unscripted speech

[Chris Waigl]

Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

>On Sat, 3 Sep 2005 07:21:30 +0200, Paul Frank wrote:
>
>
>>The power of an unscripted political speech:
>>(And an American English document)
>>
>>Mayor of New Orleans Audio
>>http://www.atypical.net/mm/nagin.mp3
>>
>>
>
>Also available from the NY Times:
>http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/audio/national/NAGIN_AUDIO.mp3
>
>With a transcript:
>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/national/nationalspecial/02TEXT-NAGIN.html
>
>
A better transcript is available from Anna Stevenson, an American
translator and writer who lives in Nice
<http://perso.fraise.net/permalink/2005/09/549/>. I've imported hers and
un-polished and corrected it a bit
<http://serendipity.lascribe.net/blogdocs/nagin-WWL.html>.

>One minor point of interest... though Nagin was using surprisingly
>"unmonitored" speech (at least for a politician) and kept up moderate
>cursing throughout the interview, there were still some odd moments of
>self-repair. For instance, twice he said "lickety-s..." (as if beginning
>to say "lickety-split"), but then self-repaired and said "lickety-quick".
>
>
So the expression is really "lickety-split"?

The BBC transcribes the passage as "lickety spit", which I thought makes
sense, but is definitely not what Nagin said, i.e. "lickety-s-quick",
and "lickety-s-[snaps fingers]-quick" the second time.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4209174.stm>

Chris Waigl

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