This was posted in December of last year, but the poster failed to include an interesting quotation, so I feel the article failed to leverage its market value in likes: During World War II, some United States soldiers in the Pacific theater used the word lollapalooza as a shibboleth to challenge unidentified persons, on the premise that Japanese people often pronounce the letter L as R or confuse Rs with Ls; the word is also an American colloquialism that even a foreign person fairly well-versed in American English would probably mispronounce or be unfamiliar with.[10] In George Stimpsons A Book about a Thousand Things, the author notes that, in the war, Japanese spies would often approach checkpoints posing as American or Filipino military personnel. A shibboleth such as lollapalooza would be used by the sentry, who, if the first two syllables come back as rorra, would open fire without waiting to hear the remainder.[11] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
Posted on: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 17:40:18 +0000