That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 "Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly based on an interview with me. http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
> That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 > "Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly based > on an interview with me. > http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
Good article; thanks.
-- Cheers, Harvey Canadian (30 years) and British (23 years) For e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van
bri...@wsu.edu wrote: > That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 > "Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly based > on an interview with me. > http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
"This is my 'fort'?" Geroutofit. If the OED says "forté formally fort" that'll do for correct usage rather than 'abuse' for me, ta very much.
On 25 Oct 2005 12:38:53 -0700, "bri...@wsu.edu" <bri...@wsu.edu> wrought:
>That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 >"Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly based >on an interview with me. >http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Not so much for the article, interesting enough though it was, as for having refrained from saying it was "partly based on an interview with myself".
>> That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 >> "Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly based >> on an interview with me. >> http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
> "This is my 'fort'?" Geroutofit. If the OED says "forté formally > fort" that'll do for correct usage rather than 'abuse' for me, ta very > much.
> DC
Any rawd oop, I want to know how _Italian_ fencing-masters pronounce it. If you think I'm going to argue with an Italian fencing-master at close quarters unless I've got a .44 magnum against his rapier, you've got another pensée coming, old thing.
And it's not even "possible" that the jerk formerly known as "Prince" (of where, may one ask?) invented hyper-telegraphese. "I C U R YY 4 me," he thinks? W L, he int.
>> That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 >> "Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly based >> on an interview with me. >> http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
> "This is my 'fort'?" Geroutofit. If the OED says "forté formally > fort" that'll do for correct usage rather than 'abuse' for me, ta very > much.
Seconded. Both pronunciations appear to be acceptable in my "humble" Collins...
It sounds like inverted pretentiousness to me. Worried about being declass...or is that declassé?
> >> That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 > >> "Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly > based > >> on an interview with me. > >> http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
> > "This is my 'fort'?" Geroutofit. If the OED says "forti formally > > fort" that'll do for correct usage rather than 'abuse' for me, ta > very > > much.
> > DC
> Any rawd oop, I want to know how Italian fencing-masters pronounce > it. If you think I'm going to argue with an Italian fencing-master at > close quarters unless I've got a .44 magnum against his rapier, > you've got another pensie coming, old thing.
> And it's not even "possible" that the jerk formerly known as "Prince" > (of where, may one ask?) invented hyper-telegraphese. "I C U R YY 4 > me," he thinks? W L, he int.
Dunno - though Prince is actually Prince Rogers Nelson's real name (I know you'll enjoy this Mike... http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/prince.html). Bit like Prince Michael Jackson - aka the child in the Butterfly Mask, gord help him.
Well, I'm going to run through a couple of numbers on the ol' Pianofort, before I stroll down to Fort's Italian coff shop for a large late.
Later on I'm watching Forte Apach the Bronk.
How come my e acutes come out as i's? Fortay, I know, I know, not Forty.
On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 15:43:08 -0500, "Django Cat" <nospam@please> wrote: >bri...@wsu.edu wrote:
>> That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 >> "Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly based >> on an interview with me. >> http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
>"This is my 'fort'?" Geroutofit. If the OED says "forté formally >fort" that'll do for correct usage rather than 'abuse' for me, ta very >much.
Absolutely. I have before me a 1975 Collins which has both pronunciations. I have never heard the word pronounced "fort" that I can recall.
There are far more abused words - pron[ou]nciation being one of them. -- Jim the polymoth
> > > That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 > > > "Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly > > > based on an interview with me. > > > http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
> > "This is my 'fort'?" Geroutofit. If the OED says "forté formally > > fort" that'll do for correct usage rather than 'abuse' for me, ta > > very much.
> Seconded. > Both pronunciations appear to be acceptable in my "humble" Collins...
> It sounds like inverted pretentiousness to me. > Worried about being declass...or is that declassé?
> HumphreyB
I am 47 years old, a native BrE speaker, educated to higher degree level and have spent much of the last 20 years teaching ESL.
Never in my life have I heard anybody say 'that's my fort'; in person, on TV...
So in what way is using the universally accepted pronunciation an 'abuse'?
People can say 'fort' if they must, but they're just going to sound like ponces.
Does Andrew Lansley MP (recently on AEU) know about this?
> >> That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 > >> "Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly > based >> on an interview with me. > >> http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
> > "This is my 'fort'?" Geroutofit. If the OED says "forté formally > > fort" that'll do for correct usage rather than 'abuse' for me, ta > > very much.
> Absolutely. I have before me a 1975 Collins which has both > pronunciations. I have never heard the word pronounced "fort" that I > can recall.
> There are far more abused words - pron[ou]nciation being one of them.
I agree, I've never really heard it any way besides "for-tay" in my life. It seems odd that this of all things would be a bugbear for someone, but we all have our little irritations.
Brian
-- If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who won't shut up. -- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com)
>> Django Cat wrote: [...] >> Any rawd oop, I want to know how Italian fencing-masters pronounce >> it. If you think I'm going to argue with an Italian fencing-master at >> close quarters unless I've got a .44 magnum against his rapier, >> you've got another pensie coming, old thing.
>> And it's not even "possible" that the jerk formerly known as "Prince" >> (of where, may one ask?) invented hyper-telegraphese. "I C U R YY 4 >> me," he thinks? W L, he int.
> People can say 'fort' if they must, but they're just going to sound > like ponces.
[...]
Or like better swordsmen than you or I. If we value our ears, among other things, then we must allow for the swordsmen. Don Phillipson could be along in a moment to slit us from the guggle to the zatch.
bri...@wsu.edu wrote: > That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 > "Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly based > on an interview with me. > http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
""You do know," she says, "that 'bird' used to be pronounced 'brid.'" "
Really? I thought "brid" used to be pronounced "brid" while "bird" used to be pronounced "bird". Of course, "brid" was used generally in England in days of yore for "bird" and used more recently in Northern dialect. -- John Dean Oxford
The original French expression is "pas mon fort"--meaning "not my strong point." Note: no "e" on the end. It got mangled in the transfer into English by cross-pollination with italian "forte." Some hoity-toity types used to pronounce it "fourt"--but that's actually wrong because the "t" is not pronounced in French. A certain number of people have been arguing ever since for the one-syllable version over the two-syllable one as truer to its roots. I consider it a lost cause. Illogical derivation, but we're stuck with it.
>> > "This is my 'fort'?" Geroutofit. If the OED says "forté formally >> > fort" that'll do for correct usage rather than 'abuse' for me, ta >> > very much.
>> Seconded. >> Both pronunciations appear to be acceptable in my "humble" Collins...
>> It sounds like inverted pretentiousness to me. >> Worried about being declass...or is that declassé?
>> HumphreyB > Never in my life have I heard anybody say 'that's my fort'; in person, > on TV...
> So in what way is using the universally accepted pronunciation an > 'abuse'?
Not universally accepted, apparently...There was a "sigh" in the quoted article that seemed to imply that "the ay-ers" did not have it! We poor Brits, apparently, have got it all wrong...yet again! But then, why accept a standard pronunciation when you can change it?
> People can say 'fort' if they must, but they're just going to sound > like ponces.
Apparently it depends who the people are... "Fort" sounds awful to me...But...live and let live! Fortis becomes fort, forte...Vive la diference!
I really don't understand the polemic...
(Don´t know about his cat, but I doubt that Django Reinhardt would have been the tiniest bit concerned, when "Manoir de mes Rêves" became "The Gypsy Mass" and got a few "forte" passages thrown in by a bemused orchestra, whether or not the "e" was in evidence...Sorry, I'll correct that...In the key of "A" the "e" would have been very much in evidence...In Bb it has to be flattened...much like certain people insist on doing to English...with a sigh!)
bri...@wsu.edu wrote: > The original French expression is "pas mon fort"--meaning "not my > strong point." Note: no "e" on the end. It got mangled in the transfer > into English by cross-pollination with italian "forte." Some > hoity-toity types used to pronounce it "fourt"--but that's actually > wrong because the "t" is not pronounced in French. A certain number of > people have been arguing ever since for the one-syllable version over > the two-syllable one as truer to its roots. I consider it a lost > cause. Illogical derivation, but we're stuck with it.
My understanding is that it's a fencing term, and therefore French in origin, and therefore has a reason for the feminine ending. Evidence to the contrary accepted gracefully, of course.
> The original French expression is "pas mon fort"--meaning "not my > strong point." Note: no "e" on the end.
Merci, Monsieur le Maître! Je vous rappele que les langues changent...
> It got mangled in the transfer > into English by cross-pollination with italian "forte."
Merde, mec. Les anglais ont leur propre langue. Quand ils prennent un nouveau mot il peut changer, non? La plus grande branlette de tous se produit quand ceux qui parlent la même langue le changent sans aucune raison...
> Some > hoity-toity types used to pronounce it "fourt"--but that's actually > wrong because the "t" is not pronounced in French.
Te pongo otro ejemplo, señor don nadie...
"You say potato; I say potato You say tomato; I say tomato Potato, potato, tomato, tomato Let's call the whole thing off"
On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 16:29:30 -0500, Django Cat wrote: > I am 47 years old, a native BrE speaker, educated to higher degree level > and have spent much of the last 20 years teaching ESL.
> Never in my life have I heard anybody say 'that's my fort'; in person, > on TV...
> So in what way is using the universally accepted pronunciation an > 'abuse'?
The French collocation is spelled "X est/n'est pas mon/son/... fort" without an "e" at the end. It was imported as "mein/sein... Forte" into German as well. As a child, when I first heard it, I assumed it must come from the Italian performance directions you find on sheet music ("piano", "pianissimo", "forte", "fortissimo" etc.).
In any case "this is/isn't my forte" is English, not French, so English speakers are free to decide, via the usual unconscious collective distillation process, how to pronounce it. In any even, usage context has already strayed from the French original. I see it much more often from more-than-average educated English speakers than from the French, though it does occur, usually either somewhat tongue-in-cheek or when writing in a markedly enthusiastic tone. It would be rare indeed to hear it in a TV interview. "X est/n'est pas son point fort" (i.e. simply "... is not his/her/... strong point" is much more common.
On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 12:38:53 -0700, bri...@wsu.edu wrote: > That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 "Inside > Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly based on an > interview with me. > http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
Thanks for pointing to this.
I am wondering about the following:
---- But today, it's quite likely that those abuses and misuses are worming their way into standard English usage at a quicker rate. ----
These are not your words, but the journalist Candace Murphy's, and I don't claim you implied anything like this in the passages she quoted from you. It just struck me as quite unlikely, unless the "quicker rate" refers to the very last few years, when TV and the electronic media arguably accelerated the process of language change. And even for this I'd like to see a study before I believe it.
But for a long time -- since the 19th century or so -- the expansion of post-primary education to 100% of the population and the standardisation of curricula, usage manuals and dictionaries would seem to me to have slowed down the accession of errors and reinterpretations into standard English: there was always an expert around who could claim the authority to dismiss a neologism, reshaping or slang term. Errors have of course always happened, and when English borrowed a word, it was often assimilated, anglicised, pronounced or spelled differently. The entire idea that spelling should be fixed and that correct spelling was a mark of the educated is not that old.
On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 20:09:27 GMT, Harvey Van Sickle
<harvey.n...@ntlworld.com> wrote: >On 25 Oct 2005, bri...@wsu.edu wrote
>> That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 >> "Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly based >> on an interview with me. >> http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
>Good article; thanks.
I should read this when there were over 400 other posts to read this morning? The reader can decide for himself whether the article is good or not.
"Thank you"s without further comment belong in AOL or in the chat rooms teenagers frequent.
An allowable exception, as I and probably Miss Manners see it, is when a poster has done something nice for the person expressing gratitude. -- Charles Riggs
>>> That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 >>> "Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly based >>> on an interview with me. >>> http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
>>"This is my 'fort'?" Geroutofit. If the OED says "forté formally >>fort" that'll do for correct usage rather than 'abuse' for me, ta very >>much.
>Absolutely. I have before me a 1975 Collins which has both pronunciations. I >have never heard the word pronounced "fort" that I can recall.
Then you've never talked to me, as we know, or to other lovers, as I see it, of the language. The word is correctly pronounced fort. So many people mispronounce it, I've given up on trying to convince them of their error. Your pronunciation is from the Italian and refers, of course, to music dynamics: a different word entirely, derived from the French language, and pronounced as I and many other purists pronounce it.
>There are far more abused words - pron[ou]nciation being one of them.
That is unimportant by comparison, since we wouldn't confuse it for another word. -- Charles Riggs
>(Don´t know about his cat, but I doubt that Django Reinhardt would have >been the tiniest bit concerned, when "Manoir de mes Rêves" became "The >Gypsy Mass" and got a few "forte" passages thrown in by a bemused >orchestra, whether or not the "e" was in evidence...Sorry, I'll correct >that...In the key of "A" the "e" would have been very much in >evidence...In Bb it has to be flattened...much like certain people >insist on doing to English...with a sigh!)
"*Has* to be flattened"?...I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the eighteenth century ended quite some time back....r
> > > > That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 > > > > "Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly > > > > based on an interview with me. > > > > http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
> > > "This is my 'fort'?" Geroutofit. If the OED says "forté formally > > > fort" that'll do for correct usage rather than 'abuse' for me, ta > > > very much.
> > Seconded. > > Both pronunciations appear to be acceptable in my "humble" Collins...
> > It sounds like inverted pretentiousness to me. > > Worried about being declass...or is that declassé?
> > HumphreyB
> I am 47 years old, a native BrE speaker, educated to higher degree > level and have spent much of the last 20 years teaching ESL.
> Never in my life have I heard anybody say 'that's my fort'; in person, > on TV...
> So in what way is using the universally accepted pronunciation an > 'abuse'?
> People can say 'fort' if they must, but they're just going to sound > like ponces.
> Does Andrew Lansley MP (recently on AEU) know about this?
What's surprising about your observation on the pronunciation of "forte" is that the usage note in the 11th edition of *Merriam-Webster's Collegiate," discussing the "one's strong point" sense, gives "FOR-tay" and "FORT" (both pronounced non-rhotically) as the predominate pronunciations in British English, while "FOR-tay" and "for-TAY" (pronounced rhotically) are given as the most frequent American pronunciations.
>>> That's the title of a column by Candace Murphy in the October 25 >>> "Inside Bay Area," a publication of the Oakland Tribune. Partly >>> based on an interview with me. >>> http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3149376
>> Good article; thanks.
> I should read this when there were over 400 other posts to read > this morning?
And you should bother responding?
Get a life, Charles.
-- Cheers, Harvey Canadian (30 years) and British (23 years) For e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van
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