Minor point of difference. I heard it as "Persuasive is the ppropriate word."

W cld sv lts f tm f w ll jst drppd mr vwls.

Glad ta her it.... finally but even more mysterious is the missing "Vodka" and "Tomorrow" from this website.... where ya been boys?

I liked the version quoted in The Onion better.

What a baffling controversy. I watched the moon landing live, and clearly remember Neil Armstrong's first words. My thoughts were to cringe a bit for what seemed an obviously contrived statement.

Of course, given its historical importance, Armstrong HAD to say something pithy and memorable. It is just that it necessarily sounded staged and somewhat ponderous, I wished it could have been a little more jaunty and original. But hey, he had to think of the folks back in Houston and many people before him who made it possible. He was an aviator, not a writer or lecturer.

Never, never, in my hearing or recollection was the "a" missing in action. So where did this controversy come from?

I've seen this posted in several blogs. To the point where I have to say "So what?"

They found the missing "a". The guy was the first man to walk on the moon and people are obsessing about a missing letter. The missing "a" is about as interesting as a missing rivet on the lander.

I thought he said, "It's some kind of soft stuff. I can kick it around with my foot", but that oart was not transmitted to the TV viewers. That's my story.

The new version may be grammatically correct, but the old version sounded better and used better imagery.

The linguistics blog Language Log has several posts on Armstrong's a (or not) using spectrographic analysis, this being the kind of thing linguists do. And there's a link to the Shann Ford paper.

I think you can color the linguists skeptical.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl
/languagelog/archives/003632
.html#more

(sorry that breaks badly, rejoin the pieces without spurious spaces)

def not as a good a ring as the first way

Hello,

This is a great blog. I'm going to be sure to link yours to mine. Would you mind doing the same for me?

Thank you very much.

My site:
www.americanlegends.blogspot.com

Take care,
Mark