"phonetically"

[Herb Stahlke]

I haven't seen this use of "pony" since I was in school, where it meant a
translation, usually interlinear, of a Greek or Latin work.  I don't recall
it being used with German texts, though, but it probably was.

Herb


On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 2:42 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "phonetically"
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> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 7:45 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > speaks phonetically
>
> Interestingly, the Late-Great Redd Foxx, on his album, You Got to Wash
> Your Ass, says of himself that, back in his days as an altar-boy back
> at St. Benedict the Moor parish in Saint Louis, he "spoke Latin
> _phonetically_."
>
> Your guess is as good as mine as to what, exactly, he meant by that.
> We altar-boys weren't taught Latin and didn't speak Latin, sensu
> stricto. We merely recited fixed formulae -
>
> Priest: Introibo ad altare Dei
> Altar-boy: Ad Deum, qui laetificat juventutem meam
>
> - that we already knew - there were "ponies," called "altar cards,"
> supplied, just in case - from years of reading along with the
> "celebrant," as we say in Catholic, in our missals, before we achieved
> stardom.
>
> --
> -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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