From now on, this is a political blog! I will talk about the GOP and the Committee on Foreign Relations and the latest Supreme Court noms* and John Boehner's skin color and taxes.
Just fooling! Speaking of English gerunds and gerundives...I really wish folks would realize that we don't use a "g" phoneme word-finally (at the end of the word) when we say things like "fooling" and "eating" and "[artfully] demonstrating [one's worth]." It is actually a velar nasal, and it looks like this when you write it in IPA: ŋ
The alveolar nasal /n/ is a separate phoneme (although n and ŋ are sometimes allophones!), and that is what we use when we say "eatin'," ""foolin'," "demonstratin'," and "and" (but not "ink," because the nasal there assimilates to the place of articulation of the following /k/, which is also velar).
Sorry to talk about phonology again.
The reason I almost decided to turn political was a conversation held between me and ____ last night. My conversational partner claimed that my blog holds no interest for him/her, or for anyone, really, for two reasons: first, because it is not of topical subject matter, and second, because I "name-drop." Actually, I name-preserve, but from now on I shall drop all names. That is why, for instance, I have withheld the name of the person with whom I was speaking yesterday.
But I will try to be more topical in the future. Because I am under the weather, I am not going to attempt such a feat now. I don't think I can beat the Supreme Court pun I've made, either (see below). For now, suffice it to say that, given recent legislation passed in the House of Representatives, every Republican member of that body must be of below-average intelligence, or else their staffers are, or else they have decided to arrest all progress that might be made in this Congress for some larger noble purpose of which I am not yet aware. I don't really think that last option is true--I just put it in there to be fair and balanced. That is a great slogan! I am going to use it more often.
*(Get it? Breyer? Noms? Ice cream? Justice Breyer? Mayb'z or mayb'z not?)
No comments:
Post a Comment