Re: Survived 'Nixon In China'

On Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:30:51 GMT, "Mark Cipra"
<cipramark@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[re misaccented lyrics]

Fo' he made his home in
Dat fish's abdomen.

I realize he was being intentionally cute, but IG's intentional cuteness
always rubs me the wrong way, for some reason.

I don't always warm to Ira's "Conning Tower" wordplay myself, but in
this case he's not really guilty of excessive cuteness. Ab-DOH-men
was, in the thirties, the standard, traditional pronunciation;
AB-duh-men was, however, rapidly gaining favor and by the sixties was
preferred. Both are still listed as standard in most dictionaries.

Abfou
.