Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club! On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 23:23:41 -0400, L.D. Best wrote: > Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club! > Peter, > Are "ass" and "arse" *actually* pronounced the same in Oz?? No, that's the point. "Arse" sounds much more like the German word for the same thing, "Arsch". It's the US dialect that makes the animal and the body part have a similar sound, like the "-ass" in "grass". > Peter Lawrence wrote: >> <snip> >> "PITA" than on your conflation of "ass" and "arse", probably one that >> arose from misspelling after a pronunciation shift made them sound the >> same in US dialect. > 'cuz they are not in the US, not in any regional dialect I've learned > .... and I can understand all -- except a strong Cajun one. Maybe there was once a similar sound that separated again? > I think it more likely that the use of "ass" instead of "arse" is of UK > origin, similar to my use of pixx instead of the vernacular for urine. I doubt it, since it isn't used that way in the UK at all. PML. GST+NPT=JOBS I.e., a Goods and Services Tax (or almost any other broad based production tax), with a Negative Payroll Tax, promotes employme t. See http://member.netlink.com.au/~peterl/publicns.html#AFRLET2 and the other items on that page for some reasons why. -- Arachne V1.77+/B~5 Arachne at FreeLists -- Arachne, The Web Browser/Suite for DOS and Linux --