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AWADmail Issue 664

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From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the net

Did a Human or a Computer Write This?
The New York Times
WebCite

25 Maps That Explain the English Language
Vox
WebCite

What the English of Shakespeare, Beowulf, and King Arthur Actually Sounded Like
The Week
WebCite

Why Are White People Expats When the Rest of Us Are Immigrants?
The Guardian
WebCite

From: Hope Bucher (hopebucher gmail.com)
Subject: Not Abstentious

My favorite Christmas cookies were my mother’s Scottish tarts. During my first year in the Convent as a postulant, my mom made tarts and drove over 150 miles to deliver them. As was the practice, on Christmas morning, we were allowed to open packages from home but then had to hand everything we received in to the nun in charge of the dispensary (knowing that the likelihood of getting anything of our own back -- whether food or a pretty nightgown -- was highly unlikely). Therefore I decided not to hand in the tin of tarts. Instead I headed to the bathroom, removed the top of the tin, and ate all but three of the tarts. The problem arose two days later when I had to confess publicly in the Chapter of Faults. It took place in the Chapel and I confessed to a number of faults like breaking silence, then, as quickly as possible, I slurred the facts saying that I had eaten the whole tin of tarts. All the novices and postulants in the Chapel broke into uncontrolled laughter -- not appropriate and not abstentious in spirit.

From: M Henri Day (mhenriday gmail.com)
Subject: Re: abstentious

Those abstentious athletes were presumably abstemious as well!

From: Paul H. Blaney (pblaney ehc.edu)
Subject: Words with all vowels

Fifty or sixty years ago, my father’s favorite riddle was as follows -- posed in exactly this fashion: “What common English word contains all the vowels in order? I should warn you that the answer is facetious.” It was, of course, this second sentence that caused embarrassment in persons who offered no solution.

From: Janette Emmerson (janettea tpg.com.au)
Subject: vowels

Not meeting the vowels-in-order condition, but perhaps of interest, near my home, in the Blue Mountains area of the state of New South Wales, Australia, is a village called Faulconbridge.

From: Giulio Cesare Cassani (gcasmarina aol.com)
Subject: vowels

In Italian the word ‘aiuole’ (flower beds) fits, but it cannot be enhanced by a Y.

From: J.L. Rosner (jlrathome juno.com)
Subject: All five vowels

A favorite baseball player was Aurelio Rodriguez, with all the vowels in his 1st name. Too bad his name hadn’t been Aeriolu.

From: Ron Frazier (ronfraz frontier.com)
Subject: Vowels in order

Abstentious leads to abstemious, arterious leads to arteriosus, but I am only HALF-SERIOUS when I say that vowels in order are certainly affectious.

Duolitera: If it is to be, it is up to me.

From: Peter Collins (pcollins fieldlaw.com)
Subject: RE: A.Word.A.Day--duoliteral

To be distinguished from duolittoral (having two coastlines)?

From: Dave Zobel (dave davezobel.com)
Subject: Two-letter words

Inside a computer’s memory, a “byte” (an eight-bit quantity) can be used to store a single letter of the alphabet. The term “word” is often used to denote a two-byte quantity, although its sixteen bits theoretically only provide enough storage for two letters. Still, there are plenty of two-letter words -- for example, “ah”, “uh”, and “ew” -- which (as mentioned in The Science of TV’s The Big Bang Theory) could constitute an entire day’s worth of conversation for some programmers.

From: Sheila Pfeffer (sheilalpf hotmail.com)
Subject: vowels

I believe the ‘all five vowels’ only refers to the alphabet: a collection of letter/scribble names, a convenient way to order words. IPA is a system that illustrates the spoken English language and identifies the 20 vowel sounds as well as the 24 consonant sounds (phonemes) and the many, many letter combinations representing those sounds (graphemes). These combinations of graphs, digraphs, trigraphs, and quadgraphs are letter choices that a writer and/or reader uses to decode and encode words.

Back to the “all five vowels” -- they are the limited traditional view of a vowel. Examples to ponder are “through” (quadgraph ough), “neighbour” (quadgraph eigh and trigraph our), and “reindeer” (digraph ei and trigraph eer).

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Limericks

There are some who say, “Let’s be abstentious.”
Which into the works would throw wrenches
The natural way
To get through the day
Is by starting it off being sens’ous.

On Los Angeles highways arterious
We shout, “Will you be f---ing serious!”
In that kind of traffic
Our language gets graphic
Stay calm, though, if CHiPs stop and query us.

Chez Addams the speaking of French is
To Gomez quite madly placentious
If we say “Mon amour”,
With Lurch looking dour
His master with kisses will drench us.

I was told by a clever young nerd
That “aerious” was a real word
But it was so rare
That it meant only air
Or at least that is what I inferred.

When game of Scrabble I play,
I love to play the word, ai.
This duoliteral word,
Is a sloth, so I’ve heard,
Helps me to win, by the way.

The duoliteral editorial “We”
Gave this aerious health tip with glee,
“In matters placentious,
Be somewhat abstentious.
Let arterious circulation flow free!”