The Pernandle

[vakkotaur]

Pernandle - The gear selection control for an automatic transmission. (From "P R N D L" the listed selections on such a control.)

I don't recall how long ago it was, but it was a while ago now, a station was showing re-runs of Green Acres before or after the news or such. One show had Oliver Douglass (Eddie Albert) trying to teach Lisa Douglass (Eva Gabor) how to drive. At one point Oliver is a bit bewildered when Lisa says something about "the pernandle." Pernandle was simply what the selections for the automatic transmission read out as: P R N D L.

This became an in-joke of sorts in our family. A manual transmission had a gearshift and an automatic had a pernandle. I find that I still make that distinction. A few days ago jmaynard and I were talking and somewhere in the conversation I said "...the pernandle..." and he asked, "The what?" After I explained, he then said, "Most people would call that the gearshift." And if it were on a manual transmission, so would I. But it was on an automatic, so it's a pernandle. Even if L has been replaced by 2 1.

Comments

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

3 2 1, in my Chevy Cavalier. :}

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I always heard it as...

Park
Reverse
Neutral
Drive
Low

[rillaspins.livejournal.com]

Hey, I was always told that "R" stood for "race".

Gee, between this, exploding cigars and glowing eyes, you had quite a colorful childhood.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

And I haven't even gotten to the laser (in 1972), the air horn, the 15 thousand volt transformers, the DC generator, the er.. maybe I best not mention some things.

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

We allways pronounced it PRIN-dl.

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

A few years ago I referred to that (does it have an official spelling now? I remember the pronunciation on the Green Acres episode as being /p'r NÖN d'l/...I don't know how to get the funky diacritical marks for "short oo" in HTML), and was highly amused that irpooh caught the reference.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

We probably morphed it a bit away from the accent-laden version used on the show. I don't know if there's a standard spelling, but I'm going what I have as it seems close to pronunciation with current spelling rules

[irpooh.livejournal.com]

I'm sure the writer of that script had no idea that "Purrnurnduhl" would become part of American vocabulary... however - after the original airing of that episode (yes-I watched the original airing) it became the term for that thing sticking out of the floor or steering column in a car with an automatic transmission.