"Turn on"

[Wilson Gray]

On Oct 12, 2004, at 1:28 PM, Mark A. Mandel wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Turn on"
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> writes (responding to Jonathan
> Lightner's
> post):
>>>>>>
>>   Pei's comments on American slang are often unreliable.
>
> Alas! Poor Mario! He just don't get no respect. Everybody puts him
> down. (Long story not worth the telling.)
>  <<<<<
>
> I remember his _The Story of Language_ as part of what turned me on to
> linguistics.

That's true for me, too. But my annoying experience has been that to
refer to Pei in any serious manner is to invite a negative comment, as
above. Even when I was in the Army, the mere mention of Mario's name
was to invite a rain of cutting remarks from the barracks
linguisterati.

Thanks! I owe you one, Mark.

-Wilson

>
> Mark A. Mandel, Research Administrator
> Biomedical Information Extraction, Linguistic Data Consortium
> University of Pennsylvania
> [This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]
>