Basic Instructions by Scott Meyer for December 05, 2011

Snerk!!!

I had a high school English teacher who pronounced ‘Penelope’ as Penny-lope.

My room mate, after many corrections, still uses ideal in place of idea. “I have no earthly ideal.” Drives me nuts. He also still calls the coffee carafe a carafate. (Capitalize that and it’s an ulcer medicine).

This is just the tip of the iceberb…

Just don’t get him started about nukeelar energy.

I have heard that in the UK there was a point where ALL titles were pronounced as if they were English — hence in the UK “Don Quicks-Oat” was the “proper” pronunciation. Apparently so was “Don Ju-ann.” From a country that gave us “Featheringstonehaugh” pronounced as “Fanshaw,” it boggles the mind…

Those t’s are like the silent x in fish.

Hey, Ray C, and the alternate is “nuculer”.

How about: “for all intensive purpose”? – drives me nuts.

Or, we could put the whole thing off until a Wensday in Febry.

It’ll all come out in the worsh.

I know several people who get “flustrated”

I’m sure their’s some matrix to support you’re hypnosis…

Prolly shoulda axed soonerer

The thirdt panel almost made me spill my carafate of coffee.

“Nucular” is actually in the Oxford English Dictionary due to its common usage.

OK, my favorite: ‘Should of’, instead of ‘should have’.

Someone is now attempting to walk acrost Anartica.

For your pleasure:

http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/style-and-usage/mispron.html

Not meaning to be a wet blanket, but “fift” is the original form, starting with Old English fifta (m) fifte (f, n). The form fifth first appears in the 14th century, by obvious analogy with fourth, seventh, etc., but the original form (fift) persists in many dialects. Actually, sixth and twelfth have the exact same history. Seventh is a manufactured form, too, replacing original seveth. (The loss of nasals before fricatives is regular in the prehistory of Old English; the “hardening” of *þ to t after fricatives is also normal, as in weight, which has the same suffix (historically) as lenth and breadth. (The former fricative indicated by the speling gh has dissapeared in most dialects of modern English.)

Oddly, lots of “ignorant” forms, for example “figger”, are actually original (in the case of figure, the approved pronunciation is called a “spelling-pronunciation”).

Oh, and ax is a much older form than ask, too. An Old English “ask” would have turned into ash (and is so pronounced in some British English dialects but none, I think, in the USA or Canada). The history is complicated and imperfectly understood, but standard ask appears to be a case of metathesis, like wasp for Old English wæps.

“I take that pill for my prostrate”. “Do you get lunch at school or take a zack lunch?” " There are too many to discuss in medicine.

Oh, and I had a colleague say we do a whole pot-poury of stuff around here.

Don’t forget the symbol you get by doing shift/8. It’s called an “asterick” by a lot of people.