Bubbly more Punchel

Under a new experimental mobile-phone-based ticket scheme, buses* in one part of Britain will, a spokesman told us on telly, be able to "leave more puncherly" .

I don't record this either to complain or to mock - but merely to illustrate an aspect of spoken language that has been operating for millennia: words and phrases built up of what were once significant syllables and sounds tend to become simplified and modified to make them easier to speak - though often with the original meaning lost.

In this way, our phrase 'will not' has become 'won't', and 'can not' became first 'cannot', and then 'can't'. Many children say 'probly' for 'probably', because they quite correctly think that that is what their parents say. I remember as a small boy hearing a companion of mine say "bubbly hink" for 'probably, I think'. Similarly the prayer 'May God be with with you' has degenerated into the simple 'Good-bye'. Have you ever wondered what a bad bye might be like ? And now we say 'Bye-bye'.

Lorenzo, in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, greets Jessica (once Launcelot has left him and Jessica alone together) with the words "How cheer'st thou, Jessica?". In later times the conventional greeting becomes "What cheer ?", and in later times still a mere "Wotcha !".

So the four-syllable 'punct-u-al-ly' has, for most of us, become a three-syllable 'punk-cher-ly'. Often the 'k' sound is dropped to make 'puncherly', and the next phase will perhaps be a two-syllable 'punchly': indeed, it is probly in use already.

* Even buses were once 'omnibuses': omnibus being the Latin word meaning (in this context) 'for everyone'.

Bubbly more Punchel