phoneticist

A musical was involved, and not just any musical — “My Fair Lady,” the American blockbuster about the caustic British phoneticist and the cockney flower seller.

Translation is very much the point: as the subtitle suggests, the setting is a language lab; Professor Higgins has become Professor Karpathy, not an English phoneticist but a Hungarian one; and there are three Eliza Doolittles, each played by different actors.

"Thank God I'm a professional phoneticist," he says.

Old Phoneticist Bernard Shaw himself, attempting to set down Eliza's cockney, accent, gave the whole thing up as a bad job after four lines, and implied that the reader should use his imagination.

At the same time, an incipient fight broke out on the other side of the arc of tables between the head of the language department at Mallorysport Academy and a spinsterish amateur phoneticist.