Fun with English.

-ee	eak/each	ight	ought/aught…	Notes
	wreak		wrought	Thinking about this is what started this whole table.
see	seek	sight	sought	Here’s a nice complete version.
	teach	[tight???]	taught	Variation of -ch and -k. All would have been like a Scottish or German ch back in the day (where BITD means late medieval period mas o menos).
may	[meek???]	might		(I’ll note here that “ought” seems like avoir in the French to have become merely an “ending” as a modal verb.)
buy		bight	bought	(Is this why Microsoft picked “Bing™” as their search engine name? Get that subliminal “Buy! buy! buy!” message in there.) I’m having trouble envisioning a semantic connection between “bight” and buying. Anyone?
vie (fie?)		fight	fought
	catch		caught
	think		thought	I suspect that an original -in- shifted to an -ee- , lengthening in compensation for dropping the n, but I may have it backwards.
	drink		draught	Aha! Why draught is spelt as it is!
	sink		shaft	Mining on the brain?
	bring	[bright???]	brought	Here, the -ink has softened into an -ing.
		light	laughter	I would love for these to be connected. Too good to be true?
plea		plight
flee		flight
knee		knight		Knights kneel to be knighted. “Kinn-nigget” isn’t a bad approximation of the BITD pronunciation.
[free???] fray	freak	fright	fraught	“Freak” is speculative because it’s awfully nouny, and everything in its column so far is solidly in the verb camp.

Blue indicates speculations. Red things that on semantic grounds don't seem to belong. I came up with this before (while?) falling asleep the other night. Its sense may be naught.

German exam today

...it went quite satisfactorily; at least, if the examiners get the same impression I did. This implies that I get my life back, for a couple of weeks at least, until studying for my next (i.e. last) exam commences.

I have been examined.

Hebrew exam yesterday. Interestingly, one of the few words from Hebrew with an Indo-European cognate is baĥan, "test, try, examine." It shows up in Greek as basanos, "touchstone," and the word came into English as "basanite."

The exam, meanwhile, went pretty well: the known passage was Job 1; the unknown Joshua 8. I don't think I had any majr screwups; I do have a small fear that I didn't go fast enough. Is it good or bad (or just a fact) that I got through more of the unknown passage in the allotted time than the known passage?

The grammar questions (about words in the known passage) went well, I think, though I was stumped by one of them.

Results by the end of the week.

Eliphaz the Temanite

This is not a post about Eliphaz (rich though that subject may be), rather it's about Temanites. "Temanite" is a gentilic, coming from the root YMN: you add some vowels and a t-prefix (that's a fairly common thing in Hebrew), and you wind up with Teyman. Now, "YMN" means, "right hand." YMN also shows up in "Benjamin": it's, etymologically, "Ben-Yamin," "son of my right hand." So the Temanites were some folks who lived in the south (relative, of course, to the Hebrew speakers who dubbed them this), because the directions are given relative to the facing sun.
This right-hand/southpaw duality, of course, explains why Sandy Koufax pitched left and batted right.

Idiosyncratic pronunciations

Everyone's entitled to a few: I pronounce Norbert Elias's last name the same as Patrik Elias's. Then there's that bicycle part which is acceptably called in English a "derailer" or by its French name "derailleur" (pron. de-rie-ehrr). And I continue to call by the bastardized pronunciation of "dee-ra-lure."

And the sandal companies: Chaco and Teva. They want to rhyme with "taco" and "B-F-4eva" but for god's sakes, they're freaking sandals. Chaco rhymes with Waco, Teva with beaver (show your New Jersey roots!).

I used to think that bedraggled was the condition one was in when one arose from bed, hence "bed-raggled" (a pronunciation I still occasionally use, particularly when I can use that word to describe myself). A case of a false etymology leading to a wrong pronunciation.

Pony up with yours in the comments.

Premature Epistolation

n. phrase. The act of inadvertently sending an email while not yet completed or attachments not yet attached. May cause feelings of embarrassment, shame, etc.