Okay, issue #1 - in the thread on sport vs. game I used the word ‘skiing’. That made me think of something, which I always think about when I see the word ‘skiing’. How rare are double-i’s in English. Double-o and double-e are fairly common I know. Double-a double-u and double-i are not. I can’t think of any double-a or double-u english words right now. Double-i gets a few because of the pluralization of the “-ius” ending. Is “skiing” two sylables or is the vowel sound a dipthong? I’ve always had trouble with the difference between a dipthong and two adjacent vowel sounds.
Issue #2 - My dictionary says that the word ‘ski’ comes from the old norse for horseshoe. Is there any relationship between that and the common eastern european name-ending, ‘-ski’?
Issue #3 - Why are people so concerned with post count. I’ve been registered for a year and have less than one hundred posts. I only post when I think I have something interesting to say. I think in terms of quality over quantity. Should I rethink a bit? Is quantity more valuable than I think? Should I have split this into three threads?
If men had wings,
and bore black feathers,
few of them would be clever enough to be crows.
I’ve always pronounced “skiing” as two syllables: the same vowel sound twice with a minute pause between – “ski-ing”. Contrast it with a word like “sing”. I have more trouble with forming the proper past tense for the verb: I went skiing. Have I then “skiied” or “skied”? The former doesn’t look right and the latter is liable to confusion with the past tense of “sky”. We are saved because “sky” is not used as a verb (AFAIK). My Webster’s lists only “skied”.
Incidentally, Webster also gives the etymology as Norwegian from Old Norse “skith”, stick of wood. No mention of horseshoes.
Post count is a little vanity we indulge in. There are posters with low post counts who are highly regarded, IMO. Quality is definitely an important issue. Others, like myself, simply post a lot, hoping to gain recognition simply through overexposure
“I’ll tell him but I don’t think he’ll be very keen. He’s already got one, you see!”
Issue 1: I remember an elementary school teacher telling me skiing the’s the only word in the language with a double i, but grepping /usr/dict/words gives me taxiing'' and radii’’ in addition to skiing'' and a bunch of proper names like Hawaii’’ and Shiite'' and Shanghaiing.’’ I wouldn’t count ``radii’’ because it’s Latin. I suppose any verb ending in i can be double-i-ized with the -ing suffix, but there aren’t many verbs ending in i.
``You’re just an empty cage girl if you kill the bird.’’ – Tori Amos.
Pluto - What about words like ‘toil’. I am told that ‘oi’ is a dipthong. Compare it to ‘skiing’. They seem to have the same number of sylables to me. Maybe I just don’t have a good ear.
xekul - “double-i-ized” - Radii-ized? <— triple-i
AWB (Average White Band?)- vacuum: 2 sylables ; continuum: 4 sylables? The more I think about it the stranger these words become. Latin seems to be the root of this strangeness. I have always regretted not taking latin in college. I need to look into a night class or a web class.
I haven’t been keeping close watch but maybe this is post#100. I know I’m close. Do I get a party? An invite to the next dopercon? I just thought of something to do myself. I’m going to find or create a new sig. This is the last time you’ll be seeing this one. Bye-bye crows.
If men had wings,
and bore black feathers,
few of them would be clever enough to be crows.
About doubled letters, for reasons I don’t totally understand, words with -uu- seem to attract an inordinate armount of attention (now I can understand collecting palindromes…).
Anyway, see http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words7.html for a number of rare doubled letters (also some tripled and quadrupled letters), although apparently -aa- and -ii- aren’t rare enough for this list.
I guess the root of all my curiousity is my puzzlement on the difference between a diphthong (sorry I’ve been spelling it wrong) and two adjacent vowel sounds. The way I see it in my American Heritage dictionary the definitions are circular. They use ‘diphthong’ in defining ‘sylable’ and ‘sylable’ in defining ‘diphthong’. I have a nephew who thinks I am omniscient (lower case ‘o’) and he had some homework involving counting syllables (looking back I see I’ve been spelling that wrong too, but from lack of concentration rather than ignorance). Rather than see him do poorly, I got my mom involved with helping him. Capitalization and Syllable Division were the only sections where I did poorly on some standardized grade school test that my mother still shows off proudly. I think the difference is similar to the difference between legato and staccato in music, but my pronunciation of skiing feels legato in my mouth. However, I’m also not sure that the vowel sound (or sounds) in ‘skiing’ is not a diphthong. If it is, then maybe I’m getting better at this.
And to Celebrate my 100th Post, my new sig. I wanted to do a food recipe but all my good ones are too long for a sig. So, you get a drink instead. I’ll try and change sigs more frequently from now on.
Spring Ice: 2 parts gin, 1 part Cointreau, 1 part Midori, 2 parts fresh squeezed lime, 7-up to fill Garnish: Orange Slice in bottom of glass.
Sorry, Vile, I wasn’t trying to answer your question about diphthongs vs. double vowel sounds. I was only pointing out that “skiing” seems to be one of the latter.
However – once again consulting Webster, diphthong is defined as a monosyllabic speech sound that starts at one vowel position and moves to another. The crux of the matter seems to be whether or not it’s monosyllabic, and I think that varies from speaker to speaker. Some diphthongs, like the hard “i” sound, as in “site” or “side” or “buy”, are generally considered single vowels in English but it are actually a combination of two vowel sounds. Most Americans pronounce a terminal “oh” sound (as in “know”) as “oh-oo” without being conscious of it. My dictionary lists for the sound of “oi” (which is generally considered a diphthong) the examples “coin”, “destroy” and, surprisingly, “sawing”. The third example is generally considered two syllables, but if you listen carefully it is the same sound as the others. The sound “oi” seems to be a diphthong in some instances and a double vowel in others.
My guess is that the distinction between diphthongs and double vowel sounds is one of convenience. Some instances are more clearly one than the other but there are also instances where it’s too close to call. If you insist on an either-or categorization I suspect you will not be able to find criteria that suit all cases. One man’s diphthong is another man’s double vowel.
casdave, you forgot to mention that going across snow with boards on your feet was originally called skitting and was changed for the same reason. (No one wants to see you skitting on the snow.)
pluto - your last post sounds like what I said to my teacher when she tried to explain the difference to me. I agree with you whole heartedly. I don’t really understand why the school curriculum puts any emphasis on syllable division, but they do. I just thought someone out there might be able to clarify how the schools define diphthong without using the word ‘syllable’.
From my 1976 American Heritage, “syl-la-ble 1. A unit of spoken language consisting of a vowel or diphthong alone, of a syllabic consonant alone, or of either with one or more consonants.”
“diph-thong 1. A complex speech sound beginning with one vowel sound and moving to another vowel or semi-vowel position within the same syllable.”
Definitely not mathematicians writing these definitions. They even use ‘syllabic’ in defining ‘syllable’.
On the test my mom flourishes at other moms, the first question I got wrong was identifying the number of syllables in ‘boil’. I answered ‘2’ and my mom still laughs at me. I don’t get laughed at much and my ego probably needs the therapy, so no big deal. Just one of those itches I can’t scratch.
AWB - Do you know there is a 70’s band called Average White Band, often referred to as AWB? IIRC, they are from Scotland and played a sort of funky classic rock. I’m sure you can find them on allmusic or amazon.
Spring Ice: 2 parts gin, 1 part Cointreau, 1 part Midori, 2 parts fresh squeezed lime, 7-up to fill - Garnish: Orange slice in bottom of glass.
Do you pronounce it BOY-ul? That would give it two syllables and is probably the standard pronunciation in a couple of U.S. dialects. I suspect that most dialects/accents in English (including all the Standard or Received ones) do not add the pause or the glide before the “l” sound, so the “standard” pronunciation is treated as a single syllable.
(This is my big objection to spelling “reform,” by the way. With our current hodge-podge of accents applied to a general historical orthography, we can understand that people will say things “differently” than the way we think they should be spelled. If we started using a spelling dependent on pronunciation, whose accent would we use? Is Oxonian the proper choice, being the accent associated with the upper crust of original speakers of the language? Is the Great Lakes/Midwest accent the one to use since it has been broadcast to the largest number of speakers through U.S. movies, TV, and radio? I think we ought to leave spelling alone and muddle through until the language starts to break up into actual new languages.)
Tom, I haven’t heard any talk of developing phonetic spelling in years. What prompted your rant? You’re right that English spelling is the only thing tying together millions of people worldwide who claim to speak English. The other major problem is shown in your post with BOY-ul. What do you do with the unstressed vowel? We’d probably end up adding a new vowel, the schwa, just to deal with it.
VO, I have to say that it is my observation that SOME of the people who are the most concerned with post count, are also the sort of people who enjoy measuring their penises, or having contests among themselves to see who can send a stream of urine the farthest. :rolleyes:
So don’t worry about it. Just say whatever you’ve got to say and post it and be done with it.
And nobody’s going to come to your house in the middle of the night and shoot you because you combined several subjects in one thread. Actually, as long as the questions are sensible, and sort-of related, it makes for a more interesting thread, taken altogether, because then people can choose talk about different things, more like a real-life conversation.
And technical questions will usually be answered no matter where you post them (except maybe in the Pit).
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
- Radii-ized? <— triple-i
