Debbie Wasserman Schultz stumbles into the people-who-read-too-much mispronunciation of "misled."

Watch for it: myzzled.

"Have you saddled your child with a name that needs constant spelling-out?"

Asks Elizabeth Scalia, and I wonder what name does not need constant spelling out? My older son is named John, a very common name, and yet earnest educated people never assume it's not Jon, and some even expand the name to Jonathan, which feels like a rebuke — as if we should have chosen something fancier.

And you'd be surprised how often younger folks would spell John "Jhon." I assumed that was a combination of 3 things that they did know: 1. "John" contains an H, 2. There are very few English words with an HN combination, 3. Many common English words begin with a consonant followed by an H (e.g., the, she, child, ghost, phone, rhyme, who).

And, look, it's Jhonny Peralta, playing for the Detroit Tigers in the American League Championship Series. What's that Jh about? Is that the way to keep the Spanish last name from causing people to pronounce "John" as "Hone"?

"It's weird, I know," Peralta said. "My father spelled it that way in the Dominican (Republic). A lot of people actually spell the name that way in the Dominican. When I first came up to the Indians, fans would shout, 'Hey, JAY-honny!' It's not a problem. It's OK however people say it."

That's a relaxed attitude, and who's to say where that relaxed attitude came from? Perhaps having a name that needs constant spelling out causes a person to grow in patience and understanding over the years.

And I say that as a woman with the simplest common girl's name that must constantly be spelled out.

July... rhymes with coolly.

Suddenly, it's July, and I wonder if you're pronouncing the word correctly. The (unlinkable) OED says:

The word was usually stressed on the first syllable in the early modern period, as the form July-flower, due to folk etymology (see γ forms at gillyflower n.), implies. The orthoepists Peter Levins (1570) and Elisha Coles (late 17th cent.) both include the word among those which have unstressed -y, and Johnson (1755), W. Johnston Pronouncing & Spelling Dict. (1764), and J. Walker Dict. Answering Purposes of Rhyming (1775) all indicate stress on the first syllable (Johnston also marking the y as ‘long’). Both occurrences of the word in Shakespeare are so stressed, as are most metrical examples down to the late 18th cent..... Stress on the first syllable still occas. occurs in Scotland.

That's authoritative, even though the simplest Google detects an error. There are 3, not merely 2, occurrences of "July" in Shakespeare:

The Winter's Tale: "He makes a July's day short as December..."

Much Ado About Nothing: "The sixth of July: your loving friend, Benedick."

King Henry VIII: "And proofs as clear as founts in July when/We see each grain of gravel..."

We know these plays are written in iambic pentameter, so these lines prove the stress went on the first syllable. Who put the lie in July... and why? 

"Healthing."

I'm not sure what bothers me more here — the word "healthing" or the notion of spraying germ-killer all over the house. What passes for cleaning these days? What passes for healthy? What passes for language?!

AND:



ALSO: I looked up "fungi" in the OED, hoping for some better pronunciation info, after many commenters said the "fun guy" pronunciation was correct and/or subliminally useful. I got distracted by the 1c definition of fungus:

c. A beard. Also face fungus n. at face....

1925 P. G. Wodehouse Sam the Sudden xiii. 89 Where did you get the fungus?
1936 P. G. Wodehouse Laughing Gas xxiv. 255, I had fallen among a band of criminals who were not wilful beavers, but had merely assumed the fungus for purposes of disguise.
1937 ‘R. Crompton’ William—the Showman x. 240 ‘Is it to be me or that ass with the fungus on his cheeks?’ demanded Richard belligerently....

Joining the news team, as inauspiciously as possible.

"As if things couldn't get worse for A.J. 'Fuckin' Shit' Clemente, it seemed as if he prefaced his profanity with the usage of 'gay" in an exasperated, derogatory tone."

I just want to say that I did not say the word gay, I was trying to pronounce the London Marathon winners name Tsegaye Kebede.
— A.J. Clemente (@ClementeAJ) April 22, 2013

"Did Recording the McConnell Meeting Violate State Law?"

Orin Kerr takes a look at the Kentucky eavesdropping statute and this relevant commentary:

A conversation which is loud enough to be heard through the wall or through the heating system without the use of any device is not protected by KRS 526.020. A person who desires privacy of communication has the responsibility to take the steps necessary to insure that his conversation cannot be overheard by the ordinary ear.

Kerr comments:

This is arguably quite relevant: the McConnell campaign discussion apparently was loud enough to be overheard from outside the door; from what we can tell, it was recorded from a phone or video camera without audio amplification. So that language makes me think that the recording was probably not a crime. At the same time, the commentary is ambiguous. It could be read as merely making the obvious point that eavesdropping requires a device. That is, listening with your ears is different from recording with a microphone.

Obviously, you don't want to make a crime out of happening to hear a conversation on the other side of a door or wall. Perhaps there's something a little more wrong about stopping to listen, once you realize you can hear people talking. If you can hear through the wall when your neighbors talk, should you have an obligation not to pay attention or is it their responsibility to make sure you can't hear? Yet to record them seems to cross a moral line, I would think.

But what would you say about writing down quotes? Many times, I've sat in cafés and heard people talking, and I've jotted down quotes I've found interesting. And here's a specific example: Once we sat in a café at a table where we could not help overhearing a conversation. We recognized one participant as a famous professor and he was saying some extraordinarily foolish things. There's a certain word, that — if you knew how to pronounced it the way this professor did — you could say and crack me up in one second. I could have written down a lot of quotes that day and blogged them. Decency constrained me. But, surely, that could not be made into a crime in the United States.

ADDED: I'm musing about what we might consider morally wrong because it relates to what the statute might mean and also what the government may — if it chooses — criminalize.

AND: It seems to me that putting your ear against the wall/door is wrong in a way that pausing to listen when you hear talking through a wall/door is not. Here's a passage from David Rakoff's book "Half Empty":

Once during the day... I could hear Raul Rivas having sex in the office downstairs. I skittered around the apartment like a cockroach on a frying pan, trying not to make noise while desperately looking for a knothole in the crappy floorboards. Eventually I just lay down flat against the tile of the kitchen floor, listening. Lying flat against the tile of the kitchen floor listening to someone else have sex is essentially my early twenties in a nutshell.

Morally wrong, but how morally wrong?

Pat Sajak condemned as a pronunciation Nazi.

When "seven swans a-swimmin'" for "seven swans a-swimming" costs Navy Intel Specialist Renee Durette $4,000.

The "a-" beginning makes it seem as though you should be doing Southern American dialect, but "The 12 Days of Christmas" is set in an English aristocratic milieu (with lords and ladies).

More importantly, "Wheel of Fortune" is all about letters, so obviously they've got to be pedantic about getting all the letters.

Anyway... one more reason to be sick of that song. Or do you like it? Here it is by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.