If GH can stand for P as in HICCOUGH but it doesn't in potato.
If OUGH can stand for O as in DOUGH but it doesn't in potato.
If PHTH can stand for T and in PHTISIS but it doesn't in potato.
If EIGH can stand for A as in NEIGHBOR but it doesn't in potato.
If TTE can stand for T as in GAZETTE but it doesn't in potato.
If EAU can stand for O as in PLATEAU but it doesn't in potato.
Stotting is what antelope do. They stott by jumping in the air. Pronghorn, native the the Canadian prairies will stott.
C'est bizarre, ça. The action you describe is, in South Africa, called "pronking". It's what springboks do - leaping up into the air. Used in both Afrikaans and English.
We have the understanding that the fur traders modified it from the Scots and French. iIdigenous peoples, plus French and Scots* - combined cultures and languages to become the Métis nation in Canada (said may-tee; languages Bungi and Michif), which are legally recognized (to a degree, e.g., hunting and fishing rights) . Bannock is traditional fare.
*Scots re fur trading, Canada and Métis. Had the understanding that it was mostly from Orkney as the thought was that the people from there were already weather tolerant.
I don't know whether it was that Orcadians were "weather tolerant" (though a safe guess), but, for a lot of Hudson's Bay Company ships, their last port of call before heading west across the Atlantic was Kirkwall. The local museum has a surprising collection of Canadian and HBC artefacts.
I take it this isn't what's sold in the US as "Canadian bacon"? Thin, round slices in a can, no lard. Really good. Sort of a rare treat, when I was going up. Now, often an option as a pizza topping.
I take it this isn't what's sold in the US as "Canadian bacon"? Thin, round slices in a can, no lard. Really good. Sort of a rare treat, when I was going up. Now, often an option as a pizza topping.
When I were a lad, a company called DAK made canned bacon, and it was streaky bacon, not back bacon. It was an excellent staple shipboard, because you could pull it out when you were ready to make a seafood chowder and have bacon without refrigerating it, regardless of what day on your voyage you managed to get enough seafood to make your chowder. No need to ask me how I know this.
This is relevant, but takes a minute to set up. Patience, please.
For the last couple of years, we've been getting the FNX (First Nations Experience) network on broadcast TV. Here in the SF Bay Area, it's part of a set of public broadcasting stations that carry all sorts of indigenous programming. Much of it is re Canadian First Nations, but there are also Native American shows; and also indigenous programming from around the world.
Two relevant things about bannock and fry bread:
--The "Wapos Bay" stop-motion series (FNX) about a Cree village in Canada. Bannock comes up, from time to time. I dearly love this series--I love stop-action animation; the series is really well done; bits of Cree language and culture are included; and it's funny. Oh, and most eps have clever shout-outs to TV and film.
NOTE: This is by Cree people, and I think might have originally been for them in a Cree-language version. So they poke fun at *themselves*--and also some other people. It's on every night here. I find it comforting and calming, so I watch it most nights.
NOTE-2: I tried to find a place where you could watch full episodes free online. Mixed results, and couldn't always get a page to work. At the FNX link, the main page was fine, but I couldn't get a viewer to display when I clicked on links. However, you can get *some* things at Wapos Bay Productions on YouTube.
Do not enter discussion about the pronounciation of scones. It varies with region, but everyone claims fiercely that their way is the only correct one.
The scone we're talking about here has a short "o"; Scone, the town, is pronounced Scown.
EDIT: We do a similar thing with "chips". Only in that case we use it to mean 2 completely different things, one in common with Brits and the other in common with Americans.
Americans will use "chips" to mean pommes frites when in context of a dish containing fried fish: fish and chips. Some restaurants have alternative versions which will keep the word, such as clam and chips or shrimp and chips. Once you leave that context, and especially if preceded with the word "potato", "chips" refers to what the Brits call "crisps".
We use chips for all of that, all the time. British crisps are chips. Pommes frites are chips. They become (French) fries at McDonald's and that's about it.
Brits have chips and crisps. Americans have pommes frites and chips. But Australians decided to have chips and chips.
Do not enter discussion about the pronounciation of scones. It varies with region, but everyone claims fiercely that their way is the only correct one.
The scone we're talking about here has a short "o"; Scone, the town, is pronounced Scown.
Nope, scone is pronounced s-con with a short o around here, although I know people who say sc-own.
Welsh cakes are griddle cakes and I keep forgetting them as I like them and they're another thing that works OK GF.
There are a range of amazing yeasted buns (not so good GF) - bath, hot cross, Colston, Chelsea, saffron, Sally Lunn and cinnamon, to name a few of the traditional local recipes. There's a Cambridge tradition of Chelsea buns from Fitzwilliams, definitely worth trying.
I'm amused to note the Bristol local traditional Colston bun listed as it's named after Edward Colston, he of the toppled statue. Apparently the society celebrating the events with the distribution of the buns voluntarily closed last year, so I wonder how long they will continue to be made.
Has anyone mentioned lardy cake yet? One of my school friend's mothers made it for us when I went round after school one day. Fresh out of the oven it's amazing, a different experience from shop bought.
If GH can stand for P as in HICCOUGH;
If OUGH can stand for O as in DOUGH;
If PHTH can stand for T and in PHTISIS;
If EIGH can stand for A as in NEIGHBOR;
If TTE can stand for T as in GAZETTE;
If EAU can stand for O as in PLATEAU,
Then the correct way to spell POTATO is
GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU.
These things (like spelling fish 'ghoti') always ignore that English spellling only allows these values for these graphs in certain positions in a word.
Brits have chips and crisps. Americans have pommes frites and chips. But Australians decided to have chips and chips.
Probably more accurate to say Americans have fries/French fries and chips. I’d hazard a guess that most Americans wouldn’t have a clue what’s meant by pommes frites. They wouldn’t in these parts, at least. I can’t recall hearing that term until the last decade or two, and I only encounter it in a fancier restaurant (or a restaurant trying to look fancy) or in discussions like this, where it’s useful to convey exactly what is meant.
I came across another difference which I'd would never have thought of. How do you pronounce 'lapis lazuli'? It's the semi-precious stone which was used to make ultramarine before French chemists found out a cheap way of manufacturing it in the early nineteenth century?
It's usually lapis laz-you-lie in England with the stress on the 'laz'. On a US documentary recently I heard someone say 'la-zoo-lee' with the emphasis on the 'zoo'. I was so surprised that I thought he didn't know how the word was said and was just wrong. Then someone else in the documentary pronounced it the same way. A check on the internet revealed that in the US 'la-zoo-lee' is how it is pronounced.
My geologist father called it lazurite. The crystalline structure of it is dodecahedral (12 sided). I know this well as it was used by me as an insult. It sounded a bit like dodo and rather sophisticated at 5 syllables when I was 8.
My geologist father called it lazurite. The crystalline structure of it is dodecahedral (12 sided). I know this well as it was used by me as an insult. It sounded a bit like dodo and rather sophisticated at 5 syllables when I was 8.
8-year-old you went around "insulting" people by calling them "dodecahedral"? That's quite amusing.
I came across another difference which I'd would never have thought of. How do you pronounce 'lapis lazuli'? It's the semi-precious stone which was used to make ultramarine before French chemists found out a cheap way of manufacturing it in the early nineteenth century?
It's usually lapis laz-you-lie in England with the stress on the 'laz'. On a US documentary recently I heard someone say 'la-zoo-lee' with the emphasis on the 'zoo'. I was so surprised that I thought he didn't know how the word was said and was just wrong. Then someone else in the documentary pronounced it the same way. A check on the internet revealed that in the US 'la-zoo-lee' is how it is pronounced.
I’ve always heard “LA-zoo-lee,” with the emphasis on the first syllable.
There are quite a lot of differences in stress in different words. The obvious one is karate, stressed on 2nd syllable by many English, first syllable by some US. Many exceptions, no doubt.
There are quite a lot of differences in stress in different words. The obvious one is karate, stressed on 2nd syllable by many English, first syllable by some US. Many exceptions, no doubt.
Some US English speakers pronounce it "Carroty", as in "like a carrot"?
There are quite a lot of differences in stress in different words. The obvious one is karate, stressed on 2nd syllable by many English, first syllable by some US. Many exceptions, no doubt.
I’ve hardly ever heard anything but access on the second syllable in the US, except from the very occasional TV or movie character trying to sound Japanese, who might put the access on the last syllable. That’s usually presented as a joke.
EDIT: We do a similar thing with "chips". Only in that case we use it to mean 2 completely different things, one in common with Brits and the other in common with Americans.
Americans will use "chips" to mean pommes frites when in context of a dish containing fried fish: fish and chips. Some restaurants have alternative versions which will keep the word, such as clam and chips or shrimp and chips. Once you leave that context, and especially if preceded with the word "potato", "chips" refers to what the Brits call "crisps".
We use chips for all of that, all the time. British crisps are chips. Pommes frites are chips. They become (French) fries at McDonald's and that's about it.
Brits have chips and crisps. Americans have pommes frites and chips. But Australians decided to have chips and chips.
Actually only effete snobs say "pommes frites". Primarily we have chips and fries.
"Steak frites" is a pretty common menu item in Canada. The "frites" are always the slim French variety. I've noticed in the UK some places will give you the choice of frites or chips (the larger, wedge-type) with your steak. One pub gave me the choice of frites or "proper chips". I inferred their feelings on Brexit.
"Steak frites" is a pretty common menu item in Canada. The "frites" are always the slim French variety. I've noticed in the UK some places will give you the choice of frites or chips (the larger, wedge-type) with your steak. One pub gave me the choice of frites or "proper chips". I inferred their feelings on Brexit.
Never seen them described as frites in all my years living here. Fries yes, frites no.
EDIT: We do a similar thing with "chips". Only in that case we use it to mean 2 completely different things, one in common with Brits and the other in common with Americans.
Americans will use "chips" to mean pommes frites when in context of a dish containing fried fish: fish and chips. Some restaurants have alternative versions which will keep the word, such as clam and chips or shrimp and chips. Once you leave that context, and especially if preceded with the word "potato", "chips" refers to what the Brits call "crisps".
We use chips for all of that, all the time. British crisps are chips. Pommes frites are chips. They become (French) fries at McDonald's and that's about it.
Brits have chips and crisps. Americans have pommes frites and chips. But Australians decided to have chips and chips.
Actually only effete snobs say "pommes frites". Primarily we have chips and fries.
Well if you want to call yourself an effete snob... I only used the term because you did.
If GH can stand for P as in HICCOUGH;
If OUGH can stand for O as in DOUGH;
If PHTH can stand for T and in PHTISIS;
If EIGH can stand for A as in NEIGHBOR;
If TTE can stand for T as in GAZETTE;
If EAU can stand for O as in PLATEAU,
Then the correct way to spell POTATO is
GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU.
These things (like spelling fish 'ghoti') always ignore that English spellling only allows these values for these graphs in certain positions in a word.
And also that a great deal of the supposed craziness of English spelling can be explained by a combination of recognising what other language a word came from and actual changes in the way a word is pronounced.
The whole proposition in that meme that a letter combination can 'stand for' a sound covers this over. The fact is that in a lot of cases the people who originally spelled the word in that way had absolutely no intention of representing the sound we now use. They were representing a completely different sound, or representing more than one sound because later generations dropped one out.
Or were copying the sound system of a completely different language. The "eau" is plateau has nothing to do with English spelling conventions, it's a French spelling convention (which itself has to deal with the huge changes in French pronunciation over the centuries) that we didn't get around to anglicizing. "Phthisis" comes from Greek (and in any case is a word that can be pronounced 2 different ways).
"Hiccough" is a folk etymology spelling that has replaced the perfectly sensible "hiccup" in some circles because people wrongly believed there was a connection with "cough". It's a mistake, pure and simple. And then people who have adopted the mistake and taken on a spelling because it looked fancy then turn around and say "how silly to spell a 'P' sound that way". Yes, it is silly. So why did you do it? You have a more rational and more traditional spelling available to you, so use it.
I have seen steak frites on several menus in California over the years. They always seemed to be slim french fries. They had always accompanied the main course and were not a separate item.
And then the government insist on teaching reading through phonics. I got out just in time. I had to have the posters on the wall, but was not required to use them in actual teaching - that was for the younger children.
We were supposed to use the letter sounds in a particular way I couldn't get my head round. Or, more to the point, my tongue, teeth and larynx, either.
So - A is not ay, B is not bee, but should be said so it isn't b(uh), either. One child had some interesting spelling with omitted vowels, because he had sounded out words using that breath from the consonant. I'm trying to recall the particular word which made this clear, but can't.
Looking through the above, I come across "bkoz" as a possible in his way. Get away from very basic words, and all that tangle of historical sound changes and imported adoptions into English renders phonics a mess.
FWIW: Phonics works very well for some people--like me. That was the main teaching method when I was growing up.
Me too. My mother on the other hand couldn't split words into sounds at all.
Most Modern English orthography is Middle English spelled by scribes using Old French Norman dialect spelling conventions as best they could.
On top of that we have a habit of borrowing words without changing their spelling so bring in foreign conventions just for those words.
But I wouldn't describe English spelling as a mess - it's a lot more regular than people think it is because they're not taught all the rules, or partial rules. The much maligned 'i before e except after c' rule works very well if you remember that the full rule adds "when it says 'ee'"
Generally it's easier to guess the pronunciation from the spelling than the other way round.
I used an amazing online program* that taught phonics, reading and spelling. It included lessons on Greek and Latin prefixes and suffixes and how the more scientific words build up, plus the more complicated phonic sounds, like ough. It really brought the reading on for poor readers, often by several years in a year, by systematic teaching and lots of practice. It also helped some of the severely dyslexic students improve their reading significantly - a 15 year old with a reading age of 6 years improved to around 8 years, which is a lot more functional.
Having worked in a mainstream secondary when the school was part of a research project teaching poor readers phonics when they arrived in secondary school, it helped a significant number of those students. It stopped working after phonics became compulsory in primary school and remedial reading went back to using a mixture of teaching methods.
Phonics is only one tool in learning to read, but if the children aren't taught them they are not being given an important tool to decode text.
"Steak frites" is a pretty common menu item in Canada. The "frites" are always the slim French variety. I've noticed in the UK some places will give you the choice of frites or chips (the larger, wedge-type) with your steak. One pub gave me the choice of frites or "proper chips". I inferred their feelings on Brexit.
Never seen them described as frites in all my years living here. Fries yes, frites no.
Never seen frites in any form except on a menu in French in Canada.
"frenching" means in cooking, to cut things up in particular ways. Like english means to put a spin on a ball.
I think the problem I faced was that we weren't given any training, and it sounds as if doing it in primary may have been a problem if it stopped working in secondary. The other thing I was concerned about was that no other method was acceptable. It limited the reading that could be offered. My remedial component went off to do it in small groups. Most of mine were already reading.
"Steak frites" is a pretty common menu item in Canada. The "frites" are always the slim French variety. I've noticed in the UK some places will give you the choice of frites or chips (the larger, wedge-type) with your steak. One pub gave me the choice of frites or "proper chips". I inferred their feelings on Brexit.
Never seen them described as frites in all my years living here. Fries yes, frites no.
Never seen frites in any form except on a menu in French in Canada.
"frenching" means in cooking, to cut things up in particular ways. Like english means to put a spin on a ball.
Not seen "frites" in English? Visit Toronto. Visit Vancouver. Visit Calgary.
"Steak frites" is a pretty common menu item in Canada. The "frites" are always the slim French variety. I've noticed in the UK some places will give you the choice of frites or chips (the larger, wedge-type) with your steak. One pub gave me the choice of frites or "proper chips". I inferred their feelings on Brexit.
Never seen them described as frites in all my years living here. Fries yes, frites no.
Never seen frites in any form except on a menu in French in Canada.
"frenching" means in cooking, to cut things up in particular ways. Like english means to put a spin on a ball.
Not seen "frites" in English? Visit Toronto. Visit Vancouver. Visit Calgary.
I have been to all of those. Probably I'm not going to the classy places.
Comments
Context is everything.
C'est bizarre, ça. The action you describe is, in South Africa, called "pronking". It's what springboks do - leaping up into the air. Used in both Afrikaans and English.
I don't know whether it was that Orcadians were "weather tolerant" (though a safe guess), but, for a lot of Hudson's Bay Company ships, their last port of call before heading west across the Atlantic was Kirkwall. The local museum has a surprising collection of Canadian and HBC artefacts.
I take it this isn't what's sold in the US as "Canadian bacon"? Thin, round slices in a can, no lard. Really good. Sort of a rare treat, when I was going up. Now, often an option as a pizza topping.
When I were a lad, a company called DAK made canned bacon, and it was streaky bacon, not back bacon. It was an excellent staple shipboard, because you could pull it out when you were ready to make a seafood chowder and have bacon without refrigerating it, regardless of what day on your voyage you managed to get enough seafood to make your chowder. No need to ask me how I know this.
You have a better memory than I, even with your prompt.
Then there's barmy.
This is relevant, but takes a minute to set up. Patience, please.
For the last couple of years, we've been getting the FNX (First Nations Experience) network on broadcast TV. Here in the SF Bay Area, it's part of a set of public broadcasting stations that carry all sorts of indigenous programming. Much of it is re Canadian First Nations, but there are also Native American shows; and also indigenous programming from around the world.
Two relevant things about bannock and fry bread:
--The "Wapos Bay" stop-motion series (FNX) about a Cree village in Canada. Bannock comes up, from time to time. I dearly love this series--I love stop-action animation; the series is really well done; bits of Cree language and culture are included; and it's funny. Oh, and most eps have clever shout-outs to TV and film.
NOTE: This is by Cree people, and I think might have originally been for them in a Cree-language version. So they poke fun at *themselves*--and also some other people. It's on every night here. I find it comforting and calming, so I watch it most nights.
NOTE-2: I tried to find a place where you could watch full episodes free online. Mixed results, and couldn't always get a page to work. At the FNX link, the main page was fine, but I couldn't get a viewer to display when I clicked on links. However, you can get *some* things at Wapos Bay Productions on YouTube.
--There's also a funny, pseudo-documentary called "More Than Fry Bread" (IMDB), about a fry bread competition.
I think I've gone on long enough!
‘’Scown” as in “drown” or as in “thrown”?
We use chips for all of that, all the time. British crisps are chips. Pommes frites are chips. They become (French) fries at McDonald's and that's about it.
Brits have chips and crisps. Americans have pommes frites and chips. But Australians decided to have chips and chips.
Thrown
Welsh cakes are griddle cakes and I keep forgetting them as I like them and they're another thing that works OK GF.
There are a range of amazing yeasted buns (not so good GF) - bath, hot cross, Colston, Chelsea, saffron, Sally Lunn and cinnamon, to name a few of the traditional local recipes. There's a Cambridge tradition of Chelsea buns from Fitzwilliams, definitely worth trying.
I'm amused to note the Bristol local traditional Colston bun listed as it's named after Edward Colston, he of the toppled statue. Apparently the society celebrating the events with the distribution of the buns voluntarily closed last year, so I wonder how long they will continue to be made.
Has anyone mentioned lardy cake yet? One of my school friend's mothers made it for us when I went round after school one day. Fresh out of the oven it's amazing, a different experience from shop bought.
I suggest you re-read what was said about the difference between a scone and Scone.
These things (like spelling fish 'ghoti') always ignore that English spellling only allows these values for these graphs in certain positions in a word.
It's usually lapis laz-you-lie in England with the stress on the 'laz'. On a US documentary recently I heard someone say 'la-zoo-lee' with the emphasis on the 'zoo'. I was so surprised that I thought he didn't know how the word was said and was just wrong. Then someone else in the documentary pronounced it the same way. A check on the internet revealed that in the US 'la-zoo-lee' is how it is pronounced.
Let's not resurrect the Scone Wars. We need to agree that the word is pronounced differently.
(But it's "scon" - "scown" is just pretentious)
8-year-old you went around "insulting" people by calling them "dodecahedral"? That's quite amusing.
Some US English speakers pronounce it "Carroty", as in "like a carrot"?
I’ve never heard access on the first syllable.
Actually only effete snobs say "pommes frites". Primarily we have chips and fries.
Not for the town in the Upper Hunter, it isn't.
Never seen them described as frites in all my years living here. Fries yes, frites no.
And again, the whole point was that there's a town called Scone, which is not edible.
Well if you want to call yourself an effete snob... I only used the term because you did.
And also that a great deal of the supposed craziness of English spelling can be explained by a combination of recognising what other language a word came from and actual changes in the way a word is pronounced.
The whole proposition in that meme that a letter combination can 'stand for' a sound covers this over. The fact is that in a lot of cases the people who originally spelled the word in that way had absolutely no intention of representing the sound we now use. They were representing a completely different sound, or representing more than one sound because later generations dropped one out.
Or were copying the sound system of a completely different language. The "eau" is plateau has nothing to do with English spelling conventions, it's a French spelling convention (which itself has to deal with the huge changes in French pronunciation over the centuries) that we didn't get around to anglicizing. "Phthisis" comes from Greek (and in any case is a word that can be pronounced 2 different ways).
"Hiccough" is a folk etymology spelling that has replaced the perfectly sensible "hiccup" in some circles because people wrongly believed there was a connection with "cough". It's a mistake, pure and simple. And then people who have adopted the mistake and taken on a spelling because it looked fancy then turn around and say "how silly to spell a 'P' sound that way". Yes, it is silly. So why did you do it? You have a more rational and more traditional spelling available to you, so use it.
We were supposed to use the letter sounds in a particular way I couldn't get my head round. Or, more to the point, my tongue, teeth and larynx, either.
So - A is not ay, B is not bee, but should be said so it isn't b(uh), either. One child had some interesting spelling with omitted vowels, because he had sounded out words using that breath from the consonant. I'm trying to recall the particular word which made this clear, but can't.
Looking through the above, I come across "bkoz" as a possible in his way. Get away from very basic words, and all that tangle of historical sound changes and imported adoptions into English renders phonics a mess.
Me too. My mother on the other hand couldn't split words into sounds at all.
Most Modern English orthography is Middle English spelled by scribes using Old French Norman dialect spelling conventions as best they could.
On top of that we have a habit of borrowing words without changing their spelling so bring in foreign conventions just for those words.
But I wouldn't describe English spelling as a mess - it's a lot more regular than people think it is because they're not taught all the rules, or partial rules. The much maligned 'i before e except after c' rule works very well if you remember that the full rule adds "when it says 'ee'"
Generally it's easier to guess the pronunciation from the spelling than the other way round.
Here in the U.K. it means for a very short time. In the US it seems to mean ‘soon’ - and it confuses me every time I watch CNN!
"I before E
Except after C
When it says 'Ee'"
Generally holds.
Having worked in a mainstream secondary when the school was part of a research project teaching poor readers phonics when they arrived in secondary school, it helped a significant number of those students. It stopped working after phonics became compulsory in primary school and remedial reading went back to using a mixture of teaching methods.
Phonics is only one tool in learning to read, but if the children aren't taught them they are not being given an important tool to decode text.
* Lexia if anyone is interested
Never seen frites in any form except on a menu in French in Canada.
"frenching" means in cooking, to cut things up in particular ways. Like english means to put a spin on a ball.
I before E,
Except after C,
Or when it says A
As in “neighbor” or “weigh.”
Not seen "frites" in English? Visit Toronto. Visit Vancouver. Visit Calgary.
I have been to all of those. Probably I'm not going to the classy places.
:eyeroll: