Question for the Brits: I've been an avid Dorothy L. Sayers fan and I very much enjoyed Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon. I especially enjoyed Lord Peter's scamp of a nephew, St. George, AKA Jerry AKA Gherkins. As St. John (as a given name, not the saint or Gospel) is pronounced pronounced sin-jun is there a special way that St. George is pronounced? Thanks.
Lyda, I'm an avid Dorothy L Sayers fan too, and I've never come across a special way to pronounce it. I would say either Saint George or Snt George, as if it were a church name. But I could be wrong. She uses a few names I've never been quite sure about, like Urquhart.
My classic mispronunciation was when I walked into the bathroom of our new house, aged 13, and said, "Oh look, it has a bi-dett!"
232 (1) Culpable homicide that otherwise would be murder may be reduced to manslaughter if the person who committed it did so in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation."
Urquhart is pronounced more or less the same way as a northern English speaker would pronounce Erk-ut with the second syllable having an undefined schwa sound.
Danish is kind of phonetic, once you're prepared to accept that there is a myriad of vowel sounds and the consonants don't tend to matter much...
Slight tangent - a couple of years ago we were in Denmark (Skagen) on Midsummer's Day and joined in a local celebration, including singing a hymn and the Danish national anthem. The words (in Danish) were on a leaflet so I joined in... despite not speaking the language. The tour guide was amused by this (I don't think any of the other tourists were singing) and commented on it. I said that after years singing in Welsh, attacking Danish held no terrors for me!
(I don't imagine that my pronunciation was even vaguely accurate, but I enjoyed the attempt and no-one complained at my mangling of the Danish language)
Another one that seems to be changing in Canada re how people talk about it is murder versus homicide. We have first degree murder which means it was planned, and then second degree and manslaughter which are also murder but mean the circumstances are different. I don't know the details very well. But increasingly the media (I notice CBC) is calling all murder "homicide". I didn't hear this term before I don't know when exactly.
Manslaughter is most definitely not murder - it is manslaughter. The result of each is the death of a person, but very different intents. In the old days here (and in England and Wales; I imagine non-French Canada as well) the result of a conviction was very different as well. For murder, the mandatory sentence used be death whereas for manslaughter it was imprisonment for a period up to life.
@deletoile In which universe is written French phonetic? It's not, at least not to my oeil (=eye) and oreille (=ear).
I can't think of any modern languages that are true the other way - accurately predicting spelling from pronunciation.
Finnish. Easy peasy.The only "trick" - and it's not a trick, it requires only practice - is to be able to distinguish between a single vowel/consonant and a doubled one. Like German, (and other languages), in Finnish the doubled letter doesn't change the phoneme, but the length. Like in music, an A# is an A# whether held for one beat or two. Attention must be paid, though, as it changes the meaning, e.g., puna = red, punna = hot toddy.
@la vie en rouge re: Russian, mostly but not entirely, e.g., -ogo- sometimes g=g, sometimes g=v; devoicing of some final consonants, not others.
Maori and probably most Polynesian languages are phonetic.
Japanese is if you're writing everything in hiragana, but given it has so many homophones and doesn't have spaces between the words in a sentence Chinese characters are needed for clarification.
232 (1) Culpable homicide that otherwise would be murder may be reduced to manslaughter if the person who committed it did so in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation."
"Reduced to manslaughter" means "not convicted of murder". The point of the section is indeed, as has been said, that "homicide" is a wider category that covers both murder and manslaughter.
Danish is kind of phonetic, once you're prepared to accept that there is a myriad of vowel sounds and the consonants don't tend to matter much...
Slight tangent - a couple of years ago we were in Denmark (Skagen) on Midsummer's Day and joined in a local celebration, including singing a hymn and the Danish national anthem. The words (in Danish) were on a leaflet so I joined in... despite not speaking the language. The tour guide was amused by this (I don't think any of the other tourists were singing) and commented on it. I said that after years singing in Welsh, attacking Danish held no terrors for me!
(I don't imagine that my pronunciation was even vaguely accurate, but I enjoyed the attempt and no-one complained at my mangling of the Danish language)
Funnily enough I have resolved to learn the words of the Danish national anthem, having been very caught up in watching the football matches in Copenhagen that I wanted tickets for way back in December 2019 (before those tickets were oversubscribed about 12-fold, and the tournament was pushed back a year, and travel from Australia for recreational purposes was banned, and Christian Eriksen had a heart attack).
Being able to read the fan banners is no longer enough.
To set out deliberately to kill someone would be 'murder'
If death were caused during some altercation without a previous intention to kill then it would be 'culpable homicide'.At least that is a term which one hears more commonly now in the UK.
I can't speak for Scottish law, but in England and Wales it's murder if one intends to kill someone and they die or if one intends to cause them grievous bodily harm (gbh) and they die. It counts as 'intend' if one is reckless as to whether they die or not. It's manslaughter if they die as a result of a lesser intention, such as to cause actual bodily harm, or if they die as a result of ones culpable act or negligence. A murder charge automatically contains within it the possibility of being convicted of manslaughter if murder is not proved.
It's also murder if you intend to kill one person but someone else dies in stead.
English and Welsh law don't go in for degrees of murder. It's one or the other, murder or manslaughter.
Changing the subject, @NOprophet_NØprofit the fluidity of English pronunciation may well be one of the reasons why the spelling isn't phonetic. If words had to be spelt phonetically, words like 'midwife' and 'midwifery' would have to be spelt in a way that concealed their relationship.
I suppose a person might argue that people should be made to pronounce related words so that they sound more like each other, but that's not the way either people or languages work.
As to what the media says, my guess is they default to homicide because the intent of the accused has not yet been proven, or because the circumstances surrounding the death are unknown.
I think the use of words like homicide in places like news reports is a distinctive North American feature. UK reports, IME, would tend to say something like "a man was killed".
So they wouldn't distinguish between a man being killed by another human, and a man being killed by falling off a building?
The story headlines tend to specify the manner of death and frequently the locale - Man stabbed in Fulham/soldier shot in the Ardoyne/boy dies falling off roof/woman drowns in rough seas. Where it includes a place name it may be a way of categorising as local news, or indeed be one of the few known facts about the death.
I can't speak for Scottish law, but in England and Wales it's murder if one intends to kill someone and they die or if one intends to cause them grievous bodily harm (gbh) and they die. It counts as 'intend' if one is reckless as to whether they die or not. It's manslaughter if they die as a result of a lesser intention, such as to cause actual bodily harm, or if they die as a result of ones culpable act or negligence. A murder charge automatically contains within it the possibility of being convicted of manslaughter if murder is not proved.
There was also the old felony-murder rule: a killing committed in the course of carrying out a felony was a murder.
Then there is the curiosity of the little travelling sewing kit I once had for fixing things like shirt buttons. It was called something that sounded like 'hussif', short for 'housewife'. (I don't know if it ever crossed the ocean).
Then there is the curiosity of the little travelling sewing kit I once had for fixing things like shirt buttons. It was called something that sounded like 'hussif', short for 'housewife'. (I don't know if it ever crossed the ocean).
Crops up in J Austen - Emma - where Miss Bates is rattling on about having lost something and then finding it under her housewife.
I can't speak for Scottish law, but in England and Wales it's murder if one intends to kill someone and they die or if one intends to cause them grievous bodily harm (gbh) and they die. It counts as 'intend' if one is reckless as to whether they die or not. It's manslaughter if they die as a result of a lesser intention, such as to cause actual bodily harm, or if they die as a result of ones culpable act or negligence. A murder charge automatically contains within it the possibility of being convicted of manslaughter if murder is not proved.
There was also the old felony-murder rule: a killing committed in the course of carrying out a felony was a murder.
Housewife is considered date usage I believe. I think homemaker might be more recent usage, though I don't hear either any more.
Maybe, but housewife, pronounced (and sometimes spelt) hussif, is still a traditional name for a small sewing repair kit. Outside that usage housewife (if used) is still pronounced as it is spelt.
There was also the old felony-murder rule: a killing committed in the course of carrying out a felony was a murder.
Still is the rule in my jurisdiction.
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As it is here - the old was meant as showing age rather than former, if that makes sense. IIRC, the rule formed part of the prosecution case against Ronald Ryan, the last person executed in Australia. A prison warder was killed in the course of Ryan's escaping from gaol. He denied firing the fatal shot, but rather that it had been his co-accused. On appeal, the court held that that it did not matter who of them fired it.
There was also the old felony-murder rule: a killing committed in the course of carrying out a felony was a murder.
Still is the rule in my jurisdiction.
As it is here - the old was meant as showing age rather than former, if that makes sense. IIRC, the rule formed part of the prosecution case against Ronald Ryan, the last person executed in Australia. A prison warder was killed in the course of Ryan's escaping from gaol. He denied firing the fatal shot, but rather that it had been his co-accused. On appeal, the court held that that it did not matter who of them fired it.
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Exactly - the case against Ryan was put on several bases and any one would have been sufficient. The case has notoriety because the State Premier, Henry Bolte, refused to recommend* an exercise of mercy in reducing the sentence to life imprisonment. That would have been a standard recommendation. Another factor was his totally inconsiderate approach to the case - when asked what he was doing at the time of the execution, he replied that he was in his bathroom going through the 3 s-s.
*Strictly speaking, the exercise of mercy would have been by the State Governor, but of course he would have acted in accordance with advice from the government.
A prison warder was killed in the course of Ryan's escaping from gaol.
Now that highlights a couple of differences. Here (the US) that sentence would read: “A prison warden was killed in the course of Ryan’s escaping from jail.”
And, I should probably add, “prison” and “jail” are not the same thing here. Similar, but distinct.
A prison warder was killed in the course of Ryan's escaping from gaol.
Now that highlights a couple of differences. Here (the US) that sentence would read: “A prison warden was killed in the course of Ryan’s escaping from jail.”
And, I should probably add, “prison” and “jail” are not the same thing here. Similar, but distinct.
Little differences that make life interesting. 45 years ago, when I was in Law School, felonies were those criminal offences punishable by penal servitude, while misdemeanours were punishable by imprisonment. That very arbitrary distinction made no difference in practice.
A prison warder was killed in the course of Ryan's escaping from gaol.
Now that highlights a couple of differences. Here (the US) that sentence would read: “A prison warden was killed in the course of Ryan’s escaping from jail.”
And, I should probably add, “prison” and “jail” are not the same thing here. Similar, but distinct.
If "prison" and "jail" are not the same thing, then surely you wouldn't have a prison warden at a jail?
Another curious difference. In the filmlets of Chauvin being sentenced yesterday, the judge audibly sentences him to 270 months. Over here, neither in ordinary speech nor in sentencing convicts does anyone normally measure time in months above about 18 or 21 months.
From checking this morning, all the reports have converted this to either 22½ years or 22 years and 6 months, which are the more normal usages here. On sentences, though, it would be unusual at that sort of duration to sentence for anything other than a number of years.
Is it the normal usage in the US to measure quite long periods of time in months the way that it seems to be with lbs and weight?
And @Nick Tamen what is the difference in US usage between a prison and a jail.
I think in England and Wales, whatever the enterprise you were engaged in, if you were found to have been carrying a gun and then used it, it would be just about impossible to persuade anyone that that wasn't an intention to kill if necessary to whatever one was doing.
The scope of joint enterprise gets argued about quite a lot in law schools but as a legal principle remains alive and well here.
The word "slain" for a person having been violently killed, seems to have fallen out of usage in UK English, but still seems to crop up in the US in media headlines: "3 slain in drive by shooting" etc.
The word "slain" for a person having been violently killed, seems to have fallen out of usage in UK English, but still seems to crop up in the US in media headlines: "3 slain in drive by shooting" etc.
It’s the same with ‘slay’ and ‘slew’ too. That whole verb family has dropped out of more general use.
Is it the normal usage in the US to measure quite long periods of time in months the way that it seems to be with lbs and weight?
No, it’s not. It is, however, normal court usage, at least where I live, to measure sentences of imprisonment in months. Don’t ask me why.
And @Nick Tamen what is the difference in US usage between a prison and a jail.
Generally speaking, a jails are operated by a local government—e.g., “the county jail,” though there are also jails in the federal court system—as places where a person is held when arrested, while awaiting trial or sentencing, or to serve a short (30 days, perhaps) sentence for a misdemeanor. A prison is operated by a state or by the federal government and is for persons convicted of felonies.
You might have seen in the bits of sentencing you watched that the judge remanded Chauvin to the custody of the Minnesota Department or Commissioner of Corrections (or words to that effect). That would be prison. My assumption is that prior to sentencing, Chauvin was in the custody of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department, in the county jail.
The word "slain" for a person having been violently killed, seems to have fallen out of usage in UK English, but still seems to crop up in the US in media headlines: "3 slain in drive by shooting" etc.
It’s the same with ‘slay’ and ‘slew’ too. That whole verb family has dropped out of more general use.
Does anyone still say, "You slay me!" in response to a terrible pun or suchlike? It's a long time since I heard that.
The word "slain" for a person having been violently killed, seems to have fallen out of usage in UK English, but still seems to crop up in the US in media headlines: "3 slain in drive by shooting" etc.
It’s the same with ‘slay’ and ‘slew’ too. That whole verb family has dropped out of more general use.
Does anyone still say, "You slay me!" in response to a terrible pun or suchlike? It's a long time since I heard that.
Penitentiary is the main term for federal prisons in Canada. Police have cells which they'll use overnight. Provincial correctional centres (terms vary) hold people on Remand. Mostly a person is sentenced to more than 2 years they go to a penitentiary. "2 years less a day" sentences keep a person in provincial custody. A jailed person is frequently called an inmate.
The word "slain" for a person having been violently killed, seems to have fallen out of usage in UK English, but still seems to crop up in the US in media headlines: "3 slain in drive by shooting" etc.
It’s the same with ‘slay’ and ‘slew’ too. That whole verb family has dropped out of more general use.
We got "slay, slew, slain" when I was growing up in southern California and reading the news.
In the past five years or so I've been coming across "slayed" almost without exception. I looked the thing up (old proofreader's habits die hard) and apparently the rule (new?) is that "slayed" is used in the metaphorical "what a great job you did on stage" sense, and "slew" for the murder.
If "prison" and "jail" are not the same thing, then surely you wouldn't have a prison warden at a jail?
No, we wouldn’t. I was simply adjusting the spelling of Gee D’s sentence.
Adjusting to US usage, that is!
No county or other local authority gaols here, and I can't think there are any federal ones either - perhaps very short-term sentences for those in the armed forces would be the closest. I assume some agreement between the federal and state governments gives funding to states to hold those charged and/or convicted of federal offences.
Part of a major NSW gaol is strictly called a penitentiary, but that term is rarely used in ordinary speech or writing.
Comments
Lyda, I'm an avid Dorothy L Sayers fan too, and I've never come across a special way to pronounce it. I would say either Saint George or Snt George, as if it were a church name. But I could be wrong. She uses a few names I've never been quite sure about, like Urquhart.
My classic mispronunciation was when I walked into the bathroom of our new house, aged 13, and said, "Oh look, it has a bi-dett!"
This section may be specifically helpful to murder-manslaughter discussion. :Murder reduced to manslaughter
232 (1) Culpable homicide that otherwise would be murder may be reduced to manslaughter if the person who committed it did so in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation."
I think you're right. There are a few people called St. George, including the rather splendidly-named St. George St. George, 1st Baron St. George.
Slight tangent - a couple of years ago we were in Denmark (Skagen) on Midsummer's Day and joined in a local celebration, including singing a hymn and the Danish national anthem. The words (in Danish) were on a leaflet so I joined in... despite not speaking the language. The tour guide was amused by this (I don't think any of the other tourists were singing) and commented on it. I said that after years singing in Welsh, attacking Danish held no terrors for me!
(I don't imagine that my pronunciation was even vaguely accurate, but I enjoyed the attempt and no-one complained at my mangling of the Danish language)
Manslaughter is most definitely not murder - it is manslaughter. The result of each is the death of a person, but very different intents. In the old days here (and in England and Wales; I imagine non-French Canada as well) the result of a conviction was very different as well. For murder, the mandatory sentence used be death whereas for manslaughter it was imprisonment for a period up to life.
Finnish. Easy peasy.The only "trick" - and it's not a trick, it requires only practice - is to be able to distinguish between a single vowel/consonant and a doubled one. Like German, (and other languages), in Finnish the doubled letter doesn't change the phoneme, but the length. Like in music, an A# is an A# whether held for one beat or two. Attention must be paid, though, as it changes the meaning, e.g., puna = red, punna = hot toddy.
@la vie en rouge re: Russian, mostly but not entirely, e.g., -ogo- sometimes g=g, sometimes g=v; devoicing of some final consonants, not others.
Japanese is if you're writing everything in hiragana, but given it has so many homophones and doesn't have spaces between the words in a sentence Chinese characters are needed for clarification.
"Reduced to manslaughter" means "not convicted of murder". The point of the section is indeed, as has been said, that "homicide" is a wider category that covers both murder and manslaughter.
Funnily enough I have resolved to learn the words of the Danish national anthem, having been very caught up in watching the football matches in Copenhagen that I wanted tickets for way back in December 2019 (before those tickets were oversubscribed about 12-fold, and the tournament was pushed back a year, and travel from Australia for recreational purposes was banned, and Christian Eriksen had a heart attack).
Being able to read the fan banners is no longer enough.
PS On the question of how to pronounce Danish, this is a popular tip.
If death were caused during some altercation without a previous intention to kill then it would be 'culpable homicide'.At least that is a term which one hears more commonly now in the UK.
It's also murder if you intend to kill one person but someone else dies in stead.
English and Welsh law don't go in for degrees of murder. It's one or the other, murder or manslaughter.
Changing the subject, @NOprophet_NØprofit the fluidity of English pronunciation may well be one of the reasons why the spelling isn't phonetic. If words had to be spelt phonetically, words like 'midwife' and 'midwifery' would have to be spelt in a way that concealed their relationship.
I suppose a person might argue that people should be made to pronounce related words so that they sound more like each other, but that's not the way either people or languages work.
So they wouldn't distinguish between a man being killed by another human, and a man being killed by falling off a building?
There was also the old felony-murder rule: a killing committed in the course of carrying out a felony was a murder.
Because the great vowel shift happened to one and not the other.
And that was because the GVS only affected long vowels, and while wife had a long vowel (like modern English "ee"), Midwifery had a short one.
Yup. That 'e' at the end was kind of a marker of vowel length. After it stopped being pronounced...
Ain't English fun?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_e
Crops up in J Austen - Emma - where Miss Bates is rattling on about having lost something and then finding it under her housewife.
The latter would usually be rendered "a man has died after ..."
In wife, the E got added as a length marker later on in Middle English. The Old English word is Wīf, so that final E was never pronounced.
Stupid bloody language...
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As it is here - the old was meant as showing age rather than former, if that makes sense. IIRC, the rule formed part of the prosecution case against Ronald Ryan, the last person executed in Australia. A prison warder was killed in the course of Ryan's escaping from gaol. He denied firing the fatal shot, but rather that it had been his co-accused. On appeal, the court held that that it did not matter who of them fired it.
As it is here - the old was meant as showing age rather than former, if that makes sense. IIRC, the rule formed part of the prosecution case against Ronald Ryan, the last person executed in Australia. A prison warder was killed in the course of Ryan's escaping from gaol. He denied firing the fatal shot, but rather that it had been his co-accused. On appeal, the court held that that it did not matter who of them fired it.
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Its the rule of Joint enterprise.
*Strictly speaking, the exercise of mercy would have been by the State Governor, but of course he would have acted in accordance with advice from the government.
And, I should probably add, “prison” and “jail” are not the same thing here. Similar, but distinct.
Agreed. But absolutely wonderful.
Little differences that make life interesting. 45 years ago, when I was in Law School, felonies were those criminal offences punishable by penal servitude, while misdemeanours were punishable by imprisonment. That very arbitrary distinction made no difference in practice.
If "prison" and "jail" are not the same thing, then surely you wouldn't have a prison warden at a jail?
From checking this morning, all the reports have converted this to either 22½ years or 22 years and 6 months, which are the more normal usages here. On sentences, though, it would be unusual at that sort of duration to sentence for anything other than a number of years.
Is it the normal usage in the US to measure quite long periods of time in months the way that it seems to be with lbs and weight?
And @Nick Tamen what is the difference in US usage between a prison and a jail.
I think in England and Wales, whatever the enterprise you were engaged in, if you were found to have been carrying a gun and then used it, it would be just about impossible to persuade anyone that that wasn't an intention to kill if necessary to whatever one was doing.
The scope of joint enterprise gets argued about quite a lot in law schools but as a legal principle remains alive and well here.
No, it’s not. It is, however, normal court usage, at least where I live, to measure sentences of imprisonment in months. Don’t ask me why.
Generally speaking, a jails are operated by a local government—e.g., “the county jail,” though there are also jails in the federal court system—as places where a person is held when arrested, while awaiting trial or sentencing, or to serve a short (30 days, perhaps) sentence for a misdemeanor. A prison is operated by a state or by the federal government and is for persons convicted of felonies.
You might have seen in the bits of sentencing you watched that the judge remanded Chauvin to the custody of the Minnesota Department or Commissioner of Corrections (or words to that effect). That would be prison. My assumption is that prior to sentencing, Chauvin was in the custody of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department, in the county jail.
Does anyone still say, "You slay me!" in response to a terrible pun or suchlike? It's a long time since I heard that.
Not forgetting forred (forehead) and wesket (waistcoat.)
Slay, Queen?
It's a metaphorical, rather than literal, use, but ...
We got "slay, slew, slain" when I was growing up in southern California and reading the news.
In the past five years or so I've been coming across "slayed" almost without exception. I looked the thing up (old proofreader's habits die hard) and apparently the rule (new?) is that "slayed" is used in the metaphorical "what a great job you did on stage" sense, and "slew" for the murder.
But "slayed" still slays me. Ugh.
Adjusting to US usage, that is!
No county or other local authority gaols here, and I can't think there are any federal ones either - perhaps very short-term sentences for those in the armed forces would be the closest. I assume some agreement between the federal and state governments gives funding to states to hold those charged and/or convicted of federal offences.
Part of a major NSW gaol is strictly called a penitentiary, but that term is rarely used in ordinary speech or writing.