Was "Dip-thong" but now I'm hijacking it!

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:31 PM +0100 5/19/00, Aaron E. Drews wrote:

>
>"phth" is never found at the beginning of a word in English, so the "ph" go
>to the vowel on its left.  Why "phth" become "pth" is something else.
>
One of my favorite dictionary words has always been "phthisis", which,
although it actually refers to pulmonary tuberculosis, is the way I used to
think of my dissertation before it managed to get written.  Unfortunately,
the initial ph- (and not just the -h- part!) is evidently silent; M-W NCD7
gives [THAY-s at s] (rhyming with 'crisis') as the only pronunciation.  I've
never heard it pronounced myself, so I felt justified in thinking of it as
[FTHI:s at s].

larry