Monday 15 February 2021

" 'isawfully decen' uv you..."













Next Time: Please Hold transcript? I hope.

7 comments:

Dave Kopperman said...

Dave is second to none at making exposition go down painlessly. Only other comic writer I can think of who comes close to that seamless info dumping is Grant Morrison.

Michael Grabowski said...

Is there an agreed-upon pronunciation for Hsiffy? I don't remember if it's in the audiobook.

Jeff said...

Huh-siffee.

I think. Only Dave kuhnos, and he ain't sa'in'.

Birdsong said...

The H is silent. If you acknowledge it at all it's perhaps the same way you say some Russian words by making a V with your mouth but not quite saying it. My Russian is rusty but the best example I can remember is "within the last year" or simply "last year" which you can only get close to in English "v proshlom godu" (yesteryear) or "predydushchiy god" or less formal "proshlyy god" (last year). You don't say the V, you just mouth it like you're about to say it, top teeth on the lower lip and then onto the PR. This is probably only noticeable to the hard core Russian teachers I had in the 1980s. They would say things like, "Where's your Vvv!" because of their life-long use of the language. And then they would harp on the need for that V, (looks like a capital B, but the same size as lower case letters) saying it needed to be there because you mean something that happened in or came from the previous year. I kept wanting to harass them about not being able to say "window". "It's Window, not Vindo, you commie bastard!"

Anyway, you probably don't need the "Huh" bit at the beginning.

Now, is it "HArass" or "harASS"? Discuss.

Jeff said...

Huh-RASS. Thanks for playing; here's your parting gift.

Jeff said...

Yeah, no, Mr. B, you don't say it with a full-formed "huh". It is, as you wrote, somewhat "preformed"; that is, the "huh" part just is elicited as a sound, rather than a word.

But they were definitely not Siffies. They were: small, soft soundin haitch, followed by "Siffies". A terrifying force.

RSS said...

Ptarmigan!