----------------------
PIZZA:
Everyone likes pizza.
Last September, around the time of the San Gennaro festival, I posted a
1905 article on pizza and some stuff regarding the first pizzeria in New York
City.
I shamed OED for its first pizza citation, which was 1935!!
This is from Sketches of Naples by Alexandre Dumas, trans. by A.
Roland, Philadelphia, 1845, pp. 29-30:
As to his food, this is more easy to describe; for, although the
lazzarone belongs to the species omnivora, he, generally, eats by two things:
the _pizza_ and the _cocomero_ or watermelon.
The impression has gone out into the world, that the lazzarone lives
upon macaroni; this is a great mistake, which it is time to correct. The
macaroni is, it is true, a native of Naples; but, at the present time, it is
an European dish, which has traveled, like civilization, and which, like
civilization, finds itself very far from its cradle. The macaroni, moreover,
cost two sous a pound; which renders it inaccessible to the purse of the
lazzarone; except upon Sundays and holidays. At all other times the
lazzarone eats, as we have said, the pizza and the cocomero; the cocomero in
summer, the pizza in winter. A pizza of two farthings suffices for one
person, a pizza of two sous is enough to satisfy a whole family. At first
sight, the pizza appears to be a simple dish, upon examination it proves to
be compound. The pizza is prepared with bacon, with lard, with cheese, with
tomatas, with fish. It is the gastronomic thermometer of the market. The
price of the pizza rises and falls according to the rate of the ingredients
just designated; according to the abundance or scarcity of the year. When
the fish-pizza sells at half a grain, the fishing has been godd; when the
oil-pizza sells at a grain, the yield of olives has been bad. The rate at
which the pizza sells is, also, influenced by the greater or less degree of
freshness; it will be easily understood that yesterday's pizza will not bring
the same price as to-day's. For small purses, they have the pizza of a week
old, which, if not agreeably, very advantageously, supplies the place of the
sea-biscuit.
The pizza as we have said is the food of winter. On the first of May
the pizza gives place to the cocomero.....
All of which, I guess, is better than a Three Musketeers bar.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 18:32:00 EST
From: PCCS Research Staff research[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]BROOKLYN.CUNY.EDU
Subject: "See Naples and Die"
A lead for Barry Popik on the origins of this phrase's popularity comes
from H.V. Morton's book, "A Traveller in Southern Italy" (first published in
1969). Section 7 of Chapter 7 begins:
"The Hamilton period in Naples was a brief thirty-five years of
enchantment during which 'Vedi Napoli e poi muori' - 'See Naples and die' -
was substituted for the more exciting promise of an earlier generation, 'Ecce
Roma!'. A brilliant and friendly royal court ruled by an Italian version of
Squire Western, together with delightful palaces which could be rented with
gilt furniture and beguiling servants, made Naples an attractive city for the
rich and well-born."
The enchanted years Morton refers to are 1764 to 1799. Sir William
Hamilton was a British ambassador to the court of Naples perhaps best known
as the husband of Lady Emma Hamilton, mistress of Lord Nelson. Hamilton was
also known for his interest in volcanoes and archaeology. He made a
collection of antiquities from Pompeii which were then sold to the British
Museum.
Morton goes on to describe the marvelous detachment from the troubles of
the world possible in Naples at that time:
"... and reading the diaries and letters written in Naples from 1764 to
1799, one find no mention of the outside world, no murmur of Bunker's Hill,
no angry shouts from the Gordon Rioters, even accounts of the Bastille were
not allowed to interfere with dinner parties. Nevertheless, it was the
guillotine that at last concluded the Neapolitan Elysium and with the
execution of the French queen, the happy dream came to an end. Goethe, Mrs.
Piozzi, William Beckford, and many more, have described how enchanting it was
while it lasted."
Hamilton's book was "Observations on Mount Vesuvius, etc. (1772).
Goethe described his time in Italy from 1786 -88 in "Italienische Reise"
(Italian Travels) written in 1816.
Patricia Kuhlman
New York City
research[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]brooklyn.cuny.edu
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 18:21:00 -0500
From: Ron Butters RonButters[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM
Subject: No problemo isn't fully Spanish
LM says, "but the -o in 'no problemo' is a different thing. it's spanish"
actually, the -o in "problemo" can't very well be Spanish, since the Spanish
word is "problema"! Of course, one might hypothesize that the -o in
"problemo" is mistaken Spanish--but in that case why couldn't the -o in
"Daddy-o" and "dear-o" be "Spanish" too?
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 18:41:13 -0500
From: Ron Butters RonButters[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM
Subject: Everybody uses tag questions, don't we?
PDaniels writes:
No, it's not correct, some people
don't like pizza.
(Fieldworkers tell us that informants
*always* respond to the content of
the sentence, not the form; likewise
also toddlers learning to talk simply
never notice the intent of corrections.)
Well, okay then, how about:
**Everybody hates a wise-ass, doesn't one?
*Everybody hates a wise-ass, doesn't he or she?
:-) Everybody hates a wise-ass, don't they?
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 20:32:06 -0500
From: "Virginia P. Clark" Virginia.Clark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UVM.EDU
Subject: NPR newscast
I'm still somewhat bemused by the wording of an NPR news broadcast last
Friday. The newscaster was describing some legislation that Congress might
or might not pass; then he said, "If they do, then they will be able to
still deficit spend." Is "deficit spend" a new verb? Are there others
like it? It's usually adverbs that get into verb phrases, but "deficit"
certainly isn't an adverb.
Virginia
Virginia Clark
Professsor Emerita of English
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT 05405
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 21:42:06 EST
From: Larry Horn LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU
Subject: NPR newscast
Virginia Clark writes,
I'm still somewhat bemused by the wording of an NPR news broadcast last
Friday. The newscaster was describing some legislation that Congress might
or might not pass; then he said, "If they do, then they will be able to
still deficit spend." Is "deficit spend" a new verb? Are there others
like it? It's usually adverbs that get into verb phrases, but "deficit"
certainly isn't an adverb.
The pattern in which the compound verb "deficit spend" participates is a
fairly productive one, if the results may seem nonce formations at first; the
key is back-formation from a nominal compound, as in
to baby-sit
to faith-heal
to stage-manage
to shoplift
to sight-see
In each case, the agentive nominal predates and "sponsors" the deagentive
verb, which has a sense along the lines of "to do what an X-Yer does". In the
NPR coinage, then, to deficit spend is to do what a deficit spender does;
deficit is no more an adverb here than are "baby", "faith", "stage", etc. in
the above. An innovative instance of this process provided by my own (then)
4-year-old son, uttered while advancing menacingly, implement in hand:
"I'm going to egg-beat you!"
--Larry
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 21:59:52 EST
From: Larry Horn LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU
Subject: Ebonics: Yet another last word
For those collecting treatments in the popular press, the New York Times in
yesterday's edition (March 1, p. 10), carried a fairly comprehensive article
by Peter Applebome that traces the roots of the Oakland move to the work of a
rather unconventional "linguist" named Dr. Ernie Smith. Smith really does
seem to be quite loony; let me just cite the following as an instance of his
argumentation. (This, of course, assumes that Applebome cites Smith
correctly.)
Among other things, he hailed Oakland's schools for rejecting "the
white supremacist double standard" that classifies English as language
but not ebonics, ridiculed blacks who spoke "king's English"--"You're
not speaking English just because you learned how to mimic old Massa and
Missus Ann"--and said that since fossils of the oldest known human so far
have been found in Africa, English, if anything, is a dialect of African.
"If we were on the globe first, how can our language be based on European
languages?" he asked.
Much of the article does go through the arguments sensibly enough, citing
McWhorter, Baugh, and several other sane linguists, African-American and not,
along with the problems in defining "dialect" and "standard", and it mentions
the LSA statement that black English is systematic and rule-governed, so if
fair-minded readers don't associate "linguists" with Dr. Ernie Smith, the
article might do more good than harm.
Larry
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 23:57:29 -0500
From: David Carlson Davidhwaet[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM
Subject: Re: I've done my best to read the table Donald M. Lance posted,
Thanks To Don Lance for the information about the final vowel in Missouri.
Here's the data from the Pacific Northwest (LAPNW) records.
**schwa = 13
**dotted i (high front tense vowel) = 11
** dotted i with one dot for length = 13
** barred dotted i = 6
**barred dotted i with one dot for length
**barred small capital I = 1 which also occurred with schwa followed by a
question mark by the fieldworker
David R. Carlson
Springfield College
Springfield MA
David_Carlson[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]spfldcol.edu
Davidhwaet[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]aol.com
------------------------------
End of ADS-L Digest - 1 Mar 1997 to 2 Mar 1997
**********************************************
Subject: ADS-L Digest - 2 Mar 1997 to 3 Mar 1997
There are 48 messages totalling 1481 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. missouri/missouria and Rick Trevino, C&W singer
2. /h/ as a vowel?!? -Reply -Reply (3)
3. I've done my best to read the table Donald M. Lance
4. No problemo! (2)
5. No problemo, daddy-o -Reply
6. "show stopper"
7. More on -O (2)
8. No problemo! Daddy-O!
9. Homely (3)
10. No problemo (9)
11. See Naples and die
12. No problemo, daddy-o (2)
13. Homely teepeeing & soaping
14. Homely -Reply
15. No problemo -Reply
16. deficit-spend (footnote)
17. -ies Ending (5)
18. Supreme Court Official English Decision
19. help: address for fling, please (2)
20. official lg (3)
21. I've done my best to read the table Donald M. Lance posted,
22. /h/ as a vowel?!? -Reply -Reply -Reply
23. Olla podrida
24. No subject given
25. Clones; Naples; Daddy-O; My Dad
26. it's
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 08:11:23 EST
From: simon[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU
Subject: missouri/missouria and Rick Trevino, C&W singer
Yesterday, on one of the radio weekly "country music countdown", during
which C&W singers call up in between songs and "talk" with the hosts,
the hosts got the following call from Rick Trevino, who had the
number one song last week.
Caller: Hey Guys!
Host/DJ: Hey! Who is this?
Caller: Rick [trEviny[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]]. How's it goin?
beth simon
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 09:39:38 -0500
From: Mark Mandel Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM
Subject: /h/ as a vowel?!? -Reply -Reply
Well, it looks as if I made a tactical error in choosing /t/ as a supraglottal
consonant to describe in parallel with /h/, because I inadvertently misled
Terry to infer that I was bringing the aspiration of syllable-initial AmE /t/
into the picture.
But Donald is "disturbed" by my explanation, and I'm not sure why.
Donald?
Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 09:42:45 -0500
From: Mark Mandel Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM
Subject: Re: I've done my best to read the table Donald M. Lance
posted, -Reply
Thanks! Now, THIS I can put together with the earlier messages for
enlightenment.
Donald M. Lance engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU 0301.0017
Thanks, Mark Mandel. I wondered how the spaces would survive
cyberspace and convolutions of fiberoptics going in and out of dossed
apples and blue unixes.
I composed the table in Eudora and assumed it was friendly with
whatever everyone else was using. Sorry about my naivete. I'll try
something else:
[...]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 08:43:17 CST
From: mpicone MPICONE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UA1VM.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo!
On Sat, 1 Mar 1997 16:08:02 EST said:
Since I associate "Daddy-o" with whats-his-nose on the show
before Gilligan's Island (sorry, I'm blanking on lots of refs today,)
I've got to ask: Was "Daddy-o" every actually used without
self-consciousness or parody?
beth simon
The show was The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis or something like that and
Bob Denver played Maynard, a beatnik type who used expressions like
Daddy-o, presumably because there is some real connection to the jargon
of the beat generation.
The expression is used frequenty in West Side Story as well.
The "no problemo" is probably hypercorrective Spanish in the way that
it used by many English speakers, the same way Americans almost
invariably hypercorrect Fontainebleau to *Fontainebleu to make it sound
more French.
Mike Picone
University of Alabama
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 09:59:37 -0500
From: Mark Mandel Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM
Subject: Re: No problemo, daddy-o -Reply
The song Thomas Clark was learning was what I know as "Kilgarry
Mountain", or "Gilgarry Mountain", or doubtless forty-'leven other
variants; I learned the line in question as "Whack fal the daddy, oh,
there's whiskey in the jar".
(Whiskey in the jar turns up in a lot of Irish song choruses, as do
nonsense words. I've always wondered (but never investigated)
whether the latter go back to Gaelic, misheard and distorted through
layers of anglophone singers.)
But back to the subject: I don't think this "daddy o" has anything to do
with the "Daddy-o" vocative that comes from hipster talk.
Thomas L. Clark tlc[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]NEVADA.EDU 0302.0155
As Ron says, in the '50s "daddy-o" was so common that I can attest to
its being common to teenagers of the time (1954) as "dude" five years
ago. I was trying to learn a folk song (I think Irish) on my GIT-tar. I called
the song "Whiskey in a Jar," though I don't think that is the title.
At any rate, I learned the line "what-ho, the daddy-o, there's whiskey in
the jar."
All my hip (or was it hep) friends concurred with what we were hearing
on the 45 rpm record (lo-fi).
Cheers, tlc
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 10:15:26 -0500
From: Mark Mandel Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM
Subject: "show stopper"
On Friday I posted:
------------
"Show stopper" has a different use in filk [sic] music, the
musical tradition that arises out of the community of fantasy and
science fiction* fans. It refers to a short song, usually just one
stanza or chorus and typically a parody (or at least to a well-
known tune), that amounts to a single joke and (ideally) breaks up
the room with laughter.
* (Please, not "sci-fi"!)
------------
... and forwarded it to a more experienced fellow filker, Gary
McGath, for confirmation. Here is the relevant portion of his
reply, quoted by permission:
============
The only qualification I'd make is that a show-stopper is often
less than a complete verse. E.g.:
Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
Flying high into the sun ... (sizzle)
(To "The Exodus Song")
There are some things man was not meant to know,
Some songs man was not meant to sing.
And this is one of them.
In the mundane* world of music, "Be Kind To Your Web-Footed
Friends" could be considered a show-stopper.
I think "sci-fi" fans can be included as well, using the term as a rough
synonym for "space opera."**
============
[definitions -- MAM]
* mundane: not part of the sf subculture
** space opera: Think of "Star Wars". Good guys and bad guys,
shootouts, chases, battles, and lots of special effects
(whether on screen, or on the page and in the theater of the
mind), but in space rather than on the dusty plains or the
high seas or over France and Belgium.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 09:37:56 CDT
From: Randy Roberts robertsr[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]EXT.MISSOURI.EDU
Subject: More on -O
There are a great many examples of the use of final -o in Peter
Tamony's collection. It seems from the evidence to have been very
prolific in sources like Variety magazine and Walter Winchell colums
during the 1930s with terms such as swingo, jambo, wrongo, floppo,
whamo, socko, pinko, hambo, etc. Earlier than that, cartoonist T. A.
Dorgan used it prolifically in terms like pippo, kiddo, righto, and in
fictional[?] product names like washo, smoko, polisho, etc. I imagine
Leonard Zwilling's work on TAD would be useful in this area.
In Mencken's The American Language [see 3rd edition, 1926, p. 110]
he speaks of the use of "intensifying suffixes" originating with the
Irish.
For some early examples you might consider rotto, meaning rot gut
drink, recorded in Barrere and Leland in 1889; or Pierce Egan, Life in
London, 1821, which recorded two lines of verse: "The monkey "Jacco",
All the crack O!" Tamony notes these verse lines in Hotten's edition
of 1869, p. 160.
Randy Roberts
University of Missouri-Columbia
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 23:48:48 -0600
From: "E.S. McNair" esmcnair[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo! Daddy-O!
At 04:08 PM 3/1/97 EST, you wrote:
Since I associate "Daddy-o" with whats-his-nose on the show
before Gilligan's Island (sorry, I'm blanking on lots of refs today,)
I've got to ask: Was "Daddy-o" every actually used without
self-consciousness or parody?
(Woulds
n't Daddy-o be slang on slang?)
beth simon
The expression,"daddy-o", was in use long before Maynard G. Krebs used it in
"The Many Loves of Doby Gilis", a popular sit-com that ran from '59 to '63 on
CBS. I use it all the time, as do many.
David McNair
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 12:28:02 -0500
From: Leslie Dunkling 106407.3560[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]COMPUSERVE.COM
Subject: Homely
1895 Westm. Gaz. 31 Jan. 3/2, I may tell you we are all homely girls. We
don't want any la-di-da members.
"What does the word "homely" mean to Brits?"
In this instance I think it meant "unpretentious." When I first saw a
reference to "a homely woman" many years ago I assumed that it meant a
woman who was domesticated. I was very surprised to find that in American
English it can mean "ugly." (Equally surprised to learn now that American
children sometimes wrap houses in toilet paper. British kids would think
this a great idea.) But "homely" has long meant "plain," and that word can
obviously mean of plain appearance as well as unpretentious in speech and
behaviour.
I have never heard "homey" used in Britain, though I would assume it to
mean "cosy" if it occurred.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 12:28:00 -0500
From: Leslie Dunkling 106407.3560[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]COMPUSERVE.COM
Subject: No problemo
"i'm trying to think if -o is used generally in brit english as well."
Where vocatives are concerned, the answer is a guarded yes. Football
players still instinctively address the linesman as lino; -o can still be
added to a name, as in Johno, Jacko. Boyo used to be associated with Welsh
speakers and maybe still is. Kiddo was heard for a while in the sixties,
along with daddyo. Fatso might still be used of someone considered to be
overweight.
It must be a coincidence, but O was formerly used in English, wasn't it, in
imitation of Latin, as a kind of prefix marking a vocative: `Winking away a
tear, O Amy,' says a character in _The Heir of Redclyffe- by Charlotte M.
Young. This was also Shakespearean usage - hence `O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore
art thou Romeo?' Just as well. `Romeo-o, Romeo-o, wherefore art thou
Romeo?' would not have had the same ring.
Surely the -o added to "no problem" (presumably itself a loan-translation
from German) just picks up on the "o'" of "No" and makes a satisfying
little rhyme?
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 12:27:53 -0500
From: Leslie Dunkling 106407.3560[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]COMPUSERVE.COM
Subject: See Naples and die
Nigel Rees _Dictionary of Phrase and Allusion_ quotes Goethe's _Italian
Journey_ 3 March 1787: "As they say here, vedi Napoli e poi muori!"
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 12:52:09 -0500
From: "Dale F.Coye" CoyeCFAT[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM
Subject: Re: No problemo, daddy-o
Using an -o ending makes a word sound Spanish to Eng. speakers and has for
centuries, no matter whether masculine or feminine in Sp. Armada was armado
in Early Mod. English, bastinado (a torture where you got beaten with a rod)
fr. Sp. bastinada, ambuscado, etc. I think the OED has a section on this
under -ado.
Dale Coye
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Princeton, NJ
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 13:00:59 -0500
From: "David W. Donnell" dthunder[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CONCENTRIC.NET
Subject: Re: Homely teepeeing & soaping
Leslie Dunkling 106407.3560[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]COMPUSERVE.COM wrote:
I was very [snip] surprised to learn now that American
children sometimes wrap houses in toilet paper. British kids would think
this a great idea...
This is largely (exclusively?) a Halloween "Trick" (as in "Trick or
Treat"), and I believe it is widespread in America. It's been going on for
at least 40 years. When I was growing up it was often accompanied by
dumping confetti on a family's lawn and sometimes soaping their windows.
David W. Donnnell
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 13:05:25 -0500
From: "Dale F.Coye" CoyeCFAT[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM
Subject: Re: Homely
Leslie writes:
But "homely" has long meant "plain," and that word can
obviously mean of plain appearance as well as unpretentious in speech and
behaviour.
It's not clear from your context, but I think I'm right in saying that
describing someone's face as plain in British English generally means not
good-looking, or even ugly. I think this adj. is never used in American
English to describe a face, and I remember when I first saw it in a British
text I thought it was value-neutral, not pretty, not ugly. 'Plain
appearance' I associate with Plainclothes of some denominations- nothing
fancy or even a 'uniform' of black or gray clothes.
Dale Coye
Princeton NJ
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 09:58:03 -0800
From: Allen Maberry maberry[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]U.WASHINGTON.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo!
Daddy-o was certainly current before "Dobie Gillis" which began, I think,
in 1959. A movie titled "Daddy-o" was released that same year and was
deservedly forgotten until it was resurrected by "Mystery Science Theater
3000." I don't know if it was the worst movie ever made, but it has got
to be in the running.
Allen
maberry[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]u.washington.edu
On Sat, 1 Mar 1997, Peggy Smith wrote:
I am relatively sure that "daddy-o" was used by James Dean, Sal
Mineo, and friends in the 1957 movie, "Rebel Without a Cause", which
would pre-date Maynard G. Krebs in "Dobie Gillis". The movie date might
have been even earlier. My copy of the screenplay is at school. I will
check on Monday.
Peggy Smith
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 13:07:47 -0500
From: Mark Mandel Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM
Subject: Homely -Reply
Leslie Dunkling 106407.3560[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]COMPUSERVE.COM 0303.1228
(Equally surprised to learn now that American children sometimes wrap
houses in toilet paper. British kids would think this a great idea.)
Does "toilet paper" mean the same thing on both sides of the water? In
the US it is the stuff used for personal cleanliness after defecation, and
comes in rolls.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 13:00:28 -0500
From: Mark Mandel Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM
Subject: No problemo -Reply
Leslie Dunkling 106407.3560[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]COMPUSERVE.COM 0303.1228
Surely the -o added to "no problem" (presumably itself a loan-translation
from German) just picks up on the "o'" of "No" and makes a satisfying little
rhyme?
I don't think so. They don't rhyme to me because the stress is different:
any rhyme would have to rhyme on the stressed syllable of each word,
and those are /ow/ and /em/.
Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 13:45:31 EST
From: Larry Horn LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU
Subject: deficit-spend (footnote)
I hadn't meant to imply that 'deficit spend' as a back-formed verb is a nonce
creation by the NPR reporter Virginia Clark cited. In fact, it struck me as
familiar, so I wasn't TOO surprised when I checked Nexis and discovered well
over 300 citations of this verb, dating back to this familiar-appearing excerpt
from the 1976 Republican Party Platform:
... direct responsibility of a spendthrift, Democrat-controlled Congress
has been unwilling to discipline itself to live within our means. The
temptation to spend and deficit-spend for political reasons has simply been
too great for most of our elected politicians to resist.
Some are a bit more dated than others, e.g. this one from 1984:
... weak as a kitten on the ropes economically. Nothing would please the
technocrats and militarists in the Kremlin better than to have the United
deficit-spend itself into defenselessness.
Many, many citations from the 1980's about states whose constitutions don't let
them deficit-spend, governors claiming they won't deficit spend, and so on.
Not elegant, perhaps, but not new.
--Larry
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 12:31:45 CST
From: Ellen Johnson Ellen.Johnson[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]WKU.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo
Could someone who speaks Spanish better than me tell us whether this
is in fact an idiomatic phrase akin to Eng "no problem", and if so,
why it isn't "ningun problema", which is the way I probably would have
translated it. The mention of German, which would use kein rather
than nein made me wonder about this.
If it is a loan translation from German dressed up as a Spanish
borrowing, this is interesting, as is the re-translation of the phrase
into pseudo-Swahili "hakuna matata", pronounced, to the chagrin of my
friend Lioba, with the last /t/ flapped.
Ellen.johnson[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]wku.edu
p.s. a cultural note: we didn't wrap the houses in toilet paper,
rather we threw the rolls into the branches of trees so it would hang
down and blow in the breeze like streamers, a rather lovely
decoration.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 14:24:12 -0500
From: Grant Barrett gbarrett[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]JERRYNET.COM
Subject: -ies Ending
Reading a sailing magazine from Britain, I came across the word "foulies" which refers to
oilskins or apparel worn during nasty weather. I am also familiar with "Wellies" for Wellington
boots.
I have vague feeling that the -ies ending may be more practiced in Britain than Stateside.
Any thoughts?
Grant Barrett
gbarrett[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dfjp.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 14:47:18 -0500
From: "M. Lynne Murphy" 104LYN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MUSE.ARTS.WITS.AC.ZA
Subject: Re: -ies Ending
Reading a sailing magazine from Britain, I came across the word
"foulies" which refers to oilskins or apparel worn during nasty weather. I am also familiar with
"Wellies" for Wellington boots.
then there's "walkies!"
when i see -ies in south african english, i usually attribute it to
afrikaans influence (not the case in brit english, i know)--for
example, the university of pretoria's nickname is 'tuks' (i don't
know why) and it's called 'tukkies'--but that's an afrikaans-medium
university. then we have takkies for sneakers and all sorts of
other -ie words that are borrowings from afrikaans. note that like
"wellies", "takkies" come in pairs, so that seems to be why the 's'
is there--not that -ies is a diminutive ending, but that -ie is
diminutive and -s is plural. i think the 'foulies' is probably also
plural--it's a set of clothes, right?
but adding -s to singular nouns, especially names, is a feature of
brit english that carries over into south african english. all
the examples i can think of are clippings + s. so, for example, i'm
at university of the witwatersrand (not 'witswatersrand' as so many
of my american correspondents would have it!). the nickname of the
place is "wits"--so, clip it to the first syllable and add an 's'.
other examples are "durbs" (city of durban) and "gabs" (city of
gaborone, botswana). they seem to like to do it with things that
clip so as to be one syllable things with stops at the end.
trying to think of a personal name i've heard it with, but can't
think of any i've definitely heard.
rather the reverse of the -ies phenomenon seems to be the -sie/-sy
diminutive--as in flopsy and mopsy. i'm quite sure i've been called
lynnesie-wynnesie, but god knows in what dialect.
lynnes
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