First annual meeting of the Legion of Doom

[Vort]

44 minutes ago, The Folk Prophet said:

Share then. Because I'm lost.

"Utah"

[The Folk Prophet]

3 minutes ago, Vort said:

"Utah"

Well I could surmise that contextually. What I'm lost on is whatever the joke is? Is it making fun of accents? Is it a nick name? Is there something related to that called "joot" that I'm unaware of?

It's not important. I just don't get it.

[Vort]

2 minutes ago, The Folk Prophet said:

Well I could surmise that contextually.

Then you're way ahead of me. I figured that out only this morning.

[The Folk Prophet]

19 minutes ago, Vort said:

Then you're way ahead of me. I figured that out only this morning.

Haha. I said I "could" surmise that contextually. Not that I did.

[Vort]

24 minutes ago, The Folk Prophet said:

Haha. I said I "could" surmise that contextually. Not that I did.

I'm actually tickled by "jooter", especially by the first part, the initial consonant "y-" sound being replaced with a "j-" or "dzh-" sound. This is super-common in many Spanish dialects; I have heard that many South Americans literally cannot hear the difference between the words "yellow" and "Jello", which, let's face it, is pretty funny.

This is no mere Latin American coincidence. There is a reason that the letter 'j' looks like an elongated 'i'. In Italian, 'j' is not a canonical part of the alphabet, though it is occasionally used in foreign or dialectical words (e.g. the Italian soccer team "Juventus"). The Italians call the letter i lunga, or "long i", and always pronounce it like we pronounce the letter 'y' at the beginning of a word. (So "Juventus" is pronounced yoo-ven-toos, and "Joseph Smith" is pronounced yo-sep smeet). But that initial 'y-' sound catches stress, and it's a small matter of lifting the tip of one's tongue just a bit to turn "y-" into "zh-", and thence to "dzh-", finally arriving at our modern American "j-".

I've also noticed that most Hispanics who don't speak English natively have a hard time with words that start with s followed by a consonant, such as "scary", "scam", "sport", "sponge", and "stupid". They will typically say "es-caree", "es-cam", etc. At first I thought this was because there are no Spanish words that start with "st" or "sc" or "s-consonant", but I finally realized that's putting the cart before the horse; Spanish (Español) lacks words that begin with s-consonant because Spanish-speaking people in general can't say them. If you don't practice saying "st-" and "sp-" and "sc-" in childhood, it's harder to learn in adulthood. We can see that in a common Italian word, sbagliare "to err, to be wrong". Early in my missionary service, I found this verb and its conjugations difficult to say. But it really isn't; I just wasn't used to it, because we don't have a lot of English words starting with "sb-".

(For the record, sbaglio "I err, I am wrong" is pronounced zbah-lyoh. The first sound is pretty much the same as the beginning of "sport" or "spaghetti", except that you "voice" the syllable, making a vocal 'z' sound instead of the silent 's' and following it with a voiced 'b' sound instead of the unvoiced 'p'.)

Edited May 1, 2019 by Vort

[The Folk Prophet]

1 hour ago, Vort said:

I'm actually tickled by "jooter", especially by the first part, the initial consonant "y-" sound being replaced with a "j-" or "dzh-" sound. This is super-common in many Spanish dialects; I have heard that many South Americans literally cannot hear the difference between the words "yellow" and "Jello", which, let's face it, is pretty funny.

This is no mere Latin American coincidence. There is a reason that the letter 'j' looks like an elongated 'i'. In Italian, 'j' is not a canonical part of the alphabet, though it is occasionally used in foreign or dialectical words (e.g. the Italian soccer team "Juventus"). The Italians call the letter i lunga, or "long i", and always pronounce it like we pronounce the letter 'y' at the beginning of a word. (So "Juventus" is pronounced yoo-ven-toos, and "Joseph Smith" is pronounced yo-sep smeet). But that initial 'y-' sound catches stress, and it's a small matter of lifting the tip of one's tongue just a bit to turn "y-" into "zh-", and thence to "dzh-", finally arriving at our modern American "j-".

I've also noticed that most Hispanics who don't speak English natively have a hard time with words that start with s followed by a consonant, such as "scary", "scam", "sport", "sponge", and "stupid". They will typically say "es-caree", "es-cam", etc. At first I thought this was because there are no Spanish words that start with "st" or "sc" or "s-consonant", but I finally realized that's putting the cart before the horse; Spanish (Español) lacks words that begin with s-consonant because Spanish-speaking people in general can't say them. If you don't practice saying "st-" and "sp-" and "sc-" in childhood, it's harder to learn in adulthood. We can see that in a common Italian word, sbagliare "to err, to be wrong". Early in my missionary service, I found this verb and its conjugations difficult to say. But it really isn't; I just wasn't used to it, because we don't have a lot of English words starting with "sb-".

(For the record, sbaglio "I err, I am wrong" is pronounced zbah-lyoh. The first sound is pretty much the same as the beginning of "sport" or "spaghetti", except that you "voice" the syllable, making a vocal 'z' sound instead of the silent 's' and following it with a voiced 'b' sound instead of the unvoiced 'p'.)

That is one serious inside joke.