[Ads-l] Dueling dialects

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Thu May 18 03:18:19 UTC 2017


The headline in my mailbox read:

"Hire A Lawyer For This Fox!"

I thought, Whoa, what is this?! Some new, porn-based version of the
Nigerian letter?!

When I saw the opening sentence,

"Red foxes and oil don't mix well. This guy and his fellow vulpis vulpis
[sic; a hypocorrection of _Vulpes vulpes_ by a writer untutored in both the
classics and zoology] used to rule the roost in places like Baytown, Texas
(just outside of Houston), and other wooded coastal lands."

then I realized that it was an anti-oil-refinery message from an
environmental group.

-- 
-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

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



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