" Olive, the other reindeer"

[Landau, James]

In a message dated Mon, 27 Sep 2004 13:27:40 -0400,
 "Dennis R. Preston" <[log in to unmask]> writes:

> Look like the old /hw/-/w/ jumped up. It bit me the other day. I was
> out in the garden working and bitching and carrying on about how hard
> I had it, etc... My neighbor said " You want some cheese and crackers
> to go with that wine." Luckily my pragmatic organizer took over, and
> I had to figure out why what he said make sense. Finally, of course,
> I got to his "wine" - "whine" homophony.

>From: Dennis Preston <preston at MSU.EDU>
>Date:         Thu, 2 Aug 2007 19:32:14
>To:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject:      ; was Re: "Trolling" for >"Trawling": An Eggcorn?
>
>Once years ago I stood in front of  a used car lot in Calgary wondering
why
>Otto's Auto's struck me as mildly funny; then I realized that for
almost ahl
>Canadians they are homophones. (And nearly everybody west of the
Mississippi,
>nearly everybody in New England, and a passle of folk in a band through
the
>middle of the US.)

Dr. Preston, I find it rather surprising that your ear can be so attuned
to phonemic nuances that you overlook obvious plays on words.

I personally distinguish /ah/ from /aw/ yet the assonance in "Otto's
Autos" was immediately obvious to me.  Although it may have been because
back in elementary school I gleefully learned that autos are powered by
Otto engines. (The four-cycle internal combustion engine was invented by
Nikolaus August Otto in 1876).

Here's one for you, from the old Pogo strip:

    Deck us all with Boston Charlie
    Nora's freezing on the trolley

Do you catch the rhyme?

   James A. Landau
   test engineer
   Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
   8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
   West Atlantic City  NJ  08232  USA

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PUUSI SPJLU MBZCT GQGLH POAWW YYQWR
FGALC HLBYK YYQWR
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