[Ads-l] Q: M silent in MN?

[Dan Goncharoff]

Xylophone?
On Jan 2, 2015 11:01 PM, "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Q:  M silent in MN?
>
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> I just now "Mnemosyne", and that's really a name, so it doesn't count, =
> at least in Scrabble.  ("Mnemonic" also has the nice feature of =
> containing different grades of the same PIE etymon in the first two =
> syllables, so it's a good mnemonic for remembering "men-".)
>
> Is there some sort of principle that dictates that we always pronounce =
> the second consonant of those phonotactic-violating initial clusters, =
> especially the ones from Greek  (psychology, pneumonia, xylophone, =
> gnostic,=85)?  Is this discussed somewhere?   =20
>
> LH
>
> On Jan 2, 2015, at 10:07 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
> > Thanks (and there are 19 other words beginning "mnem", none of which I =
> am familiar with).  My morbid mind ran rather to words like "condemn".
> >=20
> > Joel
> >=20
> >=20
> > At 1/2/2015 09:54 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >> Well, we'd need a "mnemonic" for that.
> >>=20
> >> LH
> >>=20
> >> On Jan 2, 2015, at 9:33 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >>=20
> >> > Are there words containing "mn" for which the "m" is silent, so the =
> result is "n"?
> >> >
> >> > Joel
> >> >
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