indice

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

I won't presume to lecture Wilson on the social manifestations of racism, but (a) Wilson is such a learned guy that I'd think most people would hesitate to correct "the colored fellow" because they would assume he was "right" and they were wrong; (b) I was always taught that it was impolite to correct strangers about minor pronunciation issues, regardless of whether the speaker is a "colored fellow" or fish-belly white.
------Original Message------
From: Wilson Gray
Sender:
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Sent: Aug 24, 2008 1:42 AM
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] indice

When I have occasion to use these words, I pronounce them as
"IN-[dais]" and "VER-[tais]." Since this is a subtle playing of the
race card, it's all that I can do to keep a straight face. I can tell
that my white listeners really want to "correct" me. but they don't
want appear racist by "embarrasing" the colored fellow, who probably
knows no better, poor uneducated lout, by publicly correcting him.

But, OTOH, since the use of _indice vertice_ is jargon and [-ais] is
very different from [-Is], [@s], or whatever, if you stop to think
about, it's possible that I may be using some other bit of jargon
that's specific to my field and "correcting" me might make the
corrector look stupid.

This happens *extremely* rarely, but, when it does, it warms the
cockles of my heart.

-Wilson

On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 10:40 PM, Bill Le May <blemay0 at mchsi.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Bill Le May <blemay0 at MCHSI.COM>
> Subject:      Re: indice
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In a previous life, writing program code for civil engineering and
> surveying, I encountered users who would refer to a vertice.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
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-----
-Mark Twain

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