just an interesting thought that hit me as i was reading up on anthropology and the power of rituals in the construction of authority:

why is autochthonous pronounced as autoch-thonous rather than auto-chthonous, which, surely, given its etymology (autos, greek for self, and chton, greek for earth) should be more "correct"?

also, why should agnostic be pronounced ag-nostic rather than a-gnostic? (a - prefix meaning 'without', gnosis, greek for knowledge).

anyway it does warn me against amateurish attempts at reconstructing etymologies from a) pronunciation and b) what we are used to in normal english consonants (which do not usually include sounds like chth, zd, gn, or ps, like say, greek.) and i did actually try searching for 'autoch-' as a greek root before realizing that "-chthonous" looked similar to the word "chthonian".

i also stumbled upon an interesting article online insisting (and making a lot of sense) that the word forte in english should be pronounced in the french way (i.e. like 'fort') rather than italian (i.e. 'fortAY') because the etymology was french. after all the modern definition of the word is "strong point" which is the meaning in french, and not italian (where it means 'loud'.)

and then there is the whole esplanade (rhyming with spade) esplanade (rhyming with marquis de sade).

and also nonchalant. (non-shel-ont? non-chair-learnt?)

words are, as always, fascinating.

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AH FUCK i'm just bored by stupid anthropology, which waffles endlessly about symbols and power and witchcraft. GGRRRR.