Is there a term for deliberately mispronouncing or spelling words to be playful? Examples: "sammich" for sandwich, or "nakkin" for napkin. My girlfriend and I do this all the time, and I was just wondering if there is a term for this sort of wordplay.
Actually, as far sa the word of the day, I have found delight in the combination "magic nakkin." For a good while, "chickenbeast" was the subject of much hilarity.
It's a good thing in life to be easily amused as I am.
When this thread first started I pondered the spelling, mumbling "sandwich" over and over to myself. But I very clearly hear a "w" in it, I can feel my lips making the "w" shape. So my pronunciation is more like "samwich".
Anyway, who actually enunciates sandwich? It's possible that my mom might actually enunciate "sandwich". I'd have to get her to say it to be sure. She's just like that.
I always used to say "sandwich" very clearly, according to the spelling. But then I fell in love with someone who said "sammich" or "sangwich". I switched to "sammich" first as a bit of a joke, but now it seems to have stuck (even though he, unfortunately, didn't). Another one I picked up is "I'm hungy" when I'm hungry.
I do enunciate "sandwich" pretty carefully, but don't know why. I'm lazy on other words, most irritably to myself "little," which I screw up nearly always as "liddle"--shame on me!
deliberately mispronouncing or spelling words to be playful?
You mean like prolly, parbly, praps, and akshually?
And what about kids unintentional garbling of words? When my sister was very young she used to say pesketti instead of spaghetti and brak instead of brat.
My mom (see "sandwich" comment above) always got on my back for making T's into D's. Or eating the T's altogether - for example, I usually lose the T in Italy when I'm not paying attention, so it comes out "I-uh-lee". Now that I don't live with her any more my pronunciation has definitely gone downhill (if you define not enunciating as the downhill direction).
My mom always got on my back for making T's into D's.
Your mom was the proverbial* King Canute stopping the tide. The tendency to voice unvoiced stops or plosives between vowels is a natural element of language change.
*But not the real King Canute. The real King Canute knew perfectly well that he was incapable of stopping the tide; he was trying to prove this very point to his sycophantic toadies.
"We went through a stage of calling them chicken boobs!"
The practice of calling the parts of the fowl "drumstick" and "second joint" originated in Victorian England, to alleviate discomfort with the foul terms "leg" and "thigh".
I am guilty myself of saying liddle at times, but was very surprised to hear a friend say that her baby had already eaden (sounds like Eden), instead of eaten - it struck me as unusual, maybe because the first syllable is long and accented????
I think the T in "eaten" is often not quite given its due. There's a lingustics way to describe that half a T that I hear in "eaten", isn't there? For me, it usually doesn't make itself into a D, either.
After delivering four children well into adulthood, we still tend to say bis-ketti, as well as he/she gots. The latter makes perfect sense to small children, simply an over-generalization of the third-person-singular s. I've discovered too that most of my family has always pronounced trough with a final th-sound, like troth. It's not a word we use that often; we haven't kept pigs in years.
Saying ih-ul-ly for Italy is what's known as a glottal stop ( or gloh-ul, if you will). In many parts of the Northeast US you will hear someone ask for a boh-ul-a-beer.
he/she gots. The latter makes perfect sense to small children, simply an over-generalization of the third-person-singular s
I've got
The 've is assimilated into the g of got, the sense that it is a past tense is lost, since it describes an on-going condition and the rule about s at the end of a third person singular verb takes over.
>there *should be a word for this! Hurry up tsuwm, or there will be...
sorry, this looked like a food thread you know...
Jackie is right; this is baby talk, by extension: 1 a : the syntactically imperfect speech or phonetically modified forms used by small children learning to talk b : the consciously imperfect or altered speech used by adults in speaking to small children 2 : oversimplified speech or writing [MWCD]
caradea is also right; the original, obsolete sense of lallation is "Childish utterance". [OED]
Jackie is right Oh, joy! Will wonders never cease! I'm gonna run 'n mark it on my calendar! And by the way, I say sandwich, mostly. Occasionally sanwich. But, samwich?! Shudder---that's as bad as Antartica.
The practice of calling the parts of the fowl "drumstick" and "second joint" originated in Victorian England, to alleviate discomfort with the foul terms "leg" and "thigh".
We don't use "chickenbeast" to refer to poultry, rather its just a nonsense word suggesting a parodoxical creature that is somehow both chicken and beast. That is, both cowardly and ridiculous like a chicken and ferocious and wild like a beast. I think we were inspired by Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which Sir Robin is said to have "nearly stood up to the dreaded Chicken of Bristol."
The funny part (to me at least) is that we have a baby talk term for chickenbeast: chickabeast.
As far as victorian propriety, didn't they have long, overhanging tablecloths to cover the legs of the dining table? Of course, pornography was a booming business in the victorian age.
Disclaimer: Wordsmith.org is not responsible for views expressed on this site.
Use of this forum is at your own risk and liability - you agree to
hold Wordsmith.org and its associates harmless as a condition of using it.
