"Norval" ... How do *you* pronounce it?

[Bill Palmer]

Nice to hear from someone with a connection to DDG-24, "The Warship
Waddell...4 (boilers) burnin', 2 (main engines) turnin', 30 knots, no smoke"
was what was written on their T-shirts, when I encountered them on liberty
in Subic Bay. (I added the parenthetical stuff , for the non-destrroyermen
on the list)

I served 2 years on DDG-20.  Wonderful ships (beautiful, too)

Bill Palmer

----- Original Message -----
From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2009 1:43 PM
Subject: Re: "Norval" ... How do *you* pronounce it?


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Norval" ... How do *you* pronounce it?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In BE, of course, there's no distinction to be made. The two names
> fall together indistinguishably. Naahveil Mo was the first and only
> <har! har!> person that I've ever known with this name or any variant
> thereof. However, my mother had a friend, Doris Rita, whose surname
> was "Novell," pronounced, of course, "Naahveil." I was was quite
> surprised to discover the way that he spelled his name, though it did
> explain why Sr. Ann Elizabeth persisted in addressing him as [nOrv at l].
>
> When my brother was in the Navy, he was the XO of a guided-missile
> destroyer (it was merely *armed* with guided missiles, in addition to
> the usual armament of such a vessel; it was not purposed toward the
> *destruction* of guided missiles) christened the USS Waddell [,wa
> 'dEl]. I mentioned this to my German penpal - he wrote *in* English; I
> wrote *at* German - and he replied, using the spelling, "Waddle,"
> presumably representing [wadl].
>
> It wasn't until I discovered that there is no work known as [lI 'dEl]
> & Scott that I realised ;-) how it had come about that Klaus-Juergen
> had made such an egregious spelling error: he was using the "Liddell"
> of Liddell & Scott or something similar in Britspeak as his mental
> exemplar.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Victor Steinbok<aardvark66 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail
>> header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: "Norval" ... How do *you* pronounce it?
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Wilson's original (Texas) pronunciation looks like being close to that
>> for the narwhal (whale--occasionally spelled "norwhal" or "narwal"),
>> except for the v/w distinction. I was somewhat surprised to find the
>> stress to be on the first syllable (for the whale, not for the name).
>>
>> As for the rest of the country (and, perhaps, the Anglophone world),
>> would there be a distinction between Norval and Norville? (As in,
>> Deborah Norville or Norville Barnes)
>>
>>    VS-)
>>
>> Wilson Gray wrote:
>>> I got a note from Facebook telling me that Norval [Surname] had become
>>> my Fb-friend. That reminded me of a grade-school classmate of mine
>>> down home in Texas. His name was Norval Moore, pronounced
>>> approximately [na:ve at l mo].
>>>
>>>
>>
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> -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

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