[Ads-l] Media request (Business Insider) about language and nature

[Wilson Gray]

When my late wife sneezed, she literally said, "Ah-chew!", instead of just
sneezing. She was unaware that she did this. So, there wasn't any way to
discover how this originated.

On Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 4:18 PM ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Andy Bach wrote:
> > There was a recent "Now I Know" blog
> > http://nowiknow.com/the-surprising-story-behind-the-sound-of-sneezes/
> >
> > about the various sounds of sneezes, onomatopoeia they may be, but
> there's
> > a lot of them:
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneeze#Sound
>
> That is a fascinating example. The onomatopoeic representation of a
> sneeze as "achoo" in English was influenced by the sound. In addition,
> the pronunciation of the word "achoo" helped to mold the partially
> involuntary sound emitted while sneezing. The wide variety of
> representations for a sneeze suggests that a similar feedback loop
> exists in other languages.
>
> Garson
>
>
> >
> >
> > --
> wk
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
-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