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

[AEF]

On Feb 13, 7:57 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?
>
> 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:
>
> It's i before e, except when it's e before i. :-D
>
> 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

Another twist to pronouciation of the letter 'c':

Normally you add a k when adding a suffix to a word ending in c:

panic, panicked, panicking

for example. This keeps the k sound.

But there are a few exceptions -- very few:

arc, arced, arcing
sync, synced, syncing

I'm guessing that if a the ending c is immediately preceded by a
consonant, you don't add the k.

But there's an exception to the exception!

spec, specced or spec'd, speccing - all pronounced with a k.

And then there's a hybrid:

zinc, zinced or zincked, zincing or zincking

AEF