Things you were shockingly old when you learned

I guess we're actually throwing in "u"s in the middle of "or".

I thought the original way to spell things had the u for whatever historic etymological reasons and the Americans just got rid of them cos they wanted to simplify whatever spelling.

I am a minimalist and prefer the American chili, aluminum and erbs. I do like my 'u's tho

Yeah it was Noah Webster xpost

also famously tried to get rid of the 'k' in 'knee'

Yeah, didn't mean to suggest that the US spellings came first.

Calling the last letter "zee": was that Webster too?

Does anybody call Billy Gibbons famous band by its English pronunciation?

That very question was posed in the classic 1992 book, Wayne's World: Extreme Close-Up.

I haven't in the past, but I will from now on.

the way I understood it was that English just didn't have standard spelling when the USA became independent and the UK and USA just standardised differently, but at around the same time, so neither spelling predates the other. and UK English went with "u"s because French was seen as posh and therefore better or something

zee is pre-webster (earliest printed appearance in a 1677 spelling book)* but NW gave it his seal (s/b seel)of approval and it then landed solidly and began to spread. sesame street took it wide.

zed derives from french zede (from greek zeta); zee is assumed to be "well we say bee, dee, tee etc so it must be zee

*not sure if book wz UK or US but either way this aurely means it wz said "zee" in the uk in 1677 then also (as well as "zed"): in fact the diff might be a class thing (only posh ukanians know greek)

"Other pronunciations of “z” you might hear in the English speaking world include: zod, zad, zard, ezod, izzard, and uzzard"

tag yrself

Does anyone other than Scottish people say jy /dʒaɪ/ for 'J' anymore?

xp ps all those facts are from here: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/10/why-do-the-british-pronounce-z-as-zed/

i omitted that the varient of the sesame street alphabet song adapted to affirm zed over zee switches the coda as follows

out: know you know your ABCs, won't you wing a long with me
in: here's some sugar for your bread, eat it all up before you're dead

I found out today (though I'm not shocked), that the snow leopard is also known as the 'ounce', believed to be from from lynx -> lonce -> l'once

P sure it was "zed" on Canadian Sesame Street. Was there no UK version?

famous rapper dʒaɪzed

YYZ by Rush is pronounced y-y-zed as far as I know, the Canucks clearly know what's up

there is a bone called a hyoid bone that is in your neck, and it has no points of articulation with other bones.

that's what they want you to think

'Ounce' is a cryptic crossword staple.

cf the Latin name pantera uncia (prev. uncia uncia, it's got a good beat to it)

fun (?) fact (?): smaller wildcat the oncilla's name is derived from "ounce", a little snow leopard, but the ocelot's name is apparently thought to come from the Aztec and thus be unrelated to oncilla, even though both the name and the cat look p. similar to me

I saw an oncilla last week (in a zoo, I'm afraid) and I <3 them all

To curry Favel.
as an act of obseqience to royalty people used to go off and groom a mythical horse apparently.
BUt the mythology behind Favel fell out of circulation so people replaced the name with the word favour.

that's a great one!

Is it too late to go back?

I discovered this recently but was just reminded that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a total Sherlock-head and wrote a latter-day Holmes novel.

Yes! My dad is also a Sherlock head and has commiserated with Kareem on several occasions.

kareem is an extremely interesting guy

He wrote one of the new Veronica Mars episodes.

elementary, my dear Colasanto

I only learned today, while crossing one of them, that there are two Severn Bridges.

Could perhaps as well be in the "puns you had missed" thread but

Darth Vader's second name is simply the Dutch word for "father".

(as written, not spoken obv)

To curry Favel.
as an act of obseqience to royalty people used to go off and groom a mythical horse apparently.
BUt the mythology behind Favel fell out of circulation so people replaced the name with the word favour.

lilith slept with niles? wtf

lol

ha ha

2+ tamales, 1 tamal.

"lousy" from louse/lice

just now, duh

traceable in the usage meaning "infested" i.e. "that place is just LOUSY with cops!"

well I guess you'd expect the s in a descriptive form of a given word to be soft. Maybe if it was pronounced more like loussy you'd get it clearer. Does adding a y to the end of a word tend to harden the letter before it, pronunciationwise?

I think it varies? Most people don’t say greasy to rhyme with easy eg

except in yeats

(xp) Not sure about that tbh.

Or to be more specific changing a word from noun to adjective does it harden an end syllable's soft letter.
Language pronunciation tends to change to what flows naturally off the tongue over time. & it can obscure etymological evolution, innit?

a good example of where changing a word from noun to adjective fails to harden the end syllable's soft letter is louse and lousy, which goes in exactly the opposite direction (except no doubt in the dialects where this doesn't happen)

id use both words either way tbh, tryin to think why/when and it may be depending on following consonant or somesuch

I might use a z sound for louse if I’m saying “louse up the joint”. Maybe. I’ve never said that I don’t think