LukeJavan8, You asked about non-Anglo Saxon words for genitalia. “Genitalia” is one such word. Tender sensibilities are protected by guarded speech. Euphemisms are used and they must be changed as they become vulgar in turn. The practice extends to other body parts, to many bodily functions, to cert...

How can one pronounce the "a" in bath any shorter than we do it in the USA?

This is the wildest thread I have ever tried to unravel (or ravel, take your pick). I have failed somewhere along the way. Back to the original question: I have some salutations that I use for specific recipients. I call my brothers “Br’er” my sisters “Sis” and my Cousins “Kuz”. I have several frien...

Perry, You seem to be quite educated in languages. Please look under the discussion for the Goodword "copse" and help me with Matagorda. I am not complaining about Spanish spelling and pronunciation. They follow pretty good phonetic rules, much better than our English that is almost non-ph...

Perry Lassiter,
Gordo and Gorda also mean "large" in Spanish. Hence Matagorda could mean "big kill", hence massacre. I would be glad to hear from an authority. I just speak a little Tex-Mex.

Perry Lassiter.

Alas!

I just learned how to pronounce copse. Having known the word most of my life, but never having heard anyone say it, I naturally went for the long o instead of the "ah" sound. In Texas we call it a mot or motte, pronounced "maht". It is from the Spanish. A question: There is a Cou...

post script to bnjtokyo,

I forgot to say that I know IPA well enough to understand how we (Americans, you and I) and the English pronounce bathing. Maybe I should take another look at IPA.

bnjtokyo, I am aware of the IPA. As with many Americans, I am pretty provincial, and I am also lazy. Though I have studied German and Spanish and am interested in language in general, I am actually monolingual. I believe the English language is the greatest artifact God has allowed the human race to...

As an old geezer I neither text nor tweet. My wife texts but she is not a geezer. I tell her talking on the phone is much easier than texting. Neither of us tweets. I write many e-mails but they are usually long and, I say modestly, scholarly.

Thank you for the effort to enlighten me Audiendus. I still cannot be sure how you pronounce some of these words. I spent a lot of time working in England, but it was near Northampton, so I suppose that doesn’t count. I notice that the further north I go in England the more easily I understand the l...

Does anyone know the rules of punctuation? Are there any rules? I juts throw in punctuation at random and seldom get called down on it.

Bite the bullet and just accept irregular plurals. Datum is singular and Data are plural. Get over it. There are more important battles to be fought.

Audiendus, Either regional pronunciation variations or plain ignorance on my part give me trouble with the following words that are spelled the same but should perhaps be pronounced differently. I pronounce them the same in every instance. My local dialect of Southern merged with Texan, even in the ...

Perry Lassiter: I am shy about using contact as a verb. My English teacher (sixty years ago) told me it was not a verb. But I suppose it is, no matter what Nero Wolfe and I prefer. I don’t object to all verbs that have been created from nouns. There are gobs of them. I couldn’t resist putting in gob...