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Having just finished my trawl through SID, I thought I would look around to see what other similar resources are available on the web. I wish I hadn’t really. For those of a nervous or excitable disposition what follows could be…er…challenging.
I was unfortunate enough on my web wander to alight here. I am all in favour of philanthropic attempts to provide people with information about phonetics and the like, but anyone creating sites to do this has a duty to attain a certain standard of accuracy.
Among the monstrosities on view on the site I got to are (in no particular order):
- lateral: blockage on the side
- pharyngeal: air set in motion holding the vocal folds together and using air above
- contrastiveness: Two phonemes are contrastive by listing minimal pairs distinguished by the contrast being illustrated
- homophone: word pronounced the same but spelled differently
- bilabial: lips pressed together
Also we have marvellous circular paths of ultimate confusion such as:
- strong form: see weak form
- weak form: used with articles, prepositions etc. to differentiate from strong form with different phoneme
I will confine my comments on the above to….AAAAAAARGH!
Note for those puzzled by the title:
kid means both “young goat” and “to tease/deceive”. To get someone’s goat means “to make someone angry” (Don’t ask me! I don’t know why!)
Photo credit: Armin Kübelbeck. Used under this licence.
Why go to the internet for a bit of the old red mist when you can get your fix of phonetic faux pas from textbooks?
I’ve got a couple in mind, but I wouldn’t be so indiscreet as to name them here, of course.
Answers on a postcard…
Dear John, I was so sorry to gather that you you didnt know why ‘gets my goat’ means ‘makes me angry’. As I’m sure this must be rather frustrating for you, I thaut I might offer a little help. I tried the OED who defined it nicely thus:”to get (a person’s) goat: to make (him) angry; to annoy or irritate. slang (orig. U.S.)”. This was intresting because their earliest quote was from as late as 1910 when I’d've thaut it was much older — still do so. Btw, rather feminist of the lexicographer to apparently imagine that wimmin never lose their tempers. Anyway, when it came to the origin of the expression, they seemed to have no comment to make so I suggest the sense is that it brings out the goatish element in one’s character. Goats are of course well known to be undisciplined, ungovernable, uncontrollable, unmanageable, naughty, unruly as well as lascivious. Quite off the topic, do you know that goats resemble humans in one rater curious way? — The males usually have beards. Happy blogging!
Jack,
Your hypothesis seems eminently reasonable to me. Brewer is no help either. It seems to me that male goats know what makes a chap look cool
Alternative explanation from World Wide Words:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-get1.htm
Thanks, Martin.
I particularly liked: A substantial desire to suspend one’s disbelief is needed to accept this story at face value.