SOTA watch: "ancestors" for "descendants" again?

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Oct 2 13:29:11 UTC 2008


At 7:16 AM +0000 10/2/08, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>To be fair the Webster's Student Dictionary by Barnes and Noble (an
>American Co.) though printed in USA does not say it's an American
>dictionary (but it does say "American edition copyright 1992,1999")
>.  Copyright shifted from Harrap Publishing (a UK Co.) in 1992.
>It's phonetic notation looks like SAMPA.  Every ending "r" is
>written with an upside-down "e", because "-r is never pronounced at
>the end of words" it says.  Also "farm" is fa:m.  I suppose the
>"Webster" part is that US spelling is given first then British.  But
>it's clearly UK pronunciation written in European SAMPA.
>
>I bought an older "Webster's Dictionary" (copyrights 1939 first to
>1975 last) by Modern Promotions, NY.  It says "This dictionary is
>not published by the original publishers of Webster's Dictionary,
>nor by their ancestors."

Does it actually say "ancestors"?  Stunning.

LH

>So what makes it Websters?  I suppose the spelling.  The
>pronunciation guide is different than above, with a long line macron
>over the long vowels and the short vowels having no diacritics.
>(...)

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list