Re: "write him" was Re: More questions

Stephen Mulraney scripsit:

> But Ireland might as well be in the Pacific Ocean as
> far as most Britishers are concerned.
Perhaps a confusion between Ireland and New Ireland?  :-)

> I thought that might be asked :). Have a butcher's 'ere:
> http://www.btinternet.com/~adlivingston/new-furniture.htm
I consulted my local experts, who tell me that this is a "hutch"
or a "china cupboard".

> > I share your view about "pot", and am frequently confused when my wife
> > (a Southerner) refers to an obvious pot as a pan.  She calls all such
> > utensils pans, whereas for me "pan" has to be qualified as "frying pan"
> > or "cake pan" or such.
>
> Damn right!
I think the other posting about handles has merit as well: pots have
two handles by default, whereas pans have one or none at all.
_Pot_ 'marijuana' is a mass noun, whereas _pot_ 'cooking utensil' is
a count noun, so confusion is very unlikely even sans context.
(Not that marijuana is an unknown ingredient in cookery, to those of a
certain age!)

> Maybe it bypassed Ireland? "Clerk" and the philosopher present similar
> problems to me,
I can't quite tell from this whether you say [klAr\k] in a rhotic
version of English pron., or whether you say [klr\=k] like Americans.
In any case, as my other posting notes, the shift was pervasive and
only undone in words that were still spelled with "er", with the
exceptions of "clerk" in some dialects and "sergeant" in all dialects.

--
John Cowan      jcowan@reutershealth.com        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
        Is it not written, "That which is written, is written"?

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