Eleven salmon smoking

[venta]

The Kipper Issue is resolved.

Pier Road Seafoods seem wholly ungooglable. However, by arcane means involving a leaflet in with the offending fishes, I acquired a URL. Their website only gives old-skool contact details, so I just rang them. No, no problem. A new pair of kippers would be in the post tomorrow.

So, I thought service like that deserved to be advertised. Everyone who likes kippers should visit:

http://www.kippersbymailwhitby.co.uk/

And order a pair. Off you go, now.

Comments

[wimble.livejournal.com]

googlable? Dear god. I thought you were a memeber of the language police.

[triskellian]

Isn't it weird and scary when you can't find someone on Google even though they have a website?

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Just musing.... why do kippers always have to be bought in pairs? I mean, if I wanted to buy one kipper, or three, why couldn't I do that?

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

1 herring = 2 kippers (I believe - Liz is the expert!)

So I suppose that's why they're traditionally in pairs.

Now, why is it a pair and not a brace?!

[venta.livejournal.com]

I have no idea.

I assume it's so that you can have humorous misunderstandings about slippers over bad phone lines.

How many u's are there in humourous ?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Liz is the expert

Bzzzzt! Wrong!

[venta.livejournal.com]

I am. I'm just a creative member of the language police.

I never said you couldn't make up words. Just that you couldn't makeup shite words.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Aye. I'm thinking Pier Roads could do with some advice on making their site more google-friendly.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

http://www.google.co.uk/about.html:

"Other Ways to Google"

It appears that even Google accept that they've become a verb now!

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

> How many u's are there in humourous?

I thought "humourous" looked wrong even in proper English until I wrote "humorous", so now I'm not sure which is the correct version.

But, regardless, the answer to your question is clearly "3". There are 3 u's in humourous. Boom! Boom!

[wimble.livejournal.com]

I think you're only allowed to do that if you can nominate somebody else to be more expert than you are.

You may not be "an expert", but you certainly appear to be "the expert" (around here, anyway).

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Just two, according to my dictionary (i.e. 'humorous'). I believe 'glamorous' follows the same rule.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I thought one kipper was one herring, cut almost in half and opened out?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I thought two, but then it looked wrong, so I experiemented with three - and that looked wrong!

I think it's one of those things where the more you think about it, the less clue you realise you have.

There seems to be a nasty trait of mislaying apparently necessary vowels when you extend a word. Where's the pre-n i gone in explanation ? More to the point, why has it gone ?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think you're only allowed to do that if you can nominate somebody else to be more expert than you are.

My mother. Bet she knows all about kippers.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

It would appear I am as clueless as I look. From studying pictures of some, it does look like that's what they are.

In which case: why can you only but them in pairs?!

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

To quote either a tiger or his imaginary small boy friend (I forget which), "verbing weirds language".

[venta.livejournal.com]

I don't believe so. She has sent me many and varied strange things, as you know.

However, she is aware, as some people on this thread don't seem to have guessed, that I'm not actually that fond of kippers myself :)

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I have been consulting my Latin dictionary. This doesn't work for 'glamour', because it doesn't have Latin roots.

But for the other two, what seems to be happening is that the stem gets closer to its Latin spelling when the word is extended. The relevant roots are 'explano' and '(h)umor' (it didn't have the 'h' in 'pure' Classical Latin, but got it later).

I guess someone fiddled about with the extended versions when spelling was standardised, but why they didn't change the shorter versions too, I don't know. Perhaps the extra vowels had gotten themselves too well established by that time to shift them?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oooh. Thank you. That's looking like a way to a sensible explanation.

If verlaine (aka Mr. Latin-Coming-Out-Of-His-Ears) is passing, could he offer a comment, or any further examples ?