Well, I predicted "esker" yesterday and I was right, heh heh.

It's another word from Irish/Gaelic. I didn't realise we had monopolised the vocabulary of glacial geology! All the more surprising since we haven't had a glacier in millennia, and our highest peaks don't even get enough snow to ski on.

I used live a few miles from a village called Esker in Co. Galway.
http://www.tageo.com/index-e-ei-v-10-d-491537.htm
Why was it called Esker? Because it was built beside one. Not the most imaginative people, the ancient founders of Esker...

Esker is the only glacier word that is kept as it is in our language and we have only just one glacier relic: a largely eroded esker somewhere in the East of the country.The rest as you may know is mud, sand, clay and peat and water water everwhere.

BTW.Today's picture of a cirque. Gee, I'd like to be there!
Link

>cirque

Also called cwm - one of the two Welsh words I know, featuring w as a vowel.

How do you you pronounce it? Quvum? I read welsh is pronounced exactly as it is spelt.

Also another pronunciation question: the name (Scottish?) Dalziel is pronounced Deeyel. So how is Dalgliesh pronounced: Deegleesh?

w is pronounced as though it were a u, thus /koom/

see also, crwth /krooth/

Another good glacier word is "arête," which is a long, sharp ridge formed when two parallel glaciers rub shoulders. It always has looked French to me, and I can't think of a better place to confirm or deny my suspicion.

yes, it's French; but taken from Latin arista 'ear of corn, fish bone, spine'.
-joe (I LIU) friday

Thank yw, sir. An arista (in the sense of an elongate spine) is used in describing anatomical parts in biology, where the modifier, aristate, is also common. The awns of wheat and rye seeds, or the process at the end of a house fly's antenna are described as aristate. The fly thingie is called an arista.

Dalziel and Pascoe I read are Yorkshire-detectives.

Ooh! By that Ian guy...what's-his-name?

Yes. Never actually seen the show. I heard the name dalziel pronounced differently from its spelling in the promos and thought of the p d james detective's name dalgliesh which I had thought was pronounced daalgleesh. I wondered whether I had got that pronunciation wrong. Deegleesh does not sound right. I thought the awad people'd know, but I can try and google "pronunciation dalgliesh".

Dalziel and Pascoe are from Reginald Hill.. you may be thinking of Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus?

It definitely is pronounced dee-el. I've seen them all, because there is something charming (boorish charming) about this fat unattractive man. He and his assistant a sort of crude dry comical duo. There is a scene in which some not-of-the-region officer calls him Daalgleesh all the time, just to irritate him.

Ian Rankin, yes; thank you. An okay writer.

Thanks bran. The show has only just begun here. I'll watch it. (Google said daalgiesh was "dogleash"!!!).

I am reminded today of a third Welsh word in my dictionary:
hwyl -
/HU il/ Welsh an emotional quality which inspires and sustains impassioned eloquence; also, the fervor of emotion characteristic of Welsh gatherings

hwow! a 'wy' dipthong!?

Okay--and hwyl demonstrate this for us?

Looks like two distinct syllables to me.

From: Praise of Summer / Mawl i'r Haf

And it is an eternal grief
by night or day, how nearly August comes,
and to know that you, golden abundance,
from the prolongued defection, would depart.
'Tell me summer - this is wrong -
and I would like to ask of you
to what region or what kingdom
or what country, by wise Peter, do you go?'

A drwg yw yn dragywydd
nesed Awst, ai nos ai dydd,
a gwybod o'r method maith,
euraid deml, yr aut ymaith.
'Manag ym, haf, mae'n gam hyn,
myfy a fedr d'ymofyn,
pa gyfair neu pa gyfoeth,
pa dir ydd ei, myn Pedr, ddoeth

[Dafydd ap Gwilym , (may have been born about 1320) ]
A friend once gave me the volume of selected poems

I always like, by comparison, to find at least some words that by their repetition or similarities become clear.

That's how TV people pronounce Kenny Dalglish (famous Scottish football player & sometime football manager), although it could be that the English media have always been mispronouncing it - they tend to struggle with the nuances in Celtic names. Just as I struggle with Worcestershire sauce.

Worcestershire/ Ha, I always wondered why they use all those letters just to say Wooster. They don't write rorcerstershire for rooster do they?

I always wondered why they use all those letters just to say Wooster.

That would be a better spelling than Worcester, but the English language has long been associated with a silly and stupid spelling "system".

In one Bugs Bunny cartoon, he not only insisted on pronouncing the "ces" in worcestershire, but he used Tmesis and pronounced it "Worcestercestershire". I found that really funny.

Agreed, but in this particular case, I think it's the formalization of lazy speech patterns that has produced the disconnect. It's the sound that's errant in this case, not the spelling.

Which makes me think, In a sober and intelligent spelling system, would the spelling of words change as the pronunciations shift? There's nothing more tedious than a Spanish spelling bee, since words are soberly and intelligently spelled the way they sound. So should "hola" now be spelled "ola," since the aitch has evolved to silence, or is it worthwhile to retain these oddities as indicators of the history of the language? I have no opinion, one way or the other, but I'm curious to hear what others think.

I was once in love with a Celtic name. For a while, I thought it was the man. Then I realised of course it was the name!

this particular case, I think it's the formalization of lazy speech patterns that has produced the disconnect.

Language changes over time: sounds, meanings, and grammar. Nothing you or I can do about it. My favorites are the c in perfect and the d in admiral. Both are pronounced today because people were confused by the etymological re-spellings of Middle English parfit and amiral. In the former case, the c is etymological sound, the Latin word being perfectus, but in the latter it is a false etymology, the Arabic word being a variant of emir.

Two pronunciations which annoy me, though realize I'm on the wrong side are the pronunciation of err as air and pronouncing the t in often: both of which are some kind of wrong-headed hyper-correction based on back-formation from the pronunciation of error and spelling pronunciation respectively.

In a sober and intelligent spelling system, would the spelling of words change as the pronunciations shift? There's nothing more tedious than a Spanish spelling bee, since words are soberly and intelligently spelled the way they sound. So should "hola" now be spelled "ola," since the aitch has evolved to silence, or is it worthwhile to retain these oddities as indicators of the history of the language?

Well, spelling bees only work for languages that have screwed up spelling systems. It's a way for folks to feel better about their hopeless situation.

Yes, there's no real reason to put in the h in Spanish ola or English humor.

Many languages change their spelling over the years to bring them into conformity with changes in the language. The real problem with many folks is what to do with regional accents. While it is important to distinguish between a phonetic and a phonemic spelling system. (Nobody who knows which end is up linguistically speaking advocates the former, but rather the latter.) I think, you just bite the bullet and choose a standard and base the orthography on that. (It will cause trouble with folks who merge sounds like in cot-caught or pen-pin, but it will still be less onerous than the status quo.

he used Tmesis and pronounced it "Worcestercestershire". I found that really funny.

Really more of a reduplication, but, yes, it was funny. And was his Brooklynese rhotic or non-rhotic?

Non-rhotic (I think). He went "woocestercestershire". His implication was "I'll not only say 'ces', but I'll not stop saying it."
ETA: Doubt.

British?

British?

Nope, the h in humor is incorrect. The Latin word was umor, but the h got added sometime in the Middle Ages.

And we do pronounce the h in humor and good honor overhere.

I see. I thought we were talking (at least partly) pronunciation; the H in hola has been dropped, but I certainly say an H in humor!

but I should probably re-read the thread, because I likely mis-read it!

AHD4 lists the Latin as both umor and humor. The H was gone in the Old French we stole it from so maybe it just got added in the same way as the B in doubt/i] and [i]debt or the C in perfect.

no H for honor, here!

heh

I thought we were talking (at least partly) pronunciation;

I was talking about the US pronunciation of humor (hence the spelling). There was no aitch there in Latin (Classical at least), but it is pronounced because we spell it that way.

I should've probably been clearer in my declaration, but ...

I once heard somebody say, "I know how to spell 'banana;' I just don't know when to stop."

I just don't know when to stop.

When my father was learning how to sign his name ("Jimmy"), he would make some number of humps for the middle two ems. At least that's what his mother told me.

it's all good!