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00:00 - 18:0018:00 - 00:00

6:00 PM
@CopperKettle Umm... I think this typo is not very rare!
@snailboat A dog that is ready to attack!
 
@DamkerngT. LOL (0: Gods barking in Russia.. (0:
 
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Kyan kyan is like English yap, yap
 
@CopperKettle Hee!
 
Anonymous
Which dogs also do
 
@snailboat Oh!!
 
Anonymous
6:01 PM
Well, I suppose dogs make all sorts of sounds...
 
Anonymous
But what's interesting is how the onomatopoeia varies with time and language
 
Hey, Thai dogs go "ngum-ngum", something similar to English "nom nom", when they are biting!
 
Anonymous
Dogs in Japanese used to go byō, byō
 
user116848
They are dogs after all!
 
Anonymous
Five hundred years ago
 
user116848
6:02 PM
Bark! Bark!
 
When they howl?
 
Anonymous
But then wan wan took over
 
Ahh
 
Actually @DamkerngT. Spartan speech was described as laconic. It is a cool word.
 
Small dogs do "tyav-tyav" (тяв-тяв) in Russia sometimes
 
Anonymous
6:03 PM
@DamkerngT. Hmm, a howl is more like ウォーン?
 
user116848
Coyotes make very scary sound I hear.
 
Anonymous
Onomatopoeia is a complex topic! :-)
 
I think one of the most varied animal sounds across languages is the sound a rooster makes.
@CopperKettle Interesting!
 
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Oh!
 
Anonymous
That's kokekokkō!
 
Anonymous
6:05 PM
 
It's เอ้กอี๊เอ้กเอ้ก (ek-ee-ek-ek) here!
 
In Russian, "kookarekoo"
 
Anonymous
I don't know what other sounds they make.
 
Anonymous
Actually, cock-a-doodle-doo is the only one I can think of in English
 
@CopperKettle Pretty close to Japanese!
 
Anonymous
6:07 PM
I know another sound they make but I don't know how it's written in English
 
@DamkerngT. yes (0;
 
Anonymous
Hee
 
I'm pretty sure that it was made by Thais. :D
 
Anonymous
Roosters don't lay eggs! Let alone egg-e-egg-eggs
 
6:08 PM
:D
 
user116848
 
Anonymous
I mean, I'm not a chicken sexer, but it's got quite a wattle
 
Anonymous
A caruncle, y'know.
 
Anonymous
(Word of the day?)
 
6:10 PM
caruncle is new for me!
 
Of the week
 
For me too!
@DamkerngT. Unless its a good uncle who lets you drive his car, of course
 
LOL!
 
Or asking him caruncle?
His wife would be your carauntie
 
6:14 PM
Oh, I took some time to look up reduplication at Wikipedia. It's easy-peasy.
 
Anonymous
Tha's right!
 
@skullpatrol Heh (0:
 
Anonymous
Anyone can do it!
 
Does reduplicate mean the same as redouble?
Or is it like recopy?
 
Anonymous
Etymologically yes
 
Anonymous
6:18 PM
Reduplication is a technical term in linguistics, though
 
Anonymous
Redoubling would be slightly strange in its place
 
Anonymous
Despite having basically the same meaning
 
Anonymous
Honestly, I don't know why linguists go for reduplication
 
Anonymous
It seems like duplication would be enough :-)
 
You can redouble your efforts, but can you reduplicate them?
 
Anonymous
6:19 PM
@CopperKettle Not really.
 
So times four?
 
"With reduplicated efforts we arise against redundancy"
 
Can we rereduplicate?
 
Anonymous
@CopperKettle Rise up!
 
Anonymous
Rise up against redundancy!
 
6:22 PM
@snailboat Thanks!
@skullpatrol We can easily. Or peasily. But not easily-peasily. (0:
 
Join the Spatans!
 
Anonymous
@CopperKettle Most people know the phrase easy-peasy-Japanesey
 
@snailboat That I didn't know!
 
Dirt on kneesy?
 
6:24 PM
:D
 
Anonymous
6:38 PM
0
Q: Could the English language be learned purely by observing written texts?

CuriousWebDeveloperThis is a much higher level and more difficult question than what is characteristic of this site, but I think it is an interesting question about learning the English language (albeit in an abstract manner). If our species went extinct, would it be possible for an alien historian, perhaps a lang...

 
I would utter a resounding yes.
 
Anonymous
They could start with the human race's rather large collection of picture books!
 
Anonymous
They could reconstruct the spoken language from books on linguistics.
 
The Hebrew was revived, with English it would be easier
 
Anonymous
6:40 PM
At least with well-documented languages
 
Anonymous
Of course, we're losing languages all the time …
 
user116848
Yeah, for example the languages from the Old Kingdom of Egypt. Very hard to interpret even for scientists.
 
user116848
BC period.
 
user116848
They would mainly use diagrams rather than written words.
 
"I must admit translating Elvis into Sumerian was not easy, but it was an interesting experience, and I learned a lot in the process. "
http://www.helsinki.fi/science/saa/sumercd.html
 
Anonymous
6:46 PM
Hieroglyphs are phonetic
 
Anonymous
There has never been a comprehensive writing system that is not phonetic in nature
 
Anonymous
Although many scripts include some pictographic elements
 
Anonymous
Scholars used to believe hieroglyphs were purely pictographic and didn't represent sound
 
Anonymous
But that turns out not to have been the case
 
Jukka Ammondt is a Finnish literature professor who has recorded popular music, including songs of Elvis Presley, in Latin and Sumerian. Jukka Ammondt is a professor of literature in the University of Jyväskylä, Finland with a Ph.D in philosophy. In 1992 he recorded a single consisting of tango songs sung in Latin. 1993 he recorded the first record Surun Siivet, Latin versions of tangos by songwriter Toivo Kärki, and later the same year another album, Tango Triste Finnicum, for which he gained international recognition. In 1995 Ammondt recorded an album The Legend Lives Forever in Latin, Latin...
 
Anonymous
6:48 PM
Champollion demonstrated that they were phonetic in nature almost two hundred years ago
 
Anonymous
Still, even today, it's popularly believed that hieroglyphs are pictographic in nature
 
@snailboat Interesting. What about the Aztec writing system, I wonder
 
user116848
So in that case how do they allocate sound (phonetics) to the figures/pictographics ?
 
Anonymous
@CopperKettle Same thing―partially phonetic
 
Anonymous
@Farooq Metaphor
 
6:49 PM
oh
 
user116848
@snailboat So it is not real?
 
Anonymous
Chinese characters too have some pictographic elements, although 95% of them represent sound
 
Anonymous
@Farooq Which they are you talking about?
 
Anonymous
The people who came up with them in the first place?
 
Anonymous
Or the scholars trying to figure out what sounds they represented?
 
user116848
6:50 PM
@snailboat Scientists who come up with the sounds for ancient diagrams/figures?
 
Anonymous
@Farooq Oh, okay, I misunderstood your question
 
Anonymous
The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts (with some minor differences among them), it provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Although it is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple, possibly at nearby Sais, the stone was probably moved during the...
 
Yep, the famous Rosetta Stone.
Did it have clues at to the pronunciation, I wonder.
 
Anonymous
Well, Egyptian didn't exist in a vacuum
 
Anonymous
6:53 PM
Coptic or Coptic Egyptian (Bohairic: ⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙ̀ⲛⲭⲏⲙⲓ met.rem.ən.khēmi, Sahidic: ⲙⲛⲧⲣⲙⲛⲕⲏⲙⲉ mənt.rəm.ən.kēme, Greek: Μετ Ρεμνχημι Met Rem(e)nkhēmi) is the latest stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written in the Coptic alphabet – an adaptation of the Greek script with some letters inherited from Demotic – in the 1st century CE. The new writing system became the Coptic script, an adapted Greek alphabet with the addition of six or seven signs from the demotic script to represent Egyptian sounds the Greek...
 
Anonymous
But it's true that we can't figure out phonetic details precisely for extinct languages
 
user116848
nods
 
oh
" Coptic belongs to the Later Egyptian phase which started to be written in the New Kingdom."
 
Anonymous
But you'd be surprised how much we can figure out :-)
 
Anonymous
A lot of the time we can figure out phonological details more than phonetic
 
Anonymous
6:55 PM
And then it's a matter of speculation as to how exactly the ancient phonemes were articulated
 
Anonymous
But that's not entirely guessing, either―
 
Oh, this reminds me of Zardoz.
 
Anonymous
Historical linguists can trace sound changes across time and figure out what kinds of sounds are plausible to reconstruct
 
And Contact.
And Voyager.
 
Anonymous
What are these things?
 
6:58 PM
Movies.
 
Anonymous
Oh! I haven't seen them yet
 
Zardoz is a movie, Contact is both a movie and a novel.
Voyager has Golden Record of "Greetings From Earth".
In case any other intelligent beings out there want to hear our languages.
> English: Hello from the children of planet Earth
> Thai: สวัสดีค่ะ สหายในธรณีโพ้น พวกเราในธรณีนี้ขอส่งมิตรจิตมา­ถึงท่านทุกคน
(Hello friends from farland. We in this land have sent you warm greeting to you all)
 
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Oh, that Voyager!
 
Anonymous
That's why you didn't italicize it? :-)
 
The one and only!
Yup!
 
7:06 PM
We have a joke about an old american Indian who asks lunar mission astronauts to record his message in case they find anyone on the Moon.
 
Oh, those Lunarians!
 
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. In Japan, rabbits live on the moon.
 
Anonymous
In English speaking countries, a cow jumps over the moon.
 
Anonymous
And I suppose mice live on the moon.
 
Ah, I think we got a similar idea. We also have "grandpa and grandma on the moon" too!
 
Anonymous
7:08 PM
@DamkerngT. Moonparents!
 
I don't know if Russians have anyone or anything "living on the moon".. I don't recall
 
Anonymous
How wasteful! A whole moon, no one living on it …
 
user116848
@CopperKettle Although they are the first ones to go to moon ;-)
 
user116848
just kidding :D
 
But there's a good song by a rock group Nautilius titled "The man on the moon"
@Farooq No, they missed that object (0:
 
7:10 PM
@snailboat They grow rice in the moon!
 
Americans beat us to it
 
user116848
@CopperKettle hehe!
 
Anonymous
Air's first album was titled Moon Safari
 
A beautiful wistful song.. the author of the song says that only the man on the moon understands him. The man on the moon pours him some moonlight liquor from up above, and they both drink.
 
@CopperKettle Nice melody!
 
7:13 PM
Yes (0:
 
user116848
So you guys know Youtube is banned here?
 
Anonymous
I didn't
 
user116848
We all use Proxies
 
@Farooq Really? ALL of Youtube?
 
Oh!
 
7:14 PM
Wow.
 
user116848
Yeah, it has been three years.
 
For what reason?
 
user116848
@CopperKettle Yep, all of it.
 
user116848
@CopperKettle Um...You know religious issues. But many people hate the fact.
 
user116848
Me including. I am all music and videos :-)
 
user116848
7:16 PM
So we use proxies etc.
 
@Farooq They must hate it. I hope there are some domestic versions of YouTube (0:
 
user116848
Yeah, there is a domestic version of it which sucks bad :)
 
Some sites have been banned in Russia too, but it's easy to evade, a simplest proxy, say in the Opera browser, allows you to visit the sites (0:
Now there's danger of Facebook being banned.
And strangely of Wikipedia, but less danger than with Facebook
 
user116848
Yeah, here in the past they said they'd ban facebook too in my opinion.
 
user116848
I don't know.
 
user116848
7:18 PM
I am not a facebook user though.
 
Russian Govt. launched a project to create a Wikipedia alternative with "rightly written" articles.
LOL
 
user116848
@CopperKettle Nice :-)
 
user116848
Before the Youtube ban I had my own channel :-)
 
@Farooq It could end up well, at least some people will be hired to write this Encyclopedia.
 
Anonymous
I don't really use social media type sites
 
7:20 PM
@Farooq You recorded videos?
 
@CopperKettle Interesting!
 
@snailboat Yes, they are time wasters, one should be wary of them.
 
Anonymous
Unlike Stack Exchange chat.
 
Anonymous
We're all work, all the time 'round here.
 
Anonymous
No time sinks in sight.
 
7:21 PM
@snailboat (0:
 
user116848
@CopperKettle Uh, no. But all my subscriptions etc. were lost.
 
@Farooq How could they be lost? Your registration should remain there.
 
user116848
@CopperKettle Yes it is there. But with proxies we can only watch videos without logging in. We can't log in with a proxy.
 
@Farooq Oh, I see. YouTube doesn't like proxies.
 
user116848
nods - True.
 
7:23 PM
@Farooq Oh, no!
 
Anonymous
Hey, didja ever come up with a 10-minute writing topic, @Farooq?
 
Anonymous
Or did anyone else?
 
Anonymous
I sure didn't.
 
user116848
@snailboat No, I didn't. But I will write it next time I am sure :-)
 
The last thing I watched on YouTube was a great documentary by BBC about Wilfred Owen.. filmed this year.
 
Anonymous
7:28 PM
Oh! That's a fun game. This is the last thing I watched on YouTube:
 
user116848
Internet censorship in Pakistan is government control of information sent and received using the Internet in Pakistan. Pakistan made global headlines in 2010 for blocking Facebook and other Web sites in response to a contest popularized on the social networking site to draw images of the Prophet Mohammad. In general, Internet filtering in Pakistan remains both inconsistent and intermittent, with filtering primarily targeted at content deemed to be a threat to national security and at religious content considered blasphemous. == Overview == In mid-2012 Pakistanis had relatively free access to a...
 
Anonymous
 
@snailboat Looks nice!
 
Anonymous
It's the opening to a cartoon!
 
Yes, I've read: "Akatsuki No Yona"
 
7:29 PM
watching Looney Tunes theme song mixed with Rabbit Dance in Thai...
 
Anonymous
I really like the song.
 
@Farooq The Opte Project is interesting.
 
Anonymous
Yet another theme song that doesn't have a CD I can buy. (Yet!)
 
Anonymous
But I can listen on YouTube :-)
 
7:31 PM
@snailboat I remember that Akatsuki ~ morning.
 
Is music without words also a "theme song"?
 
user116848
@DamkerngT. yeah
 
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Close.
 
Anonymous
It means "dawn".
 
Ahh
 
Anonymous
7:31 PM
It's also a somewhat poetic word.
 
Anonymous
@CopperKettle Sure. Yeah. Maybe. I mean, kinda. Thing is,
 
Anonymous
Song's related to sing
 
I like a Japanese pianist called Keiko Matsui. Your clip reminded me of her music.
 
Anonymous
Classically, you'd call this a piece instead.
 
Anonymous
It has no words, so it's not a song, at least not by the old definition.
 
7:32 PM
Tune
 
Anonymous
But in the vernacular, song is a lot more common.
 
Anonymous
And theme piece is not a thing people say :-)
 
Melody
 
Anonymous
Simply theme would be fine
 
@snailboat Is there any time traveling involved?
 
Anonymous
7:33 PM
@DamkerngT. Nope!
 
Oh!
 
Anonymous
It's a fantasy story set in a fictionalized Korea.
 
Anonymous
@skullpatrol The melody is the part of a song you would naturally sing along with.
 
We are sometimes told that the Russian short cartoon "A hedgehog in the fog" is popular in Japan, but I don't know.
 
Anonymous
『霧につつまれたハリネズミ』(ロシア語:Ёжик в тумане / Yozhik v tumane)は1975年のソビエト連邦のアニメーションである。監督はユーリイ・ノルシュテイン、制作はモスクワのソユズムリトフィーリムであった。ロシア語のせりふは、同名の著書を著したセルゲイ・コズロフによるものである。2006年、ノルシュテインは同名の著書を執筆し、その中でノルシュテイン自身とともにコズロフを著者名に入れている。 本作は切り紙を使ったアニメーションであり、全体を覆う霧は、非常に細かい紙片を舞台上に置き、1フレームごとにすこしずつカメラに近づけていくことによって、表現されている。 日本では、『霧の中のハリネズミ』というタイトルのもと、2004年7月18日に『ユーリー・ノルシュテインの世界』というイベントにてノルシュテインの他作品とともに正式に上映された == あらすじ == ハリネズミ(声:マリヤ・ヴィノグラドヴァ)と、その友人の小グマ(声:ヴャチェスラーフ・ネヴィーヌィイ)の物語である。2人は毎晩会い、ビャクシンの小枝を炊いて温め、子グマのサモワールで淹れた茶を飲んでいた。2人は茶を飲みながら語り合い、星を数えていた。ある日ハリネズミは、子グマにラズベリーのジャムを持って行こうと決めた。その道中、森を抜けたところで、美しい白い馬が霧の中に立っているのを見つけた。霧はとても濃く立ち込め...
 
7:39 PM
Yep, that's it (0:
Wow, the same animator who did "Hedgehog" has been working on an adaptation of Gogol's Overcoat since 1983, and still hasn't finished the project.
 
Anonymous
8:06 PM
That's a long project!
 
11:20 PM
Anyone uncomfortable with the below sentence? A recent question here uses it. It's the second time in a few days that someone has used it. It is not idiomatic in English. An Ngram will show no or next to no usage, as compared with the sentence below.
A person on ELU asked if I was also squeamish about the above sentence. I have to admit I am not. But when I looked up above there were usage notes indicating strong disfavor for above in this exact sense. But that such a use is now 'standard'. I suppose my reaction to below sentence is similar to earlier resctio to above sentence?
*earlier reaction
 
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