[Ads-l] mic/mike (was fuck them)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Part of the problem here is that the pop-pedantic "mic" has become general
only in the past generation.

Old people expect and demand "mike."

JL

On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 3:31 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> It's partly habit. We accept (grudgingly or not) that "pint" can have the
> /aI/ diphthong (as opposed to "hint", "lint", "tint", etc.), so in
> principle "mic" could too.  It's just that it did used to be abbreviated
> "mike" so when we (of a certain age) see "mic" we assume it's *not* short
> for m/aI/crophone, but for something that rhymes with "Bic" and "tic".
>
> LH
>
> > On Aug 31, 2016, at 3:21 PM, Marc Sacks <msacksg at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > No, Amy. It's not just you. I still spell it mike, just like I did when I
> > learned it back in the 50s. Though come to think of it, I never really
> > learned it, just heard it pronounced mike and spelled it accordingly,
> just
> > like a guy's name. Mick could be a guy's name too, but it's not short for
> > mickrophone. so what gives?
> >
> > Marc Sacks
> >
> > On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 3:07 PM, Amy West <medievalist at w-sts.com> wrote:
> >
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >> -----------------------
> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       Amy West <medievalist at W-STS.COM>
> >> Subject:      Re: mic/mike (was fuck them)
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> -------------------
> >>
> >> On 8/31/16 12:00 AM, ADS-L automatic digest system wrote:
> >>> Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2016 20:51:41 -0400 From: Jonathan Lighter
> >>> <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> Subject: Re: fuck them Yeah, whenever I read
> >>> the pop-pedantic "mic," I still think "Mick," which must make me some
> >>> kind of bigot. JL On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 8:33 PM, Laurence Horn
> >>> <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> >>>>> Yeah, I've run into that.  I just can't read"mic" with a "long" (i.e.
> >>>>> diphthongized great-vowel-shifted) "i".  But we're a dying breed,
> >> Dubya(s).
> >>
> >> Thank God it's not just me.
> >>
> >> ---Amy West
> >>
> >>
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