Well you are wrong 
However, no I still don’t know what the answer is/was/ever could be. The person who passed the question on to me is no longer in the same job and I now live several thousand miles away from him. Whoever it is that knows the answer is going to take it to their grave I think.
Serve him right, too.
Other way round. Panther (by itself) would be pronounced the same as “pantha”. Unless it preceeds a word with a vowel (in which case Anthea also gains an “r”)
Fans of Chris Morris will also be familiar with the phrase “talking Nonce Sense”.
Edit: Beaten like red-headed step-child
Dig up their body, burn it, and salt the earth they are buried in. Then, sell their possessions, buy some precious metals, and take 14 kernels of gold in a fairly poor district of Detroit and spread their wealth to those who need it.
Hey, I think I just solved it!
I believe that Christopher Robin was trying to say Winnie-Sir-Pooh, but due to his lisp, it sounded like Winnie-Ther-Pooh. “Don’t you know what ther (sir) means”. They had spent some time in London & ‘sir’ would be common nomenclature for a little boy to describe a man. The stories should have probably always referred to Pooh as Winnie-Sir-Pooh, but the mistaken adult interpretation has resulted in him always being referred to as Winnie the Pooh.
Another Zombie Thread? Oh, Bother!
Oh, look! Zombified just in time to link to this!
I’ve read P.G. Wodehouse stories where ‘r’ was used to indicate a dialectical pronunciation of open vowels, I think to show that the character pronounces them a little more forward in the mouth, e.g. “arf-parse” instead of “half-past”. In Code Of The Wooster’s, Constable Oates refers to the dog Bartholomew as a “vicious dorg not under proper control”.
Since this is about a literary character, it is probably more suited to Cafe Society.
Please note the thread was started in 2010.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Well, maybe not this thread as such but
Did I miss it where somebody got the answer to that confounded riddle/acronym/whatever it is?
A very selective lisp, he had, only coming out on the word ‘sir’, as it does.
Strange, too, that his father apparently didn’t know what ‘sir’ meant.
I’m flabbergasted that no one has offered the explanation that C.R. is simply thinking on his feet. And A.A. is simply going along with it to avoid having story time replaced with a temper tantrum.
Also, it’s my understanding that the actual toy was named after human-interest-story bear in Canada, who went by the name “Winnipeg.”
No. Someone had a co-worker who said they knew, but then they changed jobs and couldn’t ask.
I think that’s implied in the explanation that CR is just over-emphasizing ‘the’.
Winnipeg was actually in the UK, when the Milnes saw her - London Zoo, specifically. Though she was originally captured in Canada, then bought and brought to the UK by some Canadian soldiers. Winnie’s Wiki.
So wonderfully well worth it! Thank you!
This doesn’t really make any more sense than “ther” because sir isn’t used that way. He’d be Sir Winnie in that case, not Winnie Sir Pooh.
What’s the other way around? dangermom is saying that “Panther” to an American has a hard R at the end, but a Brit who is non-rhotic is going to make it rhyme with “An-the-uh”.
It’s the word the, emphasized, with an R added by a non-rhotic speaker who has no intention of pronouncing it.
It’s like the name Eeyore, which is onomatopoeia for the sound a donkey makes - that R isn’t supposed to be pronounced, either.
