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Shave and a Haircut

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Re: Shave and a Haircut

#81

Post by QuercusMax »

InitialLastName wrote: post #75
mchaver wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole of the US would be hard since national level news and culture is what is getting exported, but local knowledge by state/region is a possible source. Like pronunciation of location names pronunciation (like pronunciation of Tilamuk Oregon, Miami Oklahoma, etc.), songs and chants for university sports teams, and jingles and phrases from local commercials. Rock Chalk...

The pronunciation of Chili, NY is an immediate way to ID anyone from the Rochester area.

...of course it's pronounced "Chye-lie".

I can't talk, though, I come from Ohio where we have a city named "Versailles" that's pronounced "vur-SAYLES".

Re: Shave and a Haircut

#82

Post by WalterBright »

Two bits meaning 25 cents came from an early practice of cutting a Spanish silver dollar into 8 pieces with four cuts.

That's also where "piece of eight" as a reference to the Spanish dollar comes from.

Re: Shave and a Haircut

#84

Post by [deleted] »

scelerat wrote: post #76

I like the variation where the note for "hair" is played a half step flat. In the example on the wikipedia page, the implied chords for "shave and a hair- cut" would be (original) G / . C G shave and a hair cut (variation) G / . Eb7 D7 shave and a hair cut

[deleted]

Re: Shave and a Haircut

#85

Post by munificent »

bitwize wrote: post #62
buildsjets wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoy watching recent Seattle arrivals attempt to pronounce Mukilteo, Sequim, and Sekiu. I grew up in Long Island, New York, and there used to be a radio commercial for a local insurance company that bagged on national competitors for not being able to pronounce Ronkonkoma. Other local place names that were difficult for some to pronounce, mostly indigenous language derived, were Quogue, Patchogue, Cutchogue, Yapha…

Louisiana has a long list of place names like this. New Orleans street names alone have standard pronunciations, many of which are not obvious especially if you've seen the name in other contexts. Then there are the city names like Plaquemines, Natchitoches, and even New Orleans itself (if you say "new or-LEENZ" like Chuck Berry you will be immediately flagged as an outsider). I reminded my wife of Natchitoches every…

I grew up in New Orleans and now live in Seattle, and all of my intuition for pronunciation is just totally broken.

In many places, if you see a "weird" (as in non-English-seeming) place name, a reasonable pronunciation guess is to just assume it's from a Romance language and pronounce it vaguely Spanish/French-ish. This works because so many foreign names that are common in the US that aren't obviously Anglo/Germanic are from Spanish, French, or Italian immigrants.

New Orleans screws that all up, though, because it has such a complex intertwined cultural history. In New Orleans, place names often have a pronunciation that is explicitly weirder and sort of the opposite of phonetic. You mentioned "Natchitoches", which is pronounced locally like "Nackodish". There is no reasonable algorithm that would take as input the spelling of a place name in New Orleans and output its pronunciation.

So my usual algorithm for pronouncing an unfamiliar name is, "Guess that it's like a Romance language and if not assume it's completely weird and unrelated to the spelling."

But Native American-derived names in the Pacific Northwest often confound that. They don't have Romance vowels or emphasis at all (for obvious reasons). And the pronunciation often is very close to the spelling. (I assume that's because the spelling came along so much more recently here in the PNW than on the East and Gulf Coast, and hasn't had as much time to drift.)

My dumb algorithm for pronouncing PNW placenames is "Imagine an American who's never even heard of a European country much less visited one, and have them pronounce the name phonetically." And it works surprisingly well!

For example, "Mukilteo". If you try to throw some Romance flair onto it, you'd get "Muh-KILL-tey-o", which isn't right (but does sound charmingly exotic). It's anybody's guess how that would be pronounced if it were a street in New Orleans. Maybe "Mill-toe".

But if you imagine some hopelessly bored midwestern kid forced to read it out loud in school and not even trying to get it right and they'd go, "Muh-kill-TEE-oh" and... that's it.

Likewise, I kept wanting "Anacortez" to sound like some Spanish explorer "Anna CorTEZ". But, no, it's just "Anna-CORE-tiss". "Humptulips" is literally "hump tulips". "Chimacum" is "chim-uh-cum". "Snoqualmie" is "snow-quall-me". They all have the most vanilla-sounding pronunciation.

I admit that Sequim ("skwim") and Puyallup ("pyoo-A-lup") are weird.

Re: Shave and a Haircut

#86

Post by samatman »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #29
pavel_lishin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've definitely heard expressions that go something like, "Why you no-good, two-bit etc etc!", and never connected that to this until now.

Me neither! I always tentatively assumed it's about computer bits, where two bits would be "not much", and that somehow it entered into normie vernacular. So, TIL that this is another case of society and culture in the 19th and 20th century US evolving primarily around the stock exchange :o.

I suspect that "bit" for binary digit and "bit" as in "two bits" is a deliberate convergence more than pure coincidence. Tukey coined the term right after the war, which is a cultural high water mark for the term two bits. It doesn't hurt that "a bit" also means the least of something one might reasonably consider, this is where the bit as a sliver of the Spanish Dollar comes from in the first place, eight pieces being about as small as it was feasible to divide the coin into. Hence two bits for the quarter.

Re: Shave and a Haircut

#87

Post by StevePerkins »

samatman wrote: post #79
mkmk wrote: post #7

> The former prisoner of war and U.S. Navy seaman Doug Hegdahl reports fellow U.S. captives in the Vietnam War would authenticate a new prisoner's U.S. identity by using "Shave and a Haircut" as a shibboleth, tapping the first five notes against a cell wall and waiting for the appropriate response. With the mass export of western culture, I wonder if there are any songs, tunes, or patterns like this that would still…

For the US, "where does the shortstop play" is a pretty good one. Some people might get through K-12 without learning that, but surely not many.

I don't give a damn!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_on_First%3F#Sketch

Re: Shave and a Haircut

#88

Post by floren »

kcorbitt wrote: post #65
pavel_lishin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine they would have to be hyper-local at this point. You could authenticate someone from a major metropolis, maybe, but not likely the whole of the US.

I once interviewed a candidate for an engineering position in Seattle. It quickly turned out that he had fabricated his entire work history and education. My first clue was that he claimed two years of work experience at Costco HQ in Issaquah, Washington but he pronounced it as "Is-ACK" (the local pronounciation is "IS-uh-kwah"). No one who spent two years in Issaquah would ever pronounce it that way, regardless of t…

I'd say the Washington shibboleth should be "Puyallup"

Re: Shave and a Haircut

#89

Post by MBCook »

tanseydavid wrote: post #50
arp242 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood that either. It only took me about 30 years to get the joke.

This is the funniest scene in the entire movie IMHO. Roger's compulsive, uncontrollable need to respond with "Two Bits" kills me every time.

Right. As a toon Roger can’t not respond. It’s how Doom forces him to reveal himself.

Re: Shave and a Haircut

#90

Post by MBCook »

rsaz wrote: post #73
xxr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m interested in learning where you’re from—I’d assume outside of North America/Western Europe? I take familiarity with it so much for granted that it’s fascinating that someone’s familiarity with it comes from Narduwar.

I am from North America actually, I’m curious where your association with it comes from. I just spend a lot of time on youtube/listening to hip hop so have heard Nardwuar do it many times. I’m vaguely familiar with it otherwise too, but wouldn’t be able to place it anywhere.

I’m American.

It was in the movie Roger Rabbit, which came out when I was 5 (40 now). And I know I knew it then.

I assume I learned it from looney tunes or some other cartoon. But it was ubiquitous enough everyone knew it. To me it feels a little bit like asking how you know who Superman is. It’s just too engrained.

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