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Well, skunks might not be civets, but I had thought them to be.
Live and learn!
And, Faldage, so true. It's very important to know how to correctly pronounce words. Take the difference between "pen" and "pin." So many people don't make the distinction between them in their everyday speech. I would say "binturong" pronounced phonetically, would be a piece of cake with a person who had very good enunciation skills.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I think the concept of parallel evolution is fascinating. there is something deep and mysterious about like creatures evolving separately, distanced by thousands of miles...
formerly known as etaoin...
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This quote makes me feel a bit better about fairness:
The judges have put on their serious faces. To their left sits
Alex Cameron, aka the Pronouncer. He gives spellers their
words. He may also provide the word's part of speech,
language of origin, and definition, and use it in a sentence if
the speller asks. An English professor at the University of
Dayton, Cameron has warmed the Pronouncer's chair since
1981. He is a jowly, ruddy-faced man with an authoritative
presence, like a stern but kindly uncle.
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Carpal Tunnel
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"binturong" pronounced phonetically
I've thought of some more spellings:
Beentoorawng
Binturon
Of course if you're allowed to ask what language it comes from, then all you've got to know is the spelling conventions of a couple thousand languages.
How would you spell [guuretskee]?
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Carpal Tunnel
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formerly known as etaoin...
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Carpal Tunnel
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gorecki
No fair! That question was for WerdWind.
And it's actual® Górecki, if you want to get technical
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'Least you didn't call me WeirdWind, Faldaged:
OK. I didn't make myself clear. I wrote that binturong is an easy word to spell. That's the only point I was making about binturong. If you look up its pronunciation, it's very straightforward:
BIN-too-Rong.
If someone asked me to spell "BIN-too-Rong," I imagine I would spell it:
binturong
because that seems the most direct route into an animal spelling. For instance, the "ong" I would associate with earth syllables, such as prong, long (horns), and billabong. And the "bin" would make me think of something existing perhaps in the east or southeast Asia. After getting a definition, I would be pretty sure the spelling was binturong unless there were some unusual rule of which I wasn't aware.
That's why, Faldage, I wrote that I think binturong is an easy word to spell.
I certainly didn't mean that every dadburned word on earth you could come up with would be easy to spell correctly based on phonics.
Like this one, fer instance:
KEY-ruh-boss.
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No fair! That question was for WerdWind.sorry.  I'll stay out of this one... I figured all that typin' stuff would be a thorn in somebodys side...
formerly known as etaoin...
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My dictionary says that "civet" is valuable secretion for making perfumes, derived from the
"civet cat". At the bottom was a reference to "cacomistle" which I thought might mean
something about chemical warfare. Folk etymology again.
>cacomistle
n.
5AmSp cacomixtle < Nahuatl %atkomis%i < %atko, half + mis3%i, cougar6
1 a slender, long-tailed, raccoonlike carnivore (Bassariscus astutus) of the SW U.S. and Mexico
2 its fur Also cac$o[mix#le 73mis#!l, 3mik#s!l8
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