About That Name
I know, you probably didn’t follow that link from Instapundit just to find out what on earth the name “Xrlq” refers to. Nevertheless, a few people have emailed to ask, so I’ll address it here.
“Xrlq” is nothing more than a very unusual spelling of my first name, Jeff. It is my answer to George Bernard Shaw’s amusing, but factually incorrect, observation that the rules of English orthography are so haphazard as to permit the word fish to be spelled “ghoti.” For those unfamiliar with “ghoti,” Shaw’s rationale was that the letters -gh are often used to form the f-sound, as in tough, rough, or enough. The letter o is rarely pronounced like the short i in fish, but it is used that way in women. Finally, the ti- forms an sh-sound in words such as cautious or ratio. So there you have it, fish can be spelled ghoti, right? Well, actually, no, it can’t. Both ti- and -gh are highly sensitive to their environment, i.e. the ti- sequence must immediately precede a vowel to be pronounced “sh,” and the -gh sequence must immediately follow the vowel to be pronounced “f.”
Thus, according to the real rules of English orthography, the most likely pronunciation of ghoti is “goaty,” or possibly “gitty.” Shaw casually glossed over these inconvenient facts to make his point. I say, if we’re going to break some rules to make a point, why not break all rules and come up with something even sillier than “ghoti?” The rest is history.
August 13th, 2003 at 6:29 pm
Narrowing the Field
In my Ah-nuld satire, I have him say there are “nearly two hondred candidates” for “Guffernor” on the recall ballot….
February 6th, 2004 at 12:25 pm
Unemployment Drops To 5.6%
WSJ.com - Payrolls Grow by 112,000 Jobs As Unemployment Rate Drops This is a surprisingly sour report given that the unemployment rate dropped to 5.6% and the economy created 112,000 new jobs. The jobs number didn’t “meet expectations” and the…
April 1st, 2004 at 5:42 am
Following the damnum logic
At some point, Jeff, emphasis on the eff as in effing break, decided he knew more about language than George Bernard Shaw. Shaw, mind you. Based on this brilliant welf-assessment, he picks random letters and expects the entire blogosphere to…