on pronouncing "gyros" (recycled Linguist List posting)

[David Bowie]

From:    Bob Haas <highbob at MINDSPRING.COM>

: Was ist eine Käsesemmel?  Ich mus lernen jetzt!...

It's a Semmel (further north: Brötchen), which i've seen most often defined
as a "hard roll" even though most of the ones i ate in Germany and Austria
were crusty but really rather soft, sliced horizontally, slathered with
butter, and filled with lots of thinly sliced mild cheese. The ones i used
to get at the bakery just down the street in the direction the tourists
*don't* go from the Innsbruck rail station were positively addicting. I
think the closest English translation would be something like "cholesterol
sandwich".

And while on dairy-rich foods, why is it that soft pretzels made it to
Philadelphia PA but Butterbrezeln didn't?

And to bring this back to the subject line, back when food trucks were still
allowed all around the University of Pennsylvania campus, a couple of them
had apparently mass-produced signs that read "It tastes better when you say
it 'yee-ro'!"

David Bowie                                       Department of English
Assistant Professor                            Brigham Young University
db.list at pmpkn.net              http://humanities.byu.edu/faculty/bowied
   The opinions stated here are not necessarily those of my employer