Читать книгу Facts and fancies for the curious from the harvest-fields of literature - Charles C. Bombaugh - Страница 53

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A smart girl in Vassar claims that Phtholognyrrh should be pronounced Turner, and gives this little table to explain her theory:

First—Pbth (as in phthisis) is	T
Second—olo (as in colonel) is	UR
Third—gn (as in gnat) is	N
Fourth—yrrh (as in myrrh) is	ER

An ignorant Yorkshireman, having occasion to go to France, was surprised on his arrival to hear the men speaking French, the women speaking French, and the children jabbering away in the same tongue. In the height of the perplexity which this occasioned he retired to his hotel, and was awakened in the morning by the cock crowing, whereupon he burst into a wild exclamation of astonishment and delight, crying, “Thank goodness, there’s English at last!”

An Irish gentleman writes to Truth to say that he has never found a Frenchman who can pronounce this: “Thimblerig Thristlethwaite thievishly thought to thrive through thick and thin by throwing his thimbles about, but he was thwarted and thwacked and thumped and thrashed with thirty-three thousand thistles and thorns for thievishly thinking to thrive through thick and through thin by throwing the thimbles about.”

Scene at Continental kursaal: English party at card table—“Hello, we are two to two.” English party at opposite table—“We are two to two, to.” German spectator, who “speaks English,” to companion who is acquiring the language—“Vell, now you see how dis is. Off you want to gife expression to yourself in English all you have to do is to blay mit der French horn!”