last laugh on awe-dropping

[Mark Mandel]

Getting back to the topic... Ron re-sent to me "using aol and the dsl
in the hotel" the Sunday message that I and several others received in
base64; I quote the relevant parts below for context.

No, Ron, this guy has learned nothing whatsoever about standard
phonological terminology or any other part of language science, and he
never will. Not because he's stupid or malicious -- I don't think he
is -- but because he is willfully ignorant, and proud of it. I might
instead call him stubbornly naive. He posts here, but he ignores
anything anyone else says that doesn't fit his own conceptions. He has
been running his "Truespel" for many years and prides himself on never
having polluted his pure native-speaker awareness with any theory or
book-larnin'. (There, I've made my contempt for his attitude
explicit.) By now, I'm sure, he is too deeply psychologically invested
in it to admit that he could ever, possibly, be in any way wrong.

I will only repeat the advice I have offered here many times since
shortly after his first appearances here: save yourself the trouble.
Killfile his posts, and do your best to ignore his rubbish when other
listmembers make the mistake of replying to him.

Mark Mandel


On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:59 AM,  <RonButters at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Has this guy learned NOTHING about the stardard phonological terminology in
> all the years he has been posting to this list?
>
> As we are talking about it here, schwa is a phone, not a phoneme. The "uh"
> that he hears is a schwa. There is nothing "vague" about it. If it is not
> pronounced "uh" it is not a schwa.
>
> In a message dated 2/8/09 12:07:31 PM, truespel at HOTMAIL.COM writes:
>
>> As I hear spoken in m-w.com  ~Lu Gwaardeeyu~  where ~u = "uh", ~aar =
>> "are"
>>
>> Again I here a y glide.  I think m-w.com initially had y glides in the
>> phonetic spelling but took them out.
>>
>> Schwa is a vague phoneme, often spoken with a short i or short oo.  In
>> truespel there are no schwas because all are spelled out as heard on
>> talking
>> dictionaries.
>>
>> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>> see truespel.com

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