Archive for 4: UUppercase 2
Dominus and Darren were the first to point out that Hercules had twelve labors, not seven. Oops. So many other things come in sevens... Thanks for the correction! (And let this be another reminder to other readers: if you catch an error in any of these columns, whether of fact, grammar, spelling, punctuation, or common […]
The word that was my favorite Hangman word for years has six letters, none repeating. It makes a good Hangman word if the guessers guess according to the frequency table— Oh, okay, I suppose I have to take time out here to explain the frequency table, for those who don't do cryptograms. It's a list […]
My parents showed me this when I was a kid; I think they'd known it from childhood: YYUR YYUB ICUR YY4ME They had to explain to me how to read it. "YY" is "two Ys," or "too wise"; the whole thing is thus "Too wise you are, too wise you be; I see you are […]
Jacob Mattison suggests that the fish symbol derives from the loaves-and-fishes story recounted in John 6. (I guess a loaf was too hard to draw.) He points out a couple of other New Testament mentions of fish: eating fish after the resurrection (John 21), and Jesus telling Peter to catch a fish to pay taxes […]
I always wondered where the X in "Xmas" came from. Or rather, I thought I knew: I thought it symbolized a cross. But recently it occurred to me that the similarity in sound between the words "cross" and "Christ" is an accident; "crossmas" doesn't really make any sense. So why the X? Maybe I was […]
Pierre provides a Russian loop he heard in college: U popa byla sobaka On yeyo lyubil. Ona ukrala kusok sala On yeyo ubil. Ubil, zakapal, na kamushkye napisal, "U popa byla sobaka..." Pierre's translation: A priest had a dog He loved her. She stole a bit of bacon He killed her. Killed, buried, on the […]
I'm always amused by jokes and rhymes and poems that go in loops. For instance, when I was a kid, my father told me, "Pete and Re-Pete went out in a boat. Pete fell overboard. Who was left?" I answered, "Re-Pete," and he of course said, "Pete and Re-Pete went out in a boat..." Along […]
Jacob Mattison reminds me that "sometimes w" has nothing to do with "cwm"; it's because the "w" in words like "cow" is an off-glide, the second part of a diphthong (much like the "y" in "toy"), and is thus contributing to a vowel sound. The point is still valid, though: in the linguistic sense, it's […]
Note: if you can't read ASCII IPA notation, go learn it. It's not hard. The sounds made by most consonant symbols are obvious, though this week's column contains some exceptions, and there aren't many common vowel symbols to learn. Several months ago I deconstructed the idea of verbs and nouns; now I'm going to go […]
[Note: This week's column requires a graphical browser for best effect. Apologies to those reading in a text-only browser.] Is it a maze? Instructions for a chicken dance? Or perhaps a giant structure in the desert which can be understood only from an aerial perspective, providing evidence of ancient astronauts? Whatever it is, it can […]