Re: ts in Tagalog

From: Des Small (des.small_at_bristol.ac.uk)
Date: 10/06/04 

Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 08:52:43 GMT

benlizross <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> writes:

> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > benlizross wrote:
> > >
> > > Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I had an English visitor in May, and as we walked around
> > > > Hoboken and Jersey City, he paused every few minutes to look
> > > > at his cellphone (which he thought was a mobile),

"Phrasal apocope in British English technological abbreviations",
isn't it?

Television => Telly (vs. "TV", which latter is now winning out)
Video [Cassette] Recorder => Video (vs. "VCR", thankfully rare here)
Microwave oven => Microwave ("MO", anyone?)

We have, in this increasingly global world, filled much-needed lexical
gaps with "SUV" and "WMD" however.

> > > Ah, Peter, I do love your habit of attributing dialect
> > > differences to ignorance or confusion on the part of others. I
> > > have heard people refer to cellphones down here (where we do
> > > lots of txting because it's cheaper than talking) as mobiles,
> > > but not routinely. It seemed natural though because after all
> > > they are, er, mobile. So according to you what's a real mobile?
> > > Something that links directly to a satellite? A portable unit
> > > linked to a home number? Something with its own little engine
> > > and wheels? A type of hanging artwork popular in the 1950s?
> >
> > /'mowbl/ isn't a noun here;
>
> Ah. I puzzled over this for some time, wondering how "mobile" could be
> anything but a noun in "...which he thought was a mobile." But now I see
> that "here" must refer to the USA, where there ain't no such noun as
> /mowbl/. I did think from the way you worded it that you had in mind
> some other type of device which went by that name.
>
> I am surprised at the pronunciation, though, from an Englishman.

So am I, and I am not only an Englishperson myself, I am surrounded by
them and /'mow,bayl/ is all I've ever heard.

[...]

Des
hasn't got one of those either 

-- 
"[T]he structural trend in linguistics which took root with the
International Congresses of the twenties and early thirties [...] had
close and effective connections with phenomenology in its Husserlian
and Hegelian versions." -- Roman Jakobson

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