[TAG] Accents

[Mike Orr]

Rick Moen wrote:

>>I heard the word comes from Greek basileus (king), because it's the "king
>>of herbs".
>>
>Or from Latin basiliscus (English "basilisk") because its sharpness of
>flavour and aroma conjure up the fire-breathing dragons of myth.  We'll
>probably never know, unless some word-hunter spends time chasing it
>down.
>  
>

I heard it from a Greek Orthodox priest.  The word basileus (now 
pronounced "vossil-EFS") is used all over in the hymns and New 
Testament.  Vasili ("Vah-SEE-lee") is a common first name (I'm not sure 
how they anglicize it: Basile?), and one of the three liturgies is named 
after St Basil the Great.  Against this background he said basil was 
so-named because it was considered the "king" of herbs.  So I guess 
basil has a long and honorable history in Greek.  As for basiliscus, it 
seems to come from basileus too.  "dict basilisk" says:

 From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Basilisk \Bas"i*lisk\, n. [L. basiliscus, Gr. basili`skos little
     king, kind of serpent, dim. of basiley`s king; -- so named
     from some prominences on the head resembling a crown.]
     1. A fabulous serpent, or dragon. The ancients alleged that
        its hissing would drive away all other serpents, and that
        its breath, and even its look, was fatal. See
        {Cockatrice}.
        [1913 Webster]

              Make me not sighted like the basilisk. --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]


I don't know what it means by "basiley's king".

>[Pronunciation of "nukular" for nuclear:]
>
>  
>
>
>>I don't know how many people would notice the difference.  I prob'ly
>>wouldn't, not unless it was highly exaggerated.  
>>    
>>
>
>Really?  As with "ah-thuh-lete", I wince and pity the speaker -- which
>is the sort of response that makes possible the theatrical
>anti-Eastern-liberal-elitism posture some people aim at, in deliberately
>adopting those and similar examples of semiliterate pronunciation.  Thus
>my point.
>  
>

I guess I'm too much of a philistine.  Nook-you-lr and ath-uh-leet are 
what I grew up saying coz everybody said it that way.  At some point I 
unconsciously switched to nook-lee-r most of the time but never 100%. 
(Maybe.  I don't know which one I say when I'm not consciously thinking 
about it.)  Certainly I've never heard "nukular is wrong" or "nucular 
sounds uneducated" before.   Occasionally I notice the extra vowel but 
just put it down to "lots of English words are pronounced differently 
than they're spelled".  Ath-leet and nook-lee-r sound a bit more 
formal.  But I do switch back and forth with athlete.  And herb too, now 
that I think about it.

I can imagine an actor playing an uneducated Texan saying, "I don't know 
if that newfangled nook-you-lr ree-act-or we got in town is safe."  That 
sounds uneducated because of the whole sentance.  But "nucular" alone 
would not sound significant to me; just a variation like tomayto/tomahto 
and coyotee/coyote.  Now if they said "ain't", that'd be a different matter.

There's a town near Seattle called Puyallup.  Everybody pronounces it 
pyoo-AL-up (short a) even though some people claim it's "supposed" to be 
poo-YAWL-up.  But I had a college friend (from Texas) who used to say as 
a joke: "pull-y'all-UP".