[Info-vax] Long uptime cut short by Hurricane Sandy

[Rich Jordan]

On Feb 13, 6:57 pm, AEF <spamsink2... at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Feb 12, 4:50 pm, hel... at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---
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> undress to reply) wrote:
> > In article
> > <30cb251a-22f9-43a5-84c5-741ea5209... at hl5g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>, AEF
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> > <spamsink2... at yahoo.com> writes:
> > > disc - CD, frisbee (flying disc), phonograph record, DVD, videodisc,
> > > optical disc (or disk), abbreviation for discount, disc brakes, Blu-
> > > ray disc
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> > > disk - disk drive; image of a celestial body as visible in a
> > > telescope, or in the case of the Sun or Moon, also in the naked eye,
> > > and in the case of a star, which is something too small to be seen as
> > > a normal disk, a diffraction disk (in naked eye or telescope); slipped
> > > disk in the backbone
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> > Yes, there are rules, which vary from country to country.  But what ARE
> > the rules?  Can you describe them without examples?
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> The only hard and fast rule of English spelling that's guaranteed to
> work all the time is the following variant of the i before e rule:
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> It's i before e, except when it's e before i. :-D
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> Audio/video tends to be disc, even when adapted to computers, as in CD-
> ROMs.
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> C followed by a is almost always pronounced like k. Caeser and Celtic
> are the only exceptions I can think of. (Actually Celtic can be either
> soft or hard [s or k]. In Irish English it's k (at least for the music
> group "Celtic Woman") and in American basketball it's s.)
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> C followed by o is always with a k sound AFAIK. Same for c followed by
> u.
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> C followed by e, i, or y is always soft, as an s, I believe. Hmmm,
> even there there's an exception: words like efficient, sufficient,
> omniscient, proficient, coefficient, where the c is pronounced as an
> sh. In fact, this is the chief motivation for the "i before e except
> after c" bit.
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> G followed by a, o, or u is always a hard g, with the occasional
> exception of vegan, which can be pronounced soft or hard (like g or j,
> respectively. Oh, and then there's the word "garage", in which the
> second g is neither.)
>
> AEF

Our university english lit prof told the likely apocryphal tale of her
English professor telling his students that after long and careful
study, he had determined that the only word in the English language
where s followed by a vowel was pronounced as 'sh' was sumac.

One of his students asked, 'Professor, are you sure?'