The
remainder of the current blog may create an odd effect, but I can’t currently
make my mouth and teeth yield what would hit your ear like the alphabetic
entity in my title. I am therefore writing the way I declaim and pledge to avoid the relevant letter (bar the indented material quoted from other people below).
For
I have today taken the orthodontic plunge and had metal put within my teeth to
de-rabbit them. The brilliant Dr Clare
McNamara, of Cheltenham Orthodontic fame, warned me about the problematic
letter.
On
returning home I found an email from the British Broadcathting Pronunthiation
Unit, which read, unbelievably,
Dear
Professor Hall,
One
of our broadcasters has asked us to research the correct pronunciation for some
of the alternative names of Odysseus and I was hoping you were available to
advise us today.
If
you do happen to have some time, could you please help us with the pronunciations
of the following names?
Olysseus/
Ὀλυσσεύς
Oulixeus
/Οὐλιξεύς
Oulixes/Οὐλίξης
I’d
be happy to call you if you send me a contact number and a convenient time to
call.
I
cannot tell you what a droll phone dialogue that would have been. Try reading
the above email but putting “th” or “f”
in for every you-know-what and for every “x” too. I recommended another academic.
Dionythiuth of Halicarnatthuth |
Pericleth' Funeral Oration |
Another,
anon. drama, of which we have a fragment, experimented with avoiding the letter
altogether. Had the author been having dental work done? In it the Titan
beginning with “A”, who held up the firmament on their neck, and the hero beginning
with “H”, who performed many a labour, had a quarrel off Gibraltar. The aural effect will have
been like hearing me in my current condition.
The
technical name for omitting one letter throughout a work = (ha! You thought you would catch me out with conjugating the verb
“to be”!) LIPOGRAMMATIC. I offer you
here a very rough Anglophone rendition of the mediocre ancient Greek lipogrammatic dramatic dialogue
chunk with A and H. I am too tired to
bother imitating the effect of the lack of the naughty letter here, and drop it
in liberally. But I would love to hear from anyone feeling up to the job.
Atlas I promised to bring apples here. Here
they are. Take them. I didn’t promise anything else. I have kept my promise.
Heracles I have been deceived. Perfidy! Infamy! I call
upon heavenly Themis [goddess who protected people who’d had oaths sworn to
them] to witness that Atlas has been dishonest with Heracles, although immortal
by birth. I shall pursue him, even though I am a human on my mother’s side,
since Zeus is my true father.
Atlas Go and scare others, not me. Mother
Earth is proud that she bore me first among the Titans, blood relatives of
Cronus. We ruled with him on Mount Olympus.
Heracles Justice, who supports the gods, has given a
fierce look, even though she lives far away. [From Bodmer Papyrus 28]
Which reminds me that in college, I once convinced my roommate that the aged Royal portable typewriter I had on my desk was just fine except the letter "e" did not work.
ReplyDeleteHe got down to the last page of a required ten page research paper before he tumbled to the fact I had been putting him on and he did not have to stop and painfully hand write in each "e."
He was less than amused.