"phonetically"

[Wilson Gray]

On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 7:45 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> speaks phonetically

Interestingly, the Late-Great Redd Foxx, on his album, You Got to Wash
Your Ass, says of himself that, back in his days as an altar-boy back
at St. Benedict the Moor parish in Saint Louis, he "spoke Latin
_phonetically_."

Your guess is as good as mine as to what, exactly, he meant by that.
We altar-boys weren't taught Latin and didn't speak Latin, sensu
stricto. We merely recited fixed formulae -

Priest: Introibo ad altare Dei
Altar-boy: Ad Deum, qui laetificat juventutem meam

- that we already knew - there were "ponies," called "altar cards,"
supplied, just in case - from years of reading along with the
"celebrant," as we say in Catholic, in our missals, before we achieved
stardom.

--
-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