h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A Sais who has no idea why he should have occasion to say "Catwg" (because neither of his cats is bald ) suggests "kahtoog" with syllables equally stressed.
(Waits for derisive laughter.)

Spot on - I have heard catwig, catwee, cateeg and some very strange ones as well.

Alji (Member of The Guild of Wizards @ U197895)

I'm having trouble with six7's (BA LLpof [bogus appendage liar liar pants on fire]) suspenders.

Who, what, where, when or how is "Catwg"?

Please.

Who said they were *my* suspenders?

who
St Catwg was a Celtic Saint
http://www.btinternet.com/~wonr/pentyrch/vill2.htm

what
... last year Catwg won the recruitment award for WIs with over 30 members... ... They have an established group of handbell ringers, and are forming a choir...
http://homepage.dtn.ntl.com/p.mabey/Glamorgan%20Site/catwg.html

where
St. Catwg's Church, Pentyrch
http://www.btinternet.com/~wonr/pentyrch/stcatwg.htm

when
the life of St. Catwg
Gwynllyw, king of Gwynllywg, had married Gwladys, probably the grand-daughter of Brychan, and had carried her off. Cadoc was their son.
http://www.uk-christian.net/boc/stcadoc.shtml

how
I think *dead* might be an appropriate term
six7's

The handbell ringers are form Cadoxton-juxta-Neath not Pentyrch.


Alji (Member of The Guild of Wizards)

Remember my first solo trip to wales, interview to go to the University at Pontypridd. Usually *try* and get the pronunciation correct so asked at the rail ticket office for a ticket to Pontyprith, only they didn;t know where that was and said there was no station! I'd have thought the train companies would educate peoples on how to pronounce the places. Oh well

I wonder how many pronunciations we are loosing due to all the little interestingly named places being taken over by the great and the good moving out from the cities who don;t know the correct way of saying their villages name.

I heard of one amusing one in Derbyshire - Sommercoates which thee and me would pronounce as Summer-Coats but the new pretentious residents apparently refer to as sumer-co-tees, with su as in suck. Very odd.


And we should definitely change Nottingham back to Snottingham !

Oh I don't know, the upper crust of Milngavie (just outside Glasgow) always get it right. You would be seriously looked down upon if you did not pronounce it Millguy.

... is it to keep us from finding the honey?

Ok, sorry, bad joke. But my question is serious: why do we have so many words like lamb, numb, bomb, etc?

I was thinking about this after hearing a 'foreigner' saying "bombing" where the middle 'b' wasn't silent. Sounds so strange.

Derivations again. There was a b in the Greek "bombos", the Anglo-Saxon "camb" and many others. However the Anglo-Saxon for "limb" was "lim". Perhaps it got confused with Latin "limbus" for a border?
The b was there in the Anglo Saxon for "climb"because there was a following syllable. I think the b became silent in a lot of cases when the verb or noun endings dropped off.
Then there is the fun group of words like "debt" where the b was inserted in the eighteenth century, because the "scholars" thought it looked better.
Sorry this reply has taken so long. Your post sent me off on a day dream about Winnie the Pooh

Six7s
"Who said they were *my* suspenders?"

I didn't think you would be so indelicate as to refer to another's undergarment or appliance.

Ah. Cadoc.

Very comprehensive links. Ta (as they say in Ynys Môn, well my friend David does.)

The German words for "lamb" and "comb" are Lamm and Kamm. So the "b" has completely disappeared - or it was subsequently added in for show (probably by the inhabitants of syoomer-co-tees)

And...talking about "b" s being silent. I can never think of how to explain to a German that you pronounce the "g" in "finger" but not in, say "singer". This is one occasion where I ought to use pop songs more ("finger" comes up a lot, and then there is the Cranberries' "Linger" - and loads of songs with "singer", "dead ringer" etc in)

It is easy to say that it is because these are words on their own (i.e. finger, linger, monger) and the others are simply substantives derived from verbs, but the German word "Finger" is the same and the g is not pronounced. And in the English there are no doubt exceptions, too.

Two things that struck me on holiday. We were lunching in Annecy and the cafe next door was called The Freelance. (Oh yes, very French) Where does the expression "freelance" come from? Does it date back to the days of jousting? Or is it from the French meaning of "lancer" - to launch?

And I was reading a book about the history of the Olympics and it said that statues were often made of and for Zeus, using the prize money. There were rows of these statues and the "familiar" name for Zeus was Zan. Does the word "zany" (which I hate) have its origins here (not quite sure how you'd explain the meaning) or am I enitrely up the wrong tree?

OK, first off, here's my stab at the case of the silent bees.

1. Several words from Old English (e.g. dumb, lamb, womb, comb) didn't have any endings in the nominative case. The -mb was pronounced fully at the end of a word (ah, back in the days when there was a virtual 1:1 spelling-sound correspondence in English), as well as in words like 'climban' (to climb).
2. Over time, some words which at the time ended in a vowel (e.g. crumb, numb) gained an 'intrusive' b. This can happen spontaneously, as inexact co-ordination of the 'm' sound and following vowel will result in a 'b' being heard. Try it.
3. During Middle English, further words from Romance sources (e.g. plumb, limb, tomb) were added to the collection.
4. Then, the 'b' sound was lost, but only at the end of the word, hence the difference between the two meanings 'number' (numeral and more numb) - the 'b' sound is not recovered when a suffix is added.

I think the explanation is similar with -ng. This used to always be pronounced 'ngg' in English - it still is in the Black Country. The [g] dropped off at the end of a word, (so it is not pronounced in 'fang' and 'long') but not elsewhere. Again, adding a suffix to a word ending in -ng does not reactivate the [g] sound.



Incidentally, there's also dumm in German, isn't there? Almost certainly the origin of the Amercian meaning of 'dumb'.

But it's all well and good saying that the 'g' in 'singer' is not pronounced - it is not a homonymn of 'sinner' is it?

the 'ng' *is* pronounced; but not in the same way as in 'linger'.

For singer /finger the difference seems to me to be that in the former the 'g' sound is soft and formed at the back of the throat whereas finger the g is hard and produced nearer the roof of the mouth. I bet there's a technical term for it as well

As for the derivation of Freelance, it cannot be the french option because, as we all know, there is no such thing as a Free Launch.

Have we done changing pronunciations? Such as 'rebel'?
Why does a reb-el re-bel? Why not the other way around, or one pronunciation for both?

The 'ng' in singer is one sound (a velar nasal, no less. The phonetic symbol is an 'n' with a trunk). There is no [g] sound at all. In 'finger', the same nasal sound is present, followed by a standard [g] - technically called a velar plosive. Both sounds are made with the tongue touching the soft palate or velum.

Hmmmmm, must be my ignorance of phonetics here but as the 'g' modifies the 'n' it must be pronounced? Thinking about it and pronouncing it (my, but I'm getting some odd looks here!) the tongue starts to make the 'g' sound but only slightly, so to my mind it's pronounced? Looking to be educated, not arguing!

it's interesting, i think, when you get to breaking down words like this.

Perhaps because we are all looking at the written word, this medium encourages us to concentrate on spelling more than we would in an oral discussion.

On the one hand you've got the letters there in front of you; there's the 'n' and there's the 'g'. What could be simpler.

but depending on where they fit into a word, these letters have varying values in terms of pronunciation.

As Jack says, the 'ng' in 'singer' is one 'sound' - and we even have a label for it, courtesy of our resident cunning linguist (ta Jack, )

Now, in the word 'finger', the 'n' and the 'g' in finger DO NOT combine in the same way to produce the 'ng' sound in the same way. The letter 'g' (gets tedious and confusing all this verbal tip-toing aroud definitions of 'letters' as opposed to 'sounds'!) retains it's own value in 'finger' and is 'pronounced'

In fact, with 'finger' it is the 'n' that seems to 'lose' value; virtually disappearing into the following 'g'!



that's enough of that.

Danger hazardous linguistic territory

enter at your own risk

dagnabbit

forgot to slip in the fancy terminology! phonemes! phonemes!

oh well... too late now, i spose...


fools...
angels...

So what you are saying is that the 'ng' in singer could, if we were to re-write the alphabet, be a letter all of it's own since it is a distinct sound? Trying to bring this down to my level now! The fact that our alphabet doesn't have this sound represented in it means we have to use a combination of 2 letters as a code for the sound and then rely on education so that people know that this particular 'ng' is a code for this velar nasal thingy rather than the two separate sounds of finger.

Am I getting warm yet?