Wapsi Square Forum

BTW - while that thing about "orange" sounds like the sort of straight-faced windie i like to perpetrate sometimes ... it isn't. True, so far as i understand.

I don't know about that particular case, but the migrating N is common enough . . . an auger was originally a nauger.

--FreeFlier

FreeFlier wrote:Well-meaning purists . . . aka the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

As I understand it, the word's pronunciation had drifted from colonel to coronel to cornel to kernel . . . and the spelling had drifted along as far as cornel. (Spelling wasn't all that fixed then.)

Then the purists got involved, and decreed that the spelling and pronunciation would henceforth be colonel . . .

. . .

The spelling change took, the pronunciation change didn't.

Actually, many of the changes they decreed didn't take.

--FreeFlier

I keep hearing Lebeau, in the TV show Hogan's Heroes, saying "Oui, mon Colonel"...

Sgt. Howard wrote:I read it as "le CO shia"

THIS. The variable part is with an 'sh' or just plain 's' towards the end there...

Paul Taylor on Facebook wrote:Lah-COY-sha

Tadaa!

Hey! I was the one who asked!

The "lef" syllable has its root in traditional Greek names.

GlytchMeister wrote:But then again, I am one of those people who frequently mispronounce words because I've always just read them and never actually heard anyone pronounce them.

"Colonel" vexed me somethin' awful for years.

I learned written English years before I heard even a single word of it spoken. When I did first hear spoken English, it was in my travels through various countries where English was not a major language and the people speaking it had it as a second or third language. So my accent and pronunciation when I reached English-speaking lands was. . .odd. Even odder than it is now, since I've had years to smooth it out a bit.

Funny. As it turns out I have reverted a bit- as a native English speaker I've taken to phonetically speaking these strangely spelled/pronounced words outloud to help me retain the way to spell correctly.

Doesn't always help, but 'tun-goo' is one. (tongue)

TazManiac wrote:Funny. As it turns out I have reverted a bit- as a native English speaker I've taken to phonetically speaking these strangely spelled/pronounced words outloud to help me retain the way to spell correctly.

Doesn't always help, but 'tun-goo' is one. (tongue)

A surprising number of very intelligent people can't spell (at least in English).

On the bright side, this keeps copy editors in pizza and beer.

Typeminer wrote:

TazManiac wrote:Funny. As it turns out I have reverted a bit- as a native English speaker I've taken to phonetically speaking these strangely spelled/pronounced words outloud to help me retain the way to spell correctly.

Doesn't always help, but 'tun-goo' is one. (tongue)

A surprising number of very intelligent people can't spell (at least in English).

On the bright side, this keeps copy editors in pizza and beer.

The problem is when the copy editors can't spell either . . .

I was upbraided for using indicies as the plural of index . . . the twit wouldn't accept Webster's as an authority on the matter!

Naturally, I used indicies at every excuse for months afterwards.

--FreeFlier

FreeFlier wrote:

Typeminer wrote:

TazManiac wrote:Funny. As it turns out I have reverted a bit- as a native English speaker I've taken to phonetically speaking these strangely spelled/pronounced words outloud to help me retain the way to spell correctly.

Doesn't always help, but 'tun-goo' is one. (tongue)

A surprising number of very intelligent people can't spell (at least in English).

On the bright side, this keeps copy editors in pizza and beer.

The problem is when the copy editors can't spell either . . .

I was upbraided for using indicies as the plural of index . . . the twit wouldn't accept Webster's as an authority on the matter!

Naturally, I used indicies at every excuse for months afterwards.

--FreeFlier

That could be the preference in the publisher's style guide. Some specify the first variant listed, when Webster lists more than one.

Copy editors are pretty much all deranged, though. Job requirement.

There's no style guide as such for this, as it was an internal technical document.

This was around the same time that the technical publications group was grossly rewriting technical documents that had literally been negotiated word by word in ways that totally changed the meanings, then lying about what they'd done.

That came to an abrupt end after several of the technical experts proved they were lying.

The new technical publications group understood that they were to look for possible misspellings and question them, but were not to make unilateral changes.

--FreeFlier

FreeFlier wrote: I was upbraided for using indicies as the plural of index . . . the twit wouldn't accept Webster's as an authority on the matter!

Naturally, I used indicies at every excuse for months afterwards.

And I hope your copy-editor got on your case about it every time, wondering why you have an extra i in "indices".

Warrl wrote:

FreeFlier wrote: I was upbraided for using indicies as the plural of index . . . the twit wouldn't accept Webster's as an authority on the matter!

Naturally, I used indicies at every excuse for months afterwards.

And I hope your copy-editor got on your case about it every time, wondering why you have an extra i in "indices".

That's different. He was claiming there was no such word as indices.

He made a number of other bogus claims too . . . he eventually got transferred to another group. One of those "I never make mistakes!" types.

--FreeFlier

FreeFlier wrote:One of those "I never make mistakes!" types.

*eye twitch*

Once upon a time there was a copy editor at a Major US Publisher. The company had bought a best-selling British novel that revolved around financial skullduggery and international intrigue.

Our editor noticed that the book had an inconsistency in the way that it capitalised a particular name, and decided it needed to be fixed, so she went through, and every where that the name appeared with an initial capital "C" she changed it to lowercase, because sometimes but not always referring to the "City of London" had to be a typographical error.

Was that judged to be a capital offence?

FreeFlier wrote: I was upbraided for using indicies as the plural of index . . . the twit wouldn't accept Webster's as an authority on the matter!

I only ever once ran into a guy who refused to look at Webster's to settle a question... and I mean he literally wouldn't agree to open the dictionary and look up a reference to see if I was was saying was correct.

He was convinced that I was trying to trick him into believing that something mythological was actually real. I think he thought I had a bet on with someone, and that I'd win the bet (and make him the butt of the joke) if I could get him to even begin to accept that an imaginary creature out of childhood tales might possibly exist.

(It seems that, at the time, I had developed a reputation as someone who would occasionally commit an elaborate joke or pun, with some kind of dreadful but deadpan-serious "shaggy dog" setup to it... hence, anything I said which was even slightly out of the ordinary ought not to be trusted. I truly don't know why people would think that of me. )

To this day, I don't know if he's ever accepted that the species Rangifer tarandus really does exist (although, being neither bats not birds nor insects, they cannot actually fly).

I guess he never heard of caribou?