[Pause]

Published Monday, August 11, 2008 by Kevin Breathnach | E-mail this post

Livvy Thompson, sitting beyond David, deplored these women who talked baby-talk. She felt that her own appeal to me was more serious. 'Mr Armstrong has got to play in the next set,' she said warningly. 'Hoity-toity!' thought Betty Vermont (she never used the expression aloud, as she was not certain how one pronounced it: it was one of her inner luxuries).

There aren't many words that I would ever use in conversation whose pronunciation I would stumble upon. That is to be taken as much a testament to my inarticulacy as it is to my articulacy. It is true, I think, however, that in some cranial cavern or other, the reader imagines the words on the page pronounced by the voice inside his head, without which (or is it whom?) the music in prose would seldom be performed. Here's just one quick bar of notes which I generally omit from the, er, symphonies for fear of tripping over them: antipathetic, autochthonous, coeval, elegiac, epithet, inchoate, placable, stoical.

What about you lot?

Labels: elizabeth bowen, prose, reading habits, words

[Pause]

E-mail this post

Previous posts

Archives

Latest Comments

Irish Blogs

A special place in my heart

'Proper' Journalism etc.

The Wireless