Sorry for the random post. I was wondering: Is there a methodical approach to roughly calculate the number of syllables in English?

@Louis What do you mean? As an average? The sum of all syllables in all words?

@terdon I meant distinct units of sound or letter arrangement that produce a syllable. I ask after being able to easily count the number in Japanese in minutes.

@Louis Ah, in terms of sounds produced, not words. Do you mean phonemes or syllables? Either way, that sounds like a decent question for Linguistics.

Yo yo.

@terdon I think phonemes are too primitive, I looked there but found in English there are only 40 or so. In the language that made me wonder what the English equivalent was, let's imagine there are 5 vowels and 5 consonants. A row x column grid is what this group of speakers are agreed to use giving 50 sounds (in double in practice with some equally simple modifications).

But in looking at phonemes I don't think they mattered here, yet clearly all languages share the idea produced by this consonant x vowel grid.

I thought the idea was "syllables".

@Louis It may well be, I don't know. Cerberus or tchrist probably will.

sorry for the grammar mistakes, let me know if my meaning wasn't clear!

@Louis Your meaning is fine, I just don't know any more than you do :)

i meant to say 5 vowels and 10 consonants, would give 50 sou/nds in a grid.

okay heheh

i snuck home to eat a pizza and reply

in between some IPAs

The iOS app needs work

Yes, I was thinking the IPA would help. But it's phonemes really, not syllables.

@Louis Not sure what you mean, but there are many more phonemes than 5 consonants and 5 vowels.

You should try asking this on the main site.

And there are more possible combinations: V, VC, CV, CVC, CCV, CCVCC...

@Cerberus I think he's trying to get an estimate of the number of different syllables as in pa, ba, po, bo. Not entirely sure what the definiton of a syllable would be here but that's the general idea.

Well, then there are a lot more than 5x10.

How many distinct syllables exist in the English language. Taking into account the differences in dialect, the number is probably ridiculously large and possibly impossible to define.

a, ap, pa, pap, pra, prast...

Ugh, exactly.

@terdon Exist, or are possible?

But either way the number will be very large.

Exist I think but it's not my question.

OK.

Still much larger than 50.

I think the 50 was just an illustrative example.

I will be far larger anyway...

Ask!

a way!

:-)

This chat is dead.

@Cerberus You will be far larger? LOL.

@JasperLoy Is it your picture?

@IceGirl When I was 16, lol.

OK

I should go to bed soon. I did not sleep last night.

ok rest well

No particular reason.

I was reading up on the difference between ELL, ESL, EFL and ESOL, LOL.

@snailboat what the devil is this lucubration?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 "buckram" means too formal; stilted.

@snailboat Has seppuku ever been committed by Westerners? Is it a common thing in Japan, even today? I have heard that some crazed nationalist died by seppuku in Japan.

@username901345 Hi. :)

:18095106

That's this message

Replies work if you type something after the colon-number reference.

Buckram is a stiff linen -- I've never heard it used as an adjective.

:-)

Er... yes. (Mods aren't restricted by an edit time limit :-)

you earned that privilege

@snailboat Just for your information:

Just as anymore, today, nowadays, insofar, however, and legalese’s whereso were all once written as separate and then for a time hyphenated words, I do wonder when moreso will become an acceptable spelling of more so. It’s technically pleonastic in most of its uses, though, so this might keep it at bay for a while yet. A picky copy editor will blithely s/more so/more/ on sight, and so too will they s/moreso/more/ as well.

Less picky ones might just s/moreso/more so/, but you don’t always want an unpicky copyeditor; else why bother?

And yes, this is the first time I’ve come up for air in like days. Very busy with an imminent release. It was supposed to all go to QA by COB yesterdaddy, but as so often occurs with these things, that didn’t happen and so we shall all be working round the clock through the weekend in preparation.

This is just me waking up slowly with coffee after getting my first full night of sleep the entire previous work-week.

I feel like that adverbial expression of time needs some sort of durable preposition conjoining it to some structural element. Oh well. Today no longer needs one, nor cis-( but not trans-)Atlantically do Saturdays.

@tchrist I refuse to let a job endanger my health anymore.

I refuse to let anything endanger my health.

I refuse to let assholes endanger my mental health anymore.

hi

@StoneyB hello

long time no talk mr?

@snailboat Thank you for for sharing that snailboat. And nice username! Clearly I was looking for an answer to something that I think is answerable, but too naive to be able to phrase the question. I think mora is closer, but still too complexly or not well defined enough to describe the units I thought these languages had (in its wiki, even in its general case, the editors left us with item 3 that seems ready to explode away from that section).

If we carried on with the tradition of naming the indivisble with words that end in "ons" then these sounds I was thinking of would be counted in them.

Sounds actually used...like you point out with wi, we.

@tchrist what is you regex for float?

[+-]?\d+(?:[.,]\d+)?(?:[eE][+-]?\d+)?

^ is what I have now

@JohanLarsson Hm. I think I have a couple of them.

I think all of yours are > mine

hacked it with TDD googled but did not find something I trusted

There should be some SO answer of mine with this.

was looking for an SO answer with 500+ upvotes

oh, that would be a trusted source

[TestCase("1", 1)]
[TestCase(".1", .1)]
[TestCase("-.1", -.1)]
[TestCase("1.2", 1.2)]
[TestCase("-1.2", -1.2)]
[TestCase("1.2E+3", 1.2E+3)]
[TestCase("1.2e+3", 1.2E+3)]
[TestCase("1.2E3", 1.2E3)]
[TestCase("1.2e3", 1.2E3)]
[TestCase("1.2E-3", 1.2E-3)]
[TestCase("1.2e-3", 1.2E-3)]
public void DoublePattern(string s, double expected)
{
    Assert.IsTrue(Regex.IsMatch(s, Parser.DoublePattern));
    Assert.AreEqual(expected, double.Parse(s, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));
}

Well, then check a bleedin dictionary and show us!

@tchrist insta +1, the title of the question should be edited to be easier to find on google

probably the entire question, edit it to fit your answer imo

Which is highest voted question in Stack Exchange(all sites)?

I have seen with 8764 votes up

and answer to that question have 13283 votes up!

> base-10 exponent into $7

(?<name>...) > comment imo

comments for explaining what is nonobvious

nvm, continued reading

@Freddy Almost certainly whichever is the highest voted on Stack Overflow. The regex html one probably.

> Ok fine, I typed all the others in without any syntax errors either, but I’ve been doing this for a while.

@terdon Yes see this!!

I have, that's a great answer.

And question.

I'm saying that the highest voted on the network is almost certainly the highest voted on Stack Overflow whichever that is.

And it's that one, yes.

@terdon Rubbish.

@JohanLarsson That named subexpressions exist is not comment-worthy.

@tchrist I know. Mind you, having read the definitions, I can understand how one can still be confused about it but as it stands, the Q is clearly general reference.

> phoneme: A phonological unit of language that cannot be analysed into smaller linear units and that in any particular language is realized in non-contrastive variants. Also attrib. See allophone.

He should be asking his professor if his text confuses him, not us.

',' is comma but what is '.' called? point | dot | period?

I know, I'm just saying that I would understand if the question were something like "I've read this definition but I don't understand what "linear units" are in this context.

@JohanLarsson U+002E is variously called full stop, period, dot, or decimal point. Note that it may be realized as a raised decimal point when text figures (read: non-lining or lowercase digits) are used.

public static readonly string DoublePointPattern = @"[+-]?\d*(?:.\d+)?(?:[eE][+-]?\d+)?";
public static readonly string DoubleCommaPattern = @"[+-]?\d*(?:,\d+)?(?:[eE][+-]?\d+)?";

@snailboat ^:)

You’re playing with fire with those commas; on your head be it.

pretty ugly

When you see an ugly painting, do you blame the paint or the painter?

The lighting, usually.

I blame me for this

lucifugous

still prototying

do you know this?

@tchrist you mean thousand separatrors?

@snailboat reticulated ...do you know this?

A numeric leading sign indicator is [\N{PLUS SIGN}\N{MINUS SIGN}\N{HYPHEN-MINUS}].

@JohanLarsson That’s not what you’re doing there.

If they were actually thousands-separators, so to speak, they would be grouped by triples.

$real_rx = qr{ (   # start $1 to hold entire pattern
    ( [+-]? )                  # optional leading sign, captured into $2
    (                          # start $3
        (?=                    # lookahead for what next char *will* be
            [0123456789]       #    EITHER:  an ASCII digit
          | [.]                #    OR ELSE: a dot
        )                      # end lookahead
        (                      # start $4
           [0123456789]{1,3}       # 1-3 ASCII digits to start the number

@tchrist yeah I'm not allowing it

Your pattern thinks that ",203948230948230948" is a number; most people would disagree.

@snailboat Kinda. This one is much better in that regard, since now you name your abstractions:

use 5.010;              # Perl got named patterns in 5.10
$real_rx = qr{
  (?<real_number>
    # optional leading sign
    (?<real_number_sign> [+-]? )
    (?<pre_exponent_part>
        (?=                         # lookahead for what next char *will* be
            [0123456789]            #    EITHER:  an ASCII digit
          | [.]                     #    OR ELSE: a dot
        )                           # end lookahead
        (?<pre_decimal_point>
            [0123456789]{1,3}       # 1-3 ASCII digits to start the number

That way you can later ask for the submatches by name instead of by random numbers.

That is how not to write an ugly regex.

AH.

They are somewhat new as these things go.

Java has them also.

However, what Java does not have is “callable” subexpressions, which allow you to do anything any other recursive descent parser can do:

use 5.010;              # Perl first got regex subs in v5.10
$real__rx = qr{

    ^                   # anchor to front
    (?&real_number)     # call &real_number regex sub
    $                   # either at end or before final newline

  ##################################################
  # the rest is definition only; think of         ##
  # each named buffer as declaring a subroutine   ##
  # by that name                                  ##
  ##################################################

That allows programming your regex in a traditional top-down fashion.

A calls B and C. B calls D, E, and F. C calls G and H. Et cetera ad infinitum.

It is one of the very few things typically called by the term that genuinely merits being known as a “paradigm shift”.

If you squint, it looks rather like a BNF grammar.

@snailboat I'm passing in a culture info. Looks like this now

Not super important, will probably only use parsing in tests :)

Evening!

I found the following sentence: <someone> removed their assignment -- can anyone explain me what's the role of using their word here?

It's called "singular they".

It's gender-neutral, and can be used for male or female someones.

@AndrewLeach I see, thank you!

There are many questions with the [singular-they] tag for more info.

english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/singular-they

Interesting information. It's the first time when I see this usage.

Thank you so much!

@MattЭллен if you think you can take offence, then I must tell you that you think wrong. I for one am not giving it to you.

I only have onfence left anyway. None of the off stuff.

@Cerberus but what about all the horse-porn people? I'm afraid you will need to relativilazify your statement.

This^ reminds me of a drive-by shooting :D

@AndrewLeach: english.stackexchange.com/a/199963/4972

The edited version is worthy of being converted to a comment Can you do that?

room topic changed to English Language & Usage: English As She Is Be[ing John Malkovich]spoke [Jonze] (no tags)