riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (06/19/85)
>> For an interesting side topic, why is it "a whole nother" rather than the >> more logical "an whole other"? Perhaps because of the pain it causes to >> say "an whole", and your amygdalus/angular gyrus rearranges the syllables >> to shift the "n" from before the "whole" to after it? If only I could remember all that literary and linguistic terminology that I learned in high school English! You see, the switch "an other" <=> "a nother" is a common and well known one, and there is a standard term for the process. The most famous example in English is the word "orange", which I have heard was once "norange". The only dictionary I have at hand doesn't concur that there was ever such a word in English, but the word underwent a similar transformation somewhere along the line in any case. The etymology in front of me at the moment: [ME & OFr "orenge"; Pr. "auranja" (with sp. influenced by L. "aurum", gold and loss of initial "n" through faulty separation of article "une") < Sp. "naranja"; Ar. "naranj"; Per. "narang"] The word "another" has undergone/is undergoing a similar process. One place you see evidence for it is in phrases like "a whole nother story;" you also see it in the writings of children and other people who haven't had spelling conventions throughly pounded into them, as in the epithet, "You're a nother!" --- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.") --- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle --- riddle@ut-sally.UUCP, riddle@ut-sally.ARPA, riddle%zotz@ut-sally
cjh@petsd.UUCP (Chris Henrich) (06/26/85)
[] In article <2136@ut-sally.UUCP> riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) writes: ... >The word "another" has undergone/is undergoing a similar process. One place >you see evidence for it is in phrases like "a whole nother story;" you also >see it in the writings of children and other people who haven't had spelling >conventions throughly pounded into them, as in the epithet, "You're a >nother!" I once heard a mother say, jokingly, to her two rambunctious little boys, "You're under arrest!" Pretty soon, they were using the phrase at each other, varying it with, "You're under a *real* rest!" Regards, Chris -- Full-Name: Christopher J. Henrich UUCP: ..!(cornell | ariel | ukc | houxz)!vax135!petsd!cjh US Mail: MS 313; Perkin-Elmer; 106 Apple St; Tinton Falls, NJ 07724 Phone: (201) 758-7288