The One Big Happy from January 13th, with a widespread nonstandard pronoun:
Freestanding youse /yuz/ (= you /yu/ + pl /z/) and modifying youse in youse guys ‘you guys’. In any case, a 2pl form distinct from 2sg you. The form is complexly distributed according to geography, social class, and other factors — in a way that suggests it has been invented several times in different contexts.
And then there’s the pun on used /yuzd/.
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From cartoonist Dan Thompson, passed on by several people on Facebook:
(#1) /áriò/ the rock band vs. /óriò/ the cookie
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The Zippy strip from the 5th:
(#1) Alfred Jarry?
A Muffler Man-style fiberglass figure: a lumberjack with an ax(e) slung over his shoulder.
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The One Big Happy from January 12th:
“song words”; from NOAD:
adverb & preposition o’er: archaic or poetic/literary contraction for over.
And then there’s the pizza mondegreen, Joe’s rationalization of these lines from “The Star-Spangled Banner”, as sung at the beginning of baseball games in the US:
O’er the ramparts we watched,
Were so gallantly streaming.
Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Mishearings | 1 Comment »
Passed on via Facebook, this 5th Wave cartoon by Rich Tennant, with a play on X matter, for various X:
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It starts with a recent (January 4th) One Big Happy and will end with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in 1967. In the cartoon, Ruthie and Joe are unfamiliar with Doris Day the person and take Doris Day to refer to a holiday (like Flag Day):
(#1)
Posted in Books, Holidays, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, Names, Nicknames, Phonology, Pop culture, Prosody | Leave a Comment »
The One Big Happy from January 7th:
As usual, Ruthie struggles valiantly to make sense of unfamiliar words by reference to familiar ones — in this case, by a spelling strategy that we could think of as the add-an-R game:
CONDO + R = CONDOR
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Today’s Zippy takes us to Elmsford NY, a village in Westchester County, just across the Tappan Zee Bridge from New Jersey and not far from Connecticut, and home to a BP gas station with a startling fiberglass Muffler Man mascot:
(#1)
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… in today’s Zippy strip:
(#1)
Not a wine emporium, but a diner specializing in RI-style hot dogs. And it’s been featured in Zippy at least twice before.
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Four cartoons yesterday that present interesting challenges in understanding. Now a mixed set of four more — a Zits, a Zippy, a One Big Happy, and a Dilbert — that have accumulated in my posting queue.
Posted in Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, My life, Pop culture, Slang, Writing | Leave a Comment »
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