"Silver Tsunami" (first "boomer" files for Social Security)

[Tom Zurinskas]

It's always been in "American" :) English called a "tidal wave".  Shall we start calling hurricanes, typhoons? :).  We do live with names that are a bit incongruous, like "parkway" even though we don't park on it.  Somewhere there's a list of these.  We can live with tsunami.  I wonder which word most Americans would choose.

I wonder how many words in English are out there that are not pronounced in an English friendly way.  You seem to think lots.  But I think we Englishize them, like the way "t" was dropped by m-w.com for saying tsunami.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems" at authorhouse.com.




> Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:49:15 -0700
> From: gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM
> Subject: Re: "Silver Tsunami" (first "boomer" files for Social Security)
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Benjamin Barrett
> Subject: Re: "Silver Tsunami" (first "boomer" files for Social Security)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> No objection here if you call it a pseudo-tidal wave, then. But the tide
> doesn't roar onto shores, destroying objects and creatures in the path.
> If you want to eliminate all the words with sounds that are unfriendly
> to AmE, you have a long way to go. (Psychology, gnu, knight, tse-tse...) BB
>
> Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>> I'm showing my age as well. It was always "tidal wave" years ago. Who knew the cause. I suppose there could be several causes - asteroid splash? volcano? gas bubble? Interestingly, it does act like a tide, because the ocean wells up like a tide for many waves before receding. I don't think it's so bad a term as to replace it with a word that begins with a silent letter that's not even phonetically American English friendly.
>>
>
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