One of the most intelligent sfr authors of our day, Linnea Sinclair, once opined that even my laundry list would be entertaining. That compliment is very loosely remembered, and is apropos of almost nothing, since I am not writing about carelessly removed thongs.
Perish the thought!
Although, thinking of "knickers in a twist", "panties in a wad" and other underwear idioms, I came upon a great source. https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/panties+in+a+wad
Last week, I mentioned speakers of diphthongs disparagingly... in haste, as an afterthought. I should not have done that, because I was wrong about the diphthongs. I apologize unreservedly. My examples were triphthongs.
With diphthongs, two adjacent vowels slide into one another. With triphthongs, both consecutive vowels are pronounced equally.
Alien is a triphthong. Alien - Ay-Lee-Un...not much different from maniac. May Nee Ak.
Here are some sources:
I wonder what grammarist think of "buoy" (sometimes known as a bobber).
Is that a diphthong or a triphthong. President George W. Bush pronounced it a Boooo-eeeee, so that must be the correct, American navy pronunciation,
When I was a girl, sailing dinghys in near shore races off the Cherbourg Peninsula that could last six hours, which was a serious strain even on a teenage bladder, we pronounced them Boys.
On the other hand, GW pronounced the most serious weapons to which he held the codes, NEW-Cue-Lar rather than New-Clee-Arr, so there is room for doubt.
Other triphthongs of interest might be:
moity
frailty
myocardial
coequal
coitus
oophrectomy
But not oedipal.
And then there is dialysis. As the Speak More Clearly folks share as Secret Number 6,
"In the triphthong ‘aia’ as in the word ‘dialysis’ / daɪˈælɪsɪs /, the aya has to be fully said and not cut short."
That's a lot of sources. Would my modest piece have been better if I had only referred to one?
Aside: I loathe AI. It changed my title to Pythons In A Twist. It might do it again. I also noticed a BING pitch for AI touting the ease of never having to check multiple sources for information again. So, what happens to journalistic integrity?
They say that with History, the victors write it. Would it be an improvement if a Chat Bot wrote it?
All the best.
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