Why ith ethybody tharing ath my thongue? It there thomthing amith? I wisth thombody would thtep up and ethplain the thituathion tho I could underthtand…
Thent in by Andrew Y. (More thand cat cuteneth at the Thincinnati Zoo.)
Thufferin’ Thuckotath!
43 thoughts on “Thufferin’ Thuckotath!”
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Sand cats are so cool. Even when they blep.
ESPECIALLY when they blep.
Curly blep.
I am a tiny thand cat
With a lovely thand cat thmile
And four thmall thand cat pawthieth
And perfect thand cat thtyle.
A thand cat tail for balanth
And thand cat fur for lookth
And my gorgeouth thand cat markingth
Keep me in the nature bookth.
But I have a tiny problem
With the contentth of my mouth
My tongue ith way too curiouth;
I can’t keep it in it’th houth.
Tho, while motht of me ith perfect,
(I’m a top ten thpethieth rep)
My tongue’th a bit rebelliouth, BUT
It’th a perfect thand cat blep.
[thunderouth applauthe]
more thunderouth applauthe
That wath inthpired!
Huzzath!
*** waves lighter in the air ***
Awesome post and poem, I love them.
That… Was… AMAZING!!! π π π
WOW π€
I’m in awe and bow to your greatness! Perfection all around with this post from Mike and your poem.
Wow. That is just fabulous. Bravo!
Fantathtic! Fantabulouth! A thouthandth cheerth!
Imprethive!!
Kudoth!
Thanks, Duckie – that was amazing!
Tho cute!
*and whose cruel idea was it to have the letter ‘s’ in the word ‘lisp’?
Muppet, it wath probably my thpeech therapitht from grade one.
Thank you for your applauth, everyone, ethpethially you, Mike. A compliment from you ith highly regarded.
My compliments too Duckie!! Loved it!!
Its kind of like getting a special gift from you!
(That I have to share with everyone else but that’s ok!!)
FYI, the letter S doesn’t always sound like ess. It also produces the SH sound and the Z sound. I don’t think all of these sounds get lithped.
/pedant
Debg, I attended a lecture on sibilant sounds once and the poor lecturer spoke like this sand cat. All the sibilants were like ‘th’. It was so difficult to listen to him with a straight face: ” There are 3 sibilant sounds in English, the “th”, the “th” and the “th”. Phonetics and Phonology wasn’t an easy subject, not even for the lecturer. π
You’d be amazed at the variety of things people mean when they say “lisp”βto say nothing of their complaining about “sibiliant s” when s is, by its very nature, a sibilant.
“S” in “su” and “si” spellings can also indicate the pronunciation “zh” as in “pleasure, version”. The IPA symbol for that sound is called an ezh and it looks like a curly-tailed z: Κ.) If you have Unicode fonts installed on your computer/tablet/phone, you’ll be able to see that symbol. It also looks a bit like a pulled-down numeral 3.)
I was teaching fricatives this morning, can you tell? π
I would love to have dinner with you someday, R&B’s Mom! Oh the conversations we could have!
We certainly could! [wi ΛsΙΙ»ΚtβΏnΜ©li ΛkΙ΅d]
I was a speech pathology major as an undergrad, but I haven’t kept up with it. It was delightful to start editing videos for work and to realize that I could spot the sibilants and fricatives in the audio waveform. There’s actually a hiss reducer available in the program to tone down the esssssss sound!
My choir director back in New York City used to have us virtually eliminate final ess sounds. For Unto Us a Child is Born could get really gnarly that way!
P.S. my office Office buddy likes to tease me about being Oscar, the know-it-all. When he read my comment above, he emailed to say it was the perfect “actually” response. Point taken. I am, after all, what you’d get if Hermione Granger and C3PO had a child.
Sadly this post in all it’s glory brings me back to the dark days when I had to go to speech therapy in grade school. My crime? Lisping and hissing when I spoke my “s”es and not enough enunciating. My homework?
Sister Suzy, sitting by the sea shore
sewing shirts for sailors
singing sea chanties
Spoken too fast, it almost sounded like you were speaking Parsletongue from the Harry Potter movies.
Seriously, I’m glad I went and didn’t end up with a permanent case of mushmouth.
I went to the speech pathologist in 4th grade, because I’d start a sentence, stop in the middle, and pick it up again after 10 seconds. The speech pathologist determined I was an only child who didn’t get enough practice speaking. She engaged me as a tutor for kids who really struggled with speech impediments and so I’ve been “teaching” since I was 10 years old!
Your speech path was very wise, N. Fritz. The fastest way to learn something well is to teach it to someone else!
I still haven’t been able to figure out what “thuckotath” is π
succotash, a combination of corn and lima beans. Sylvester Cat always said Thufferin Thukotath (Sufferin’ succotash!)
Actually, what he said was more like “Thufferin’ Thuccotash.”
Oh, thank you, N.Fritz. I was afraid to google it as it seemed to start with suck π
According to Etymology Online (one of my favorite reference sites):
“succotash (n.)
“1751, from a word in a Southern New England Algonquian language, such as Narragansett misckquatash “boiled whole kernels of corn.” Used by 1793 in New England in reference to a dish of boiled corn and green beans (especially lima beans).”
And very tasty it is, tooβas well as fun to say. π
I love all these comments I can learn from, thank you.
You also brought back deeply buried memories from my childhood. I didn’t remember Sylvester Cat any more. I just thought poor old Stallone must have eaten lots of corn and beans but then I saw the video you linked. π
Ok y’all, today ith my birthday and thith potht and all the commenth have juth made my day (I’m looking at you Duckie) – THANKTH!!
Happy day, Puddleglum! If you celebrate with a drink, don’t use giant-sized cups! That’s one of my fave scenes in The Silver Chair, btw.
Happy Birssday, Puddleglum! π π
Happy Birthday, Puddleglum. And thank you, Duckie, for your poem – fantastic! And to the rest for the education.
Iβm in awe.