McTag wrote:Hello JTT, how nice to see you back. Welcome.
Have you discovered Dot Wordsworth's column in The Spectator yet, BTW?
Hello, McTag and everyone else. A special nod to Setanta.
No, I haven't come across any of those columns yet, Sire.
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Merry Andrew wrote:Goldmund -- interesting that you should use the word "gigolo" as an example of unusual pronunciation. What's really interesting abut the spelling of "gigolo" is that it contains two 'g's, each of which has a quite distinctive sound. I don't necesarily disagree with JTT about the fact that the non-phonetic spelling in English is overcome quite easily by children learning to read. But it does seem to me that having the same symbol represent two quite distinctive sounds in the same word can only be confusing to anyone trying to master those symbols.
Let me try this. Think about it.
"The symbols on the page are not there to represent the sounds of language, which we don't hear, but the underlying grammar, which we do hear." [S Pinker]
No really, read it again and think about it ... deeply.
