NYT on Daniel Cassidy

[Joel S. Berson]

At 11/8/2007 11:10 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>It also seems to be the case that Cassidy bases his "etymologies" on
>spelling and not on pronunciation.

In other words, when the spelling fits Cassidy's
thesis, he relies on it -- but when instead pronunciation fits, he uses that.

>For example, "buanchumadh," as
>spelled here, is pronounced approximately ['bu at Nxum@G] in the Munster
>dialect, which doesn't sound much like "bunkum." Its pronunciation may
>be closer to [b^Nk at m] in one or more of the other dialects of Irish,
>but Cassidy shows no evidence of it.
>
>As they say in Irish, "Póg mo chóin!" (I'm not sure what "ó" looks
>like on other people's computers, but it's supposed to be "o acute,"
>as long "o" is spelled in Irish.)

o-acute is fine -- it's in everyone's character
set, like the other accented characters for the
so-called "Western European" languages.

Joel

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