It’s a wonder anyone who speaks English can spell anything correctly

In some languages -- Albanian and Armenian, for instance -- once a person learns the alphabet he or she can spell every word in the language correctly because each letter has one and only one sound. Not so in English. There are many ways to spell a sound in English.

Here are a few examples out of thousands that cause people learning English as a second language to shake their heads in bewilderment:

• Words with Long I sound: bite, bight, byte, blight, bright, fight, flight, fright, height, kite, knight, light, mite, might, night, plight, quite, rite, right, site, sight, slight, spite, sprite, tight, white, wight, write, wright
  
  
• Words with Long A sound: ate, bate, bait, crate, date, eight, fate, fete, freight, gate, gait, grate, great, hate, late, mate, pate, plate, prate, rate, sate, slate, state, strait, straight, trait, wait, weight
  
  
• More words with Long A sound: bay, bray, cay, clay, claim, day, dray, epee, fey, flay, fray, gay, gray, grey, hay, hey, jay, lay, lei, may, nay, neigh, pay, play, pray, prey, quay, ray, say, shay, slay, sleigh, spray, stay, stray, strain, sway, tray, train, trey, vain, vein, way, weigh, yea
  
  
• Words with Long E sound: bee, brie, clean, fee, flee, flea, free, gee, glee, glean, he, key, knee, lea, me, peek, peak, plea, see, sea, she, tee, tea, three, tree, wee
  
  
• Words with Long O sound: beau, blow, crow, dough, dote, faux, float, flow, foe, fro, go, goat, gloat, glow, groat, grow, grown, ho, hoe, joe, know, lo, low, moat, mote, mow, no, roe, row, sew, so, sow, show, shoat, slow, snow, stow, tableau, though, throat, throw, toe, tow, whoa, woe
  
  
• More words with Long I sound: aisle, buy, by, bye, cry, die, dye, dry, eye, fie, fly, fry, guise, guy, high, I, isle, lie, lye, my, nigh, pi, pie, ply, pry, rye, shy, sigh, sly, spy, spry, sty, tie, try, vie, why, wry
  
  
• Words with Short U sound: buff, bluff, cuff, chuff, duff, enough, fluff, guff, gruff, huff, muff, puff, rough, snuff, stuff, tough
  
  
• Words with "Aw" sound: awe, aught, bought, brought, caught, cough, dawn, doff, fawn, fought, fraught, lawn, nought, off, ought, sauce, sought, taut, taught, thought, trough, wrought
  
  
• Words with Long "oo" sound: boo, blew, blue, brew, broom, bruise, clue, crew, cruise, do, dew, due, few, flew, flue, fuse, gloom, goo, glue, grew, hew, hue, igloo, loo, lieu, moo, mew, new, queue, revue, review, room, rue, sue, slough, slew, stew, strew, to, too, two, through, threw, true, view, woo, you
  
  
• Words with "Ow" sound: aloud, bough, bow, brow, chow, cloud, cow, clown, down, drown, frau, frown, gown, how, loud, now, plow, plough, prow, proud, row, sow, town, vow, wow, zowie
  
  

I could go on but your eyes would glaze over, if they haven't already glazed over.

Don't despair, however. You could be trying to learn Mandarin Chinese, which doesn't have an alphabet. It has more than 100,000 characters instead.

How’s that again? plus rhyming foods

Do you know what a malapropism is? According to Wikipedia, it is "the mistaken use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, sometimes humorous utterance." In my own words, a malapropism occurs when a person uses a word in a spoken or written sentence that is almost the right word, but wrong. The term can be traced to a character, Mrs. Malaprop, in The Rivals, a play written in 1775 by Richard Sheridan.

Here are some malapropisms I have either heard with my own two ears or been told by someone else who heard it with his or her (notice that I do not say their) own two ears. All of the following are actual instances from real life. There is not a made-up malapropism in the lot.

At a Christian concert, my son was playing saxophone in the band for a female singer fairly well known in Christian circles when she urged the college-aged audience to get up out of their chairs and give Jesus a standing ovulation.

A 94-year-old friend, Rosemary L., asked our mutual friend Sharon S. to take her to the mall because she wanted to get a manicure and a pedophile.

A friend of mine wrote on Facebook during Holy Week this year, "Let us be reminded Jesus died on that cross but He arose on the third day and now sets on the right hand of the Father, making intersections for us."

Those are all hilarious. The following, which all occurred during the last two weeks, are more mundane:

"The objection of this game is to..."

"This song really resignated with me"

"In these stories there is a concurring theme"

"Silence is an omission of guilt"

The words for which these people were searching but didn't quite find were ovation, pedicure, intercession, object, resonate, recurring, and admission. People make this type of mistake so frequently that it has practically become an epidemic. There was a time when I would have corrected them all but I don't do that any more. I just commit them to memory. Maybe I have become part of the problem.

Way back in 1967 I heard Blanche D., a woman in Poughkeepsie, New York, say "Before I spend that kind of money on a cruise I want to know what it would curtail". She meant entail, of course, and my hobby of listening for malapropisms was launched.

Enough about malapropisms. Here's a game we can all play.

A few nights ago on Wheel Of Fortune, in a category called Rhyming Foods, the puzzle turned out to be "chickpeas and cheddar cheese". Host Pat Sajak, quick wit at the ready, wisecracked that it was much better than his suggestion, "edamame and hard salami". He set me to thinking about other foods that rhyme and I came up with these:

• collard greens and garbanzo beans
  
• chocolate cake and sirloin steak
  
• leg of lamb and strawberry jam
  
• rigatoni and sliced baloney
  
• étouffée and crème brûlée
  
• shish kabob and corn on the cob
• beanie weenie and veal scallopini

What rhyming foods can you think of?

I leave you with a photograph of actress Louisa Lane Drew as Mrs. Malaprop in an 1895 production of The Rivals:

My dad graduated from the school of hard knocks

...but this post isn't going to be about him, it's going to be about me.

I had a good education, as far as it went. Most of the teachers in our local achool system were excellent, and with their help I wound up as valedictorian of the class of 1958. True, there were only 46 of us in the class of 1958, but it was a significant achievement nonetheless. I then attended four different institutions of higher learning in three different states but never received a degree, which fact brings to mind a scene from the 1972 screwball comedy What's Up, Doc? (it was supposedly modeled on Bugs Bunny cartoons) in which Barbra Streisand, after rattling off a long litany of universities she had attended and various courses of study she had pursued, answered someone's question, "What were you trying to do?" with a single word: "Graduate."

Well, so was I but life got in the way. I ran out of money, I left school, I joined the Air Force, I married Mrs. RWP, we began having children, you know, normal interruptions. As time went by, my desire to finish university simply became less and less important and the children's education became more and more important. I am happy to report that all three of our offspring turned out well (I would even say magnificently but I am biased, of course) and two of them have earned masters degrees.

On the strength of having more than three years of college credits (because the military gave me credit for two years worth of R.O.T.C. courses plus physical education) and three years of computer programming experience in the military, IBM graciously hired me after I received my honorable discharge and re-entered civilian life.

Near the end of the year at my second campus of higher learning, I concluded that a degree from some schools meant absolutely nothing or, to be more charitable, very little, chiefly because they were for all intents and purposes just diploma mills, churning out half-educated graduates year after year. So basically I ended up throwing out the baby with the bathwater but I did continue my never-ending education by following the very good advice written on signs at railroad crossings all over the country: Stop, Look, and Listen. In addition, I never stopped reading. By and large, my approach has stood me in good stead.

One thing having a college degree definitely helps determine is one's starting salary in many corporations. And not having a degree at the start of one's career but getting one later on seems to make very little difference to the powers-that-be in most Human Resources departments (formerly known as Personnel departments).

So I am that rarest of birds, a valedictorian who became a college dropout. Interestingly (I hope), I think I was the first person on my dad's side of the family who ever went to college and the first person on my mom's side of the family who failed to finish.

If you think I have painted too bleak a picture, tell me so in a comment, but please refrain from telling me about my lack of stick-to-it-iveness by not finishing what I started. I am well aware of that.

At least Tasker Dunham in Yorkshire and I both know what 65,536 is. Do you?

I have tried to keep snarkiness out of my writing, but it is an uphill and mostly losing battle.

Enough (more than enough) about me. Today our older son and his family are coming over to take us out to lunch in celebration of Mrs. RWP's birthday, which is four days away.

I’m slipping in more ways than one.

Bastille Day came and went this year with nary a mention about it from me. Slipping.

In certain areas, however, I am on solid ground and others are the ones slipping. Take speaking English, for instance. Words that used to be necessary for communicating clearly are often dispensed with in casual conversation nowadays. Here are two examples that set my teeth on edge:

"It was so fun." Really? Adverbs do not modify nouns, people. Say "It was so much fun" instead. "So much fun" is right; "so fun" is wrong.

"It needs to happen sooner than later." Again, a word is needed that has inexplicably disappeared. You should say "It needs to happen sooner rather than later" if you want to make sense, at least in my circles. The word 'rather' provides the difference between speaking Englsh and speaking, well, gibberish.

On another subject, the price of bedroom slippers, I am still the one slipping (no pun intended). A nice pair of comfy bedroom slippers should cost what, $6.99 tops, right? No way, José. The man who foisted My Pillow on an unsuspecting world has now made a television commercial for his company's bedroom slippers that cost a mere $49.98 (gulp) along with the news that this is $90.00 below the regular price (double gulp, followed by a dead faint). If bedroom slippers now cost $139.98 and nobody bats an eye, clearly I am out of touch.

But you probably knew that already.

Nine things I know that are of no value whatsoever

1. Yves St. Laurent succeeded Christian Dior at the House of Dior and Karl Lagerfeld succeeded Coco Chanel at the House of Chanel.
2. The Washington Monument in Washington, DC, is 13 feet shorter than the San Jacinto Monument near Houston, Texas.
3. Victorian-era poet Arthur Hugh Clough spent six years as Florence Nightingale's secretary, during which time he wrote no poetry at all.
4. Rock-and-roll star Jerry Lee Lewis, who has been married seven times, is the first cousin of televangelist Jimmy Swaggart.
5. The name of the horse ridden by Roy Rogers's wife Dale Evans in all those western movies was Buttermilk.
6. Charles the Bald's parents were Louis the Pious and Judith of Bavaria.
7. Although there definitely was a Pepin the Short, no record has been found of a Pepin the Tall.
8. The country of Russia covers 11 time zones.
9. Camilla Rosemary Shand Parker Bowles Mountbatten-Windsor, Duchess of Cornwall, and her husband, Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor, Prince of Wales, are ninth cousins, once removed.

I close with an old rhyme:

"A wise old owl sat in an oak.
The more he saw, the less he spoke.
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?"

Especially me.

A one-topic post because the dog days are here

It's very hot but there's been a slight break in the weather around these parts. It's probably only temporary but it is very welcome. A few days ago our high was 97°F (36°C) here in Cherokee County with a heat index (factoring in humidity) of 104°F (40°C). That same day the high temperature in Plano, Texas, where I have relatives, was 105°F. I don't even want to think about the heat index.

In contrast, at 11 a.m. today our temperature was 74°F (23°C) and I actually felt a cool breeze while walking Abby.

I repeat, this little break in the heat is very welcome. We still have the rest of July, all of August, and part of September to go before the hope of having an early autumn would even be a remote possibility.

How is it where you live?

Thoughts on blogging on a hot summer day

The American writer Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) was once asked to describe the difference between writing a novel and writing a short story. Her answer--this may not be an exact quote--was that it was like finally emerging from wandering for a long time in a deep, dark forest only to be set upon by a pack of wolves.

I'm not sure what she meant exactly (more on this below) but I feel her pain. As a sometime writer of blogposts, I find that writing is fun except when it is anguish; it is easy except when it is extremely difficult. Most of the time I am my own worst critic and discard more posts than I publish.

Some bloggers seem to write with eloquence effortlessly while others seem to dump onto paper (okay, the screen) whatever garbage comes into their heads. Some pad their posts with photographs and some would never dream of doing that. Some strive to achieve a happy balance of words and pictures. Some blogposts succeed wildly and some fail miserably. The trick to successful blogging is being able to figure out which are which, to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The point Flannery O'Connor was making, I think, is that every type of writing is different; each type has its own set of surprises and challenges and obstacles to be overcome.

Why should blogging be any different? Some days I want to do it forever. Some days I never want to do it again. The best part, of course, is obvious: I get to interact with people I would never have met otherwise.

As Humphrey Bogart said to Ingrid Beegman in Casablanca, "Here's looking at you, kid."