Road Apples
March 8, 2010
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Alabamer Grammar By Tim Sanders Good grammar is essential. Without good grammar, today’s high school students might well have to settle for some low-paying, menial job like Limburger cheese taster, septic tank decorator, or White House Press Secretary. And paramount among grammatical skills is good pronunciation. If, for example, you believe that “corpsman” is pronounced “corpse-man,” you might well be consigned to some dead-end, one-term, government job in some economically depressed Third World country cursed with festering urban blight, skyrocketing unemployment, and widespread Oprah.Q: Speaking of “corpse-men,” what is a “corpse-man?” A: An actual “corpse-man” would be an undertaker. Q: Daddy he has been keeping company with the Widow Stubbs for several years now, and last night he told me they was going to the Justice of the Piece after they hit the Cracker Barrel this Friday on account of she had finally agreed to change her name to his. I asked him why any woman, even a widow with a glass eye and two very nasty looking moles on her face, would want to be called Harold Eugene Bookbinder, and he told me I took him way too litteral. What did he mean by that? A: What he meant was, after Friday she will be known as MRS. Harold Eugene Bookbinder. Q: You mean MIZRUZ? A: Yes. Q: In the Star Strangled Banner there is something about “or the ramparts we washed” something, something, something. What are ramparts? A: The ramparts, also known as goat giblets, include the heart, liver, gizzard, pancreas and spleen. You should wash them thoroughly, seal them in a plastic bag, and refrigerate your ramparts until you are ready to make dressing out of them. Q: When I was in school, we pronounced Chile “Chilly.” It worked out very well, and anybody with any sense knew whether we were talking about the weather, the country, or the hot, soupy stuff with beans. Now that Chile has been in the news due to its recent earthquake, I’ve noticed one very irritating cable news anchor who insists on calling it “Chee-LAY.” Sometimes he forgets and calls it “Chilly,” but he always corrects himself. Why does he call it “Chee-LAY?” A: He wants to pretend he is sophisticated and cosmopolitan, rather than just some moronic dork who was hired because he has all his own teeth and good hair and can read most of the words on a teleprompter. Q: Are you sophisticated and cosmopolitan? A: Nowadays I’m as sophisticated as all get out, but that wasn’t always true. When I was a freshman in college, we were forced to read the Cervantes novel, “Don Quixote.” There may have been some sophisticated freshmen among us, but neither my friends nor I qualified, so the best we could manage when pronouncing that name was “Don Kee-o-tee.” Kinda like “coyote” only without the initial “o.” We were proud of ourselves, though, because at least we knew not to pronounce it “Quicks-oat” any more. One of our friends, an aspiring sophisticate from Port Huron (which he pronounced “Port Urine”), made a point of pronouncing that name “Don Kee-hote-AY,” with a very cosmopolitan emphasis on the “AY” part. Long after the rest of us had given up on the novel and simply skimmed through the Cliff’s Notes version, John was still slogging his way through the book and making a great to-do over it. He mentioned it over and over again. We finally got tired of being Kee-hote-AYED to death, and three of us used six cans of shaving cream to cover John and his bunk and fill his shoes while he was sleeping off a hangover. We left a note that said, as best as I can recollect, “We’d have tilted your windmill for you, but we couldn’t locate it, so instead we tilted your waste basket, which is now on top of your door, leaning against the door jam” Of course, it was full of water. There were no video cameras back then, but take my word for it, John lost all his newfound sophistication long before he found that note. Q: I heard somewhere that there is a Bible verse which mentions how the children of Israel rejoiced when they saw the wicked flea. Where is that verse, and did they have flea circuses back then? A: We believe that verse is either in the Book of Jehosaphat, or somewhere in Erasmus. We don’t know if the Israelites had flea circuses, but we do know they had camels and tents, so it’s certainly possible. Q: The teacher gave me a part in a Shakespeare play about a whole lot of Scotch people who boil owls and kill each other off because they are all infested with the Thanes. It is called Macbeth. One of my lines is: “‘Aroint thee, witch!’ the rump-fed runion cries.” What does “aroint” mean? A: “Aroint” is an Elizabethan word which means “slather with applesauce.” Q: And what is a “rump-fed runion?” A: Furry little runion cubs were often abandoned by their mothers in the forest, and when adopted by local zoos, some were fed at the wrong end due to their odd appearance. Since everyone in Shakespeare’s audience knew that a runion couldn’t speak, let alone threaten his feeder with applesauce, that line always brought down the house. Q: I heard on TV of a man and his wife who was eating Al Fresco in Sarasota when a Toyota Camry with one of them sticky gas pedals run into their table and sent them both to the hospital. My question is, who was Al Fresco? A: Whoever he was, if that Toyota had come along a little sooner, Al might still be with us. If you have questions about grammar, pronunciation, consonant reflux or irritable vowel syndrome, please email us here at Alabamer Grammar. We may not know the answers, but that’s never stopped us before. |