[Ads-l] Heard on a re-run of The Office

[Laurence Horn]

> On Mar 5, 2018, at 7:45 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> As I may have mentioned long ago, the only pronunciation I've ever used
> semi-rhymes with "scalpin.'"
> 
> JL

I’m pretty sure I use the fall-kin pronunciation if I’m reciting the second line of Yeats’s Second Coming or the title of the Hammett/Bogart quarry from Malta (maybe because of the assonance in the latter case; ditto if I ever came across a bar called the Salty Falcon). But, as mentioned, never for the Atlanta NFL franchise.  Otherwise I don’t have much occasion to refer to the actual birds.

LH
> 
> On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 2:49 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> In the Army, there was an  NCO named "Forkner." Since he was from behind
>> the Cotton Curtain, he pronounced his name as approx. [fOUkn@]. I've spent
>> the last 55 years or so wondering whether this spelling might not be an
>> attempt at a rendering of _Falconer_ or _Faulkner_ or some such by a
>> semi-literate ancestor.
>> 
>> On Sun, Mar 4, 2018 at 8:23 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> I’ve heard both pronunciations, although increasingly the one that rhymes
>>> with the first two syllables of “balcony”.  But when sportscasters refer
>> to
>>> the football team based in Atlanta, they seem to always call them the
>>> fal.cons /'fael k at nz/ rather than the fall.cons.  Wonder if there are
>>> kids growing up who have them as separate lexical items (despite the clue
>>> from the team logo).
>>> 
>>> LH
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Mar 4, 2018, at 4:13 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> _falcon_ pronounced by Rainn Wilson as the obsolescent "fall.con,"
>>> instead
>>>> of as the far more common "fal.con."
>>>> 
>>>> I'm not alone!
>>>> 
>>>> There's a discussion on WordReference:
>>>> 
>>>> https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/pronunciation-falcon.1660038/
>>>> --
>>>> -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
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> 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
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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