"NUCULAR"

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Scott's on the air, and was just talking about Three Mile Island, and a NUCULAR accident somewhere in ?Idaho? that had happened before the accident at the NUCULAR plant on TMI...

Git 'im, Shos!

[OperaTenor]

I'm quite familiar with the previous accident Scott referred to. It is in Idaho, at what is now called the Idaho National Engineering and Ecological Laboratory, ~56 nuclear test facilities scattered throughout 840 square miles of central Idaho desert. I rode a bus by the site of that accident(smaller scale, but much more serious than TMI) twice a day for nine months.

Anyone want to hear the story?

PS. Scott, I'm disappointed....

[Shapley]

No thanks. I saw it on the History Channel.

V/R
Shapley

[dai bread]

The discussion on page 1 reminds me of the student of English who was going home after a gruelling session at his class. He looked out of his bus window and saw a billboard reading:

"Oklahoma!

Pronounced success!"

<small>[ 04-02-2006, 01:36 AM: Message edited by: dai bread ]</small>

[dai bread]

Then there's this, taken from the "NZ Herald" of some day in May, 1974:

GHOTI IS FONETIC

By a correspondent.

From recent correspondence I gather there is an opening for a good teacher of reading. I am resolved to step into the breach myself while the demand is still strong.

After considering the abundance of advice provided by those who know, I feel that of all the 40 approaches available, the fonetic one would sute me best, each letter having its sound and their being only 26 letters to worrie about.

I take it you already know
of "though" and "bough" and "cough" and "dough"? Others may stumble, but not you,
on "hiccough", "thorough", "laugh" and "through".
So now with method bright and breezy, I'll teech you others just as eezy.

We'll start with "heard", a simple word
that looks like "beard" and sounds like "bird".
And "dead"; it's said like "bed" not "bead"
for goodness sake, don't call it "deed".
And there is "meat" and "great" and "threat";
They rhyme with "suite" and "straight" and debt".
A moth is not a "moth" in "mother"
nor "both in "bother", "broth" in "brother";
and "here" is not a match for "there"
nor "dear" and "fear" for "bear" and "pear".

And then there's "dose" and "rose" and "lose"
-just look these up- and "goose" and "choose",
and "cork" and "work", and "card" and "ward",
and "font" and "front", and "word" and "sword",
and "do" and "go", and "thwart" and "cart"-
Come! Come! We've hardly made a start.

Trot out your Seuss books!- Man alive,
we'll learn it all 'twixt 3 and 5,
even if English, though poetic,
is only part, not all, phonetic- oops! I think my sight words are showing!

"Look John, look! Janet has caught a GHOTI!"

GH as in "cough" - F
O as in "women" - I
TI as in "nation" - SH

[DavidS]

Originally posted by dai bread:

GHOTI IS FONETIC
"Look John, look! Janet has caught a GHOTI!"

GH as in "cough" - F
O as in "women" - I
TI as in "nation" - SH

The creation of the word is frequently attributed to George Bernard Shaw, illustrating his claim in the preface to Pygmalion that "The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen..."
BTW - I warmly recommend googling some of GBS's other hilarious quotes...

<small>[ 04-02-2006, 11:05 AM: Message edited by: DavidS ]</small>