cavalry

I've had that happen too, cathari. Thanks to a friend of mine, to this day I have to think twice before mentioning NYC's Chrysler Building. She always called it the Chevrolet Building. :-)

seanmeade: You know, I never had trouble with the difference when I was little, until my dad had told me so many times about his own tendency to mix them up that I started mixing them up as well. Confusion can be horribly contagious like that.

Not to worry. I added a reference at yacht. Besides, how can you be confused? This is Wordie, where discussions can pop up darn near anywhere! :-)

No matter. I just like the phrase "unfamiliar guttural spirant." :-)

Wait! Why's this on the cavalry page and not the jaeger or yacht page?
*is confused*

Ooh, well... I like that about Dutch.

Actually, though Dutch and German are closely related (as languages go--I don't mean that they're the same language, of course), "jacht" is a Dutch spelling/origin, and "jaeger" (I can't make umlauts on this computer very easily) is German.

Hate to be a pooter parpy...

Unfamiliar guttural spirant, eh? But then, what can you expect from a language which considers the letter sequence ijk to be legitimate? Rijksmuseum - a word which, quite frankly, triggers nauseum.

Funny, sionnach--when I looked for the etymology of yacht, I found this in the OED Online: "Owing to the presence in the Dutch word of the unfamiliar guttural spirant denoted by g(h), the English spellings have been various and erratic; how far they represent varieties of pronunciation it is difficult to say." Then it lists these spellings: yeagh, yoath, yolke?, yaugh, yuaght, yought, y(e)aught, yaucht, jacht, yach, yacth, yat, yott, yatcht, yatch.

Which really makes your head hurt if you read it too quickly.

I think the jaegers would be on the jacht.

Cavalry units captured at Yorktown and Gloucester included "Simcoe's and Tarleton's legions" and the "Hereditary Prince's regiment of horse."

Simcoe and Tarleton were stationed at Gloucester, I believe, which is directly across the York River from Yorktown.

(See also jaegers for a comment about the German-speaking troops with the British at Yorktown and Gloucester.)

must remember difference between cavalry and Calvary ;-)