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Joined: May 2000
Posts: 10
stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 10 |
Two questions in one posting:
First: Some people hereabouts (USA) pronounce height with a TH sound on the end. At least one authority says that long ago, height used to be pronounced that way. That makes sense, since we have width, breadth and length. Those last three words are related to wide, broad and long, which have different vowel sounds from width, breadth and length. But height has the same vowel sound as high. Is this coincidence?
Second: What does anybody think expressions like Too big of a house, or not too nice of a day? The word of sounds extra to me. Seems related to OK expressions such as the size of a house. Does the extra of sound substandard? Is it a regionalism? Is it for purposes of euphony?
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Reed's a good name. My pedigree has a long line of them. I found a site that says flatly, a final "h" on "height" is incorrect. But I have heard it fairly often.
As to secnd part, the extra "of" is colloquial, and I think best avoided.
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Joined: Nov 2001
Posts: 279
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Nov 2001
Posts: 279 |
Howya reed
Welcome ta the forem - it's me furst time talken ta ya.
Re euphony- that's what I always says ta Goldilocks when she goes on about her "too big of a house" - especilly since it's the 3 bears house she's squatten in.
Be seein ya
GallantTed
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Joined: Nov 2001
Posts: 279
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Nov 2001
Posts: 279 |
Howya Dr Bill
SNAP! We posted tagather!
Quick, deal out the next hand!
Be seein ya
GallantTed
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891 |
Just a little note of welcome reed. Not much to add since I do agree with Bill on this one. I think adding an extra of is a colloquialism.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
Hi Reed. You can find more on heighth than you probably want in this thread: http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=16463and to lift tsuwm's post from that thread: just to make you feel better about the logic of it all (or maybe not), I will tell you that OED gives both spellings and pronunciations for the noun (i.e., height, heighth) and goes on to say: In ME. the forms in -t were predominant in the north, and since 1500 have increasingly prevailed in the literary language; though heighth, highth were abundant in southern writers till the 18th c., and are still affected by some. The stem-vowel has generally been U, ey, ei, though forms in i occur from 13thc., esp. in northern writers, hicht being the typical Sc. form from 14th c.; in Eng. hight is found from 15th c., and was very common in 16th and 17th c.; highth was also very common in 17th c. and was the form used by Milton. The hei- forms come lineally down from OE. (Anglian héhþo); the hi- forms are due in the main to later assimilation to high. Current usage is a compromise, retaining the spelling height (which has been by far the most frequent written form since 1500), with the pronunciation of hight.]
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