Cam(pb)ell

[Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM]

Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> writes:

>>>>>
extremely item-specific pronunciations are not unknown.  ann
daingerfield zwicky (and some of the people she grew up with in
lexington, kentucky) had "Campbell" pronounced the same as "camel",
while maintaining the [b] in "ramble", "Rambo", etc.  she used this
pronunciation for everyone named Campbell, whether or not they
themselves used it.  so it was "Camel's condensed soups", which
always struck me as perverse.  eventually one of her dearest friends
married a man named Campbell-with-a-b, and she made an exception
for bonnie and ed, her only ramble-Campbells.
<<<<<

PING! Ah HA!

This resolves a puzzle that has haunted me ... well, bubbled around in the
unconscious and occasionally surfaced, leaving me wondering "Why DID they
do that?" as well as "Why am I thinking of THAT?" -- since [pause to
reckon] the summer of 1965. I was in Corbin, Kentucky, and near where I was
staying there was a motel with a sign "Campbell's Motel"* with a picture of
a camel. It didn't take me long to realize it was supposed to be a pun on
the name, but it always seemed awfully far-fetched to me. Now I get it.

* Academic honesty: maybe the wording was something different, like "MOTEL
-- The Campbell's" [with greengrocer's apostrophe], but the name and the
picture were there.

Thanks, Arnold.

-- Mark

   Mark A. Mandel : Dragon Systems, a Lernout & Hauspie company
 Mark_Mandel at dragonsys.com : Sr. Linguist & Mgr. of Acoustic Data
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02460, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com
                     (speaking for myself)