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barbara beeton
barbara beeton
12:20 AM
@AlanMunn -- no direct tex connection. there are three invited guests, all involved with text, fonts, books, publishing, ... : robert bringhurst, kevin larson (microsoft reading technology), and chuck bigelow (fonts). today's talk was by kevin larson. he and chuck have just put together a 50th anniversary issue of visible language; they invited me to contribute an article on how the publication of mathematics has changed over the past 50 years, with tex as the centerpiece.
(cont'd) dick palais is the co-author. the issue went to the printer on july 15, and should hit the streets in september.
 
cfr
cfr
12:33 AM
@barbarabeeton It is not 4 ls. It is 2 lls. An ll is not a double l. It is a distinct letter.
@egreg Thank you. But ... er ... why? I only posted it in the hope somebody would produce something better. (I could actually use the deletion version, but it doesn't actually answer the question.)
@barbarabeeton Diolch yn fawr!
@barbarabeeton @AlanMunn I thought they renamed the place to be less long. (I can't think why as it is, so far as I know, the only thing for which it is famous. But that's what I'd understood.) I wonder if it still has a station.
 
Nick
Nick
1:01 AM
I have 30 mins to typeset a beautiful project description for an exhibition stall. Any suggestions?
 
barbara beeton
barbara beeton
@cfr -- oops! apologies and thanks. clearly i need to pay closer attention to the orthography rules.
 
Nasser
Nasser
1:21 AM
I am trying to compile large file, which compiled OK in TL 2015, and now I get this strange error:

Overfull \hbox (3544.12767pt too wide) detected at line 48296
[]
[473
! Huge page cannot be shipped out.
\@EveryShipout@Output ...@Org@Shipout \box \@cclv

l.48325 \verb
           |$Aborted|
?

I am using command lualatex file.tex and when I look at the file, I see nothing strange around line 48325. I googled this error, but so far no idea about it. ANy one here saw this before? I'll keep looking...
 
Nick
Nick
:D I did it. Yay!
 
cfr
cfr
@barbarabeeton Welsh has a whole bunch of letters which look identical to sequences of 2 letters. (ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh, th etc.) Makes dictionaries more fun!
 
barbara beeton
barbara beeton
1:37 AM
@Nasser -- if it's a "huge page", it certainly was started long before l.48325. the intended page would have been 473, so if you can determine where p.472 would have ended, you can start looking there. then you might copy the material from there on into a separate file, and debug that.
@cfr -- that's an impressive list, especially as it ends with "etc."! i shall look up the "rules" when i get home. yes, dictionaries must be fun! are these pseudo-sequences given distinct unicodes?
 
cfr
cfr
2:02 AM
@barbarabeeton The etc. is really just in case I forgot one :(. I've no idea about the unicodes. I doubt it. I expect that unicode just treats them as it treats pairs of English letters. Linguistically, that's wrong. But technology doesn't have a particularly strong track record when it comes to recognising the existence of Welsh. (Or its idiosyncrasies. I remember trying to contribute to a Welsh translation of an interface, but it kept asking for translations if individual words!)
@barbarabeeton Mutations make dictionaries even more fun, of course .... Before you can even think about the correct section and sort order, you need to figure out the dictionary form of the word .... Cat, for example, might appear as cath, gath, nghath or chath.
 
Nasser
Nasser
@barbarabeeton thanks. I found the cause of the problem. When I remove geometry, the error goes away! Very strange. I am posting a question now on this. I see nothing on line 473. This file is about 60,000 lines. Can't make MWE so I have to put a link to the Latex file. It is self contained.
I think this is a bug somewhere. Why removing geometry makes the error go away? Never seen this before.
 
 
6 hours later…
egreg
egreg
7:42 AM
@cfr Albanian has the same problem: ch dh gj ll rr sh xh (and some others I don't remember)
 
 
2 hours later…
Maïeul
Maïeul
9:19 AM
I have a question about counter associated with \insert
When we do \newinsert, (La)TeX automatically create counter, right?
should it be possible that a later \newcount override this count?
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
9:31 AM
@Maïeul no \newcounter avoids counters previously allocated. That's teh whole point of the allocation macros.
@Maïeul it doesn't really create a counter (the count registers exist already) it just adjusts the upper bound of the available registers for \newcount, \newbox etc.
 
Maïeul
Maïeul
that is what I thought, but I have a strange case in reledmac: depending wether I make a \newinsert before or after a \newcount, it is able to find insert data… or not
and if not able, the output routine does not ouput the insert box, and so there is a infinite creation of page
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Nasser why can't you make a MWE? (it's _always possible to make an example that's smaller than the document that first shows the error)
 
Maïeul
Maïeul
that is very strange
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Maïeul the log file shows the value allocated at each \newxxxx so you should be able to check that the same number isn't allocated twice. (if it is, check that you are not loading etex.sty which is the usual culprit in that area)
 
Maïeul
Maïeul
yes, I have thought to look on the log file
but if I have a \insert197 should it significat that I should not have \count197 ?
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
9:48 AM
@Maïeul yes if \newinsert and \newcount have both allocated \count197 that would be bad.
 
Maïeul
Maïeul
ok
I have to do a script to analyse the log file
I would do it tomorrow night
and maybe coming back here
is it the same for \skip, \write, \toks?
\dimen?
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Maïeul note there are three different sets of allocation macros. latex prior to 2015/01/01, latex after 2015/01/01 and etex.sty so if you suspect a bug you need to check which is being used.
 
Maïeul
Maïeul
ok
I use latex after 2015/01/01 without etex
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Maïeul \newinsert allocates a count,dimen, skip, box so other register types not affected in same way
 
Maïeul
Maïeul
yep
I would do it tomorro
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
9:52 AM
@Maïeul then you use an allocation system that must, by definition, be bug free:-)
 
Maïeul
Maïeul
because it is yours ? :-)
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@Maïeul of course
 
Maïeul
Maïeul
I see ;-)
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
10:48 AM
Yay TUG meeting!
 
egreg
egreg
@PauloCereda Are you in Toronto instead of working on your thesis?
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@egreg I wish I could be there, although I am really afraid of them mooses. :) Thesis is... well... going... :)
 
egreg
egreg
@PauloCereda I believe that moose are like fish, as far as the plural is concerned
@PauloCereda It should be meese, of course, if English was consistent. ;-)
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@egreg ooh. :)
@egreg :D
@egreg: today is the day of my city's patron saint. :)
 
egreg
egreg
@PauloCereda Which one? Anne or Joachim?
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
10:57 AM
@egreg Anne. :)
@egreg: but I didn't forget her husband in our song sheet. ^^ :)
 
egreg
egreg
@PauloCereda :)
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@egreg It looks my church will get a lot of .tex files in its archive from me. :)
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@PauloCereda the picture on the left all done with picture mode and judicious use of \circle{..} ?
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@DavidCarlisle It was featured by tcolorbox, which I am afraid relies on TikZ. :)
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@PauloCereda you'll never get into the CofE using TikZ
 
barbara beeton
barbara beeton
11:12 AM
@PauloCereda -- concentrate on your thesis. in toronto, no moose -- you have more to worry about from the trolleys (and so would any moose silly enough to wander in).
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@barbarabeeton I will, thanks. :) Have a great time too. :)
@DavidCarlisle What's CofE? :)
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
@PauloCereda well its headquarters are in Canterbury, not Rome:-)
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@DavidCarlisle ooh
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@DavidCarlisle ooh I was thinking along the lines of the Archbishop of Canterbury. :) (@JosephWright: Blackadder reference)
 
barbara beeton
barbara beeton
11:23 AM
thanks, @Paulo. time to go to breakfast.
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@barbarabeeton Yummy! Have fun!
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
12:09 PM
@PauloCereda yep he's the boss
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
12:19 PM
@DavidCarlisle :)
 
cfr
cfr
@egreg Interesting. I assumed that some of the most closely related languages might be similar, but I don't know anything about Albanian.
 
cfr
cfr
12:34 PM
@barbarabeeton The trolley problem.
@PauloCereda ^^ Guaranteed Moose-Free.
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@cfr oooh :)
 
egreg
egreg
12:55 PM
@cfr I did some research a few years ago, with an aborted project for babel support. The full list of digrams is dh gj ll nj rr sh th xh zh. Of course, Albanian ll is completely different from Welsh.
 
Maïeul
Maïeul
1:08 PM
@DavidCarlisle there is indeed a problem
here the log
and here the list of problem \insert
I will try tommorow nitght to make a MWE from reledmac code
 
cfr
cfr
@egreg Yes, sure. It is because it is very different that it seemed especially interesting. (If it had mutations as well, though, that would be positively weird.)
 
 
2 hours later…
Ulrike Fischer
Ulrike Fischer
2:54 PM
@Maïeul @DavidCarlisle As far as I can see the \newinsert are in a group and I have a faint recollection that this can lead to problems ...
 
Maïeul
Maïeul
should I push a \global before it ?
no, does not change anything
I will send it to David
a MWE
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
3:10 PM
@Maïeul no, just don't do allocation in a group, plain and latex allocation has never supported that.
@Maïeul although actually mostly it uses global allocations so it probably could be made to work, I'll look...
@Maïeul perhaps \extrafloats could have an extra \global....
 
Ulrike Fischer
Ulrike Fischer
3:45 PM
@Joseph: To avoid that you waste your time looking: the biblatex option problem is probably due to catoptions.
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
@UlrikeFischer Ah, that would do it, yes
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
4:08 PM
@cfr Now it's my turn for a little pedantry. It makes no sense to call digraphs (sequences of letters that correspond to single phonemes in the language) also letters. Letters are part of orthography not part of language per se. So the letter sequences correspond to single units of sound in the language, but they are not themselves letters. There. I'm done. :)
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
@AlanMunn :-)
@AlanMunn I think this has come up before ;-)
@AlanMunn I was thinking of 'th' vs. eth/thorn in English
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
@JosephWright Yes, I think so too. :)
@JosephWright Right, English has a few itself that it didn't even need, eth and thorn were perfectly fine. I blame the Normans. But we also have 'ch' and 'sh' and sometimes 'dg' although we have 'j' for the but not consistently.
@JosephWright But spelling reform is a very tricky issue in general.
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
@AlanMunn :-)
@AlanMunn I thought the feeling on eth/thorn was they got dropped when we started importing printing presses to the UK from continental Europe, but you are the linguist!
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
@JosephWright I don't know the history of the loss of if, but you don't see it much in the Middle English period at all, so I think that the substitution of it predates the rise of printing.
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
@AlanMunn Like I said, I bow to your knowledge here
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
4:22 PM
@JosephWright Well don't bow too low in this case. :)
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
Quaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack
 
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
 
cfr
cfr
4:38 PM
@AlanMunn This has definitely come up before ;). If by 'letter' you just mean 'a single continuous mark on a page', then, sure. But, these are letters in the usual sense of 'letters'. Other digraphs represent single sounds in the language, but that does not make them letters. Those don't behave as letters. These do. For example si is, I think, a digraph. But it is 2 letters. si comes before sy if sorting, for example, and there is no Si section in a dictionary. si is 2 in crosswords.
@AlanMunn To put this another way, it is simply a matter of conventional orthography that these are written by combining two marks into a letter rather than using a different single mark. Is there a technical linguistic term which would be more appropriate than letter? They are not simply phonemes, for sure. Phonemes don't mutate or resist mutation in the same way, for example. And dictionaries don't tell you phonemes are letters or treat them as such.
 
egreg
egreg
@cfr We have digraphs/trigraphs representing single sounds also in Italian: “sc/sci”, “gli” and “gn”, but they're not considered as single letters as far as collation is concerned. Also “ci” and “gi” can represent a single sound.
 
cfr
cfr
@AlanMunn Of course, you could say: these are just digraphs but the Welsh have completely bizarre rules for sorting, dictionary creation etc. and a really misleading alphabet. (Leaving mutations aside since you might write those off as bizarre regardless.) So then you have to say, in a Welsh dictionary, words are not sorted according to letters but, rather, according to a sequence which includes all the letters and a proper subset of digraphs. And rewrite the mutation rules, of course.
@egreg We have those, too. Nobody suggests they are letters. Even ngh which acts in some ways as a letter (c can mutate to ngh, whereas mutations otherwise involve changes from one letter to another or one letter to nothing) is not considered a single letter. It is 2 letters: ng followed by h. And it is sorted as ng followed by h. So ngh would come after nga but before ngw, whereas nga comes after gy but before ha. (G Ng H)
 
egreg
egreg
4:58 PM
@cfr A complicated language needs complicated sorting rules as well. ;-)
 
cfr
cfr
@egreg My point is that unless 'letter' just means 'single continuous mark on page' (which doesn't work, but still), these are single letters. If all you mean is that, then, sure, @AlanMunn is correct. But that is just trivially true. And that is not what 'letter' means in ordinary usage. (Not around here, anyway.) So it is some technical sense. That's fine, but when I say that ng is a single letter, I obviously don't mean it is a single letter in that technical sense.
 
egreg
egreg
@cfr The example of Albanian shows Welsh is not the only language using a different notion of letter. In Czech, the letter “ch” comes after “h” in sorting. Croatian has “dž”, “lj” and “nj” that are considered single letters and are sorted after “d”, “l” and “n” respectively.
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
@cfr Yes probably. :) But this is probably more right than not. It's really a quirk of English that we've decided not to sort using (roughly) phonemic sequences rather than strict letter sequences. It would be just as logical to sort all the 'th' words together but we just happen not to do it. And the digraphs are phonemes, as far as I know.
 
cfr
cfr
@egreg Indeed. Ch is a distinct section of the dictionary, though it does come after C. And in sorting, ch comes after cy.
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
@cfr But it's only our English bias that makes this seem odd I think.
 
egreg
egreg
5:12 PM
@cfr I guess it's a question of tradition; Italian “sc” should be considered as a single letter, but it isn't for sorting purposes. But in primary schools the signboards for teaching the letters do have special ones for “sc”, “gl” and “gn”.
 
Nasser
Nasser
Can some expert write us a Latex package that does similar thing to this new cool toy add-on by Microsoft Word? :)
"Microsoft just made it way easier to write a research paper with Word
This month, Microsoft is adding a new Researcher feature to Word. As the name implies, it's designed to make research paper writing a lot easier.
Researcher uses Microsoft's Bing Knowledge Graph to query content from the internet and then pull it straight into Word"

WOW ! Is this a threat to Latex? ;)

http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/26/12283814/microsoft-word-researcher-editor-features
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
@Nasser We can call it the Plagiarism Plugin™.
 
cfr
cfr
@AlanMunn My point is that you could say this. But you don't have to. It is much, much more convenient to use a different concept of letter. Or we could use a new word which was neither letter nor digraph/phoneme. As I say, these Welsh does not treat most digraphs this way. We don't sort iw as a unit or ts or si or ...
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
Clippy risen from the dead. You seem to be writing a research paper. Do you need some help?
 
Nasser
Nasser
"If you're a student using Office 365 then Researcher is available immediately, and Microsoft is planning to bring the feature to mobile variants of Office in the future."

So nice from MS to make this free for students.
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
5:16 PM
@cfr Yes, I understand. And hey, I did warn you I was being pedantic. :) But people already confuse letters and sounds, so I guess adding yet another version of what letter is to my mind makes things worse not better.
 
cfr
cfr
@AlanMunn Isn't it also English bias to insist there cannot be a category of the kind which exists in Welsh? What if I say that I am talking about llythrennau and you are talking about letters. I think this is true. Perhaps letter is just the closest translation, but not perfect, as llythren is the closest translation, but not perfect.
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
@cfr Fair point. Yes, absolutely true. To be fair, I'm not denying the category per se, just the appropriation of the English word 'letter' to denote it.
 
Nasser
Nasser
@DavidCarlisle I found a work around. Just removed some macros I was using related to breqn package and the error went away. I could not make MWE, too complicated. I am sure there is a bug, but I do not think any one else will see this bug, since my file is auto-generated. Very strange, but since I found work around, did not want to waste people time on this.
 
cfr
cfr
@AlanMunn And I am doubtless attempting to out-pedant you. Believe me, the confusion you would cause by insisting that the are really just digraphs would be ... As I say, the mutation rules are already enormously complex. This would increase that complexity exponentially.
@AlanMunn That's why I asked earlier if there was a better term. letter is the best I know. It is much closer than digraph or phoneme. But is there a better translation for what I think of as a llythren in Welsh. (Which is, incidentally, not in the L section of the dictionary, but the Ll one and would follow be sorted after llyty if there was such a word, which there is not that I know of.)
@AlanMunn Also, llythren is subject to mutation. But l doesn't mutate ever. In a crossword, this would need 6 squares.
@AlanMunn Also, your use of letter does not reflect the way letter is actually used by English speakers around here. In that sense of letter, what I said to @barbarabeeton is absolutely true. Anybody would deny that the name contains 4 consecutive ls. So I deny that my claim is false, even in English. Probably letter is ambiguous. Or, better, it is a 'family concept' like game. (No necessary and sufficient conditions but a set of paradigmatic characteristics which all have some of.)
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
5:39 PM
@cfr Ah, so now it's a case of dialect variation in English. Fair enough. :)
 
cfr
cfr
6:02 PM
@AlanMunn I thought you might like it ;).
@AlanMunn But, seriously, is there a better word? Welsh dictionaries and grammars always seem to use letter but is there a less ambiguous technical term?
 
cfr
cfr
6:18 PM
@AlanMunn Actually, one of the Welsh grammars I have stresses the claim that the alphabet consists of distinct letters (so ll and l are distinct letters). One describes the alphabet as consisting of letters and (presumably some subset of) digraphs. One dictionary says nothing. Two others describe them as consonants. One of these describes the alphabet as consisting of letters and combinations of letters. (So ll is one consonant / one 2-letter combination.) The other skips the alphabet. ;)
A third grammar uses 'consonants' and adds tsh to the alphabet. However, all of these are describing Welsh in English. Certainly in Welsh classes, they are llythrennau. @AlanMunn
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
@cfr Not that I'm aware of, but writing systems is not something I know much about. [When I was active on the newsgroup sci.lang there was someone there who was (but was also a professional troll).]
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
6:48 PM
TUG in Rio?!?!
 
cfr
cfr
@AlanMunn I don't even know what to call the linguistic entity the letter-or-whatever represents. The OED talks about alphabets as sets of symbols representing letters ... or sets of letters ... or .... All of a sudden, I no longer know what letter means ....
@PauloCereda Gwac?
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@cfr Insider news from TUG. :)
It looks like South America is now included in the tour. :)
@cfr: I cannot reveal the details, but it was "von iPhone gesendet". :)
 
David Carlisle
David Carlisle
7:15 PM
@JosephWright The last talk before lunch (probably a strategic placement, otherwise Frank would continue for hours and hours)
what a thing to say ^^^ :-)
 
Paulo Cereda
Paulo Cereda
@DavidCarlisle ooh Alice
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
@cfr Well part of the problem is that although most alphabetic systems are roughly phonemic (including Welsh) the correspondence is almost never pure. I don't know enough about the phonology/orthography of Welsh to know if there instances of two-letter (in your sense) combinations in Welsh that correspond to a single phoneme. I guess the diphthongs fall into such a category, but are there any consonant examples?
@cfr BTW I really the like crossword example though, it makes the issue crystal clear.
 
 
2 hours later…
Joseph Wright
Joseph Wright
9:14 PM
@DavidCarlisle Yes, I saw that
@PauloCereda Indeed: Alice = xor2 :-)
 
cfr
cfr
@AlanMunn Not really. They are mostly either vowel combinations or consonant+vowel combinations.[With the help of the web], sh occurs in some words and sounds like si (i.e. both sound roughly like the English sh in shop). This is apparently a sibilant. The list also includes tsi or tsh as an affricate (I was giving this as ts earlier). However, the ts only occurs in clearly borrowed words e.g. Tsieina for China. It even (unofficially??) 'mutates' to a borrowed letter j.
@AlanMunn Also, I guess, ngh is a combination of ng and hbut this is 2 sounds. (c mutates to ngh in certain contexts, to g in others and to ch in others).
 
Johannes_B
Johannes_B
@egreg Do you think this is a valid change? en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=LaTeX/…
 
egreg
egreg
@Johannes_B Not really. You could add the version with the trailing dots that should be \sqrt[n]{1+x+x^2+x^3+\dotsb} (assuming amsmath). Also \ldots should be \dots in the “ending” version.
 
cfr
cfr
@AlanMunn Hmm.... In a way that e.g. the divisions of the dictionary doesn't? Or the sort order? All word puzzles I've seen are like this. Word searches, crosswords and, of course, Scrabble. (Scrabŵl??)
 
Johannes_B
Johannes_B
@egreg So, leaving it as is is ok?
 
egreg
egreg
9:21 PM
@Johannes_B No.
 
Johannes_B
Johannes_B
@egreg I meant, as it was. Removing the recent change.
 
cfr
cfr
@AlanMunn I haven't checked, but I bet the Scrabble instructions talk about values of llythrennau and not llythrennau and digraphs ;).
 
egreg
egreg
@Johannes_B No, \ldots is wrong. If nothing else follows it should be \dotsb; if +x^n follows it should be \dots.
 
Johannes_B
Johannes_B
@egreg So i'll change to +\dots+x^n.
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
@cfr No, the divisions in the dictionary too, but somehow little boxes are more visceral evidence. :)
 
egreg
egreg
9:24 PM
As you are on that page, please change x \equiv a \pmod b into x \equiv a \pmod{b} or people will type \pmod 29 and scratch their head after seeing the result. All the parts “it can be done without amsmath” should be removed.
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
@cfr I'm sure it does. Do you ever play Scrabble in Welsh? I'm assuming the letter values are quite different (apart from the extra letters).
 
cfr
cfr
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
@cfr Nice! And with some clear digraph-cum-single-letter tiles!
 
cfr
cfr
@AlanMunn I have. Yes, they are a bit different ;). Not to mention the 'missing' letters, of course.
 
Johannes_B
Johannes_B
@egreg choose and over? More?
 
egreg
egreg
9:29 PM
@Johannes_B I saw those.
 
Johannes_B
Johannes_B
@egreg Three pending changes in the review queue of ... somebody. Thank you.
 
egreg
egreg
@Johannes_B I mean: any document with non trivial math must load amsmath
 
cfr
cfr
@AlanMunn I thought it made really clear why 'around here' letter might well mean something a bit different! The BBC write-up is a bit misleading/confusing. I kind of doubt that Ll ended up on tiles because it occurs more frequently than Dr! Also, their example mutation is most unfortunate since they give yn Gymraeg but yn would mutate C to Ngh here. The G is because there is a hidden y which causes the G.
 
Johannes_B
Johannes_B
@egreg Maybe even mathtools :-)
 
egreg
egreg
@Johannes_B Not necessarily, but nowadays it's not a problem, just a couple of seconds for loading it. What really disturbs me about mathtools is that it uses its own cooked expl3 look alike functions.
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
9:46 PM
@cfr Yes, I agree. Your description is much clearer. The mutation issue is interesting, but I wonder how often it arises in the game. The little bit I know about the contexts of mutation is that they are largely across word pairs, i.e., particular words cause mutation of initial consonant of the following word. Are there also word internal mutations, i.e., adding a prefix mutates the stem? (The example in the BBC text seems to imply so.)
@cfr Since Scrabble doesn't allow phrases, most of the mutations wouldn't arise. But the interesting case would be if I place an unmutated word down, would it be legal to add a mutating prefix? Technically no, I guess. Interesting if true. Must make the rules book an interesting read... :)
 
egreg
egreg
10:44 PM
@JosephWright Another problem with family_i in biblatex: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/321119/capacity-exceeded-error
 
 
1 hour later…
cfr
cfr
11:50 PM
@AlanMunn Yes, In fact, prefixes almost always cause mutation if the first letter of the prefixed word is subject to mutation at all. As the BBC says, mutation will be much less common in Scrabble because only Cymraeg would be permitted (though I though proper names were excluded anyway), whereas Gymraeg, Nghymraeg and Chymraeg also occur frequently in ordinary usage. My point was that their eg of a mutation which wouldn't be relevant to Scrabble is a confusing one qua eg of mutation.
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
@cfr Right.
@cfr So prefixes are then going to be impossible to use on any mutating consonantal word unless the whole word is constructed.
 
cfr
cfr
@AlanMunn For word pairs, they can also occur where one word is hidden. That's why the example of the can't-happen-in-Scrabble is bad. The BBC suggests C -> G following yn. But, actually, it is C -> G following y. yn Gymraeg because Cymraeg is feminine and y causes a following feminine noun to undergo soft mutation. yn causes mutation when it means in, but not soft mutation. yng Nghaerdydd: C -> Ngh.
@AlanMunn Yes. Precisely.
 
Alan Munn
Alan Munn
@cfr This must lead to interesting strategy. I think I would have great fun playing Welsh scrabble if only I knew Welsh. :)
 

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