Conference thebay::joyoflex

    	I have frequently heard TECO pronounced as tee-co, but I believe
    the origin is an abbreviation of Text Corrector. Similarly I have heard
    DECUS pronounced dee-cus, but I think the pronunciation is Digital
    Eeequipment in some dialects, so maybe that is reasonable. The "cus" is
    wrong anyway. From "users' society" the "u" should be long.
    
    	Can any Unix afficionado tell us how they pronounce "vi" (the
    editor) and why, because I have heard several versions of that.

re .1

TECO?  So how do you pronounce EKHKEX$$ ?   I've heard it pronounced
"eck-heck-ecks-esk-esk".  Say *that* five times fast!

Dave C.

    Lots of ordinary words change their accent and pronunciation even
    when ordinary prefixes or suffixes are added.  "Pronunciation"
    even has its spelling changed.  So why shouldn't it happen to
    abbrevs?
    
    This former Unix afficionado and present Unix worker used to
    pronounce "vi" as vee-eye, but now says vie.

    TECO (pronounced tee'co) is an acronym for Text Editor and COrrector.
    It was written by Dan Murphy on a PDP-1 at MIT circa 1961. About 1964
    or 1965 it was translated to the PDP-6 by Bob Clemens, who now works at
    BBN in Cambridge.  From the -6, it was propagated to the -11 (by Stan
    Rabinowitz?) and who knows from there.

    Since Dan works in ZK, you can go to him and check on the
    pronunciation.

    TECO (pronounced tee'co) is an acronym for Text Editor and COrrector.
                                               ----
                                               Tape    [paper tape]

    	re: .4
    Since all the vowels taken from "text editor and corrector" are
    pronounced short in their original form shouldn't the abbreviation
    maintain the pronunciation?
    
    	Maybe the original author does have a right to decide its
    pronunciation, but the author of .2 is the only person in this note
    that I am fairly sure is located within 1000 miles of ZK.

    Well, there's abbreviations and then there's abbreviations.  TECO,
    DECUS and others are (mostly) acronyms.  I would think that rules for
    acronym-pronunciation are rather informal - if Dan Murphy says it's
    TEE-co, fine.  (I'm in ZK, too, but I *think* Dan and Dave Cantor are
    on the same floor.  I don't know Dan except as a Spit Brook Minstrel
    which is a further tangent.  Re: .previous  -  my node finder locates
    SSDEVO in Colorado Springs.)

    My examples in .0 - LIB$ and accvio - are in the truncation category of
    abbreviations.  I would think that a truncation-abbreviation would
    retain its original pronunciation when appended or prepended to
    another.  Are there any other examples of truncation-abbreviations
    which change pronunciations?

    Pronunciation in most languages, English included, is influenced
    by what comes before and after it.  Any given word's pronunciation
    can change in response to adding a prefix or suffix, using it as a
    different tense or part of speech (I read today, I read
    yesterday), by analogy with other similar words, when a particular
    regional pronunciation pushes out the others, when it's imported
    or exported into another language, and dozens of other reasons. 
    
    The origin of the word or phrase usually has very little to do
    with it.  As soon as a word is considered part of the everyday
    vocabulary, people start pronouncing them as if they were ordinary
    words in that language.  This is generally true across all
    languages and dialects.  
    
    When people start pronouncing acronyms as other than a series of
    letters, they usually (in absence of other cues such as local
    usage) apply whatever principles of pronunciation would apply to
    it if it were an ordinary word.  For instance, in US English, a
    vowel before a single consonant is most often long, hence Teeco
    rather than Tecco. Likewise Deecus. 
    
    --bonnie 

    �Pronunciation in most languages, English included, is influenced
    �by what comes before and after it.  
    
    This is a good point that people often don't take into account.
    And I'd emphasize the `and after it' part. What comes after it
    may well be nothing - I was interested, when I first had it pointed
    out to me, to notice that when people say `Fine' at the end of a
    conversation the noise that comes out is more like `Fime'.
    
    So, when Dave suggests (in .6) that the O in TECO should take the
    (short) sound of `corrector', he's ignoring the fact that few
    (if any? I can't think of any examples) English words _end_ in
    a short O.  Even a borrowed word like `macho', which "should" end
    in a short(er) vowel (different, anyway, from the traditional
    English [eughau] noise) gets the good old English O - in British
    English, that is.
    
    b

    >Are there any other examples of truncation-abbreviations which change
    >pronunciations?
    
    
    Modem 	Modulator / De-modulator
    
    
    Pronounced:
    
    	Mode (as in apple pie ala mode) + Em (as in Auntie Em)
    
    Not Pronounced:
    
    	Mod (as in Moderator Monahan) + Deem (as in De-Moderator)

    Having attracted this personal attention, can I apply to be
    demoderated?  Or is that immoderated, or outmoderated? Could
    we legislate that all "o"s should be short as in Monahan?
    
    Come to that, is ODIXIE pronounced similarly to oddity or odious?

Modem isn't pronounced `mode-em'.  It's pronounced `moe-duhm'.

The UN*X editor vi is called vee-eye by knowledgeable UN*X users.
I imagine that it's called that because the very earliest papers on it
(e.g., An Introduction to Display Editing with Vi, by William Joy) said
that's the right pronunciation.

-d

    moe-DEM
    
    --bonnie

>The UN*X editor vi is called vee-eye by knowledgeable UN*X users.
                    --
                    was

Styles have changed during the last 15 years.

> Styles have changed during the last 15 years.

But not in ZK or at the OSF.  It's still vee-eye.  :-)

-d

    re: "lib" pronounced as "libb" or "libe"
    
    That was unclear with PDP-11 systems too.  Is the "LIB" in "SYSLIB" (or
    "anything-LIB") pronounced with a short or long "i"?  I had no idea
    when I first started working for DEC, but on ML5-5 the predominant
    pronunciation seemed to be "libe" so that was what I adopted, and
    that's what I favor by default.  So when I see "Xlib" I say "eks libe"
    rather than "eks libb" but I don't know if that's the pronunciation
    used by the cognoscenti.
    
    What about filetypes (filename extensions)?  How do you pronounce
    "EXE" or (harking back to the PDP-11 days) "TSK" or "SAV"?  For the
    latter two, on ML5-5 (that's where PDP-11 development was in those
    days) we said "task" and "save."  But a customer might say "savv"
    ("salve"?) for "SAV."
    
    Digressing from abbreviations to special characters, how do you
    pronounce "."?  "Dot" or "point"?  For me, it depends on context.
    If it's part of a file name, it's "dot."  If it's part of a version
    number, it's "point."  But I have heard "dot" in the latter context.
    
    --Simon
    

    	To confuse those interested in i18n, the French do not pronounce
    "." in numbers at all, but pronounce "," when it occurs as "point" with
    a French accent.
    
    	And how do you pronounce "i18n"?  I don't find it much easier to
    say "eye eighteen enn" than to say the full word, so in speech I only
    use the abbreviation as a joke. It is useful if you are typing to an
    audience that will understand it.
    
    	The "libe" model for LIB$ was why I suggested a short "e" in TECO,
    but nobody has ever claimed the English language is consistent, and not
    too many have claimed it should be made to be so.

>    	And how do you pronounce "i18n"?  
    
    For the Cantonese pronunciation, see note 813.23.
    
    "Eye eighteen enn" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but for those
    of us in that business, it comes easier with practice, particularly
    when it's our node name.  But "internationalization" is easy enough to
    say (though I have a tendency to trip my tongue over some of those
    syllables) that I agree that it should normally be pronounced as the
    English word for which "i18n" stands.
    
    By the same token, "L10N" should be pronounced as "localization" (or
    "localisation") -- except when it's in quotes, of course.  But it does
    look like it should be pronounced "lion."
    
    --Simon
    

>    ... it should be pronounced "lion."
    
    That reminds me of a Victor Borge joke, but never mind...
    
.18>   	The "libe" model for LIB$ was why I suggested a short "e" in TECO,
    
    I don't follow.  "TECO" is an acronym formed from "Tape Editor and
    COrrector" so the "T" and the "E" came from initials of two words.  A
    contraction of "text corrector" might have a short "e" but that's not
    the case here.  See Bonnie's last paragraph in .8.
    
    --Simon
    

    While "lib" as an abbreviation is pronounced with the vowel changed to
    a short "i" (but only for some people, I'm in the "libe" school),
    "char" is an abbreviation that has not only the vowel but also the
    initial consonant changed (again, for some people).
    
    Example: "wide character" becomes "wide tchar" and "wchar_t" is
    pronounced "dubblue tchar tee" (apparently the underscore is silent).
    
    --Simon
    

    >"wchar_t" is pronounced "dubblue tchar tee"
    
    Unfortunately most of the programmers of wchar_t things call it
    "double char t."  They pronounce the character "w" as "double."
    Ice cream cones and futon linens come in sizes S (single) and
    W (double).  Before I learned the "name" of this letter, someone
    had told me to put "minus double" on a command, and I had obeyed:
      % (whatever it was) -(whatever) -double
    and he said "No, the other one."  Huh?  He erased "double" and
    typed "w".  Sigh.

Arggh.   Saying "double" for the name of the letter W is even worse than
the mumbled name that's lots of people say:  "doub-a-you".   Folks,
that's pronounced "double-you" (or "double-ewe" if you prefer).   If you
just call it "double", then you can't properly describe how to spell
Mississippi, M-I-double-S-I-double-S-I-double-P-I.  It'll be
mistranscribed as MIWSIWSIWPI.  Arwgh.  And how would you say the call
sign of TV station WWOR?  Or radio station WWWW?

And what could a person mean if they really say "double-you"?  Could
that mean the two letters WU?  There's an ambiguity brewing.  We'll
have to start calling the letter U "single-you", or just "single" for
consistency.  Or maybe we'll call the two letters WU together
"triple".  (UW should be sufficiently rare that we'll agree to call
it "single-double".) 

Dave C.

	Ref: 888.23 

>>And what could a person mean if they really say "double-you"?  Could
>>that mean the two letters WU?  There's an ambiguity brewing.  We'll
>>have to start calling the letter U "single-you", or just "single" for
>>consistency.  

	An ambiguity is of course already present in the correct 
	usage.  Double-u could mean `w' or `uu'.  Luckily the 
	latter is rare in English, but try spelling certain Dutch 
	words in English!

	Jim

	Why do we say `double-u' anyway?  `W' is clearly `double-v'!

    Re:.24
>	Why do we say `double-u' anyway?  `W' is clearly `double-v'!
    
    
     As clearly demonstrated by the Danish. They miss the 'W' key on
    typevvriters, so my family name alvvays came out Steenvvinkel. Don't
    know if it's still true; this is 20+ years ago. Might have changed with
    increasing Europeanism. Oddly enough, there's a Steenwinkelsvej (=road) 
    in Copenhagen, correctly spelled with 'w'. They clearly know the
    letter, but it just might have been left off typewriters to enable
    letters like ae (how do you compose letters under DecWindows????) to be
    added.
    
                                                     - Rik -

    	The Welsh pronunciation of "w" as in words like "cwm" makes it
    clear that they regard it as a long vowel sound related to "u". How
    would the Danish pronounce "cvvm"? We should also remember that the
    Romans made no distinction between "u" and "v" in their writing, and
    that Latin inscriptions in churches often have "sanctvs".
    
    	If (as in Latin) "u" is indistinguisable from "v" then
    "double u" is indistinguishable from "double v", and the Welsh use it
    as a vowel then it is only those funny Scandinavian typewriters that
    have a problem. Mind you, I have often worried about vacuum. I think
    the English pronunciation is close to how a Welsh person would
    pronounce "vacwm" if that exists as a Welsh word, but it can be rather
    difficult to spell over the 'phone.

    I often hear vacuum pronounced as 'vak-jehm' or 'vak-juhm' instead of
    'vak-ju-ehm'. Close enough to the Welsh 'cwm' I think.
    Danes pronounce the letter 'V' as the German 'W', so 'cvvm' gets 'cwwm'
    or something like that. Don't know how a Welshman would tackle that
    one. 
    'CWWM' = 'Cee - quad-u - em'?
    
                                                        - Rik -

    Re: .18
    
    	"The 'libe' model for LIB$ was why I suggested a short 'e' in TECO,
    	but nobody has ever claimed the English language is consistent, and not
    	too many have claimed it should be made to be so."
    
    Thank God the French language doesn't change the pronunication of
    letters in acronyms such as CERN.
    
Lew Lasher

    �	An ambiguity is of course already present in the correct 
    �	usage.  Double-u could mean `w' or `uu'.  Luckily the 
    
    Not so. You'd spell VACUUM `vee-eh-see-double"ewe"[stressed]-em'.
    Stress often solves ambiguities in English.
    
    b

    I'd say "vee ay see you you em."  
    
    When I was taking linguistics classes in college, the English "w"
    was classed as a "semivowel" along with "l".  It's not a true
    consonant.  I don't know if that was based on usage grounds or
    pronunciation grounds (but that sentence ought to be marched out
    and shot on the parade ground).  
    
    "W" compounded with "h" at the beginning of a word (who, which) is
    actually pronounced "hw" as "hwo" or "hwich" -- which is the Old
    English spelling.  The "wi" in the middle function as a dipthong
    that's pronounced roughly "ooi".  
    
    In many parts of the midwest, a terminal "l" is pronounced "o".
    You used to hear a lot of ads on the radio for "radio" tires.  
    
    --bonnie

    	Odd that last bit ;-) The Bristol dialect adds an "l" to the end of
    every word that ends with a vowel. It is common to hear of a "cameral",
    and my mum was proud of having "Toyotal" car made in Japan. A
    midwesterner moving to Bristol might end up talking about "radiol"
    tyres, or would he refer to the town as "Bristoo"?

    So all the l's dropped in the midwest go to Bristol to find a new
    life.  I listened to myself pronounce "Bristol" to myself
    (fortunately the person in the next cube is out at a meeting) and
    I say it "Bristoe."  
    
    Bostonians drop a lot of r's when they pahk the cah, but they save
    them and put them at the ends of words ending in vowels, as in
    "I just bought a new ski parker."  
    
    I wonder where all the Cockney 'h's go?
    
    --bonnie

.0> The popular pronunciation of "LIB$" is lib-dol-lar (lib - short "i").

It's interesting to me that in all this discussion, there's been no
discussion of the pronunciation of the symbol "$".  I've never heard it
pronounced "dollar sign", but pronouncing it "dollar" never seems to create
an ambiguity, for example, someone spelling "lib$" as "libdollar".  I guess
it's primarily because people see in print, or on a monitor, "words"
containing "$", and VMS makes such generous use of "$", that everyone knows
that a spoken "dollar" means "$" in print or electronically.

Clay 

re .32

In 'Artford, 'Ereford and 'Ampshire, 'urricanes 'ardly HEVER 'appen...

    re .25
    To enter, for example, the � (ae) under DECwindows, use the <Compose
    Character> key as a modifier for the space bar. This combination
    should put you into compose mode, with the Compose LED lit (if you
    are using an LK201 variant). Then press the a, then the e. The
    <Compose Character> key is treated as <Alt> under DECwindows.

    Re .23
    
    >(UW should be sufficiently rare that we'll agree to call
    >it "single-double".)
    
    It's not rare, and it's pronounced "Waterloo."
    
    (Well, it seems to be rare in Digital.)

There are several in every gents or ladies in any Digital facility.

-d

    RE .34
    
>In 'Artford, 'Ereford and 'Ampshire, 'urricanes 'ardly HEVER 'appen...
    'Ertford surely ?
    
    (Hertfordshire, Herefordshire and Hampshire are English counties. That
    place in Connecticut is not likely to be the intended location).
    
    Andrew
    

    Re: .32

    >> Bostonians drop a lot of r's when they pahk the cah, but they save
    >> them and put them at the ends of words ending in vowels, as in "I
    >> just bought a new ski parker."  

    Almost.  The Dorchester version of Bostonese would pronounce it
    "pahker".  I think I used that exact word, and its Dorchester
    pronunciation, somewhere else in this conference.

	Re. 32

		The best example of this I ever heard was the name
		Sheila Wheeler -- pronounced, you guessed it, Sheiler
		Wheela

	Re. 33

		In the same vein, I've heard people say "under" for 
		the underscore.  Zipf's Law at work!

	Re. double-u

		Would you believe that this name goes back to only
		1840?!  What did people call it before?  Has anybody
		got an OED?

	Re. dropping h's, names of letters

		Where did we get the word "aitch" from?  My dictionary
		says "hache" from the French.  Well then, what appened to
		the aitch?  Oo dropped it?  Ardly a very likely place
		for this to appen, uh?

    �		Where did we get the word "aitch" from?  My dictionary
    �		says "hache" from the French.  
    
    It'd be easy to say `Aha, but the "h" of "hache" isn't pronounced in
    French'; but I think it probably was quite recently (Denis or Roger
    will tell us). So, although it's not pronounced today, it's still
    different from a lot of other aitches (I'd give it its proper name,
    but Norm would object to the _accent_aigu_): so it's "la hache" not 
    "l'hache" - and not just because of the cowardly pun, to which Norm 
    would also object.  There are lots of other initial aitches like this, 
    that override the normal rules of elision: a lot of quite advanced 
    students of French think they're being awfully clever when they elide 
    `aux Halles' - but [as the author of Mots d'Heure Gousse Rames knew] 
    is not elided.  This is very difficult for us outsiders to learn.
    
    Maybe an uncertainty about the pronunciation of the "h" in "hache"
    (when French, or something like it, was the language of the English
    court) led to a sort of class distinction here - the courtly
    pronunciation having no aitch (because that was at the leading edge
    of a change in the way French was spoken), but an aspirated
    pronunciation being used by people outside the court (and maybe
    by insiders who remembered the good old days); a right royal mix-up.
    
    But people have been dropping aitches, and going over the top in
    correcting themselves (putting in aitches where none belong) since
    the age of Trimalchio's Feast (who wrote that - Petrarch, Pliny?),
    which ridicules a posturing (latin-speaking) social-climber who
    pretends to know bits of Greek and so says `chommodus' when he
    means `commodus'.
    
    b

	re .41

	The aspired H sound, which is so tiring to pronounce :),
	was alive until early this century; it has almost totally 
	disappeared from today's language. Note that the letter is 
	"le H", while the axe is "la hache" as you said. Also "le H" 
	is colloquial for "le haschich".

>    (when French, or something like it, was the language of the English
>    court) led to a sort of class distinction here - the courtly

	start_rathole

	I'm glad you mentioned this historical fact (which, according
	to my observation, is ignored by a large part of the Anglo-Saxon
	population).
	French was indeed the language of the English court for about
	four centuries after Hastings. You have to wait until Henry
	of Lancaster to find a King of England who can actually 
	speak some level of English (and probably with a terrible accent).

	The Norman invaders had been in France for about one century
	before going to England. They had arrived from Scandinavia without 
	women (no women on drakkars, please) so they had to acquire 
	some local ones. After three generations, the Normans spoke only
	French, due to the "mother tongue" phaenomenon.

	I read the other day that French was the official language 
	of the British judicial system until the 17th century...

	As a matter of fact, whenever I see Prince Charles, or the 
	Duke of Edimburgh, or other Highnesses on French TV, they speak 
	excellent French (I would say better than St�phanie de Monaco :)
	Moreover, the front page of the traditional UK passport 
	is all in French. It says: "Dieu et mon droit" and
	"Hony soit qui mal y pense".
	For the above reasons, I suspect that French still _is_ 
	the language of the English Crown :)

	end_rathole
	
>    the age of Trimalchio's Feast (who wrote that - Petrarch, Pliny?),

	Plaute ?

	
	Cheers,
	roger

    it's:  "Honi soit qui mal y pense..."
    	       ^
    

    From a nit to a rathole:  
    
    Would someone please translate  "Honi soit qui mal y pense..."
    
    Thanks.
    
    					andrew
    

>    Would someone please translate  "Honi soit qui mal y pense..."
    
"Shame be on him who thinks evil of it"

"It" presumably meaning the British Crown.

John

Sounds like 'it' should be 'the English language'.

Richard.

    
    	Honi, etc.  is the motto of the knights of the Order of
    	the Garter and "it" refers to the original act of gallantry
    	of the knight who reinstated the garter of one of the ladies
    	of the court.  The accessory fell and he replaced it.  "Shame 
    	on him who thinks evil of this (act)."  In other words, no 
    	dirty thoughts.  This is an act of courtesy.
        

	re .41, .42
	
>    the age of Trimalchio's Feast (who wrote that - Petrarch, Pliny?),
>>	Plaute ?

	None of the above. It was Petronius, of course.

    re: .47
    	The "knight" is reputed to be Edward III, and the quotation 
    dates to about 1348. As he was one of the warrior kings of the times I don't
    suppose anybody near him wanted to argue about whether it was an act of
    courtesy.

    Re Dieu et mon droit
    
    This translates as `God and my right', which doesn't say much (although
    it'd be quite easy to assign a meaning to it, and probably someone
    has). When I was working on the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, I had
    an interesting thought:
    
     <WAG>
     It is only quite recently (not this century, I guess, but 19th maybe)
     that `et' and `est' were made distinct (in writing, that is). At the
     time when the motto was adopted by the king of England, the court
     spoke French (I don't remember the year or which king, but I remember 
     checking this out at the time). 
    
     Somewhere in the Old Testament (which I don't have on line) is a
     sentence translated (AV) as `the Lord is my righteousness'; the
     equivalent phrase in a modern French bible is `Le Seigneur est ma
     justesse'. But at the time the motto was adopted, there was only one
     French translation of the bible available. 
    
     I surmised that the phrase in that version was `Dieu e[s]t mon droit'
     and that the motto was adopted as summing up the divine right of kings
     - something that had to be asserted at the time, as it was politically
     quite a new idea; pointing out that `the Bible itself stated it' would
     have leant weight to the assertion.  
    
     This guess should have been easy enough to check, and I tried. There
     was a copy of that early French version (published in Geneva, I think,
     in the 16th century) in the British Library; sadly, I found that it
     wasn't organized the way the AV and all modern bibles are organized
     (`chapter and verse'). I couldn't justify the time needed to read it
     through line by line; but I've always wondered.  
     
     <ENDWAG>
    
    Re .-2
    
    Thanks for tracing Petronius, Roger. I thought it was someone beginning
    with P but couldn't remember who.
   
    Re .42
   
�Also "le H" 
�	is colloquial for "le haschich".
   Interesting. `The big H' was sixties/seventies slang for heroin - maybe
   still is.
   
   b
    

    re: English and French h's
    
    Further complicated by the fact that English, being a Germanic
    language, had a full-consonant h (the one made at the back of your
    mouth, that sounds like you're clearing your throat), not just an
    aspirated one (I think it's the velar vs. palatal fricative???
    Could one of the linguists correct or confirm?).  Depending on
    what part of the country you were in, the h sound made farther
    back in your mouth still existed in the 18th-19th century (maybe
    still does, but that exceeds my knowledge).  
    
    re: Normans and French women
    
    The Norsemen -- mostly Swedish, I think -- who invaded France were
    a group of younger sons who couldn't marry in their home country
    because all the farmable land had been used up, and without land,
    you had trouble finding a wife.  So they went out and took some
    land.  This was the same motivation for earlier colonization of
    Ireland and the Danelaw of Britain.  
    
    re: honi vs. hony
    
    In middle French, and middle English, the -i and -y are pretty
    well interchangeable.  Still are, for that matter.
    
    --bonnie

    Thanks, Bonnie, for clearing all that up...
    
    - SteveT

    b  (.50)

>   Somewhere in the Old Testament (which I don't have on line) is a
>   sentence translated (AV) as `the Lord is my righteousness';  ...

    The closest I could find was Psalm 4:1

    Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged me
    when I was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer.

    (This is from an on-line copy; I can only assume that it's accurate.)

    Interestingly for the "Dieu e[s]t mon droit" discussion, RSV (1952) has
    "O God of my right"  (This is the only non-on-line (um, hard-copy)
    version I have handy.)

    Also, re: your search in that early French version.  If the phrase
    you're thinking of is indeed from the Psalms (as it sounds), I would
    think that Psalms - comprising psalms and not "chapters" - would be
    relatively easy to search through.  Of course, if that French version
    doesn't even sequence its psalms as is customary, then ...

    Jon

    PS  If I got "comprising" wrong, take it up with that other note!

>    Further complicated by the fact that English, being a Germanic
>    language, had a full-consonant h (the one made at the back of your
>    mouth, that sounds like you're clearing your throat), not just an
>    aspirated one (I think it's the velar vs. palatal fricative???
>    Could one of the linguists correct or confirm?).  Depending on
>    what part of the country you were in, the h sound made farther
>    back in your mouth still existed in the 18th-19th century (maybe
>    still does, but that exceeds my knowledge).  
    
	Do you mean the velar fricative as in "ich," "ach," "loch,"
	etc.?  I didn't know that had anything to do with h's.

		-- C

    "What happened to all the spirited H's?"
    
    "I ate them."
    
    "You hate them?  So where did you put them?"
    
    "No, I ATE them."
    
    "You ATE them???!!!"
    
    "Yup, down the hache."

	re .50
	
>     I surmised that the phrase in that version was `Dieu e[s]t mon droit'
>     and that the motto was adopted as summing up the divine right of kings
>     - something that had to be asserted at the time, as it was politically

	It is often understood that way over here too; it makes a 
	lot of sense. The first king to adopt the motto was Richard 
	Coeur-de-Lion, aka Lionheart, who needed to affirm his legitimacy.
		
	There was a boxer champion (Georges Carpentier, I think) who
	had the motto "Dieu et ma droite" (une droite is a blow given 
	with the right fist)	    

	Cheers,
	roger

    Re .51 (velar vs palatal)
    
    The velar fricative in `ich' is platalized in some parts of Germany,
    but I don't think I've ever met a purely palatal fricative (one in
    which the air coming up from the glottal tract is constricted at
    the palate and not before) - come to think of it, you'd probably
    need to have pretty alarming bone-structure to manage one at all.
    
    The point about the French `aspirate h' is that it's not aspirated
    (at least, not as we understand the word in English, in which an /h/ 
    is an unvoiced glottal fricative). The fact that a word begins
    with `an aspirate h' (usually marked with a raised dot or dash in 
    French|English dictionaries) affects not so much its pronunciation (to 
    my ears, although I'm quite ready to believe there is some subtle
    difference) as the way it behaves in relation to other words - i.e. not 
    eliding.
    
    b

    re: .57
    
    Thanks.  Palatal didn't sound right, but I was never too clear on
    that part of things . . . the instructor had us do an exercise in
    front of the mirror positioning our tongue for each of the
    combinations of voicing -- I do remember gagging trying to make a
    palatal stop.  Our final included pronouncing "knighte" -- in
    Middle English, all 7 letters represent distinct sounds and are
    pronounced.  Arrrggghhh.
    
    But my point was that in Old English, the "h" character (often in
    combination with the semivowel represented by 'g' in words such as
    "knight") represents the voiced velar fricative of the Germanic
    languages.  These words were used right alongside of Latin imports
    such as "honi" and you can't tell by looking which one is which.  
    After the Norman conquest, the unaspirated one came into style,
    and I kind of suspect that it sounded so faint to people used to
    pronouncing "hwat" with an introductory fricative that they
    probably couldn't even hear the merely aspirated one -- I can't
    hear the difference between the French h's either, but apparently
    the French can.
    
    --bonnie

    re: palatal, fricative, etc.
    
    Gad, and I used to I WAS esoteric...!  ;^}
    
    Steve, who's_just_glad_he_can_say_"chutzpah"_without_spraying_phlegm

    >glad_he_can_say_"chutzpah"_without_spraying_phlegm
    
    And all this time I thought if you weren't spraying phlegm, you
    weren't saying it right . . .
    
    --bonnie
    

    >> And all this time I thought if you weren't spraying phlegm, you
    >> weren't saying it right . . .
    
    >> --bonnie
      
    You just have to watch what you've been eating recently...
    
    - SteveT 

    Re .59
    
    Esoteric? You ain't seen nuttin' yet. In fact I usually try to
    suppress my natural tendency that way, especially in conferences
    where
    
    	o	a (very) few readers will have some academic training in 
    		the relevant area, and will probably pick nits (in a way
    		that may interest 1 or 2 but will send everyone else
    		unerringly to the NEXT UNSEEN button)
    
    	o	most readers' eyes will glaze over anyway
    
    For those of you who were't taking notes, the deliberate mistake
    in .57 was that the English /h/ isn't an unvoiced glottal fricative;
    I believe it's an unvoiced glottal frictionless continuant. So there.
    
    b

    Oh, great.  I ask for enlightenment and I get set up as the butt
    of somebody else's joke on the ignorant.
    
    I'm sorry I asked.
    
    --bonnie

    YOu knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred!
    
    - SteveT, out_of_here_in_four_hours_now...

    Who needs Next Unseen for this topic?  It seems more like a discussion
    about Next Unheard.
    
    U, wat appened to abbreviations?

	re .57, .58

	The French 'aspirate h' is really a misnomer; in fact it
	was expirated, just like the Germanic h. A study (by Henriette
	Walter, in the seventies) indicated that aspirate h is still 
	well and alive in a small part of the population, and only for 
	a limited vocabulary; I could probably retrieve some details.
	
	Normally the presence of a French 'aspirate h' affects only the way 
	it is liaised with the preceding word. 
	Often it makes the 's' in the plural article 'les' become silent, 
	so you pronounce "les haricots", and not "les-z-haricots". 
	Also it causes the final 'e' in the masc article 'le' to be 
	pronounced where it should be elided according to the normal rule; 
	eg you'll say "le h�tre" and not "le h�tre".
	These features create a sort of audible hiatus before the 'aspirate h'.

	Note that these rules apply only to the words of Germanic origin
	which are numerous in French since the pre-Roman invasions.
	Generally, the words from Latin origin beginning with h
	follow the common rules, so you don't need to worry :). For 
	example, you say "l'homme" and not "le homme"; and "les-z-heures"
	not "les heures", "les-z-honneurs" not "les honneurs" etc...
	This is because Latin had no 'aspirate h' whatsoever.

	Doesn't the same sort of difference exist in English ? 
	I have the impression that the initial h in latinate words 
	like "hour", "honour" is softer than in Germanic words ("hear", 
	"hole" etc...). 

	Is this correct ?
	(I'm asking this out of interest, but I'm afraid I'll continue 
	to pronounce 'our, 'honour, 'ole, 'ear ...:)

	Cheers,
	roger

    Re .63
    
    Apologies Bonnie. The mistake I made wasn't deliberate; I shouldn't
    have called it that. When I was at school, teachers often got things
    wrong and called the error, retrospectively, `a deliberate mistake'.
    My joke was aimed not at the ignorant, but at people who get things
    wrong and pretend they really knew better.
    
    This stuff was all `best before June 1974', and I got it wrong.
    
    b

I couldn't be bothered to read the previous 60 replies; am I the only
one who pronounces 'vi' as 'sicks'?

:-)