Re: OT: dadgum shire reaves

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@M...> wrote:

>Just an quick rant to say that I hate, hate, hate the spelling of the
>word "sheriff".  I am in general an excellent speller - though
>getting worse as I get older - but that word trips me up all the
>time.
>It *looks* like it should be pronounced [S@'rIf].  In my 'lect it's
>actually ['SE`r\.If], which makes me want to spell it "sherrif" . . .
Man, little excites me more than good old English vocabulary!!  In my
reading recently I came across a plural of "sheriff."  I'm
embarrassed to say that I can't remember it exactly.  It was
something like "shreaves."  There is an adjective "shrieval," of or
pertaining to....  I assume the accent on the penult is because, in
the original compound "shire reave," the accent would have been
on "shire."

Not to be confused with the Arabic import "sherif" (also "sharif")
with the accent on the ultimate.

Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur