Oh yes, a shibboleth is a beautiful concept. I still claim that it cannot be translated into German or Spanish, though a commenter wrote it is German (a semitic loan, to be precise). Another one said that it may well be so, but he had never heard it before. I felt sort of vindicated.
Made me look, and good thing. I thought I had an idea from context of what shibboleth meant, but it was pretty wrong.
I first learned the concept from an episode of The West Wing.
I was watching Introducing, Selma Blair, a documentary about her battle with MS. I was avoiding it for some reason but ended up thinking it was really excellent. 35 reviewers thought so too: it has a 100 on Rotten Tomatoes.
She went in for stem cells and they basically lowered her immune system to 1%, then injected stem cells in the hope that the cells would build her a new one that wouldn’t attack her central nervous system. She mentions one person about her age died of infection shortly after having the treatment.
Highly recommended if you have Discovery +.
In New Jersey the state capitol is pronounced Tren’n’, with the second “t” swallowed up in a glottal stop or some’n’.
In Delaware the similarly spelled town keeps both ts – Tren-ton
Likewise in New Jersey the city is “NEW-urk” while in Delaware the place with the same spelling is called “New-ARK” (though I suspect that people in Delaware have unconsciously (or consciously) learned to pronounce their city name differently enough to avoid confusion.
I had to be corrected –
Oregon:
Scio – SIGH o
Philomath – fill O mth
Washington:
Puyallup – pew AL up
Sequim — skwim
Got those down and then I moved to Massachusetts and had to learn how to sloven my consonants anew. Wuhsta, Lemminsta, etc.
There are three active NHL players who have each played over 900 consecutive games: Keith Yandle (940), Phil Kessel (920), and Patrick Marleau (910). The current league record is 964 by Doug Jarvis.
Bienfait Saskatchewan is pronounced like “what ultimately happens to legumes”.
Similar situation with Beaufort.
BOW-fort is in NC
BYEW-fort is in SC
Houston, TX
HOW-stin, GA.
Spelled the same way irl, I just spelled the lesser known one phonetically in the local dialect.
And HOW-stin Street in NYC. It’s not named for Sam Houston.
I found out today that the Knight Rider theme tune was adapted from this brilliant tune:
It’s closer to Lou-uh-Vulcan-ducky.
-Superdude, who lives there.
Greenwich.
“Grenitch” in Connecticut. “Green Wich” in New Jersey.
We used Scheveningen for this during WWII. Germans can’t pronounce the sch-sound like we do.
Isn’t the sch sound in Scheveningen pronounced as sk?
ETA: nevermind, I think I remember how it’s really pronounced, not like sk, but rather with a sharp S instantly followed by a guttural ch sound. Am I in the right direction? And yes, this is hard to pronounce for a German.
A stray cat has been found in Nashville. It has a microchip from Italy.
An orange tabby female is rare enough, indeed.
Nothing like a male calico - three colors are almost always female: orange, white, and black - but a female orange cat is still unusual. Orange cats are usually, but not always, boyos.
Because the genetic determination of coat colors in calico cats is linked to the X chromosome, calicos are nearly always female, with one color linked to the maternal X chromosome and a second color linked to the paternal X chromosome.[2][3] In most cases, males are only one color (for instance, black) as they have only one X chromosome. Male calicoes can happen when a male cat has two X chromosomes (Klinefelter syndrome, with XXY sex chromosomes and generally sterile); is a chimera, with two different cell types;[4] or, rarely, when some skin cells of the developing kitten spontaneously mutate.
In the Len Deighton novel SS-GB (which is an alt-history where the Nazis occupy the UK in WWII) the resistance make suspects say “Wolverhampton Wanderers”, presuming a German infiltrator will say the Ws as Vs.