|
Comments:
Zuzu - 2004-10-06 01:29:15 Dear Zuzu, or, as I suspect, "Zuzu," welcome to the blog and thanks for reading. Yes, after pondering this microscopic tidbit of news all day (you have to do *something* on those long bike rides) I've concluded that Chiron was, if not/in addition to the name of the Stygian boatman, the name of a wise centaur--wasn't it?--who appeared in the John Updike novel "The Centaur,", among other older places. Yes, I meant to say "Chiron" is the company name, sorry to express that confusedly.* * * * * * * * * * * * tom - 2004-10-06 10:54:27 From your friendly Department of Totally Useless Information, Charon was the boatman on the River Styx.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-10-06 11:02:51 Now, Tom, look how useful your information actually is--you cleared up the whole question. Yes--you're right, it was an a, not an i. OK. Thanks Tom.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-10-06 15:26:25 This mistake is especially interesting from a linguistics viewpoint. Every time a mistake like this is made, or every time you're trying to remember a word but remember only that it starts with a P and ends with a D, or rhymes with "stasis" or whatever, it gives you a hint of how words are stored in your brain--either in clumps of words that are organized by their intial and final sounds (p---d) or in rhyming groups. In this Chiron-Charon example, it's clear that in my brain at least words are stored based on the prominent consonant sounds, and vowel sounds are deprecated in the "filing system." Quite interesting. So there's a cluster of words in my head somewhere that's the "ch-r-n" group. * * * * * * * * * * * * add your comment: |