Re: CHAT: F.L.O.E.S.

When I saw the word in your post I first
read it as ['ha.ke] too, until you sed it was
pronounced [hejk].  You are not alone.  ;-)

Jake


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: 20 February, 2004 09:06
Subject: CHAT: F.L.O.E.S.


> Yesterday I went out to lunch.
>
> This is not a novel occurrence; I eat lunch out most days.  However, it
> is usually fast food from the food court or something quick from the
> employee cafeteria.  Yesterday I went to a nice seafood restaurant,
> purely due to time constraints: the food court was packed with delegates
> from a huge convention across the street, the employee cafeteria was
> packed with employees fleeing the food court, and I had only a little
> bit of time to eat lunch before a meeting.  So I went to the nice
> seafood restaurant in the building.
>
> As I was perusing the menu, a particular dish caught my eye: hake.
> Now, I had never eaten hake - had never even heard of it - but it was
> evidently some form of whitefish, and the preparation (baked with a
> horseradish crust) sounded delicious, so I ordered it.
>
> Or tried to.
>
> What I ordered was ['ha.ke].   Turns out that "hake" is pronounced
> [hejk].  The waiter laughingly corrected me (a no-no in waitiquette,
> but I appreciated it), and probably will continue to get some mileage
> out of my error.
>
> So I have diagnosed myself as suffering from F.L.O.E.S.: Foreign
> Language Over-Exposure Syndrome.  I seem to be unable to pronounce novel
> English words with any confidence, for fear that they might be
> borrowings.  In fact, that is my default assumption; I suppose it's the
> peril of a large vocabulary:  "Well, if *I've* never heard the word
> before, it *must* be a loan from another language!"  Getting something
> so simple wrong is a tad deflating, I must say.
>
> So have any of y'all had a similar experience?  Dish, dish!  (No pun
> intended.)
>
> -Mark
>
> P.S. Okay, so maybe the pun was intended.  Just a little.

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