Strange Nebraskan Names

Working out by the Interstate makes me realize how people outside of Nebraska pronounce some of the town names. For example, the city, Kearney (pronounced "kar-nee") gets butchered by the travelers. I have noticed that they pronounce it keer-nee. Another example of this strange pronunciation is the town of Cairo (just like the city in Egypt...except it is pronounced "care-o"). It's funny when a person asks me how far "keer-nee" is and I say "'Kar-nee' is about 35 miles away." They always give me the strangest look. Anyway, I found this web quiz, that is really cool at determining where your accent places you. After taking it, I was obviously placed in the midlands (big shocker).

The "F" word

So I kept hearing about and seeing the "History of the 'F' Word" book and decided to look it up. I didn't find the book, but I did find this very amusing article called "The F Word" by M.J. Stephey. The article is about the banning of the F word from television and the ensuing trials.

Accents

Check out this lady. Her name is Amy Walker and she does accents from all over the world and she is crazy good at it. ">

Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum

I was looking up Dr. Minor and Broadmoor Lunatic Asylum and I found an interesting report.

http://victoria.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/_assets/gallery/pdf/SAKV.pdf

The above site is a copy of a commisionars report on the asylum and the inmates. I found it interesting that originally the asylum was made for female inmates. The male wing didn't open till sometime later. To the left is the modern Broadmoor hospital.

Trucker Dialects

Over the weekend I was working at the gas station (which is off the interstate about 6 miles west of Grand Island), and of course had many customers come in with different accents.
It always amazes me at how people pronounce, or lack there of, their words. Besides having customers from all over the U.S., I also get a lot of truck drivers. Usually the truck drivers are from other countries, trying to make a living. On Saturday, I had a guy come in who spoke English, but had a very strong accent, I'm pretty sure that he was from Poland, but besides having the accent, he also had a very distinct northern sounding dialect.
I was looking on the Internet and found this map. It comes from the book, Do You Speak American? and is pretty cool.
http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/mapping/map.html

English within the United States

I found this website about the different types of English spoken within the United States and I found it pretty interesting. English in US

OED

Since we were talking about the Oxford English Dictionary in HEL I found a website that has words in Modern english and translates them to old english. It was an interesting site. Here is another interesting site on Johnson's

dictionary.

Chaucer's Knight's Tale

I just finished "The Knight's Tale" by Chaucer and the Old English was hard to read, but with a companion book I really understood the story. It is a sad story kind of, one of the knight's that is in love with Emily gets to be with her at the expense of his cousin. One part I wasn't really clear on was if Emily really wanted to be with one of the knight's and if not then why does she agree to marry one of them is it just because her brother-in-law said so, but she doesn't get to marry the one who actually wins. I enjoyed the story and how descriptive Chaucer is when describing the celebration before the battle. Here is a web page with links and more information on Chaucer.

"My eyes are going south!"

As I was working at the hotel this afternoon, I used the phrase, "going south" during a conversation with a guest. The elderly gentleman looked at me queerly and asked me, "Now where do you suppose that phrase came from?" I must admit, I was at a loss for words.

Therefore, I did what any modern curious person would do. I Google-d it. I found this website World Wide Words that allows various people to give there opinions on the origins of popular phrases and words. I have loved going through all theses different posts.

Battle of Hastings

This is a well developed website about the Battle of Hastings. It also includes a link to a website devoted to The Bayeux Tapestry. I hope that all of you find this interesting and useful.

Why Do We Say It? Looking at Several Phrases in the Light of Eighteenth-Century Canting

The above is the title of an article written by James Sherwood. The article explores some of the phrases we say on a daily basis and explains where that phrase comes from. For instance, did you know that the phrase "I don't give a damn" actually originated in India? A dam (then spelled dam) was a coin made by British buisnessmen and minted in India. It was made out of tin and therefore worth only around a quarter of a cent under the British gold standard. For the rest of the article go to this website:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/100312/the_history_of_some_of_todays_most_pg3.html?cat=37

Alfred the Great

Alfred the Great is an important figure in the British Monarchy and the history of the English language. I did some additional research on him and found this website Alfred about him and his reign.

Meanings change

Sitting in class today I actually had somewhat of an epiphany. Getting lectured about nouns in old English led me to think about words that we use today that mean something completely different than what they meant 30 or 40 years ago. I also wonder about some nouns that are now verbs...like google (ex. "I googled H1N1 only to discover that I have all the symptoms). How many other nouns can be used (and make sense) as verbs?

History of English Language

This website provides some additonal information about the history of the english language. It starts were we are going to start next week at 1066 A.D. It provides a brief synopsis.

To begin...

This is a blog about different items covering the PSC ENG440-History of the English Language. Also, this will be used to share my/our little fun sayings that we share with the world around us...

My recent phrase that I use a lot is "sad day." I don't know why I say it...it just seems to fit. It's better than throwing out various curse words, believe me I can make a sailor blush...I use "sad day" to show my disappointment in a situation where I can't change things.