An RCN ad: "For TV _how_ you like it ..."

[Wilson Gray]

Whatever happened to "For TV _like_ you like it ..."? "Winstons taste
good, _how_ a cigarette should"? Shakespeare's "_How_ You Like It"?
And then there's that weird change in the BE of Saint Louis, my
beloved - three syllables - hometown, as exemplified by the hiphop
song title, "I'm Hurr, I'm Thurr, I'm Erriwhurr." Even "air" is
pronounced "urr." Now, if only I could hurrr a black St. Louisan say,
"To err is human ..."

It reminds me of that SF story, "Shall We Have A Little Talk?" The
language changes even as you learn it, though the real language
changes somewhat more slowly than did the fictional - or should I be
hip and use "fictive"? - language in the story.

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org