For some reason what this reminded me of was the fact that there was a Gilligan's Island episode where Gilligan responds to the question "whom?" with "I don't know, but it wasn't meem!" I looked this up on the stupid internet and my memory was accurate. And the "whom?" to which he is responding is spoken by Mr. Howell, who is incorrectly using it in the subject position. Really, with enough money, you can get away with anything.
I've never quite put my finger on it that collegiality is a cultural value here
"[H]ere"= Heebie U? Unfogged? The World? Texas? The internet?
The US, I was thinking. Isn't it?
But in the OP the sentiment is coming from someone who writes for the Grauniad, so it must extend beyond the US.
It's actually one of our criteria for tenure. It's super controversial because no one can explain what you have to do to be sufficiently collegial, but no one wants to axe it, either. (I'm not sure why, but I assume it's been used to deny people tenure? Otherwise who would be attached to it?)
I suppose we're just talking about people along The Atlantic?
IME Brit collegiality is different from American. Americans want to pretend to actually like each other. Brits want to pretend with more restricted scope, that this is a pleasant and interesting conversation.
For both purposes, whom in a typical sentence is like farting.
But in the OP the sentiment is coming from someone who writes for the Grauniad, so it must extend beyond the US.
It's not though. Only the "pompous twerp" bit is. The collegiality point is entirely Garber's.
Also, it's worth mentioning that the Guardian editor in question was actually defending maintaining the distinction in written English while acknowleding that it seems a bit off in spoken English.
7 seems true enough on the US side of things. Openly disliking a peer, to their face, is hugely taboo, but people subject me to a boring conversations all the time.
As a simple object ("Whom are you calling?"), the word absolutely grates. In relative clauses, especially prepositional ones ("most of whom are already there") it feels much more natural to me, even in speech. Not sure why.
Collegiality exists in two, and only two, environments. Britain and the United States. Elsewhere it's all Johnny Foreigners and cannibals who'll poke you with a sharp stick before saying thank you.
cannibals
MUST BE A YALE MAN
9. ??? Is your math department free of ex-Ostblock people? Mainland Chinese courtesy also only loosely maps onto US openness, lots of mismatches.
"most of whom are already there"
Ooh, that's a good example. "Who" would be really jarring in that context.
F* you, heebie! Whom are you calling collegial?
The connection between being grammatically overprecise and being an uncongenial twerp makes me a little sad, as I tend toward the overprecise but also try to be collegial. Admittedly, I do think 'whom' is pretty dead.
I just had a similar conversation with Newt about the subjunctive -- that there were vestiges of it in current correct English, and I probably used it more than most, but it's approaching being straightforwardly archaic.
OK, I'm willing to bargain: I'll agree to retire "whom", but the rest of the world has to give up "between you and I". Deal?
I agree with 10 in theory and practice.
I can stil haz teh me/i distincshun, pleez?
The English-speaking world managed to survive the elision of the second person singular and plural for the last couple of centuries without collapsing into unintelligibility, so I reckon we'll survive the loss of "whom" and the subjunctive. But I don't have to like it.
Come to think of it, with the hipster generation resurrecting all manner of archaic fashions and folkways, you think they could try bringing back "thou"? It could be an in-thing among intimates to get it started.
Me and him was talking about that yesterday.
14 is right: whom isn't routed, just advancing to the rear.
I guess someone should correct and reprint Meditation 17.
That might help KR's goal in 21 as well.
Speaking of archaic fashions and folkways, are Americans taught: "you and me" [correct]; "me and you" [WRONG!!!!]?
16: Whom is pretty dead.
Who?
Whom.
Right, the guy you're talking about.
No. Right's in the hospital. Whom is dead.
That's what I want to know, who is dead?
No, Who just has a bad cold, Whom is dead.
I just want to know who is dead.
Why do you want Who dead?
I don't want anybody dead, I just want know the name of the guy who's dead.
Good, because Anybody is in fine health and has a family to support. Whom is dead.
That's what I'm asking!
And I told you the answer!
Let me ask it this way. Who is in the coffin?
No, Who is at home with a bad cold.
I don't know, who's home with a bad cold?
Right.
So Right's home with a bad cold.
No Right's in the hospital.
...
Holy shit, glib left-of-center contrarian blogging must pay better than I thought.
Journalist and political blogger Matthew Yglesias bought a three-bedroom, three-bath condo on Q Street in Logan Circle for $1.2 million. In a converted Victorian rowhouse, the unit has original exposed-brick walls and a private patio.
Man, where do I sign up for that gig?
It's of course not unrelated, but I think this is more a matter of register than (simply) collegiality, much less correctness or precision. That is, there are contexts in which it might be appropriate to write/speak in a register that uses "whom"; in other contexts, adopting such a register would mark you as a twerp. That's true of all sorts of language choices and has little or nothing to do with whether they're more or less "correct".
26: I wondered when that would show up here. Off to swim to work.
26: He could have done that with his family money, nu?
OT: Have the Unfogged Harvard people been gloating about screwing up brackets yet?
30: Nah, we're keeping our heads down this morning.
30: Hang on, we're still talking about grammar; haven't gotten to punctuation yet.
(Seriously, I am for the first time in my life going to an NCAA game on Sunday. How should I prepare?)
By the way, Lynne Guist over at Separated By A Common Language has done quite a few posts on the differences in collegiality in the US and the UK. Mainly in connection with how compliments are used differently and the role of status in each culture. See, for instance, this post
30: I hadn't noticed the news, but it was already weird to hear that Kentucky is not in the tournament at all.
34: And lost a 1st round NIT game to Robert Morris at their fabled Moon campus.
Huh, I'm really out of the loop on quizbowl news. I knew there was a scandal thanks to vague comments at the other place but I didn't know what happened. Clearly all is right with the world, though, since it led to another Chicago title.
32.last: Like you would for any explosive public forum involving race and privilege.
The link in 33 is excellent. I especially liked this:
It is in Americans' nature to subconsciously look for points of connection with anyone they meet because mainstream American culture is solidarity-based (see Brown & Levinson 1987). This is to say that communication is based on the goal of creating a sense of equality and belonging.
"By defining people according to achievement, Americans can fragment their own personalities or those of other people. They do not have to accept others in their totality [...]; they may disapprove of the politics, hobbies, or personal life of associates and yet still work with them effectively. It is this trait of seeing others as fragmented, combined with the desire to achieve, that provides Americans with the motivation to cooperate."
In other words, I don't have to approve of you in order to compliment you, I just have to find a fragment of you that I can approve of in order to develop a relationship of some sort with you.
One can see why this might be taken as insincerity in some quarters, but if I tell you I like your shoes and that you play the tuba well, it's almost certainly the case that I really do like your shoes and think you're tuba-tastic. So, it's a sincere attempt on my part to cement our relationship with shared values--at least as far as shoes and brass instruments are concerned.
I keep trying to bring back "Zounds!", but it doesn't stick.
"I can unequivocally report that Candidate has excellent taste in shoes and plays the tuba well."
Speaking of brackets, it's down to the final four in the competition to host that social media conference: Tuesday it's Missoula vs. Branson MO and Thursday it's Cleveland vs. Huntsville AL.
36: I've been meaning to look up whether I ever played directly against you, which I'm pretty sure I did, but I haven't actually cared enough to bother yet.
I'm secretly gloating at all the locals heartbroken about UK, but I really don't care about who wins or loses any of it. Lee has Harvard winning two more times, which even she thinks is pushing it.
Speaking of brackets, how 'bout them Grizzlies!
10: I wonder if that's because it's easier to say "are" when it follows "whom."
27: I agree. Moreover, quite a lot of twerpitude is demonstrated mostly by correcting someone else's grammar in an informal setting.
36: And TWO Minnesota titles!
(Not that I even care about amateur academic competition.)
And speaking of which, it was very confusing to see a bunch of middle-aged ladies wearing bright yellow plastic waistcoats in the skyways this morning, until one of them called out "You're not supposed to be wandering around alone, only in groups of three!" in my direction, which was even a little bit more confusing, until I realized that this was some kind of dispersed chaperone program to keep the appleknockers from upstate out of trouble while they're in town for the big high school meets.
46 (Not that I even care about amateur academic competition.)
Only the professional quizbowl leagues interest you?
(Wait, they don't have those now, do they?)
Once, after a professor griped a bit in lecture about people using objective pronouns as predicates, I asked if that meant he would say "It's I" in conversation. Not exactly fair, in retrospect, since he was talking more about writing, but the class got a good laugh out of it.
43.1: It would appear we did at least once, although I don't really remember this particular tournament. (Someone can redact the link if Thorn thinks it's too identifying.)
I asked if that meant he would say "It's I" in conversation.
"It's me" or, slightly ironically, "'Tis I".
51: There's professional video game playing so there might as well be pro quiz bowls. I don't think there are, but it would be cool. I do pretty well in those sorts of competitions and I'm sure I would look dashing in NASCAR style overalls with sponsorship patches all over them.
51: I was attempting to perpetrate a witticism by referencing the debate about transgendered athletes conducted here earlier this week. Apparently, I was not successful.
Also, whaddya call "Jeopardy!"?
In the future, remembering things with your brain will be a quaint hobby, practiced by only a few.
Actually, "most of whom" is not a really good example as a contrast between "whom are you calling?", because the "whom" in "most of whom" isn't an object.
Minivet may dislike "whom are you calling?", but what about "my sister, whom I absolutely loathe, is trying to guilt me into visiting more often"?
(I do not loathe my sister.)
Adsum.
with the hipster generation resurrecting all manner of archaic fashions and folkways, you think they could try bringing back "thou"?
Probably not, because it would get confused with the SCA and other nerds, and nerds give too much of a damn and hipsters have to be cool.
But, come the meltdown, those few will be priests and kings.
I think to bring back "zounds!" you need to start by bringing back "Christ's wounds!" which is actually quite fun to say.
53: I'd have thought something earlier than that when I was actually in school (and I don't remember why they let a non-student play in that one anyhow) but yeah, that. There were too many people watching when we played your team and I got all fainty and worthless, which is the part that's most memorable for me. I would never, ever get any sort of sponsorship for my coveralls because I can't stand being watched.
61: You mean "God's wounds", I assume.
I do pretty well in those sorts of competitions
But, unless you've invested insane amounts of time in practicing them, I know people who would wipe the floor with you without breaking a sweat. The top handful of players were scary good. I was lucky to have a couple of them on my team, and Thorn had one who was (at least for a while) almost at that level on her team.
Moreover, quite a lot of twerpitude is demonstrated mostly by correcting someone else's grammar in an informal setting
I know you're still smarting about my having corrected you when you first showed up here long ago, Cala, but maybe it's time to let it go.
64: I refused to practice by memorization and was never technically on that good team except as a friend situation, but yeah, the good players are terrifying. And some of the bad players, certainly including ones on my very bad real team, were scary in different ways. Though that scary-good friend and I will be dominating pub trivia in another week or so, which is always fun. And I guess I should actually get 53 redacted, sorry.
64: People who memorize encyclopedias frighten me.
Also if we're bringing back "zounds!" let me lobby for "gadzooks!" as well.
64 is right. The top players are better at trivia than LB is at blog-arguing. Can you believe that College Bowl used to be on TV? (It wasn't that similar to the game played today, but still.)
scary in different ways
Speaking of which, I think your team also had a guy who really creepily hit on one of my friends. (For some reason we had an unusually high fraction of women on our team, and they all had lots of... disturbing... stories about interactions with other teams.)
It wasn't that similar to the game played today, but still
They were still running a tournament when I was playing, at least. It was viewed as the least-academic one, famed for a question with the giveaway line "For ten points, identify this curved yellow fruit."
70: It could theoretically be, but I think it's agreed that these kinds of words are from an elided "God's." The similarly-developed "gadzooks" is "God's hooks."
I think to bring back "zounds" we need to switch it up a bit. How about "zwounds," to emphasize the original meaning a bit more?
OK, why have Zounds! and Gadzooks! become obsolete while God's teeth! has merely become vulgar?
No one cares about "whom". There's more important traditions in danger.
Persians' spring tradition could be snuffed by fire rings ban
In a ritual brought from Iran, celebrants jump over beach fire pits in anticipation of Nowruz, the Persian new year...But the tradition -- celebrated here on one of Newport Beach's most popular shorelines -- could be in jeopardy as state coastal and air quality officials wrestle over whether to extinguish the fire rings on the beaches in Orange and Los Angeles counties.
Somebody either can't spell, or used to play academic trivia.
64: People who memorize encyclopedias frighten me.
The best ones had knowledge that was more "legitimate" than that-- the guy who was unambiguously the best for at least several years, if not a whole decade, basically spent all his time reading. For a while he was keeping a blog where he would review every book he read, and it was literally three or four books a day, usually a mix of really literary stuff and very dense nonfiction. He was in grad school for a long time and probably never really made much progress on his thesis because he never stopped reading. Sometimes he would even beat me to physics questions by buzzing after no more than, say, "Discovered in 1913" and answering something like "well, obviously that's the Stark effect".
People outside of fantasy fiction say "God's teeth"?
For Unfoggedecimationcon, I don't suppose anyone else was interested in a day trip to Harper's Ferry?
I think I know who 77 is talking about. That's interesting---I didn't know about the blog.
69: I'll have to make you tell me about that sometime, because I'm not sure which team you mean and that would narrow down which guy, though in neither case narrow it to one. I definitely, definitely, definitely have a lot of creepy-guy stories, like more than I can remember.
81: Huh. What happens to trivia nerds between HS and college that creepifies them? Our Quiz/Knowledge Bowl team in HS was certainly dweebish, dorky and sexually unsuccessful, but I never saw anyone behaving even slightly creepily. The gender dynamics were a little odd though, as my cohort was all guys, but the folx who had graduated the year before were majority women. And the adviser/coach was a woman.
Who was it that supposedly stormed off a job as a reporter when his editor made him change a man's words upon finding his wife dead from "it is her!" to "it is she!"?
83: Josef Stalin. And the editor was Leon Trotsky. And now you know...the rest of the story.
80: You can email me if you want to see if it's who you think it is. (And now I'm curious if I should have remembered you from that context.)
Can you believe that College Bowl used to be on TV? (It wasn't that similar to the game played today, but still.)
University Challenge still is on TV over here. It was the second most watched programme on BBC2 last week.
This article puts it as having an average 2m viewers.
85: I'm not from the same era as the tournament in the link.
82: The college game is sort of a concentrated version of the HS game. College is made up disproportionately of the most "serious" people, and the most nerdy.
let me lobby for "gadzooks!" as well
I'm totally on board.
79: Man, I wish I was going. Harper's Ferry is beautiful. You could even take the train.
If you go, make sure you take the opportunity to ride inner-tubes down the Potomac.
||
Watching an episode of Castle (Season 5, episode 13) (shut up, I know it's crap), I was incredibly amused to realize that the villain - a man (probably rightfully) driven to kill a senator - is named Robert McManus. (Not meant to imply actual homicidal tendencies on behalf of our own McManus.)
|>
67: Lkewise "odds bodkins." (God's body, but arguably God's short sword.)
Also a great comic strip back in the day.
||
Condos in Logan Circle are going for $1.2 mill?!?!
|>
Zounds
Kristovy rany, "Christs's wounds" is a legitimate exclamation in colloquial Czech, intensity somewhere between OMG and holy shit in English.
but the rest of the world has to give up "between you and I"
It's like they don't even know Charley Pride! (Bonus in that video: Lloyd Green on pedal steel.)
||
And speaking of cartoons. Joe & Willie Bill Mauldin gets a US stamp.
|>
Condos in Logan Circle are going for $1.2 mill?!?!
It's all because they won't allow high-rises, you know.
79. There are train tracks, but the service is for commuters from HF to the city, can't do a day trip to HF that way. 60 miles, a little far for a 1-day bike ride. Great falls is nice, MD side is 15miles, bikeable along the river from Gtown.
94: I lived in that neighborhood 20 years ago. The day I pulled up in a car to move in and looked up at the place* from the passenger-seat window a dude was immediately right there to sell me heroin. Amenities!
98 is funny.
*An absolutely gorgeous apartment. Stupidly lovely.
99: Great Falls is pretty sweet, although it will be mobbed that weekend.
Actually, "most of whom" is not a really good example as a contrast between "whom are you calling?", because the "whom" in "most of whom" isn't an object.
I don't understand this. Isn't "whom" the object of the preposition?
101: Most touristy things will be mobbed that weekend. I think people planning to do sightseeing and the like will just have to accept a certain degree of mobbing. Those who stay put and drink will be fine. Just sayin'.
An absolutely gorgeous apartment. Stupidly lovely.
That's just the heroin talking.
HAVE YOU EVER LIVED IN A GORGEOUS APARTMENT...ON SMACK?
102
I don't understand this. Isn't "whom" the object of the preposition?
Yes!
i'd like to bring back that gesture where you clasp your hands together, then shake them a small number of times over each shoulder, as a boisterous sign of victory or enthusiasm.
i'd also like to know what it's called.
105: I hear that in Logan Circle a man cannot be free
of all of the evils of DC and of himself and those around.
107: I had to actually do this to understand what you meant. It was fun! I felt triumphant without having done anything!
107: Like, while still clasped? Over all 4 shoulders involved?
You've started something, cleek. Should I ever acheive a victory, I will do this.
Don't they do that in the Tour de France? I have vague memories of seeing guys on bikes do that.
Speaking of which, I had a nice morning ride up the local hill and out to the ocean, then back through the park. Only 16 miles, but some real climbing, and we went fast through the park. Of course now I'm falling asleep at the office.
It turns out if I raise my hands in the air, I can't feign indifference.
I prefer the "raise the roof" gesture myself.
It turns out if I raise my hands in the air, I can't feign indifference I'm less likely to get shot.
I am so glad I'm in an English department, where we respect one another's correct uses of whom.
glib left-of-center contrarian blogging must pay better than I thought.
In the recent fracas over writing for free, this dude took a swipe at Yglesias that made me smirk: "Yglesias is one of Slate's better-paid contributors (the hyphen is important)".
Apparently it is known as a "Victory clasp."
Both hands are clasped together and shaken side to side for as long as the victory merits.
The origins of this gesture are generally unknown, however it is thought to have been derived from an ancient Hawaiian greeting.
Here is one of those Wikipedia facts that probably someone just made it up.
Linking the two subthreads, I strongly associate the victory clasp with the 8-bit NES' Jeopardy! game, in which one of the animated contestants used it in moments of triumph.
114 It turns out if I raise my hands in the air, I can't feign indifference.
So you're not capable of putting your hands in the air like you just don't care?
Oh, I'm dumb and Standpipey. I thought 114 was just chiming in to agree with 109.
Yes!
Ok, fine, I guess English still isn't Latin.
125: I would say "be the change," but I'm sure you're already hard at work on it.
I don't think it's true, anyway, that "whom" sounds better in especially prepositional relative contexts. It sounds just as awkward in non-relative prepositional contexts as in non-relative verbal object contexts, to me, and just as natural in a relative context whether the object of a verb or preposition.
I considered 127 but disagree - I would say "the person who I'm meeting" (if I included a relative pronoun at all) but "the person with whom I'm speaking".
Condos in Logan Circle are going for $1.2 mill?!?!
And less than twenty years ago was renting a nice studio in a doorman building on Mass Ave in prime DuPont with my gf for $750, and the year after that I had a small room in a nice townhouse on 17th and P for $250 - DC was cheaper than fricking Providence.
I sort of lost respect for Yglesias a while ago anyway, so it doesn't matter.
I just looked at the link in 118. I didn't realize that the Atlantic sponsors the Aspen What Passes for Ideas Festival.
What irks me (and yes, this is uncollegial of me) is the American (but now fast spreading to Canada) refusal to distinguish between thuh and thee in the pronunciation of "the." To reduce it all to thuh, in other words, whether it preceeds a vowel or a consonant or what have you. What sounds natural (and no, of course it's not "natural") to me is "thee apple" in "thuh pie." What sounds jarring to me (and I'm being prissy and pedantic, I will freely confess) is "thuh apple." I'm sorry, but that just doesn't sound right to me; that sounds like an unfortunate (but completely avoidable) interruption in the free flow of speech.
Which is ridiculous, of course, and I need to let it go. I let go of "whom" a few years ago, when I realized that that horse had left the barn about a decade earlier.
I hate "Iraq" and "Italian" as "Eye-raq" and "Eye-talian," but I try not to, because it seems so snobbish, and who the hell am I? I pronounce "out" and "about" in a "boat" like a complete hoser.
I need to let it go
Oh, I don't think so. "thuh elephant" is just wrong. I have to say that I haven't noticed Americans doing this especially much.
What irks me (and yes, this is uncollegial of me) is the American (but now fast spreading to Canada) refusal to distinguish between thuh and thee in the pronunciation of "the."
Huh, I've never noticed or heard about this before. Certainly the distinction you mention between the two has at least historically been standard in most (maybe all) American dialects. Is this changing in some? I'll have to keep an ear out for it.
I hate "Iraq" and "Italian" as "Eye-raq" and "Eye-talian,"
I find this (fairly widespread) attitude in the case of "Iraq" interesting, since the "eye-rack" pronunciation is not actually much further from the original Arabic than the generally preferred "ee-rock" pronunciation.
Yeah, what is with "eye-rack"? Is it of a kind with the Republican use of "Democrat" as an adjective?
Even setting aside teo's very good point in 134, I don't get the "eye-rack" hatred. Do you also hate the way Americans typically pronounce "France" or "Israel" or what have you? I mean, it's awfully common for foreign place names or any loan words to be pronounced differently in the adopting language. (Possibly a little defensive here, because I'll admit I picked up the "eye-rack" pronunciation and have not made the effort to change it even though I'm well aware it's something of a shibboleth; and the idea that someone would get a little frisson of superiority hearing me say it irks.)
"Eye-talian" on the other hand is just crazy. Is that really a thing beyond bad-movie caricatures?
the generally preferred "ee-rock" pronunciation.
Where's the stress on that? Because if it's on the second syllable it isn't that bad. (Usu. Brit pronunciation is i-rark'.)
What irks me (and yes, this is uncollegial of me) is the American (but now fast spreading to Canada) refusal to distinguish between thuh and thee in the pronunciation of "the." To reduce it all to thuh, in other words, whether it preceeds a vowel or a consonant or what have you. What sounds natural (and no, of course it's not "natural") to me is "thee apple" in "thuh pie." What sounds jarring to me (and I'm being prissy and pedantic, I will freely confess) is "thuh apple."
Wow, I've never thought about the two pronunciations whatsoever. I assume I'm in flagrant violation.
You're basically saying "thuh/thee" should function like "a/an" according to if the next word sounds like it begins with a consonant?
You're basically saying "thuh/thee" should function like "a/an" according to if the next word sounds like it begins with a consonant?
Never thought about it either, but now I'm forced to, I find that's what I do.
I think I do, too. I'd say "Thuh four of us are going to ..." and I'd say "Thee eight of us are going to ..."
(Usu. Brit pronunciation is i-rark'.)
This habit of indicating something about syllable length or stress by inserting an extra "r" confused the heck out of me for years (eg all the pronunciation guides in Kipling novels) until I realised these "r"s weren't pronounced. I suspect it's an English thing specifically rather than British.
141: Oh god, me too. Like when I was in middle school and Sadé first happened and everyone was told her name was pronounced "shar-day."
Wait, everyone was told by whom that her name was pronounced "shar-day"?
140: Although I *think* (because of course now it is impossible for me to tell what I do) I sometimes clip that "thee" in front of the "eight" to something like "thih," not "thuh" but not always all the way to "thee." I was trying to exaggerate everything to hear how it sounded and mostly it came out sounding like the Wayans Brothers doing impressions of "dorky white people."
143: If memory serves, that was the pronouncer given on the back of the album, or, indeed, 45. (Look it up, youngster!)
They gave a pronunciation on the back of the album! That's so dorky and awesome.
Also I thought you were directing me to comment 45 for a little bit, Grandma.
147: HA! Hey man, b-sides were where it was at.
136: There are at least three American pronunciations of Iraq: the one I think of as fairly correct, and that I consciously aim at, ee-RAHK (I don't actually know how accurate this is in terms of sounding like the Arabic); the one I learned originally and that still sounds more natural to me, ih-RAK; and the one that grates on me and makes me (probably usually unfairly) think that the speaker is the kind of person who was talking about bombing Baghdad to black glass back in 2003, EYE-rack.
I don't recall hearing eye-Rack before 1990. I guess I heard eye-Ran some, but it's the same kind of marker.
It's likely that EYE-rack is just ih-RAK with the exaggerated Southern accent that most southern politicians put on. In other words, that with other ordinary southerners, they really have naturally pronounced it that way, without any intended policy insult?
It's tough to tease apart, when an accent perfectly coincides with a fucked up ideology.
Well, yeah. I hear EYE-rack from someone with a newscaster accent, I'm probably going to think you're a bad person. If I heard it from someone who sounded generally very Southern, though, I'd reserve judgment until they said something actually political.
It happens, but it sounds totally hilarious to hear a right-thinking liberal person with a thick Texan or southern accent. Similarly, there were a few math professors in grad school with heavy accents, and it was kind of hilarious to tune out the specifics, and just let this slow, drawling sentence of heavy math vocabulary wash over you.
It happens, but it sounds totally hilarious to hear a right-thinking liberal person with a thick Texan or southern accent.
I find that incredibly charming -- that feeling that OMG, there are right-thinking, decent people out there in the world who aren't exactly like me. That's one of the things that makes me feel as if maybe everything's going to be okay and the world isn't going to come to an end.
(Conversely, I find New Yorkers who demographically should be reliable leftists and aren't sort of terrifying.)
I am not entirely sure, but I think my uncles and maybe my dad say EYE-rack. It's related to a kind of accent that also says someone plays the GIT-ar. I don't think they'd necessarily always put the stress on the first syllable of "guitar", but when it comes at certain places in a sentence it might come out that way for emphasis.
Here's an example of the accent, my grandfather telling stories. My oldest uncle talks pretty close to this, my dad and his other two brothers less so.
Yeah, that's an accent where EYE-rack would sound like a natural part of the accent, rather than a political choice.
Also, those stories are awesome.
I don't recall hearing eye-Rack before 1990. I guess I heard eye-Ran some
WOULD IT KILL YOU TO GIVE US THE CREDIT!!?
For whatever its worth, I think that most of the military guys at the gym say Eye-Rack. I say "uh rawk," I guess.
I just realized I have no idea what the actual Arabic pronounciation is, other than putting on a comic "Arab" accent and trying to say the word.
Generally it's super hilariously ridiculous when people go too far with imposing foreign pro invitations in English for foreign place names. Like the teacher in Beavis and Butthead who insists in saying "El SalvaDOR." You hear this in LA a lot where people from out of town who took high school Spanish laboriously pronounce places with "correct" Spanish accents that actual Spanish speakers in East LA have long since anglicized (eg it's San Peedro, not Pedro).
"Pro invitations" should be "pronounciations" of course. Goddamn phone.
And "insists on"'of course. Argghhhh
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Holy shit, glib left-of-center contrarian blogging must pay better than I thought.
It was only $1.175M . Looks like somebody bought the place for $.985M in 2011, split it in two, and just sold the pieces for $1.175M and $1.35M. Presumably they spent a little money fixing things up but still flipping DC real estate appears to pay better than I would have thought.
I was not thrilled to see that the property taxes (in 2008) were just $4135.46 well under what I am currently paying.
Yeah, what is with "eye-rack"? Is it of a kind with the Republican use of "Democrat" as an adjective?
Right, when I hear it always brings to mind George W. saying in that slow, wide-eyed way he had when he was playing at being serious.
But it was his use of the latter that really drove me wild. Actually not so much his use of it--what would you expect the demented little cipher to say--but that at the same time the Cokie Roberts' of the world would be lamenting the lack of civility and bipartisanship from the Dems, but the freaking President referring to the opposition with an insult and a schoolboy smirk was not worth comment.
Blume, those stories are great. So are the photos. Whoever put it together made a great gift for your family. Are you one of the littles in the group photo at 7.54?
I think Dan Rather briefly tried to get rid of the 'gate' suffix for Washington scandals, advancing I Ran Amok as a name for the thing.
164: I am! Fourth from the left in the top row, in the red and white frilly dress. The audio is from an oral history project my sister had to do in fourth grade. Very typical stories, my grandfather was quite the tall tale teller. We thought for years that the tape was lost, but then a cousin unearthed it a little over a year ago and digitized it. This was right around the time I was on a photo scanning tear, so we combined the two into the slideshow for the family for Christmas.
the one I learned originally and that still sounds more natural to me, ih-RAK
That's actually the one closest to the Arabic (though your ee-RAHK isn't too bad considering) which contains two consonants completely alien to English. And that first vowel is short and certainly not a diphthong.
Really? My homemade phonetic spelling may be confusing it, but the big difference between how they sound to me is the final vowel, which is like cat in my natural pronunciation, but like cot in the pronunciation I think is correct. Cat is closer to the Arabic?
Stories and photos are awesome
167. I thought was you!
Or, I thought that was the girl who was most likely to be you. A resemblance in expression.
Very cool.
169 I think I was taking your "H" in ee-RAHK to be some kind of aspiration which is not present but I guess in your homemade pronunciation the closest would be a combination, so: ih-RAHK. Thee "R" colors the following vowel and makes it sound richer and more open than it would sound otherwise which is what I think you were getting at with that "H", so here it's "cot" instead of "cat"
159.last: We've done this here before (d2 concocted an insane rule that everything ought to be pronounced "properly" thus the flagship UC campus becomes BARK-lee and that fancy suburb of Detroit (excuse me, Day-twah) becomes Gruhss Pwahnt), but I agree with you. There's a Goethe St. in Chicago (right next to Schiller!) that's pronounced GO-thee (th like thick). Grad students were want to complain about how "stupid" that was and pronounce it all hoch-Deutschily. Which was stupid. (nosflow might do this? sorry, nosflow!)
149: unless I'm the only one, also a fourth, eye-RACK. Although at this point I've been thinking about it too much to be sure how I would pronounce it without thinking about it.
173: Barry, do you know whether Iranian pronunciation would work the same way? That is, an Iranian friend of mine has a name like Baz: this is not pronounced like "bat". I tend to render it "bahz" but my ear hears her using a vowel more like that in "cot". i.e. "boz".
I don't know -- the difference is really subtle, but I still keep hearing myself pronouncing her name not quite right(ly), and it bugs me a bit.
Actually, the same question could be transferred to the pronunciation of "Iran", I would think.
174 -- As long as English speakers keep saying "Leghorn" instead of "Livorno" all will be right with the world.
177. Do they still, except when discussing chickens? I think that's a lost cause.
I suspect I sometimes say "the" with a schwa before another vowel, but more often I will elide the schwa into the next word: "th(uh)apple", when speaking quickly. I do perceive it as correct to make it a long vowel in that position, but I'd only be careful about it in more formal speech.
All is not right with the world, Chris Y.
179: You might be forgiven as long as you don't do what I just heard a young woman on NPR do, saying that so-and-so is "a economist". This was not pronounced "uh economist" but "ay economist", with a long "a", which is somehow even worse. I have a feeling she took speech/enunciation lessons at some point in order to be a public speaker, for the radio job.
176 Persian has a marked difference in the way long "a" and short "a" are pronounced that is not colored by preceding consonants so your friend Baz has a long "a" in there; and yeah, it's more like "cot" than "cat" ("cat" would be the short "a"). Most transliteration systems represent the long vowels with a macron so it would be "Bāz".
176 I'm remembering now that when I first studied Persian so very many years ago it took me about two weeks to even really hear and then consistently produce the difference between the two vowels and I'm usually very picking up that sort of thing.
181 for some reason reminds me of a guy I knew in grad school who I guess thought the voicing of stops between vowels was somehow a sign of poor enunciation (e. g., thought "little" should be "lit-til" rather than "lid-dil" like normal people), and that was bad enough but he overextended this "correction" to the point that he'd say things like "ThucyTiTies". Gah.
I will now never think of Thucydides in quite the same way.
Of course Brits don't voice stops between vowels at all. "Lid-dil" is a supermarket to me.
184: Still better than those Thoo-KID-ides people.
189: well I did say normal people.
I'm going to start calling Firenze Floor-ayn-chay.
We don't just voice those, remember, we flap them.
I find New Yorkers who demographically should be reliable leftists and aren't sort of terrifying.
The Marin/Boulder/Big Island version have hippie trappings and soft voices and hten explain that everyone suffering chose that in a previous life, you know, and it's really growthful. I haven't yet been in a good position to say "And they should be content in the station to which their God has called them", but am itching to.
I had a book, "The Beastly Book of Mispronunciations" which was a list of all of the words most commonly heard in their mispronunciation (e.g. flaccid as flass-id, whereas it should be flakk-id.) The person with social skills in me realized correcting anyone's pronunciation on these words would be a pedantic, twerp-like thing to do, and then the sociolinguist in me realized that if, 99% of the population pronounces a word a certain way, then that is the "correct" pronunciation.
But anyways, I still mostly use whom in speech, but I think pulling it off depends on how natural it seems. Most people think I am not a twerp but a non-native English speaker, so that is ok socially, if sometimes a little awkward. Of course, since the who/whom distinction is no longer necessary for meaning parsing, and is losing significance as a social marker, it will disappear from English fairly quickly. What drives me crazy is people who use possessive for plural, which seems to be going on everywhere. (Buy our plum's). I'm worried this might be the next language shift in English.
184
There's a great paper written on social perceptions of people who aspirate intervocalic Ts, I'm too lazy to look up the citation but you could find it easily through google scholar.
Huh. I always pronounced it 'flaxid', and the online dictionary supports me.
This was not pronounced "uh economist" but "ay economist", with a long "a"
They both sound more wrong than "an economist".
197: Right, that was the unstated point of the comment. Or maybe yours is a double secret reverse Standpipe
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My five-year-old daughter is all about this song off the last NOFX album since we heard it on the satellite radio, and I just blew my mind when I looked it up and realized they've been a band for 30 years now.
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199: Hmm, I knew once. I dunno, maybe it's explained somewhere in the archives.
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I saw the Specials on Saturday. I have wanted to see them since I got their first album 1983. They have always been broken up as far as I knew about them.
