ghoti entry [WAS: Intro E: Mini-FAQ on Spelling] - alt.usage.english

Message from discussion ghoti entry [WAS: Intro E: Mini-FAQ on Spelling]

Ben Zimmer

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More options Oct 6 2003, 5:11 pm

Newsgroups: alt.usage.english

From: Ben Zimmer <bgzim...@midway.uchicago.edu>

Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2003 17:09:50 -0400

Local: Mon, Oct 6 2003 5:09 pm

Subject: Re: ghoti entry [WAS: Intro E: Mini-FAQ on Spelling]

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Donna Richoux wrote:

> Ben Zimmer <bgzim...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:

> > Ben Zimmer wrote:

> > > Donna Richoux wrote:

> > > > I looked for a while at Web entries, which vary a great deal (except
> > > > that nearly everybody attributes it to Shaw, although no one says when
> > > > or where). What I really should do is leaf through some of the books on
> > > > my shelves, especially the older ones. We don't know how far back to
> > > > look, yet, although I did see that Joyce made a reference to it in the
> > > > 1939 _Finnegans Wake_. (If any ProQuest people are here, can we have a
> > > > first date? So to speak.)

> > > ProQuest isn't much help-- nothing predates the _Finnegans Wake_ line
> > > ("Gee each owe tea eye smells fish"). The earliest cite I can find is
> > > in a Washington Post column from Sep 14, 1948 ("The District Line" by
> > > Bill Gold): "an indolent newspaper friend of mind ... points out that
> > > there's a perfectly logical way to pronounce the good English word
> > > 'ghoti.'"

> > ProQuest (or at least the version I have access to) has just added the
> > LA Times and the Christian Science Monitor to its database. So now I
> > find the following, which slightly predates the 1939 publication of
> > _Finnegans Wake_:

> > In Lighter Vein
> > Christian Science Monitor, Aug 27, 1938. p. 17
> > A foreigner who insisted that "fish" should be spelled
> > "ghoti" explained it in this fashion: "Gh" is pronounced
> > as in "rough," the "o" as in "women," and the "ti" as in
> > "nation" -- so maybe he's right.

> Still no association with Shaw. I find it significant that so far,
> nothing attributes it to him until after his death. Death, 1950; New
> York Times attribution, 1961.

> I did check my bookshelves as I promised, but came up with no mentions
> of it. I don't own the right books, I guess. So there's still very
> little data about *why* people tell this story, what point they are
> trying to make. Since the column above is labeled "In Lighter Vein," I
> guess the ChrSciMon thought it was an amusing novelty. They didn't go on
> to say anything more about spelling, did they?

Nope-- that's the item in its entirety. "In Lighter Vein" was a column
where the Monitor would publish amusing squibs (often reprinted from
other sources), much like the Wall Street Journal's "Pepper and Salt".

Speaking of those two columns, I checked out the old story about
Churchill and prepositions in the expanded database. Previously I had
noted a "Pepper and Salt" column from Sep. 30, 1942, repeating a version
of the story (not attributed to Churchill) that had appeared in the
Strand Magazine [1]. Sure enough, the Monitor also reprinted the
Strand's item in its "In Lighter Vein" column, on Oct. 7, 1942. And
about a year later the story turned up again, but with the anonymous wag
transposed to Washington:

In Lighter Vein
Christian Science Monitor, Oct 15, 1943. p. 15
Did you hear about the official in the OPA in Washington
who sent a proposed order to the legal department to learn
if it complied with the law? After an unreasonably long
time the order was returned with no comment on its legality,
but with sarcastic comment on the fact that several sentences
ended in prepositions. The official thus criticized replied,
"Your remarks about my ending my sentences with prepositions
is one of the things up with which I do not intend to put."
-- Advance.

Much like Shaw and the "ghoti" story, this one was apparently floating
around for years before attaching itself to Churchill.

[1] http://groups.google.com/groups?th=33cd970340253e96

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