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June 30, 2009

Comments

Tami

2 questions:

1) What kind of knives are they?
2) What 19 year old doesn't know the word "lever"? How does that happen?

TheQueen

1) Um, Cutco? Heres an article:
http://tinyurl.com/l4fopl
2) Well she was just pronouncing it "leh-ver." And we have filthy minds.

Big Dot

So do you really say leever, like English English-speakers, or levver, like the Americans on TV? No value judgements here, of course...

Tami

Oh! I say it with the short "e", too. I might have also confused you.

I speak like the Americans on TV, apparently.

TheQueen

Big Dot / Tami - I say "lehver" - the girl said "luhver" It's the schwa. Gets you every time. (I have no idea if I am spelling or using that word correctly. An old college neuron sparked.)

Big Dot

No, the schwa is in the second syllable - I did linguistics too. It's unaccented. Whereas, if you're saying lehver/levver, then that is undeniably an accent. American, oddly enough.

TheQueen

Big Dot - Wikipedia begs to differ ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa
Perhaps it means something different in your hemisphere.

TheQueen

Big Dot - Oh, of course, in NZ they just have the "ih" vowel. I can picture your linguisics teacher trying to make you all speak the schwa.

Big Dot

OK, if you're going to run with that Aussie insult, I'M allowed to get anal:
"An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. Such vowels are often transcribed with the symbol , regardless of their actual phonetic value."
So the second e in, let's see, Ellen, is schwa.

TheQueen

Big Dot - I could go online and hunt for words that start with a schwa, but I will concede the point to you. But you still call me "Ell-iyn."

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