SMBC Comics Forum

Is there an official spelling of slang? I thought them folks couldn't read or write.

Are you talking about black people? Because that's racist, Ahmet. I don't know why you'd even say that.

Well you have to differentiate it from other words. I know about the whole misogyny thing, but it seems a bit extreme to use your woman to turn the soil in your fields. Ho≄Hoe

When you have words with wh, you only pronounce one of the letters (except for some old dudes who say "what" like "hwat"). Why is "why" pronounced "wai", when "who" is pronounced "hoo"?

Euclidthegreek wrote:Well you have to differentiate it from other words. I know about the whole misogyny thing, but it seems a bit extreme to use your woman to turn the soil in your fields. Ho≄Hoe

Except you can't differentiate them at all when spoken. This is called a homophone. We also have homographs and homonyms which are spelt the same in spite of different meaning.

Euclidthegreek wrote:When you have words with wh, you only pronounce one of the letters (except for some old dudes who say "what" like "hwat"). Why is "why" pronounced "wai", when "who" is pronounced "hoo"?

That's actually a voiceless labiovelar fricative, as opposed to the voiced labiovelar approximant that we are used to hearing. The sound is present in Received Pronunciation still.

As for why vs. who, they come from Old English hwy and hwa, and both of them would be pronounced with the "old dude hw". Avoiding the vowel movement (which is generally a good idea, because it doesn't make any sense) we find that in "why", the labiovelar sound has become voiced (which is a process that has recently reoccurred cf. GA "what", which has moved away from RP "what"), whereas in "who", the sound is pronounced using the same glottal states however it is no longer articulated in the oral cavity, meaning that it is acting as a voiceless vowel. This isn't that strange for an approximant since there is barely any constriction in an approximant, and phonetically it is almost like a vowel. So they basically moved in different directions. Now, as for why this happens; I don't really know. That's a much more complicated question anyway.

It is extreme to use your woman to turn the soil in our fields. That is why we are called Muslim extremists.

But aren't your women put to better use fulfilling your every sexual wish, making your food, doing your laundry, producing children, and being obedient? I would imagine using them as farm tools would go through them fairly quickly.

That's why muslims become suicide bombers.

And are rewarded with the 72 virgins, so lifetime issues become a thing of the past.