Arnold Zwicky's Blog

The Bizarro of the 25th:

An imperfect pun: hanger /hæŋǝr/ vs. anger /æŋgǝr/. Note the divergent treatment of orthographic NG in medial position: typically /ŋ/ before agentive or instrumental /ǝr/, but /ŋg/ otherwise. (There are well-known exceptions, like dinghy, with /ŋ/; and medial NG sometimes spells /nǰ/, as in dingy.)

This entry was posted on August 28, 2013 at 4:31 am and is filed under Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Phonology, Puns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.