Gwynneth Lewis, the first Welsh Poet Laureate, on the radio just now said that Dafydd ap Gwilym had done something /frɒm ðə geʔ gəʊ/. And
because her accent was quite broad, and I was expecting lilting things like /’let.tə/ for
‘letter’, I misheard in a way that suggested a reptilian version of ‘from the
horse’s mouth’. But geckos don’t enjoy the same position as horses in
figurative English, so I was momentarily flummoxed.
But
she wasn’t in the least aware of any possible pun; the perpetrators of puns
often aren’t, particularly when the pun is in the mind of the listener – and
depends on over-interpretation of an accent that the speaker, quite naturally,
sees as unimpeachable. Perhaps the most interesting puns are ones like this –
where the speaker is unaware of the pun (or ‘homonymic clash’, as I learnt to
call puns when I was studying at the feet of Doctor (now Professor) Erik Fudge.
[Sic]
+ various updates to the footer, the most recent being on 2013.10.06.12:05
Mammon (When Vowels Get Together V4.0: Collection of Kindle word-lists grouping different pronunciations of vowel-pairs – AA-AU, EA-EU, and IA-IU, and – new for V4.0 – OA-OU. If you buy it, contact @WVGTbook on Twitter and I'll alert you to free downloads of the forthcoming volumes; or click the Following button at the foot of this page.)
And if you have no objection to such promiscuity, Like this.
Freebies (Teaching resources: nearly 32,400 views**, and 4,400 downloads to date. They're very eclectic - mostly EFL and MFL, but one of the most popular is from KS4 History, dating from my PGCE, with 1570 views/700 downloads to date. So it's worth having a browse.)
** This figure includes the count of views for a single resource held in an account that I accidentally created many years ago.
+ various updates to the footer, the most recent being on 2013.10.06.12:05
Mammon (When Vowels Get Together V4.0: Collection of Kindle word-lists grouping different pronunciations of vowel-pairs – AA-AU, EA-EU, and IA-IU, and – new for V4.0 – OA-OU. If you buy it, contact @WVGTbook on Twitter and I'll alert you to free downloads of the forthcoming volumes; or click the Following button at the foot of this page.)
And if you have no objection to such promiscuity, Like this.
Freebies (Teaching resources: nearly 32,400 views**, and 4,400 downloads to date. They're very eclectic - mostly EFL and MFL, but one of the most popular is from KS4 History, dating from my PGCE, with 1570 views/700 downloads to date. So it's worth having a browse.)
** This figure includes the count of views for a single resource held in an account that I accidentally created many years ago.
