curiosa

[Dennis R. Preston]

Shame on you larry. Lots of young folks out there never heard the mongoose
story.

dInIs

>At 4:58 PM -0700 9/20/00, Peter A. McGraw wrote (with respect to
>Mark's conundrum of whether and how to pluralize "Shiraz"):
>>Just don't worry about it.  As they say in Australia, que Shiraz, Shiraz'!
>>
>Shiraz shoutin', I'd make it Shirazes.  Certainly with less
>trepidation than Bordeaux(e)s--that one has to just stay Bordeaux
>when there's more than one, but gets pronounced differently:  sing.
>[bor'do], pl. [bor'doz].  Or you could always try the "mongoose"
>maneuver:  "Buy a Shiraz--in fact, buy two."  It is a nice red wine,
>so we should probably work out the plural at some point.
>
>larry
>
>P.S.  Peter's pun is evidently taken--nothing new down under the sun,
>it appears:
>
>from http://www.clifty.com/wine/thoughts/quesirah.html:
>Que Sirah Syrah Shiraz
>
>Syrah. Petite Sirah. Shiraz. Three wines practically designed to
>confuse the consumer. Are they the same? Are they different? And if
>so, how? Today we look at the
>"common knowledge" about the three wines, plus we put it to the test
>with some blind tastings.
>
>[etc. etc.]


Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736