Categories: linguistics, concerts, life
Date: 24 February 2007 09:27:28
Thanks for the welcome back all: it is good to be back -- and I'm, slowly, catching up with all your news.
Usually I'm pretty good with dates and appointments: last night was an exception. I completely forgot I had tickets, as part of my annual subscription, to the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra's first concert of the year, Classic Mozart. I woke up this morning and thought, "Was I supposed to be somewhere last night?" -- and then it hit me. Oh well: I'll call during the week and see if I can get a seat at one of next weekend's performances. I did listen to some music, albeit rather different music, last night: Sophie Ellis-Bextor's new single, Catch You. I do quite like her music: and I love the often tongue-in-cheek videos that accompany them: they put a smile on my face.
Now for something different: a poll of my readers. How do you spell what the Compact Oxford Dictionary describes as an involuntary spasm of the diaphragm and respiratory organs, with a sudden closure of the glottis and a characteristic gulping sound? -- hiccup or hiccough? I was rather shocked to read there that hiccough is a modern spelling arising from an association with cough as that is how I have always spelled it. And I am merely a public school(*)-educated boy -- where the barbed-wire faced inwards if that gives a fuller description of my education :) -- so I can't claim a privileged up-bringing. I ask as I sent an e-mail around at work where I wrote hiccough (in terms of a setback, rather than an involuntary spasm of the diaphragm in case you were wondering!) -- and everyone around me queried it and research has shown they have history on their side. What say ye, wibreaders? Am I, as most suspect, just weird?
(*)as in a standard government school -- not what I believe is the UK meaning: a private fee-paying school.