took her words for gospel

The wheel-house is a small room or closet, with windows in front, built on the deck, in the forward part of the boat, where the helmsman stands to steer. The windows in the front of the wheel-house are for him to look out, and see where he is going. … There is a large wheel in this place, which is the reason why they call it the wheel-house. The wheel has handles to it, all around, for the man to take hold of, to turn the wheel one way or the other.

He saw the same pattern in the hamlet of Zawa on the edge of the Khotan oasis and not far from present-day Kaifa Qu. Poor soil, scarce water and a lack of irrigation technology prevented serious colonization. “If they want to increase the Chinese population,” Mannerheim wrote, officials “will have to take away land from the [Uyghurs] and give it to the Chinese.”

This pre-fortis shortening is most obvious in stressed monosyllables (i.e. single-syllable words) and is termed pre-fortis clipping. […] Listen to these sets of English words. Notice how pre-fortis clipping shortens the vowels.