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Some members of the Svenskå Sångarna (Swedish Singers) of Duluth complain that Swedish is a difficult language. Their primary problem is with certain sounds, both in pronunciation and in how the same letter combinations can be pronounced differently. Granted that it takes practice to make the sounds, but seeing the differences should be even easier than in English. After all, with very few exceptions, Swedish is pronounced almost exactly as it is spelled. This observation has put my fevered brain to constantly come up with silly sentences that demonstrate how English spelling has many pronunciations for the same spelling and many spellings for the same pronunciation. The first one I came up with was based on dislike of audience coughing by the director of the Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra, Markand Thakar. He has stopped a piece at least once because of coughing. Though not encouraged by his
entourage, Markand Thakar picked up the concert master's bow, took a
bow, went out on a bough, and said, "Enough, are you through
coughing? You ought to stop!"
From that one I've thought up several more. Here are two that I remember right now, and so I better write them while I'm at the height of my energy. For if I wait, they may lose the weight of their impact. Harry's hairy hare has no heir,
but that's neither here nor there.
The bare, hairy bear was looking for berries. My friend Don thinks I should call this page "Homophone Homilies". Maybe someday I'll change it. Finally, I took time to add a couple more. The first is from an office store that misspelled a product on its computerized receipt. The second is from seeing once again a very common misspelling. And I almost misspelled "misspell". Stationery is stationary, but a
still object is not always stationery.
I would wave some pennants
If people who misspell lose as loose Would do some penance. I thought of this one after solving a Cryptoquip that ended with "wheat tooth". When he ate hot wheat, he broke
out in a cold sweat.
This one just popped into my head. The sow and the ewe sowed in the
afternoon but eschewed sewing in the evening.
My wife was packaging up old magazines, and when I saw a dove on one cover I thought The dove dove into the water and
later the alligator ate her.
Just thinking about these seems to make them sprout out of my head. Shall Shelly be the one to sell
cell phones?
I put "one" in as a "sight word" to "phones", that is, a word spelled similarly but pronounced differently. The previous sentence could be a tongue twister as Shall Shelly sell cell phones?
Or it could be more complicated as Shall Shelly pay her dues by
selling cell phones in ones and twos.
I had another I should have written down last night, but from just a moment ago The brat wouldn't eat the brat.
The different pronunciations of water and later popped into my head at lunch. I expanded it to As father gathered his plaid bed
spread, he said he would get wood, food, and water later.
As I wished an annoying skin condition would lessen I came up with One lessens one's ignorance when
one studies one's lessons.
Many, including me, consider "one" a clumsy construction nowadays, but I wanted the key words to be phonetically the same and I wanted the statement to apply to us all. As I was updating my pictures I wasn't sure if the title should be "Grey and Green" or "Gray or Green". My crazy pattern recognition machine came up with The bey said nay to riding a bay
that wouldn't neigh.
As I passed a friend on a rowing machine at the fitness center, I said, "Keep limber." That led to To maintain your ability as a
mountain climber, you need to be limber.
I was using misappropiated in Creative Fallacies and came up with It's not appropriate to
appropriate the ideas of others.
We were talking about herbs around the lunch table: The herbalist said, "Thyme heals
all wounds."
Sick humor: The Valdez incident was a good thing. After all, the oily boid gets the
woim.
From this I got four different spellings of the same sound: Surely, the early bird gets the
worm.
And then Trying to dig through compacted
soil, the worm was worn out.
2008-09-16 At coffee last week, the word "wreak" came up. From this, Some students wreak havoc on
spring break.
2009-08 A cheese maker lost his way. He couldn't weigh his whey. Don't shed a tear over the death of the bear. He took my Heath bar. I had another set that I forgot but will probably remember at one in the morning. But I won't go into mourning with a curse that it could be worse. The ghoul howled foul when he was told he had no soul. I read in the news that Hugh and Stu fell in the stew. They turned red in hue. 2011-07-14 He growled as he bowled that he lost his soul when he stepped over the foul line. ©2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 Melvyn D. Magree |