RE: Not in my time

[The Natural Philosopher]

Technically its the inability to deal with a *digraphed* l. They can pronounce new, and clear; but not when the two are rammed together.

Other examples - jewelry=>joolery

[Sn!pe]

The Natural Philosopher [e-mail] wrote: [...]

Nitpick: 'jewelry' is the US spelling, British is 'jewellery', so "joolery" is not quite as bad a pronunciation as suggested.

[The Other John]

Not forgetting burgalry!

[The Natural Philosopher]

👍

[Bob Eager]

I despair that I now hear BBC newsreaders mispronouncing 'biopic' as 'bye- oppic'.

[Ian Jackson]

As I've referred to on a few previous occasions, three or four years ago I listened to a short Radio 4 programme about the work of the BBC Pronunciation Department. [Do they still have one?] Apart for maybe a couple of exceptions, the word used throughout was "pronounciation".

[Bob Henson]

I can't see any evidence of those being diagraphical, but you may well be correct.

That's only a problem when you misspell it the American way. The English spelling is jewellery, and that is relatively easy to enunciate correctly.

[Vir Campestris]

I'm impressed by your précis. Not least because you know how to type it.

My wife always looks for crème brûlée on menus... they almost never get it right.

Andy

[Vir Campestris]

AIUI it's an abbreviation for "Isn't it". (Wiki does seem to suggest it has its roots in immigrant communities in London.)

Andy

[Andy Burns]

Not Welsh? There's lovely, isn't it?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh yes, what I meant was that there is some hindi construction that says 'is it not' (in Hindi) at the end of each statement, like the Australian/Irish construction of raising the voice at the end of each sentence to render it interrogative. In French (as already stated) it is 'n'est ce pas' .

Implicitly seeking agreement from the listener before proceeding.

[Tim Streater]

That's v. kind but, unfortunately, not deserved. macOS knows how to spell and how to offer suggestions. It also knows how to hide the mouse pointer while I'm typing.

[The Natural Philosopher]

As I already said, it's not the words, it's the construction. Speakers of languages that have a *native* version of 'isn't it?' that they use regularly at the end of sentences will translate that into the English version = 'isn't it' or if you are an immigrant into lower class London 'innit?' No one disputes its an elided/contracted version of 'isn't it', but the more interesting point is who uses it, and why, and why the elided version?

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail]>, Tim Streater [e-mail]> writes

As we are this far off topic:-) perhaps someone could kindly give me lessons? My Packard Bell keyboard has an agrave? (French was a long time ago) but I don't see an acute or an umlaut? or whatever else the Scandinavians use.

>

[Andrew]

You hold down the ALT key and while holding it down enter

160 on the numeric keypad and this letter appears -> á (lowercase a with an accent in case thunderbird does something I didn't intend).

All you need is to lookup the tables for the letters you are interested in and enter the correct *decimal* number while holding down the ALT key.

[SteveW]

I don't normally type in any accented languages, but I do know that a French acute accented vowel, can be typed by holding the right Alt key and pressing that letter. I only looked into that as my youngest son's middle name is Steafán, Irish for Stephen, and the accent looks the same ... although it is known as a fada (apparently pronounced fother).

I hope that people's newsreaders render that correctly (the second "a" should have come out with an acute accent on it).

[Andy Burns]

For ease of typing accented characters, set keyboard to "UK Extended" then you can use the following ...

AltGr then ' then a to get á (same for éíóúẃ) AltGr then ` then a to get à (same for èìòùỳ)

AltGr with " then a to get ä (same for ëïöü) AltGr with ~ then a to get ã (same for õñ) AltGr with ^ then a to get â (same for êîôûŷ) AltGr with c to get ç

Don't press shift with the " ~ ^ deadkeys Do press shift with the letters to get uppercase accented characters.

[The Natural Philosopher]

There is in general a key that you can use to compose strange characters

Here, in Linux I mapped it to the caps lock key so capslock->o->" gives me the character-> ö

And capslock->e->' gives me-> é

I cant answer for how windows or OS/X does it or can be configured to do it, though.

[The Natural Philosopher]

This does not work in Linux. The method for achieving this is operating system AND personal configuration specific.

[Tim Lamb]

OK both. I have printed that off rather than rely on my shaky memory.

Usenet has uses:-)

Thanks.