MvdV> On Sunday August 20 2017 23:36, you wrote to me:
MvdV>>> That explains why singer is pronounced the way it is, it does MvdV>>> not explain why Ginger is not pronounced in rhime with singer. MvdV>>> Or why Ginger is not spelled Djindzjer.
DR>> Because we don't spell that way. Only the languages that don't have DR>> our soft "g" sound have to use "dj". And we don't have the soft "g" DR>> sound that there is in, say, French.
MvdV> You propably read it too. In Gödel.Escher.Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, a MvdV> superior being that can grant wishes is called a "djin". It is not MvdV> spelled "gin". OK, Hofstadteris an American, but still...
As a matter of fact we spell it "djinn". I suppose it's to differentiate it from "gin".
MvdV>>>>> Why does Worchester rhime wit booster?
DR>>>> Worcester. And it doesn't quite rhyme with booster. The "u" DR>>>> sound is shorter, like u without an umlaut in German.
MvdV>>> The 'u' as in "Kurt" or as in "Burt"?
DR>> As in "Kurt".
MvdV> I can't hear the difference, bit OK....
MvdV>>> I know about Fenshaw. It was a gag in an episode of inspector MvdV>>> Linley.
DR>> And it is the middle name of the eponymous character in DR>> P.G.Wodehouse's Ukridge - "Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge - the man DR>> of many schemes."
MvdV> Yes, I think we discussed this before. A decade ago or so.. ;-)
No doubt! ;-)
DR>>>> And bow can be pronounced in two ways according to whether it's DR>>>> how to tie a knot or whether it's an acknowledgement.
MvdV>>> Things like that are very hard for non native speakers. MvdV>>> Homographs are very rare in most other languages.
DR>> You get a lot of homophones in French:
DR>> Ver (a worm), verre (a glass), and vert (green) DR>> Mer (the sea), mère (mother) and maire (a mayor) DR>> Poids (weight), pois (a pea or peas) and poix (tar).
MvdV> Those are homophones, not homographs.
MvdV> Homographs are very rare in Dutch. There used to be some in Fidonet MvdV> when accents were still banned.
MvdV> voorkómen to prevent MvdV> vóórkomen tp appear in court.
MvdV> een the article "a", as in "a pear" MvdV> één the number one, as in "one pear"
MvdV> In Ducht Fidonet we used to circumvent the use of banned accents by MvdV> writing e1n for the number one. Or capitals . voorkOmen vs vOOrkomen. MvdV> Fortunately now that he ban on non ASCII has ben dropped, these work MvdV> arounds are no longer needed. Reading is much more comfortable when MvdV> accents are used.
MvdV> As you can see in Dutch the accent is used more or less the same as the MvdV> Umlaut in German.
But without the easier option of being able to render it correctly by the addition of an "e".
MvdV> In Dutch the diaresis is not an Umlaut, it is used as a trema. To MvdV> signal that a diphtong like 'oe' is to be pronounced as two different MvdV> vowels. Noël.
As indeed we use it in English, though less educated or careless people dispense with the dieresis altogether. I had a girl in my choir a few years ago whose name was Chloe (no dieresis). Normally we would spell it Chloë but the chap who kept the choir list insisted on spelling it Chlöe! He didn't speak any foreign languages but tried to be clever by adding the accent somewhere - and getting it wrong and rendering it meaningless!
In fact quite a number of English and American people add accents to make it look posh. Not just people but some businesses. Ever heard of the American ice cream maker, Häagen-Dazs? The accent, the double "aa" and the "zs" are there to make it look as though it's some kind of superior Scandinavian ice cream! This from the obituary its founder in the New York Times:
"Häagen-Dazs was started by Reuben Mattus, a Polish Jewish immigrant, who stuck an umlaut on a nonsensical name thinking that a large number of ice cream lovers in New York would be willing to pay for something they perceived as different and maybe better, Mattus came up with the name Häagen-Dazs, wanting it to sound Danish. A map of Scandinavia was printed on its carton. But the name is not Danish, indeed the umlaut does not exist in Danish, and the name means as little in that language as it does in English."
Oi vey!
David
-- David Rance writing from Caversham, Reading, UK
