Beware of the dog

Mark Crispin mrc at CAC.Washington.EDU
Thu Feb 6 11:04:37 CET 2003


On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, John Cowan wrote:
> What on earth makes you think he wouldn't have a clue?

Because you clearly did not.  You were more interested in taking a dig at
your fellow-countrymen.

> Mr. Clews said nothing about insults (that was your idea alone) but
> merely that Eye-rack grates on English sensibilities, quite justly.

You didn't read his message carefully then.  He specifically mentioned
"the current climate" which implied that he attributed that pronunciation
to the pending war.

And he was correct.  It may be "American arrogance", but it most certainly
was not "American ignorance."  A lot of that "American arrogance",
particularly towards Europe, has come about from self-fufilling prophecy.

> > "Eye-Rack" is a product of
> > the current climate, and will disappear totally after its resolution.  It
> > is a legitimate sound-change.
> What you expose here is your abysmal ignorance of what sound changes are,
> and how they differ from language games.

You mentioned that your father used "Eye-tal-ian" throughout his life.
What originated as a language game can become a legitimate sound change.

You are contradicting yourself.

> You might want to consider taking Linguistics 454 and learning something.

Oh, you mean how to become yet another vacuous pseudo-intellectual in a
field that offers no skills other than to properly enunciate "would you
like fries with your order, sir?"  Linguistics has gone sharply downhill
in the past 20 years, particularly with Chomsky and Searle playing the
clown for the media.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.


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