Another common error is to confuse cement and concrete. Cement, as we all know, is an ingredient of concrete.

Asa, shut up and eat your yogurt!

So, Jerry, when someone talks about a cement structure, they are incorrect? That is new to me!

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So, Jerry, when someone talks about a cement structure, they are incorrect?

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Yes, Kalleh, but it's one of those items that's not worth arguing, fighting, or losing sleep over.

cement

concrete

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Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
she says
seement. Strange?
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As long as she doesn't say, "semen -t." It's kinda sticky stuff, but it doesn't seem strong enough to hold most couples together. Rather, it often sows seeds of discontent. (Baaad pun, Asa, shame on you!)

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Now there's weird, cyberninny let that one through !

Non curo ! Si metrum no habet, non est poema.

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

At the Amberly Chalk Pits Museum there is an exhibition of concrete artifacts (the chalkpit used to make make lime). Amongst them is a concrete canoe which, apparently, floated and worked quite well.

Richard English

It's hard to see how they can shorten it further but I bet they'll find a way.
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Although it does take more speech to say it, grammatically, "y'know" is shorter, and quite common hereabouts.

Oh, Jerry, my girlfriend ate my yogurt this morning. Whatever should I do now?

Can't believe Kallah's post regarding "SEE-ment" for cement has been up here so long without anyone mentioning "The Beverly Hillbillies." Their lavish swimming pool, as you'll undoubtedly recall, was referred to at the "SEE-ment pond."

I do believe, though, that this pronunciation was based on actual fact since it seems to me I had heard it pronounced this way before that show aired. Possibly common in the Appalachian area??

Well, my assistant is from the Belleville (spelling?), Illinois area.

Yes, I do remember the "see..ment pond"!

Kalleh, You asked if it's incorrect to say the building is made of cement. In some societies you would be considered "bookish" or "uppity" if you said ("correctly") that it's made of concrete, of which cement is an essential ingredient. Cement is also an ingredient of the mortar that masons use for binding bricks and stone together.

Professor Higgins said, "An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him ... " and I think the same is true of all languages and all dialects. If any one of the Beverly Hillbillies had spoken of the "concrete swimming pool" instead of the "SEE-ment pond," the others would probably have spoken of "puttin' on airs." [It sounds more like "SEE-mint" to me.]

Among the cowboys I used to associate with, saying "I saw him," instead of "I seen him" classified me as an outsider. Their dialect is Rural Western and mine is General American.

"Correct" and "incorrect" depend on audience.

Not necessarily. Traditional lime mortar is not cement, nor need it contain it.

The reason why mortar is used to bond bricks rather than cement is because it's weaker. Why use a weaker bond? Very simple. If a wall moves and the bond is as strong as the bricks, then the bricks will crack and need to be replaced. If the mortar cracks then the crack can simply be filled.

The strength of a wall comes from its bond, not its mortar - which is why bricks are laid in the strange patterns they are. A properly bonded brick (or stone) wall will stand without mortar and non-load-bearing walls are still made this way in some parts of the world.

The main purpose of mortar is to spread the load. If bricks are laid without mortar then there will be very small contact areas and thus high point loadings. The bricks will then crack, putting greater greater loadings on other areas until eventually the structure will fail.

Richard English

You're probabnly right about that , Richard.

[This message was edited by jerry thomas on Tue Jul 22nd, 2003 at 7:50.]

Mortar can indeed contain cement. It just doesn't have to, that's all.

Incidentally, cement can be used on its own or as a sand and cement mix to render walls. This type of mixture is not the same as concrete.

Richard English

I am getting waaaay off the subject here, but Jerry's link about the vessel and the pestle reminded me of Danny Kaye's part in the Court Jester:

The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice
from the palace has the brew that is true!

[I am sounding a bit like CJ, now, am I not?]

No, the pellet with the poison's in the chalice from the palace. The flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true!

I got the line from the internet; am I wrong? Shufitz says my line is right, though he is not 100% sure. At any rate, it is a fun movie, isn't it?

If you haven't seen that movie, folks, rent it!

I did a quick google on the two phrases and Kalleh's "The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true!" gets 150 hits while Haberdasher's "the pellet with the poison's in the chalice from the palace. The flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true!" only gets 40 hits!

Shufitz now seems to think they're both used in the movie. I definitely remembered "flagan with the dragon", as well. We'll just have to watch the movie again!

He's right, Shu 'nuff. That's the whole point of the scene; the mnemonic for which-glass-has-the-poison keeps changing! If the Jester hadn't been addlepated before, he surely was afterwards.

I think it all was before he turned into a master swordsman at the snap of a finger...

Yes, it has been awhile, but now I remember!

Recently on the radio I heard someone pronounce "contribute" and "con-tri-beaut." I surely had not heard it pronounced that way before, have you?

There is a very annoying sounding programme on the radio this week about an old lady who 'corrects' pronunciation.

Apparently:
Con-sum-ut is correct
Con-sue-mut is wrong

Graham, I think I would have to hear that spoken because when I say them both, I cannot hear a difference.

It might be easier if the words were spelt even more phoenetically:

Con-summ-ut is correct
Con-syoo-mut is wrong

Both stressed on the first syllable and thus the middle vowels have little form and are short.

Richard English

How do you pronounce mature and amateur? I say "ma - tur" and "ama - tur." My husband says "ma - chur" and "ama - chur."

In amateur the -eur is reduced to schwa for me: AM-a-ta. (Probably because it went there from French -teur, and never became English -ture.)

Normally I have -ch- in unstressed syllables (as in future FYU-cha), so AM-a-cha would be expected. In stressed syllables it's TYU in careful speech, CHU in casual speech: ma-TYUa, ma-CHUa.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
I say "ma - tur" and "ama - tur." My husband says "ma - chur" and "ama - chur."

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He's right.
You come in second.
Case closed.

CJS (sitting comfortably in his ama-chur)

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He's right.
You come in second.
Case closed.

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CJ, you have been picking on me lately, haven't you?

Here is the pronunciation of "amateur" from dictionary.com:
"m-tûr, -tr, -chr, -chr, -tyr"; and "mature": "m-tyr, -tr, -chr."

Since the first pronunciation of each is "tur" and "tyr", respectively, I'd say the case is still open!

I received a spam email which asked me to look at a site which had "all-new amatures" on it. As one who has an interest in electrical matters (and one who has, indeed, rewound an armature), I assumed that this was a misspelling.

Sadly, the "amatures" were not some new kind of electical gizmo but young(ish) ladies in various states of undress. I doubt that any one of them was an amateur in the accepted sense of the word!

At least, that's the explanation I gave my wife when she crept in with a cup of coffee while I was checking the "amatures" site.

Richard English

Hmmm, seems as though I have had a similar story from Shu.

Armature, they misspelt armature, it's a perfectly innocent hobbyist thing, dear. You know how these tyre people like to drape young women over them, but I was looking at the... er... front end.