"People of color"

[Mark Mandel]

Sorry to have misunderstood, Wilson. But in email, lacking intonation,
facial expression, and so on, it can be hard to recognize irony. So there
are various ways of showing it explicitly, two (three?) of which are

   - [irony] or is that "Semetic" [/irony]   (or angle brackets)
   - or is that "Semetic" ;-)

I didn't recognize your usage, which of course is ambiguous with real
uncertainty, lacking the abovementioned clues. From now on I'll try to
remember it.

m a m

On Sun, Sep 5, 2010 at 3:14 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 8:53 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote,
> quoting Wilson Gray:
>
> > Semitic - or is that "Semetic"
>
> This is a phraseology that I use to indicate that I consider the word
> or the phrase that appears after _or is that_ to be, IMO, an asininity
> that should never apprear in the language of anyone pretending to
> speak or to write formal English.
>
> Even though I first heard the pronunciation, "Sem[E]tic," in place of
> the pronunciation, "Sem[I]tic," used by random Jewish classmates in
> Hebrew 101 at UC Davis in the late '60's, and "Sem[E]tic" is the
> pronunciation favored by such worthies as Jon Stewart, I consider it
> to be an abomination. My use of "Sem[E/I]tic" in the line quoted had
> nothing whatsoever to to do with the putative existence, or not, of a
> supposed "Sem[i]tic"/"Sem[E]tic" language family.
>
> My intention was only to drip sneering sarcasm on the
> startlingly-common use of _Sem[E]tic_ by people who know how to read.
> I've listened long and hard for, e.g. "em[I]tic," "(sym)path[I]tic,"
> or even "Sal Hep[I]tica," in hopes of finding a counterbalance, but,
> so far, I've had no luck.
>
> I'm really hurt to realize that there are people who have no trouble
> assuming that, when I write "or is that" or "or should that be," it's
> truly a sign of doubt on my part, due to my having an inadequate
> command of English spelling or syntax. Y'all oughta be 'shame' a y'all
> se'f! "Vos fir a shande!", as a native-speaker of Yiddish once
> exclaimed, upon hearing me mispronounce Yiddish _alef" as [o] instead
> of as [O].
>
> Wal, sometime', I do be jes' a-bullconnin' y'all. And I appreciate the
> fact that - or should that be, "I appreciate"? - people are merely
> trying to be helpful, with no malice aforethought.
>
> --
> -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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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