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.
I don't know any term for it.. but some of my favorites
Drunken Hines (the cake mix--perfect for baba au rum!)
and the old cafeteria chain-- big in NY, but i think also in other cities.. famous for its coin operated windows..
Horny and Hardup..
i can't think of the others.. but i have more.. (oh, a real NY one, the train lines N and R to queens.. also known as the Never and the Rarely--)
: "sammich" for sandwich, or "nakkin" for napkinHoney, I'd call that baby-talk. Or, in your-all's case: flirting!
I don't know about baby talk Jackie. My former room-mates used to call them sammiches all the time. Shame on me but I picked up the habit to.
Shame on me but I picked up the habit to
Once a cat-lick, always...
yes, there *should be a word for this! Hurry up tsuwm, or there will be... ;)
Lallation.
Tell me this is not a reference to Teletubbies. Please.
>> My girlfriend and I do this all the time
>> Is there a term for this sort of wordplay?
Foreplay?
Alex, what a lubbly relationship you and your gal have.
And what is your word of the day???
"foreplay" heh heh
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.
chickenbeastWe went through a stage of calling them
chicken boobs!
"sammich": is not unusual in New England ...
Anyway, who actually enunciates sandwich?
Think about it!
"sammich": is not unusual in New England ...
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!
But that's how we say it in the US, WW! Like "budder" for butter.
I don't see a problem with that.
enunciate "sandwich" pretty carefully
I tend to pronounce it with a nasalized a, [sã witsh]
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.
The Only WO'N!
Like "budder" for butter.
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????
her baby had already eaden, instead of eaten - it struck me as unusual
Not so unusual, since the second syllable is just the nasal [n] and easier to keep the preceding stop unvoiced against.
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.
In reply to:
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.