what the hell is this? why is it in the dictionary?

[soverylowercase]

Since English is a language that stresses some syllables and not others, weakly stressed syllables, especially those preceding strong stresses, are dropped at times. This process, called aphesis when it occurs at the beginning of a word, is more common in regional American dialects than in the more conservative Standard English, which tends to

Comments

[teacake911]

Wow, I thought I was the only person ever board enough to read the prefaces to the dictionary-- there really is some interesting things in there for Linguists, though. I remember reading about transformations (how "cup" + "board" = "cubboard", or the "t" in "feature" becomes a "ch" sound because of the "u" after it), but most interesting was a long-winded rant on Dialects of American English and how stupid people want to consider Black English (don't call it "Ebonics", fyi) or Appalachian English (aka redneck-ese) separate languages. The girl/guy made the point that in China, even though natives of Beijing and natives of Canton don't know what the fuck each other is saying, they both still speak 'Chinese'. Fancy that.

Man I'm a language nerd.

[teacake911]

After all that I can't let my typo of 'bored' slide.