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Readers who need explanations of any of the abbreviations used may find them at Section 1 of the Home Page.
| 22/09/2010 | The Pn of the word ROOM | #300 |
| 21/09/2010 | More Phantom Wyns | #299 |
| 20/09/2010 | That'll teach you | #298 |
| 18/09/2010 | The Institutional Term RP | #297 |
| 17/09/2010 | Some Phantom Wyns and Yods | #296 |
| 07/09/2010 | EFL Phonetics at Singapore | #295 |
| 05/09/2010 | Barbados | #294 |
| 05/08/2010 | Transcription Exercise Solution | #293 |
| 04/08/2010 | Bits of Linguistic Jokery | #292 |
| 03/08/2010 | A New Transcription Exercise | #291 |
Blog 300 | The 22nd of September 2010 |
On the matter of the GB (General British) pn (pronunciation) of the word room which John Wells has discussed in his phonetic blog today I’d like to add the following.
In Daniel Jones’s time his EPD (English Pronouncing Dictionary) from 1917 to 1956 always gave priority to the form /rʊm/ with /ruːm/ only given as a variant. In 1937 he first added the note “The use of the variant ruːm appears to be very much on the increase”. (He withdrew the ‘very’ in 1956). When Gimson took it over he left it like that in 1963 but put /ruːm/ first from 1972.
In OED1 (the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary) in 1909 Murray gave only /uː/ as had John Walker in his Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (1791 revised to 1845 and later) which Murray wdve known well. In 1885 in his Elementarbuch des Gesprochenen Englisch
Henry Sweet used /rʊm/. OED2 in 1989 added the variant /rʊm/; OED3 at
September 2010 maintained that /uː, ʊ/ order as one wdve expected from
seeing it in the ODP (Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation) of 2001. Currently the Wells LPD (Longman Pronunciation Dictionary) and Roach et al in EPD 2006 also agree on giving /uː/ first.
At bedroom in OED1 in 1887 Murray gave only /uː/. OED2 likewise gave only /uː/ for it. For bedroom
Jones only ever gave /ʊ/. Gimson gave /bedrʊm/ first. So does EPD2006
but not LPD. I can’t remember ever hearing for ‘roomy’ anything but
/ruːmi/ even from people who usually say /rʊm/ but it isnt a very
common word. I believe /rʊm/ is the Queen’s usual version and has been
for many but not all members of the Royal Family in the past at least.
It’s my general impression that the minority /ʊ/ form is rather more
favoured in the southeast especially London than elsewhere.
Currently it’s to be he'rd eg from eg David Cameron and David Miliband.
Growing up in (monoglot non-Welsh-speaking) Cardiff I perceived
/rʊm/ as completely alien. I never remember hearing it from anyone else
from South Wales. However, any other form than /blʊmɪn/ for ‘blooming’
(as the euphemism for the nauty word ‘bloody’) seems quite alien to me.
I suspect that the form “/blʊmzbri/” Wells quoted from a correspondent
cd be a hyper-adaptation to a more fashionable style.
As far as compounds like bedroom
are concerned, I find it surprising that no lexicographer seems to be
aware that large numbers of them (OED lists over 700) are widely
pronounced with schwa ie as /bedrəm/ or even as /bedrm̩/ with a
syllabic /m/. When I say this I’m not only thinking of the increasing
numbers of mainly younger GB speakers that make little or no
distinction between their /ʊ/ and /ə/.
Blog 299 | The 21st of September 2010 |
Tami Date has now asked this question further to our recent discussion at Blog 296.
“How about 'cooperate' and 'go on'? Don't some native speakers (mainly Americans?) pronounce them with a linking wyn?” Of
course he’s right that some speakers occasionally may utter “Go on!” in
a way that from motives of extreme emphasis and/or expressiveness cause
it to be changed from its normal lexical type of articulation. On such
an occasion one may wish to transcribe the result non-phonemically as
[`gəʊ ‶wɒn] with stretching distortion that cou’d express for example
intense impatience. However, that must happen on only the very tiniest
fraction of the number of times the expression occurs. And I very much
dou’t that Americans do this any more offen than do British people of
equivalent social backgrounds etc.
Such an “epenthetic” [w] (I prefer to avoid the term "intrusive" which
might be misconstrued as indicating a value judgment; and "linking"
seems more suitable for contexts where the sound isnt paralinguistic)
could conceivably occur in the same kind of circumstances in saying the
word “co-operate”. Tho that word seems to me to be much less likely to
crop up in emotive contexts. However, it’s an item that can and has
developt a phonemic and not merely paralinguistic wyn for some
speakers. The word in merely highly fluent or rapid enunciation may
have its /əʊ/ so reduced in articulation as to convert the first two
syllables into a single one so that we get /kwɒp`reɪʃn/. Besides that,
mainly in demotic speech, I’ve offen he’rd the word in reference to the
British organisation entitled the Co-Operative Wholesale Society
reduced by some speakers saying “the Co-Op”. It’s then most usually
pronounced /`kəʊɒp/ but also may be reduced to the /kwɒp/ and even by
some others — more rarely and definitely demotically — to the /kɒp/. (I
noted the last two of these in my 1964 MS book Glamorgan Spoken English.) Wyn of course is one of the five English phonemes (/l, r, j, w & h/) which most frequently suffer elision.
Incidentally the word “co-operation” frequently appears to become
affected by GB speakers such as media newsreaders (including Chris
Aldridge & Neil Sleat current BBC Radio 4 newsreaders and Nick
Robinson BBC Political Editor) — not merely
unsophisticated people — on roughly half the occasions on which I hear
it by the word “corporation” with the result that it is very offen
indeed pronounced /kəʊˈɔːpəˎreɪʃn/ and also sometimes /ˈkəʊɔːpəˎreɪʃn/
and /ˈkwɔːpəˎreɪʃn/ and also even /ˈkɔːpəˎreɪʃn/ so that in that
extreme case it becomes exactly homophonous with the quite different
word “corporation”. I know of no record of any such pronunciations by
any lexicographer — not even to warn readers that people who notice
them so pronounced are very likely to regard them as “incorrect”. Of
course it’s impossible to know whether that last form is simply a
misprision, a confusing of one word with the other, rather than a
phonetic development but it’s certainly credible that for many it may
be the latter.
Blog 298 | The 20th of September 2010 |
David Deterding’s blog at the 24th of August went something like this:
“My daughter lives in Australia.
When I asked her about the recent election, she told me that she had
had trouble voting, maybe because she had only registered during the
last hour of the last day of the registration period. In response I
said to her, "That'll teach you to leave things till the last moment."
So why do we say "That'll teach
you to ...." when what we mean is exactly the opposite. What I really
meant was: That will give you a good lesson NOT to leave things to the
last moment. And how come people understand a sentence like the one I
used without batting an eyelid, and usually without noticing that there
might be something peculiar about it?” Those questions he asked
make perfectly good sense and he was absolutely right to suggest that
there was nothing at all unusual about the way he phrased his remark.
I’ve actually only just noticed this blog of his but here’s what I've
commented to him about it. I shd say that mainly two features account
for this strange-seeming usage. One is the choice of language and the
other is, given that choice, the pretty equally predictable choice of
prosody. In the first place, the type of phrasing of the words `That’ll teach you to leave things till the lastˏmoment
is overwhelmingly offen used to introduce a reference to something the
speaker disapproved of. If anyone were to say it not as I’ve indicated
but with an ordinary statement intonation such as the matter-of-fact ˈThat’ll ˈteach you | to ˈleave things | till the ˈlast ˎmoment it’d sound crushingly unsympathetic.
Next the intonation pattern most likely to be selected wd almost
certainly begin with the first word as the only one accented and spoken
on a necessarily rather emphatic high-to-low falling tone. The rest of
the pattern wd equally probably be simply a low-level tail to that
tone. If it had begun with a low fall it wdve tended to sound too
gloomy or even bad-tempered (which he no dout wd have too much
affection for her to permit himself). The unvaryingly low level
syllables of that tail wd certainly need to have a limited rise at the
end to avoid a really far too disanimated effect. The end result of all
that is that any negative particle like "not" is going to be quite
superfluous because its absence wd be so unlikely to make any
difference to the overall impression. And that’s how I think he came to
leave it out and how many more of us wd be likely to do the same sort
of thing.
Blog 297 | The 18th of September 2010 |
“Kraut” in his “English Phonetics Blog” has remarked that the “draft revision of March 2010 OED online lists Edward Lluyd as the first coiner of the term 'received pronunciation' ”.
I’m not sure that “coiner” is the most appropriate term to apply to the
earliest uses of the phrase that OED quotes which are:
?1710 tr. E. Lluyd Glossography
Pref. 4 Neither would it be commendable..to continue any Orthography
very disagreeable to the received Pronunciation of the Words.
and
1774 J. WALKER Gen. Idea Pronouncing Dict. 17 Let them try if they can dwell on the radical sounds of the a, e, o, and y, in these words without departing from the common and received pronunciation.
I think it was reasonable that OED shdve quoted these early occurrences
of the collocation but I take them to be merely precursors to rather
than examples of an institutionalised usage which is how one
categorises “Received Pronunciation”.
I shd say the same of their further quotations tho praps less emphatic’ly:
1869 A. J. ELLIS On Early Eng. Pronunc. I. I. 13 The alphabet required for writing the theoretically received pronunciation of literary English.
1889 A. J. ELLIS On Early Eng. Pronunc. V. v. 6 Received pronunciation, or that of pronouncing dictionaries and educated people.
It doesnt seem to me that in these Ellis was setting out to establish
an institutional term but only that he’s employing a preferred
adjective selected from half a dozen or more approximately suitable
alternatives. Unlike Wyld and Jones he never capitalised the phrase
giving even its abbreviation as just “rp”. This feeling is confirmed
for me by a remark of his I quoted at ¶5 of Section 7 Item 3 on this
website from his 1877 Pronunciation for Singers. There he referred to
... the vowels recognised in the
“received”, “refined”, “literary”, “educated”, “cultivated”, or rather
“central” pronunciation of any language, as distinct from the “local”.
In On Early English Pronunciation (1869 p.23) he contrasted his day when one could “recognise a received pronunciation all over the country” with earlier periods when one could not so fittingly refer to such a “general English pronunciation” where we see “general” used as another synonym.
When we come to Wyld and Jones we see regular capitalisation eg
1913 H. C. WYLD in Mod. Lang. Teaching 9 261/2 When he speaks of Standard English, he is, I believe, referring to what I now call Received Standard.
Daniel Jones, in the reprinted revised edition of 1926 of his English Pronouncing Dictionary, sed apologetically and for the first time, in its Revised Introduction at p. viii ‘... I call it “Received Pronunciation” (abbreviation RP), for want of a better term’ adding lamely ‘I
wish it to be understood, however, RP means merely “widely understood
pronunciation” and that I do not hold it up as a standard which
everyone is recommended to adopt.’ He had in fact already been identifying it a couple of paragraphs previously with statements including “The
pronunciation represented in this book is that most usually heard in
everyday speech in the families of Southern English persons who have
been educated at the great public boarding-schools.”
Blog 296 | The 17th of September 2010 |
In the course of a series of discussions that have been going on
about whether “linking” yods and wyns are (to be recognised as) present
in certain words, that old frend of this blog Tami Date came up with
the following:
“Perhaps this is a silly
question, but is pronouncing 'genuine' as 'genu-wine' too casual? I
think I heard it in conversations a few times. Or for that matter, in
the old movie The African Queen I remember Humphrey Bogart sounding like "hero-wine" for "heroine" ”.
If one looks the word up in the online Webster one finds gen·u·ine adj \ˈjen-yə-wən, -(ˌ)win \. The American entry in ODP (the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation), by contrast with the British one, also uses a transcription with a wyn (ie a /w/) for its American entries. If this is me'nt to be interpreted as not just a mere transcriptional preference but as suggesting that the ordinary British and American versions of the word clearly diverge in the speaker’s choice of phonemes at that point then I think it’s misleading. As regards representations in transcriptions with a wyn, if such a word is spoken with normal fluency it seems to me pointless to claim that it’s being sed with or without a wyn because contrast between the two versions is completely neutralised. (The same wd go for the British possibility /`ʤenjəʊɪn/ if anyone were to choose to transcribe it that way). In my opinion, only by distorting the word cd anyone make it correspond closely to one as opposed to any another of these transcriptions. So Tami’s words "too casual" wd be less appropriate perhaps than "too unusual". As far I can remember Bogart’s manner of articulation in The African Queen, I suspect it was from time to time a little other than absolutely ordinary.
Tami also askt "How about
'Indian' and 'Pontiac'? In Japanese, we often say 'daiyamondo' for
'diamond', 'taiya' for 'tire/tyre', 'piyano' for 'piano', etc".
Of the three major British pronouncing dictionaries LPD uses its
compression "loop" sign thus /`ɪndiˬən/ to indicate both
possibilities (equally) for Indian ie either /`ɪndiən/ or /`ɪndjən/ perfectly properly in my view. For Pontiac
it gives only /`pɒnt i ӕk/ and the rhythmic'ly corresponding American
equivalent, again reasonably because the presence of the distinctly
strong vowel /ӕ/ of the last syllable usually militates agenst
reduction of the medial vowel /i/ to a yod (ie "semivowel" approximant
/j/) the use of which wd prob'bly give the impression of a clumsily
hurried articulation. The Cambridge EPD (English Pronouncing Dictionary)
elects quite reasonably not to record such a fairly obviously possible
compression. (The use for the ODP British entry at both words of /ɪ/
inste'd of /i/ for the medial vowel, in contrast with the practice of
the others who’ve adopted the symbol /i/ elsewhere, has no apparent
significance). Any pronunciation of either diamond or tire which undou'tedly justified transcription with a yod after the /aɪ/ wd certainly sound unusual. As to piano (ie the keyboard instrument) the online Webster only gives \ pē-ˈa-(ˌ)nō..\ with
three syllables which, for such a common word, rather taxes one’s
credulity. The ODP American entry takes the same line but LPD and EPD
both very properly list a yod variant. No-one lists a version with a
yod between two vowels.
Blog 295 | The 7th of September 2010 |
Blog 294 | The 5th of September 2010 |
John Wells wonder’d recently (24 Aug) why “the name of the island, bɑːˈbeɪdɒs
(or the like), is usually pronounced in BrE with a short vowel and
voiceless fricative in the final syllable. In comparable words such as tornado, desperado, avocado, torpedo we pluralize in the usual way with z and retain long əʊ”.
There’s no dou't that originally the name was Portuguese and plural. Murray in the OED in 1885 sed the word is “believed to be derived from Pg. las barbadas ‘bearded,’ epithet applied by the Portuguese to the Indian fig-trees growing there; whence formerly ‘the Barbadoes’ ”. That it shd be elliptical for ‘the island of bearded fig-trees’ (figueiras barbadas) is I suppose credible but it’s uncomfortably puzzling that it wasnt known as ‘barbadas’.
That conundrum will probably never be solved to everyone’s
satisfaction. There seems to be no evidence of spellings in English
other than the surviving Barbados and that formerly common variant Barbadoes, a form which clearly indicates recognition of the word as plural.
The island was from the early seventeenth century, as it still is,
English-speaking. All its placenames appear to be English. It seems it
was uninhabited when the first English-speaking settlers arrived around
1625 with the literate among them of course knowing that it already had
a name spelt “barbados”. It’s perfectly possible that divergency in the interpretation of that final s was
present from the beginning. What’s certain is that in “anglicising” the
word they changed its strest vowel to match native words comparably
spelt — exactly as we did with tornado, (and did originally with armada, desperado etc) but dont maintain doing with the mainly remodelled loans like aficionado, amontillado, avocado, bravado etc. Cf §3.7.III.4 on this site.
So it even now just about has, and for a long time has had, rival pns which treat the
ending as either the plural it historic'ly was or as a singular noun
ending -os. This latter
practice might’ve been favoured by some of the more educated settlers
who wd’ve been at home with singular words ending with the spelling -os.
Besides the Greek placenames like the ones instanced by Jongseong they
and other literates might well have been familiar with Greek words like bathos, chaos, cosmos, Eros, ethos, pathos
etc with their pns ending /-ɒs/. The classical languages wd’ve been
much more familiar to them than the Iberian ones. The island group to
which Barbados belongs received its English name’s now predominant pn
from similar historic'ly unsuitable (Ancient) Greek influence viz
/ӕn`tɪliːz/ ie Antilles. The same kind of tendency is seen in what we’ve done to eg Andes, Averroes, Cervantes and (particularly in the UK) Los Angeles. It can also be seen acting on Mercedes and even in relatively unborrowed German words like Moscheles and Pilates (even possibly also on the Indian Ganges).
It shows in the common tradition (formerly more widely and currently
by the minority of GB speakers who still preserve /-ɪz/ in -ies plurals of other words) of saying Indies as if it were written *Indes (cf on this site §3.2.13).
It even rather bizarrely must account for the fact that at least one
well-known British family who’ve inherited the name most offen spelt Figgis in the less appropriate spelling Figes pronounce their name as /`faɪʤiːz/.
LPD3 and EPD17 currently agree completely in recording only the
non-plurals
/-dɒs, -dəs/ and GA /-doʊs/ (which is what we might expect rather than
/-dɑːs/) only. LPD1&2 had had a /-dəʊz/ variant. Jones had
had only /-doʊz/ from 1917 until he added the /-dɒs/ variant in 1956.
ODP gives /-dəs/ and secondly /-dɒs/ with GA similarly
/-dəs/ alternantly /-doʊs/. Webster (online) gives first place to GA
/-doʊs/ and /-dəs & -doʊz/ as alternants. So the treatment as
plural seems just about to only survive as a GA subvariant. American Heritage Dictionary
offers
/-doʊs, -doʊz & -dəs/. Howjsay
sez /-dɒs/. OED2 of 1989 added
/-dɒs/ after Murray’s original sole /-doʊz/ which last I like best and
intend to go on using. I’ve gone past minding being old-fashioned. But
it’s been, as so offen, victory to the spelling.
Blog 293 | The 5th of August 2010 |
Remember that many alternatives are possible. Only ones are shown
here that are approximately as common as the alternative not given even
tho the one not used might well be what the spelling suggests.
1. ˈHow many had he `had? — One over the `eight, I should ˏthink.
a. ˈhaʊ meni əd i `had? — wᴧn əʊvə ði `eɪt aɪ ʃd ˏθɪŋk.
2. What am I `wanted for? — You ˈare not wanted at `all. ˈNeither am `I.
a. wɒt əm aɪ `wɒntɪd fɔː? — ju ˈɑːnt wɒntɪd ə`tɔːl. ˈnaɪðər əm `aɪ.
3. `Billy will ˏgo with you. — Billy is going `nowhere. `Not to`ˏnight.
a. `bɪli l ˏgəʊ wɪð ju. — bɪli z gəʊɪŋ `nəʊweə. `nɒt tə`ˏnaɪt.
4. It would be `nice if it would stop `ˏraining,| `would not it?
a. ɪt əd bi `naɪs ɪf ɪt əd stɒp `ˏreɪnɪŋ, `wʊdn(t) ɪt?
5. There is ˈnothing `for it. We will ˈhave to `pay the fine. — How `can we?
a. ðeəz ˈnᴧθɪŋ `fɔːr ɪt. wil ˈhav tə `peɪ ðə faɪn. — haʊ `kan wi.
6. ˈThat is ˏkind of you. — ˈFar `from it. — `No. It ˈreally `is `very kind.
a. ˈðӕts ˏkaɪnd əv ju. — ˈfɑː `frɒm ɪt. — `nəʊ. ɪt ˈrɪəli `ɪz `veri kaɪnd.
7. Has he `had his `hair ˏcut? — Of `course he has, ˏsilly! `Long ago.
a. (h)əz i `hӕd ɪz `heə ˏkᴧt? — əv `kɔːs i haz, ˏsɪli! `lɒŋ əgəʊ.
8. England and `ˏDwales? ˈNever `heard of ˏthose! What `are “dwales”?
a. ɪŋglənd ən `ˏdweɪlz? ˈnevə `hɜːd əv ˏðəʊz! wɒt `ɑː dweɪlz?
9. Where `is he at this ˎmoment? — At the ˈhospital A and `E department.
a. weər `ɪz i ət ðɪs ˎməʊmənt? — ət ðə ˈhɒspɪdl eɪ ən `iː dɪpɑːpmənt.
10. They must ˈtry them them`selves, then. — They had ˈbetter `ˏnot.
a. ðeɪ məs ˈtraɪ ðm ðm`selvz, ðen. — ðeɪd ˈbetə `ˏnɒt.
11. ˈDid they ˈsay they were Joe and `ˏAnn | or Jo and `Dan?
a. ˈdɪd ðeɪ ˈseɪ ðeɪ wə ʤəʊ ən `ˏӕn | ɔː ʤəʊ ən `dan?
12. `I am going to the ˏball as Na`poleon. ˈWho are `you going as?
a. `aɪm gəʊɪŋ tə ðə ˏbɔːl əz nə`pəʊliən. ˈhuː ə `juː gəʊɪŋ az?
13. Does ˈthis ˈtrain |ˈstop at ˈall ˏstations. — It ˈdoes not stop at `all.
a. dz ˈðɪs ˈtreɪn | ˈstɒp ət ˈɔːl ˏsteɪʃnz? — ɪt ˈdᴧzn stɒp ə`tɔːl.
14. ˈWhy is a ˈshort ˈnegro| like a `white man? — Because he’s ˈnot a tall `black.
a. ˈwaɪ ɪz ə ˈʃɔːt ˈniːgrəʊ | laɪk ə `waɪt man? — bɪkɒz iz ˈnɒt əˈtɔːl `blak.
15. At the ˈvillage ˏchurch | they ate ˈDutch ˏcheeses | and ˈdrank `orange juice.
a. ət ðə ˈvɪlɪʤ ˏʧɜːʧ | ðeɪ et ˈdᴧʧ ˏʧiːzɪz | ən ˈdraŋk `ɒrɪnʤ ʤuːs.
16. We had some ˈScottish ˏbeef |and some ˈred ˏwine | and some `cheese or other.
a. wi had sm ˈskɒtɪʃ ˏbiːf | n sm ˈred ˏwaɪn | an sᴧm `ʧiːz ɔːr ᴧðə.
17. ˈFather’s bringing home some `missionary for ˏdinner. — `That will be ˏnice.
a. ˈfɑːðəz brɪŋɪŋ həʊm sᴧm `mɪʃnri fə ˏdɪnə. — `ðat l bi ˏnaɪs.
18. She’s giving him a `ˏpainting | that she will have ˈdone by ˎChristmas.
a. ʃiz gɪvɪŋ ɪm ə `ˏpeɪntɪŋ | ðət ʃil əv ˈdᴧn baɪ ˎkrɪsməs.
19. He’s going to `give them to me, ˏis not he? ˈTell him his `father said to.
a. hiz gənə `gɪv ðm tuː mi, ˏɪzn i? ˈtel ɪm ɪz `fɑːðə sed tu.
20. We are ˈon our `own from here ˏon, ˏare not we? `Not that `that ˏmatters.
a. wɪər ˈɒn ɑːr `əʊn frm hɪər ˏɒn, ˏɑːnt wi? `nɒt ðət `ðat ˏmatəz.
21. I was `wondering what it was that was ˏkeeping them. — ˈSo was `I.
a. aɪ wz `wᴧndrɪŋ wɒt ɪt wɒz ðət wz ˏkiːpɪŋ ðm. — ˈsəʊ wəz `aɪ.
22. We `lost our `ˏway | and got ourselves `ˏterribly `muddy. — ˈSo were `we.
a. wi `lɒst ɑː `ˏweɪ | ən gɒt ɑːselvz `ˏterəbli `mᴧdi. — ˈsəʊ wə `wiː.
23. `If you `ˏwant some| `take some. They are `perfectly `ˏwholesome.
a. `ɪf ju `wɒnt sᴧm, `teɪk sᴧm. ðeə `pɜːfɪkli `ˏhəʊlsm.
24. We ˈsaw him in his `house. He always has his `ˏhands | in his `pockets.
a. wi ˈsɔː ɪm ɪn ɪz `haʊs. i ɔːwɪz haz ɪz `ˏhanz | ɪn ɪz `pɒkɪts.
25. ˈWill you ˈlet us have a `party, ˏplease? — ˈLet us ˈsee what `Father says.
a. ˈwl ju ˈlet əs hav ə `pɑːti, ˏpliːz? — ˈlets ˈsiː wɒt `fɑːðə sez.
Blog 292 | The 4th of August 2010 |
Still thinking about things that might entertain my EAL students while
having some sort of relevance to their studies, the other day I
remembered that after years of wondering what to call certain jokey
items I’m rather fond of I’d finally hit on a really satisfying term. I
had a vague idea that I’d come across a collection of them called
‘Nonsense Library’ but I’ve never been able to trace it — if I didnt
dream it up in the first place. Anyway it was too imprecise because any
sort of title was involved not just those of books. The term I was
satisfied with with was “Authorship Puns”.
Best way to explain is to quote some. One or two are very well known, I
imagine, and some others I’ve concocted. I’ve been thinking for years
of writing to the correspondence editors of some newspaper or other
with an appeal for more to add to my collection. Another thing that
reminded me about them was John Wells’s quotations from “Mishearings” he found in his Guardian this week now that we’ve entered ‘the silly season’ — a term I can’t define better than the OED’s “the months of August and September, when newspapers supply the lack of real news by articles or discussions on trivial topics”. Here’s a few:
The Demand for Alcohol by Phyllis Glass
Woman of Property by Iona Mansion
The Troubles of Old Age by Gerry Attrick
Telephone Your Man by Gib McCall
Rough Terrain by Antony Rhodes
What Society Needs by Laura Norder
Shorter Skirts by Seymour Legge
Dog’s Delight by Nora Bone
Pussy’s Revenge by Claud Hands
How He Got So Fat by Henrietta Lott
One Minute to Get the Train by Willie Makitt
EAL students may enjoy spotting the puns and advanced ones can try
specifying the phonetic processes of extreme colloquialism some of them
display by their elisions, assimilations, weakenings and consonantal
insertions. These are of course usually the preoccupations of
schoolchildren. So are riddles and such things as “Knock-Knocks”
like the following which praps lend themselves rather less to flights
of imagination than authorship puns. They’re all of course preceded by Knock, knock! – Who’s there?
Alex — Alex who? — Alex Plain-Layter
Fido — Fido who? — Fido wanna tell you I shan’t.
Howard — Howard who? — Howard Eyno.
Ammonia — Ammonia who? — Ammonia Gatecrasher.
Ivan — Ivan Who? — I’ve an idea I’m not welcome.
I wonder how widespre'd such things are around the rest of the world
besides in England. Any information on that topic and especially
further examples of them wd be gratefully received.
Blog 291 | The 3rd of August 2010 |