Lady/ Queen Sough

[Quicksilver]

Whenever I read The Fortress of the pearl, I wonder if it is pronounced as Lady Soe(as in coco) or Lady Sow(as in owch), and if it is the latter, then is it a joke, meaning Lady Pig? I always feel left out when I see it... :oops:

[Ant]

Or is it Lady Suff, as in slough (the verb not the town)?

Gr.,
Ant

[Mikey_C]

I understand that Mike is generally happy for readers to pronounce the names however they like. I always thought of her as "Lady Sow", I must admit.

[L'Etranger]

I mean, who are we dealing with? I doubt Mike would allude to a lady in terms like "sow". Maybe "Suff" is correct, like in cough.

I see there's a town by the name of "Slough" in UK, but no idea where I'd get a train ticket to if I'd ask for one to "Slow" at the British Rail counter.

[Quicksilver]

Well, thanks for your co-operation, I always felt like there was some sort of joke I wasn't getting. :)

[David Mosley]

I see there's a town by the name of "Slough" in UK, but no idea where I'd get a train ticket to if I'd ask for one to "Slow" at the British Rail counter.

All British Rail* trains go 'slow' when the drivers' unions want them to. :lol:

Re. Sough: try http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sough for pronuciations

Re. Slough (pronounced slou): This was immortalised by John Betjamin in his poem, "Slough":

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs, and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town --
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week for half-a-crown
For twenty years,

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears,

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sports and makes of cars
In various bogus Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

*British Rail no longer exists now; it was broken up in 1994 and effectively became a private company called 'Railtrack', which was no better than the nationalised company had been, and which in turn was turned into the 'not-for-profit' company 'Network Rail' in 2002 following the Hatfield rail crash, which four people died as a result of poor maintenance.

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Slough, where the Marsâ„¢ bars come from.

Damn! I was just about to post the Slough poem. Demos99 beat me to it, fair and square! :)

The late Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman (1906 - 1984). A man not unacquainted with the use of the needle gun!

[Pietro_Mercurios]

...

*British Rail no longer exists now; it was broken up in 1994 and effectively became a private company called 'Railtrack', which was no better than the nationalised company had been, and which in turn was turned into the 'not-for-profit' company 'Network Rail' in 2002 following the Hatfield rail crash, which four people died as a result of poor maintenance.

Actually there are several companies actually using the national track, which Railtrack and now Network Rail maintain.

Slough is served by First Great Western.

[L'Etranger]

...

*British Rail no longer exists now; it was broken up in 1994 and effectively became a private company called 'Railtrack', which was no better than the nationalised company had been, and which in turn was turned into the 'not-for-profit' company 'Network Rail' in 2002 following the Hatfield rail crash, which four people died as a result of poor maintenance.

Actually there are several companies actually using the national track, which Railtrack and now Network Rail maintain.

Slough is served by First Great Western.

Yikes! The last time I boarded a train in Britian I was on my way to Mexico in 1982 via Sheffield. Yes true, but a trifle complicated, that story! So then it was still British Rail.

English, and its pronunciation in particular, can be quite baffling, as a friend pointed out some time ago:

'English Language'

Let's face it -- English is a crazy language. There is no egg in
eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France.
Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find
that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't
groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why
isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2
meese? One index, 2 indices?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that
you comb through annals of history but not a single annal? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preacher praught? If a vegetarian eats
vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?

Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an
asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship?
Have noses that run and feet that smell? Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man
and wise guy are opposites? How can overlook and oversee be opposites,
while quite a lot and quite a few are alike? How can the weather be
hot as hell one day and cold as hell another.

Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are
absent? Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown?
Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your
house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by
filling it out and in which an alarm clock goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the
creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all).
That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it.

[Governor of Rowe Island]

Thanks, LE, loved that. As a native English speaker I delight in the unruliness of my language. I can only admire non-native English speakers for their ability to make sense of it or with it. It is such a mutable thing even random associations of words seem to make sense!*

Thanks for the poem, demos, I'd heard of it of course, apropos: 'The Office' and its inordinate popularity (it's good, but it's not that good!)

*As evidenced by my post on the spam emails I received [broken link]here

[Marca]

I just had to add this from the Ravenblack Surrealism Generator, that appeared when I went to the site. Very seasonal, if a bit early :lol: :

On the fifth day of Christmas, my bi-pronged love sent to me; five muddy rods! Four Orwellian webs, three diced hot dinners, two cute nihilists and a library ticket in a wooden stake.

Or this:

Why did the venusian sword write about the chubby lettuce? Because it was stapled to the eye!

Mornington Cresecent!:

Apparently, many webs will make a camera play Mornington Crescent with genies...

[Ant]

I mean, who are we dealing with? I doubt Mike would allude to a lady in terms like "sow". Maybe "Suff" is correct, like in cough. ...

Surely, that's be "Sloff"?

Maybe it's "Slew", like through (thru).

Cordialement,
Ant

[Quicksilver]

Possibly, but there must be a million ways to pronounce it I'm just not sure which one to choose

[Ant]

... ... English is a crazy language... neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

So, did you know that the word "pineapple" was originally applied to the fruits of pine trees - what we now know as pinecones? "Apple" here was being used in a generic sense of "fruit" (as in Dutch "aardappel" for a potato), in much the same way as deer was used for any beast (as in Shakespeare's "Mice and rats, and such small deer."), cp. German tier.

Anyhow, the name was applied to what most other Europeans (outside Iberia) know as ananas simply because of the physical resemblance, and somehow lost its original meaning.

So English isn't so much crazy as strangely mutable.

Ciao,
Ant

[Talisant]

Zhouz