From Judge Maria Lopez Show

[Jonathan Lighter]

This is funny. Well, maybe not...

  Last week _F& F_ interviewed a pair of fully-dressed underwear models from Victoria's secret. (You'll recall that underwear was in the news a lot last week. _Sheer_ coincidence, of course.)

  It was soon obvious that the two young ladies were somehow managing to work the words "sexy," "sexier," or "sexiest" into virtually every sentence they uttered.  This isn't easy for most of us, and if I didn't have boundless confidence in the straightforward workings of commerce, I'd have to guess that they'd been _trained_ to do so.  ("Thees will be thee _sexiest_ than _ever_!" said the model from Brazil.)

  But that's not the point. After the interview, both ladies had the opportunity to "do the weather."  This is a common gimmick on morning news shows. A guest stands in front of the great digital screen and reads the forecast like a "weatherperson."  The first guest I ever saw do this was Henry Kissinger, but let that pass.

  Anyway, the girl _not_ from Brazil spoke "perfect" American English without the hint of an accent or any foreign language interference whatsoever. But when she got to "Des Moines" on the board she looked blanked and said, "How do you say that?" The regular weather guy told her.  Fair enough; I've had college students who couldn't say "Des Moines" OR "Schenectady."  But next on the list came "Wichita."

  The ad-hoc weather-maiden said, "And in / wI 'Ci t@ / ..."

  Now it gets funny.  The weather guy helpfully said, "Wichita."  Then she got that brief look of surprise and revulsion that's so typical of high-school cheerleaders and said, "Well, how should I know that ? I was born in the CAYMAN ISLANDS !"

  Now that's the kind of sense of humor I can respect !

  JL



Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: From Judge Maria Lopez Show
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Twenty-ish Latino male speaker:

"He was drunk, your honor; he was _ineber_ (in EEb at r)."

Perhaps this was just a slip of the tongue caused by trying to use an
unusual word too big for him to wrap his tongue around it. It's hard
to see how to derive it from "inebriated." English was clearly the
speaker's first language.

-Wilson
--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Sam'l Clemens

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