re: the jail & gaol thing —
Some politician (I forget who), born and raised on the UK side of the lake, was for some forgotten reason debating an opponent in front of a mostly-American audience and tossed out this zinger-woudabeen: “I don’t know how my adversary gathers the courage to speak of goals. He knows of gaols, not goals!”
audience full of blank faces of course as everyone hears “jails, not goals”
[QUOTE=Bosstone]
I consider Raul Julia the ‘real’ Gomez over John Astin.
[/QUOTE]
:eek: Blasphemer! Heretic! Infidel!
But I will admit that Raul Julia was extremely good in the role.
Trivia: John Astin was originally asked to play Lurch. How odd.
So I figured out the gaol/jail thing a long time ago, but the one I keep tripping over in print is “draught”. It’s just an alternate/archaic/British version of “draft”, like “draft beer”, or “close the shutters, there’s a draft coming through”, right? right?
My brain, of course, wants to make it into something similar to “drought”, like “drawt”. :smack:
[QUOTE=Bosstone]
That I was. I actually forget that it was a TV series first, since the movie was my first real introduction to the Addamses. I consider Raul Julia the ‘real’ Gomez over John Astin. :o
[/QUOTE]
Heresy! Prepare the stake for burning!
Yeah, I’m piling on. But why waste a perfectly good “Reply to Thread” window?
Fiddler on the Roof, the situation with the song, The Dream, when Tevye relates a warning from Goldie’s grandmother against the match with the butcher - is a total scam. (The things one misses by only listening to the soundtrack…)
[QUOTE=OtakuLoki]
For me it was when I was talking to someone about goal fever, that I found out that goal and jail are homophones.
How did you miss that, with all the emphasis on The Last Supper being a Passover celebration?
[/QUOTE]
Because it is referred to as The Last Supper. If ‘passover’ was mentioned, I glazed over.
[Quote=Chanteuse]
Next thing you know, JEW-LUH-REE will be in the dictionary as [an] acceptable alternate [pronunciation]! 
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[QUOTE=Hostile Dialect]
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The “jew-luh-ree” pronunciation makes sense when you know the British variant spelling of the word.
[QUOTE=OpalCat]
Regarding the language evolving… I agree that it does, however I think that the way it changed in the past and the way it changes now/in the future are different. In the past people’s access to formal education was more limited. Standardizations of things like spelling were also not as widespread or accessible. In today’s world we have dictionaries and the internet to use as reference, which are available to just about everyone. The excuse, therefore, for things like misspellings, is much less. Obviously there are new words coming into being; there always will be. Obviously as culture evolves, new usages will be found for existing words; there always will be. However, I find very little reason to find it “ok” to say that since a bunch of people are too stupid or lazy to look things up that a flat-out misspelling should become an acceptable “alternate spelling” in the future of the language. You’re welcome to disagree with me, but I think it’s ignorance and the fact that dictionaries will eventually concede that “a bunch of people get it wrong like this, so that’s also what people mean when they spell it like this” does not change my opinion.
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I don’t disagree. I just think you picked the wrong word to make the argument. Sherbet was changing from it’s original spelling long before the internet became widespread. The cite I gave was from 1993 and it has been going on for a lot longer than that. Sherbet may sound fine in Turkish but sherbert flows better in English. The same way English has been taking words from other languages and changing them since we first thought of English as its own language.
[QUOTE=Loach]
Sherbet may sound fine in Turkish but sherbert flows better in English.
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Really? So next time I’m convinced something’s going to happen I should call it a “sure bert”? Because “sure bet” sound just like “sherbet” (except the syllable getting the accent) and I don’t know anyone who has trouble saying it.
Your struggle against mispronunciation is very Quixotic.
Pronounced KEY-HO-TEAK.
[QUOTE=Cardinal]
I was telling my Environmental Science seniors (HS) about androgen insensitivity, in which an XY fetus does not respond to its testosterone, and stays externally female, but is not coded for a uterus, rendering her infertile. I was pointing out that “andro” is a root for “male”, and it hit me so hard that I made a stupid face in front of the class.
Andro-gyn-ous
Male-female-ous.
Duh.
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I never realized this before, either, until you just pointed it out. :smack:
[QUOTE=robby]
I never realized this before, either, until you just pointed it out. :smack:
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Of course, if you really want to get confused, consider philanderers…
[QUOTE=Peter Morris]
Your struggle against mispronunciation is very Quixotic.
Pronounced KEY-HO-TEAK.
[/QUOTE]
Seems like you’re serious about this.
I’ve always thought it was something like kwik-sah-tik, which it is according to Compact Oxford, Merriam-Webster, and American Heritage online dictionaries.
[QUOTE=Abirode]
Seems like you’re serious about this.
I’ve always thought it was something like kwik-sah-tik, which it is according to Compact Oxford, Merriam-Webster, and American Heritage online dictionaries.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, but what do any of those guys know? They don’t even post to the SDMB! 
We’ve already had a lenghthy thread about precisely this word.
I believe that the proper pronunciation is given in dictionaries as “quick-sotick”, which offends my ears. I personally advocate pronouncing it “KEY-ah-tick”, and will continue to do so (along with pronouncing “impious” “im-PIE-us” and using “a historic” rather than “An historic”) as part of my drive to make the English language (at least the American version) consistent with my own prejudices.
[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
Really? So next time I’m convinced something’s going to happen I should call it a “sure bert”? Because “sure bet” sound just like “sherbet” (except the syllable getting the accent) and I don’t know anyone who has trouble saying it.
[/QUOTE]
You’re right. That’s why no one is saying or spelling it like sherbert. Sorry what was I thinking. I’ll be off writing a lengthy homage to you. (I said it flows better, not that anyone has difficulty saying it)
[QUOTE=The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993. ]
Now the name of a frozen dessert, the word sherbet appeared in English in the seventeenth century, meaning “a cold fruit drink,” and developed two spellings reflecting its two pronunciations, sherbet (SHUHR-bit) and sherbert (SHUHR-buhrt). Today both spellings and both pronunciations are regularly encountered in both British and American use, to the discomfort of some purists, who argue that only sherbet is acceptable. Meantime, food fanciers have reborrowed this word in its French form, sorbet, pronounced both in the French way (sor-BAI) and an anglicized (SOR-bet). Standard English now uses all three forms, although Edited English usually clings to sherbet and continues to italicize the French sorbet as foreign. Australian English now uses sherbert, both alone and in compounds, as another name for beer.
[/QUOTE]
The word came into English from Turkey during the time of Shakespeare. It is not being mispronouced, it is being anglicized. Do you have as much of a problem with everything else that has changed with the language since the 1600s?
That’s a huge “except”. “Sure bet” sounds almost nothing like “sherbet”, anyway, and honestly, the concept of judging variant spellings’ worth by splitting them into two vaguely similar words is patently absurd.
Yes he is. Quixote was a Spanish literary character, hence he gave the Spanish pronunciation of Quixotic. By the logic of the “Foreign Words Should Never Change” crowd (who apparently go apoplectic when someone says “cream” instead of “crema”), Quixotic should be pronounced the way Peter Morris did there.
Which is a common theme in prescriptivism: its proponents suggest rules and demand that they be applied universally, without taking even a moment to think about how absurd that would be.
To be fair, it’s been pretty much downhill since uneducated barbarians decided they weren’t even going to bother with “thou” anymore.
[QUOTE=Hostile Dialect]
That’s a huge “except”. “Sure bet” sounds almost nothing like “sherbet”, anyway, and honestly, the concept of judging variant spellings’ worth by splitting them into two vaguely similar words is patently absurd.
Yes he is. Quixote was a Spanish literary character, hence he gave the Spanish pronunciation of Quixotic. By the logic of the “Foreign Words Should Never Change” crowd (who apparently go apoplectic when someone says “cream” instead of “crema”), Quixotic should be pronounced the way Peter Morris did there.
Which is a common theme in prescriptivism: its proponents suggest rules and demand that they be applied universally, without taking even a moment to think about how absurd that would be.
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I will never argue language with someone named Hostile Dialect.
[QUOTE=Abirode]
Seems like you’re serious about this.
I’ve always thought it was something like kwik-sah-tik, …
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Actually, I was joking.
Some struggles are Quixotic (kwik-zot-ick).
Objecting to pronunciation changing over time is Quixotic (key-ho-teak)
see?