Genitalia

[Bill Smith]

In the posting below, I wrote a "see below," but omitted the "below.  Here
it is:
Are [aiS] and [IS] English sounds?  Aside from proper nouns (e.g.
"Fleischmann"), foreign words used only in the context of their native
territories (e.g. "Reich"), and dialects in which [I] is raised to [i], I
can't think of any.  Is that due to a failure of my memory retrieval, or do
such words not exist?
Bill


At 11:16 PM 9/27/00 -0400, I wrote:
>        I seem to owe an apology to those who did not realize that my
>"prurience" comment was tongue-in-cheek.  Still, you must admit that Jesse
>Sheidlower got more attention by writing _The F-Word_ (hardly a book to be
>read for its pornographic content) than he would have if he had chosen to
>write about, say, "science" (although that too has some interesting
>etymological relatives).
>        This is indeed linguistic research, seeking answers of the type that
>I received for "possible."  That is why I ask for the pronunciation of
>"nishi."  If it is [niSI], a likely source is French "niche."  If it is
>[nISI], "knish" is the likely candidate (but see below).