hopefully/hopedly

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Tue Aug 25 02:00:38 UTC 2009


My impression was that the writer meant only the first *two* (Romaji)
syllables of "Ichiro": "Ichi." But, of course, that yields only a single
syllable, [iTS], plus a voiceless release in Japanese.
BTW, I'm listening to Put Your Dreams Away, Frank's old themesong from
during The War.

Further BTW: Gmail's spellcheck is trying to tell me that "themesong" should
be "theme(-)song." Strange, considering that "themesong" has been the
spelling that I've known and loved since I learned to read and to write.
Indeed, back in the day, Detective-Inspector Dick Tracy's asshole buddies,
B.O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie, the latter's wife, had a daughter named
"Themesong."

-Wilson

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: hopefully/hopedly
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 9:34 AM -0500 8/24/09, Joan H. Hall wrote:
> >Fred Cassidy's variant of choice was "hopedly" (in three syllables).
> >Unfortunately, it didn't get much traction.
> >
> Speaking of syllables, I was a bit puzzled by a claim in yesterday's
> NYT Sports section piece on how outfielder Ichiro Suzuki came to
> become just plain "Ichiro" back when he was still playing in Japan,
> before he became a star for the Seattle Mariners:
>
> ===================
> Because Suzuki's magical season [210 hits in a 130-game season]
> happened to coincide with a wacky marketing gimmick concocted by his
> manager, Akira Ohgi, his name will forever be rooted in the mystique
> of 200 hits in Japan...Hoping to capture Japan's fancy, Ohgi replaced
> the surname across the back of Suzuki's jersey with his first name
> during spring training and registered him with the commissioner's
> office as Ichiro. Surprised, to say the least, Suzuki, who was 20,
> had little leverage to protest.
>
>  From that moment, scoreboards across Japan would identify him as
> Ichiro and the rest of Orix's starting lineup by their surnames.
> Public-address announcers would shout out only the two syllables of
> his first name when introducing his at-bat.
> ===================
>
> I was wondering whether one of his three syllables (the middle one I
> figured) was actually silent in Japanese.  But I see from the version
> appearing in the online version today that this was just a typo; the
> last sentence above now refers to "the three syllables of his first
> name"  Whew.
>
> LH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to come
from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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