Mad magazine, Bonanza parody)

Whenever I see Leslie, I think of another word that starts with a and ends with e.And I love Punk’s smile in the last frame.

“Trumpeteer” doen’t fit into the Gunthsplanation.

…Trumpeters – because that’s to distinguish that we’re better than everyone else. (But we have to let the drum – er’s in the club because if we don’t they keep poking us in the back with their little sticks while we’re trying to play. But make no mistake – Trumpeters are better than those tappers – just don’t let them know that we call them that behind their backs…)

English used to make so much more sense before the Norman Conquest, when the French took over. Language heresies, like silent consonants, were only the beginning.

I think what we are seeing here is a difference between germanic and romance words.

English is actually a real screwed up language. It started out as germanic. Then the Romans invaded. The the Norse invaded. Then the French invaded. Then it drifted a lot. So it winds up being a creole of a creole of a creole, and has many weird features. For instance, “cow” is germanic while “beef” is romance — most languages use the same word for the animal and its meat (like English does for “chicken” …. though “poultry”?).

The fact that we changed the pronunciations after setting the spelling doesn’t help.

The fact that the French invaders didn’t have three English letters and misread “Þe” (“the”) as “ye” doesn’t help.

The fact that we lost the second person singular almost completely doesn’t help (thee, thou, thine, etc; and irregular verb forms). (I suspect French influence, but it could have gone the other way for all I know.)

So, as people have pointed out, the -ist form relates to Italian (a romance language). The -er form appears to be on germanic words.