Fwd: Re: Ghoti -- oops!

[Dennis R. Preston]

I always preferred "horses' doovers" (leaving the hearer to imagine
what a "doover" might be) to "whore's d'ovaries." I take all of these
to be intentional mispronunciations to mock the unsophisticated,
apparently a Colorado belief about Nebraskans, a pairing I didn't
know about.

dInIs

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>From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: Ghoti -- oops!
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>Subject:      Re: Ghoti -- oops!
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>At 11:26 PM -0500 12/12/06, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>>>Shoulda noticed Larry's  post before spouting off. I do think Shaw used it
>>>even if he wasn't its inventor.
>>
>>Many people have searched high and low in Shaw's works for "ghoti" and
>>have come up empty. Had it appeared in print, it would most likely
>>have showed up in _George Bernard Shaw on Language_ (New York:
>>Philosophical Library, 1963), edited by Abraham Tauber, an anthology
>>of items written by Shaw about language and language reform (including
>>excerpts from his will).  But the only mention of it is in Tauber's
>>introduction (p. xvii):
>>
>>"Shaw is frequently associated with his innovation of the story of a
>>'fish' -- spelled 'ghoti' -- the 'gh' of laugh, the 'o' of women, and
>>the 'ti' of nation -- the transliteration 'ghoti' representing the
>>sounds of the word 'fish,' as well as the irrational and inconsistent
>>nature of English spelling."
>>
>>As I mentioned in my other post, we do have a firm attribution to
>>Daniel Jones from 1943, and he may have been confused in the popular
>>imagination (by Mario Pei and others) with Shaw.
>>
>>--Ben
>>
>Let's see..."J" as in "Beijing" [hyperforeignism-style], "o" as in
>"dog", "n" as in "column", "e" as in "make", "s" as in "hors
>d'oeuvres"*--I can see why Pei might have thought Jones was Shaw.
>
>
>LH
>
>*But not when pronounced as a student reports it is in "backwoods
>Nebraska" according to a Coloradan friend of his, viz. "whore's
>ovaries".
>
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There are many different religions in this world, but if you look at
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Homer Simpson

Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
15-C Morrill Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1036
Phone: (517) 353-4736
Fax: (517) 353-3755
preston at msu.edu

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