Re: BBC Horizon - The Presidents Guide to Science Part 1/5

On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:14:17 -0400, Cory Albrecht wrote:

Tiny Bulcher wrote, on 2008-10-21 14:45:
þus cwæð Cory Albrecht:
Tiny Bulcher wrote, on 2008-10-20 14:03:
þus cwæð Wombat:
On 20 Oct, 17:13, Cory Albrecht<coryalbre...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ye Old One wrote, on 2008-10-18 20:04:



On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:16:11 +0100, "Hypatia"<H...@xxxxxxxx>
enriched this group when s/he wrote:
"Ye Old One"<use...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:frmkf4ldc4s4oeq9t528c6460hn9cv6s7k@
Here in Cambridge, saying 'nucular' is seen as proof of idiocy.
I suggest you stay far away.
Can't. Too much work with people there.
Great. Try talking about the 'nuculus' of an atom, and see what
you get.
H
I've heard more than one talk of the NewQuLar fission of the
atomic NewKleeUs.
Mind you, I always shout at someone who say EyeRack when it should
be EeeRack.
Let me guess - both of you think that we should still be
pronouncing English the way it was pronounce 1500 years ago, with
no change over time?

:-P
Wow! Who was speaking English 1500 years ago, when my ancestors in
Somerset were speaking Anglo-Saxon?
They didn't call it that, though: they called it ænglisc. The current
preferred term is Old English.
And we'd still be pronouncing it as "ænglisc", if people back then had
been like these two anti-nucular fanatics.

Um, we do, actually. Only the spelling has changed.

Maybe in your dialect, but in most that initial /æ/ has become /i/, like
the vowel in the second syllable, rather than being pronounced like the
a in "bad".


But evolution works on populations, not individuals. The shift from
/ae/ to /e/ to /i/ happened universally, not just to the word "English".
If you can show me a similar universal process at work in "nuclear" ->
"nucular" I might concede that you have an argument. Until then,
until I hear someone talking about a belt buckule or a cochular
implant, I will continue to consider "nucular" a fumbletongued
solecism.

Oh, and I doubt that the following sounds like Modern English:

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum,
Si þin nama gehalgod.
To becume þin rice,
gewurþe ðin willa, on eorðan swa swa on heofonum. Urne gedæghwamlican
hlaf syle us todæg, and forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgyfað urum
gyltendum. And ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele.
Soþlice.


Shift happens. But so do ignorant mispronunciations that reveal
that the speaker is using words he (or she) hasn't mastered.

<snip snappy closing>

John

.

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