I heard from some friends that pocket lint can also be called gnrr. Has anyone heard of this word before? Does it exist?

I don't think it's real. It's got no vowels.

jimthedog

Does it exist?

It does now!

Warrants investigation. Crwth has no vowels ( from the Welsh; meaning crowd)...so that's no criterion for dismissing
something as a non-word in English! In fact, Anu did a week of vowelless words once, long before I subscribed. (I know because I thought "crwth" was my best-kept Scrabble secret...but A.W.A.D. already had it documented!)
Gnrr is not in my dictionary, though. But it sounds pretty cool. If it's not a word, it should be!

Welcome aBoard, squid. I finally found one lonely, unhelpful ref. to a word I thought I remembered seeing somewhere. Hopefully someone with a better dictionary than I have access to can check out this word: gnurr.
So, here is the context, and FWIW (not much), the site:

It's not like Elise polluted it (well, maybe Bill did:-). That is all
*our* old PRDB gnurr. If we did not care enough to clean it up in those
days, and we don't look in there now and clean up our pieces, who are we
to complain? Ever read "Grazing of the Commons"?
http://www.cctec.com/maillists/nanog/historical/9512/msg00136.html

Crwth has no vowels ( from the Welsh; meaning crowd)
In Welsh, there are a lot of letters that are used as vowels that aren't used like that in English, like w. And they pronounce dd as th. But I haven't ever seen g, n, or r used as vowels.

jimthedog

whilst I (doubtfully) look up gnurr, I will also throw out gnarr, which is to snarl... [exits to growelry, stage left]

gnrr, gnurr, gnarr...

How would you pronounce these? With the hard g sound, or the silent g of gnu?

gnrr, gnurr, gnarr...

How would you pronounce these?

My guess is infrequently. And with a silent g, as in gnu.

a silent g, as in gnu.

Wer-hot? A ger-nu! But it's the ger-nicest creature in the zoo!

The Gnu Song

A year ago last thursday, I was strolling in the zoo
When I met a man who thought he knew the lot
He was laying down the law about the habits of baboons
And the number of quills a porcupine has got
So I asked him "What's that creature's name?" and he answered
"That's a helk!"

And I'd have gone on thinking that was true
If the animal in question hadn't put that chap to shame,
And remarked-"I ain't a helk-I'm a gnu!

I'm a gnu-I'm a gnu
The g-nicest work of g-nature in the zoo
I'm a gnu-how do you do?
You really oughtta g-know w-who's w-who
I'm a gnu-spelt G - N - U
I'm not a camel or a kangaroo
So let me introduce, I'm neither man nor moose
Oh, g-no, g-no, g-no, I'm a gnu!"

I had taken furnished lodgings down at Rustington-on-sea
Whence I travelled on to Aston-under-lyne
On the second night I stayed there I was wakened from a dream
Which I'll tell you all about some other time
Among the hunting trophies on the wall above my bed
Stuffed and mounted was a face I thought I knew
A bison? An oakpi? Could it be a hearty beast?
Then I seem to hear a voice-"I'm a gnu!

I'm a gnu-a-g-nother gnu
I wish I could g-nash my teeth at you
I'm a gnu-how do you do?
You really oughtta g-know w-who's w-who
I'm a gnu-spelt G - N - U
Call me bison or okapi and I'll sue
Nor am I in the least like that dreadful hearty beast
Oh, g-no, g-no, g-no, I'm a gnu!
G-no, g-no, g-no, I'm a gnu!
G-no, g-no, g-no, I'm a gnu!"

- Flanders and Swann!

The g in gnu is silent?

 

Well, yes.

jimthedog

I really hesitate to interject myself into this thread [yeah, right], but the orthoepy of gnu is given as nu by OED, although the Hottentots pronounce it gnoo. actually, I prefer the Dutch word wildebeest.

The gnu Song

I am a great Flanders and Swan fan. I received "At the drop of a Hat" for my 13th birthday, which was only replaced by the set of CDs last birthday by my son. But the CD was recorded at a different show, and the lyrics and asides are subtly different. It is very annoying when word perfect to have the artistes sing a different version. Great sing-along music for the car.

Rod

I somehow gnu I wouldn't be alone here!

the Hottentots pronounce it gnoo

Or do they pronounce it g!noo?

How interesting, Rodward, that the vinyl and CD versions of At the Drop of a Hat are different. I have only the CDs of F&S; I imagine that hearing the vinyls would be tin in my ear.

>crwth has no vowels

here's another interesting bit from alt.english.usage

words without vowels
--------------------

When I was 6 years old, my schoolmistress said, "There are no
words in the English language that have no vowels. To anyone who
can tell me a word with no vowels, I'll give threepence."

I raised my hand and said, "Shhh."

The mistress looked at me very contemptuously and said, "He
thinks 'shhh' is a word. But it isn't; it's just a sound that
people make."

A couple of weeks later, the mistress asked the class, "Has
anyone thought of a word without any vowels yet?"

Another little boy raised his hand and said, "My. Try.
Sky."

"No," replied the mistress, "'y' is a vowel there. But I'll give
you threepence anyway, because you've been thinking."

After all these years, I *still* think my example was better than
that other little boy's.

I WANT MY THREEPENCE!

The word "vowel" has more than one meaning. From MWCD10:

# 1: one of a class of speech sounds in the articulation of which
# the oral part of the breath channel is not blocked and is not
# constricted enough to cause audible friction; broadly : the one
# most prominent sound in a syllable 2: a letter or other symbol
# representing a vowel -- usu. used in English of a, e, i, o, u, and
# sometimes y

Children are usually taught sense 2, because meaning 1 would be
harder for them to grasp. But since sense 2 is not that *useful*
except as a rough approximation to sense 1 (and on the U.S. TV
show _Wheel of Fortune_), "words without vowels" in sense 2 (such as
"cwm", "nth", "Mrs.", and "TV") are not terribly interesting. Words
without vowels in sense 1 (such as "shhh", "psst", and "mm-hmm")
*are* interesting, because they tell us something about the
phonology of the language.

I just love the tangents that these topics take (Hey, nice alliteration there), but back to pocket lint... is this the same word that would describe the navel/belly-button fuzz that men flick off whilst disrobing? It must be in the same genre, being, of course, of the same identical molecular composition?

is this the same word that would describe the navel/belly-button fuzz that men flick off whilst disrobing?

um... thanks. in my own special apophasistic way, i'll resist the urge to wonder aloud if this happens *every* time a man disrobes.

bridget wanders off, hoping beyond all hope that this image does not haunt her for eternity


ps: i guess this may help cure my problematic apodysophilia

Just flicking at disrobing is not enough. When showering soap, water, and gentle removal of dead skin and secretions is essential.

All this gnarly discussion about gnus leaves my teeth gnashing, will all these insidious linguistic gnats stop gnawing at me, please! It's not gneiss!

As Gerard Hoffnung used to say about one's navel: "When eating celery in bed, it's a very good place to keep the salt."

Let's see .... hmmmm.....crackers or cookies in bed versus celery and salt?
You still have to shake out the bedding!
Reminds me of the saying :
"Children are like sugar ... you forget how sweet they are when they're underfoot."

It's not gneiss!

I'm at a loess to understand why you'd give a schist.

Great sing-along music for the car.

Rod, you have a car with which you sing along? Incredible! My car only emits occasional flatulence, and Gallic nasalities (it's a Peugeot) but never anything truly melodious! I know, it's an old British car - a Singer!

Singer
You ride around on a sewing machine? When we had a 1966 VW Beetle, my wife complained it was like riding in a washing machine.

Singer - You ride around on a sewing machine?

My wife's Grandfather flew in seaplanes (can't remember exactly what at this moment) in WW1 (after he graduated from airships), and these were powered by Singer engines, which had a nasty habit of stopping. They could sometimes be restarted by diving with feathered props and then throwing the props back in again, but he ditched in the North sea at least twice. They had pigeons with them to release with their last known position in the hope that someone would rescue them. It seemed to work.

Rod

back to pocket lint?????

Yes.
Gnrr also occurs in pants cuffs.
This word, and a few others that I can still remember, was in a book that we used to have in my school library in the sixties.
The only other word that I can remember distinctly is 'bimblewiffy' which is for the dust bunnies under couches and beds.
This predates Rich Hall's Sniglets by quite a bit and I would give a lot to find out the citation for the book itself.
Pls let me know if you get any further with it yourself.
Charlie Affel, Philadelphia

WELCOME CHARLIE

You sure picked up on an old thread to begin here, but welcome
anyway.

who g-nu that pocket lint was such a fascinating subject. I looked at peoples' collections online following links on the subject because I remember that book that was mentioned and wanted to see if I could find it.
As far as vowels...before I went to school I was taught a,e,i,o,u,sometimes y and w. (I know my mom had an example of the use of w as a vowel but I don't remember what it was now.) I was told in school that this was wrong and I was most upset.
We extensively played the 'three letter word' game in the car while traveling and 'gnu' was one of my favorites.

It might have been the Welsh word "Cwm".

It means "valley".

I don't think that was her example as it was not connected with the 3 letter word game. I sent an e to my sister to ask if she remembers. I do remember 'ohm' and 'mho' since my eldest brother was a Ham operator. For a four year old I learned a lot of strange words. I basically learned to read off of billboards and road signs once I was out of 'baby books' although we all read very early and we all spent our lives reading constantly.

another commonly cited Welsh word with the 'w' vowel is crwth - Welsh crowd (an ancient Celtic musical instrument; an early form of the fiddle)

I know both those words as I travel to Wales on a regular basis. I asked my sister and she said she only remembered the rhyme and not the example that we were given. I know my mom didn't speak Welsh but she had some Gaelic. For some reason though I want to say it was an English language word,, but I could be totally wrong in that memory.
Do you speak Welsh? I never know how to pronounce their road signs...sigh.

w as a vowel

It's a good idea to separate the orthography (spelling) of a language from its phonology (the actual acoustic and articulated sounds of a language. Welsh orthography uses w to represent /ʊ/ and /uː/ (which sounds exist in English put and through). Welsh w can also sometimes stand in for a semivowel, as in English wet). Some Northern dialects of Welsh do have some vocalic sounds that do not exist in English. The are central high vowels and are represented in the orthography by u.

People will say things like English has 5 (or 6 or 7) vowels, but they are talking about spelling there. Most varieties of English have over 10 distinct, monophthongal vowel sounds. Unfortunately our "system" of spelling has the 5 cardinal vowel symbols to work with.

10 distinct, monophthongal vowel sounds.

Okay, I'll fall for it, not being a linguist in any size, shape, or form....
Name those 10 distinct, monophthongal vowel sounds in five seconds or less! And then tell me what that even means.

while we wait for the linguist's definitive answer,
monophthongal = having a single vowel sound (as opposed to dipthongs and the like?) [ILIU]

Yes. The vowels in fleece, kit, dress, bath, strut, foot, goose, palm, lot, and thought are monophthongs in most dialects. This is between around 8 and 10 vowels depending on the dialect. The vowels in face, goat, boy, out, high are diphthongs in most dialects.

Is the w in cow (or vowel) considered to be a consonant? It seems to act the same as the w in cwm and crwth.

The "ow" in "cow" is a digraph: two letters used to represent one sound. Which sound it represents depends on the word: compare "cow" and "mow". Other digraphs are th, sh, ch.

The "ow" in "cow" is a digraph: two letters used to represent one sound. Oh, thank you for saying that! I was struggling and struggling to try and discern any sound for w in that word.

I was thinking the other day about the w in why, and realized that for me at least it's a diphthong: kind of an ooo-wuh, the whole being sort of like ooo-wuh-eye. Hmm--correction--more like ooo-wuh-eye-ee. Not quite Hawaii!

Is the w in cow (or vowel) considered to be a consonant?

Well, that's sort of a trick question. Cow in my dialect (General American English) is /'kaʊ/. That's a consonant followed by a diphthong. The /a/ does not occur in my dialect as a monophthongal vowel sound, but is pronounced like the vowel in bath or palmm in Australian English; the /ʊ/ occurs and is pronounced like the vowel in foot or put. /w/ is sometimes called a semi-vowel.

[Edited for grammar and correctness.]

I think you mean /w/.

The first sound in "why" is the semi-vowel /w/. /w/ is pretty much the same as /u/ (the vowel in "boot") - the difference is that /w/ is the onset of the syllable while /u/ is the nucleus. If that helps.

ILIU too and didn't see 10 examples listed (WIKIPEDIA). Do you think that our speech patterns are so standardized and monotonously the same that people hear and recognize those distinctions in everyday speech? Regular, real people, not linguists or someone making a study?
I tried saying the example words for both diphthongs and monophthongs out loud to see if I could hear two vowel sounds or just one. I am not sure that experiment was very successful. From living so many places during my childhood I have some very regional pronunciations of some words that I have retained as an adult.

wow>>>> interesting topic.

Back in the day, when people had such things, we would tape various words on our reel to reel tape deck and play the tape backwards. The final W in words such as cow and shadow definitely sounded like a normal initial W when the word was played backwards. You don't hear it when the word is coming at you in its usual way because you're not listening for it. And even if you are listening for it you don't know how to hear it. But it's there nonetheless.

Zwoan wodash uth.

I think you mean /w/.

Yes, what goofy said.

Do you think that our speech patterns are so standardized and monotonously the same that people hear and recognize those distinctions in everyday speech? Regular, real people, not linguists or someone making a study?

Most assuredly, yes, but not consciously. That's how we can detect "foreign" accents. For example, most USans can distinguish between the two vocalic sounds in ship and sheep, but some can and others cannot distinguish between cot and caught. An experiment for people for whom the latter pair are homonyms, can you hear the distinction that other regional accents (dialects) make between those two sounds? Whether one can identify those sounds in isolation, or better yet, whether one can disentangle what one hears from what one writes is another matter entirely.

Yes, but I think it's misleading to call it the final W. You would also hear it in words like bough, foe, so which don't have a final written w. It's because these two sounds are diphthongs in your dialect, something like /aʊ/ and /oʊ/ (maybe, I'm guessing you're American). They consist of two sounds, and the second sound is almost identical to /w/ in articulatory terms.

unless you put that old H in front like some of us...

So I just read the wiki on vowel sounds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_low_back_vowels) and tried out saying some of those examples after looking at the citation of regional variances. Okay, so I "think" I say caught and cot the same...in listening to most people talk I would know what they are saying by context, not pronunciation. Ship and sheep, though, I don't think I've heard folks turn those into the same sound.
Having lived so many places I can usually pick out regions from speech, but not always.
Not having ever studied this, I don't think I ever realized how many technical variations there are in pronunciations and the little /o/ thingies to describe them. Amazing new world!

The Shadow Knows?

would that be a shadow, a long shadow, or a very long shadow?

The Shadow who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men. And yes, goofy, I understand that's not the way you would represent it in IPA, but I was responding to Jackie's comment about not hearing a W sound in words like cow.

Or broken down into (k + ah + oo)?

Zat's more like it, Muse. To hear the w sound I'd have to say cow-wah.
It was lovely to see you last weekend! [blowing kiss e]

Backwards that would be awahk.

zmjezhd must be rubbing off on you.

Just in case you want to hear what the cow said....

moo

Certainly expressing her opinion, that's for sure.

But if the cow spoke back(wards)she would say
"o-om"

As in chanting......very astute of you V

Sort of like the Hindu Prayer.

"o-om"
Now while I am not a linguist (as proven on this forum) I am sure that translates as "Thank God you don't eat me."

Or, "thank heaven, I'm not on the menu, even"! ! !

Amoosing

Cowabunga!

"o-om"

Actually moo backwards sounds more like womb than om.

so would that cow be pregnant then?

so would that cow be pregnant then?

Kine have hooves, not paws.

Be she pregnant or not, she certainly is in
meditative state....oom or om.

zmjezhd, were you calling for a pregnant ... paws?

Not pregnant: meno-paws.

were you calling for a pregnant ... paws?

That was my intent.

Just south of Sacramento there used to b a car wash that could be seen from I-5. It was called All Kine Wash. I always wondered about it and someone told I could take my steers there for a bath.
I think that was a bum steer though.

What goes oo ooo ooo

a cow with no lips!

must have been a 'background' singer from Mo(o)Town label.

Perhaps that steer running thru the streets of Seattle
yesterday was looking for our beauty.
(I liked the pregnant paws bit!)

So they have encierro in Seattle too, Luke!

That's no bull !