Basic Instructions by Scott Meyer for February 18, 2019

I’ll take the Fiftht on this one.

How lit was his school’s teacher?

I know a man who always says “heighth”. Drives me nuts. In laws say "clifft, armoradillo, fox (meaning ‘faux’). For some reason, I find that funny and it doesn’t bother me at all. Go figure.

Why doesn’t onomatopoeia sound like itself?

I very much liked the southern draw they have in south Alabama, although I needed some time to get to understand it, as they have regular deviations from “Standard English” (regarding grammar and phonetics, not to mention different word usage and customs).

On another note, why do we have “warmth” but not “coolth”?

You, kind yet intriguing internet commenter, just blowed my mind.

My mom always said Dr. ’Th’omas for our dentist. And she was never wrong.

Oops, an extraneously capitalized “That.”

Yes, it’s an anguish languish. I do feel sorry for immigrants who have to learn this language with all its inconsistencies.

One thing that bothers me, and it shouldn’t; it’s just how or where such ones were raised, is axe instead of ask. “I don’t know, let me axe my mother.” Yet, I have never heard it the other way around. “Grab an ask from the tool shed, will you?”

I just realized I’ve heard several around here pronounce it fift and sixt. Like the h is silent.

The oddity I hear sometimes is “eighth” being pronounced “aith.”

Mispronunciations bother me much less (when they bother me at all), than misspellings. Maybe it’s because, when you can actually see the letters, there’s less excuse for getting it wrong.

Of course, then you get the differences between American and British spelling. Isn’t it nice that we’ll always have something to argue about?

Why isn’t “palindrome” a palindrome? You’d think someone would come up with a name for it that works. My favorite: Doc, note. I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod.