mark by hand (was: the curious phonology of Wisconsin)

[Dennis R. Preston]

>Fritz,

You obviously don't live where your namesake beer is sold; there your
name would be familiar to every beer-belly in town.

Of course familiarity does not always breed accuracy; when I was in
Madison WI in the 12th Cent. there was a cheap beer (popular among
the little moneyed) named Feuerbach pronounced 'fireback,' but the
best local pronunciation of all the midwestern US German heritage
beers was Griesedieck as 'greasydick.'

dInIs



>Mark,
>I didn't know about the '15' meaning.  Names are often so
>interesting.  I have a kid whose last name is Breivogel.  He
>naturally thinks that it has something to do with birds, but such is
>not the case.  A Breivogel is not a bird, altho it probably alludes
>it one.
>My last name gets slaughtered all the time.  I am used to it and
>even enjoy the variations I get.  ALmost no one here at the school
>can even spell it.  I've gotten about 20 different spellings on
>various notes.  Oh well. Pronunciations are just as amusing. My
>favorite happened recently when I was in a Chinese restaurant and
>paid with my plastic.  The lady who took it, who is from China,
>informed me "you have a Chinese name--zhueng- ling." Now, if you
>were to see me, you would never think I was Chinese. I don't know
>how she ever thought I could have gotten a Chinese name, but she was
>able to tell me what it means--something like 'trees in the mist' if
>I remember correctly.  It's all good:)
>Fritz Juengling aka Zhueng-ling
>
>>>>  mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU 11/23/04 08:07AM >>>
>FRITZ JUENGLING <juengling_fritz at SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US> asks:
>>>>
>Just out of curiosity, are you sure it's 'mark by hand' and not 'mark almond
>(or tonsil)?'
><<<
>
>i've always been pretty careful (obsessive) with my wording, punctuation,
>capitalization, and so on. nowadays i usually use dragon naturallyspeaking
>to type, and am pretty careful with it, although the occasional speako
>escapes my notice. when typing by hand, as now, i minimize shifts, etc., and
>sign "mark by hand" as an excuse to those who know about my tendinitis.
>
>i know my last name means 'almond' in german. my grandfather's name was
>mandelbaum. when my father enlisted in the us army in ww2 he shortened it. i
>like to think his motive was to avoid a german-sounding name, rather than to
>avoid a jewish-sounding one. sometimes i say he cut down the trees and left
>only the nuts.
>
>aha! i hadn't realized that it also means 'tonsil' (similar shape; french
>also, "amygdale"?); thank you very much. but in this case, as you can see,
>"by hand" is away from the tonsils!
>
>it also means in some dialects '(group of) 15' in the same way that eng.
>"dozen" is '(group of) 12'.
>
>-- mark by hand


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
A-740 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 432-3099
Fax: (517) 432-2736
preston at msu.edu