English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:57 AM

@Cerberus only the rich are playing with that money in the first place so it is only redistribution among them.

It has been an aeon since last I had cause to use the past subjunctive of be inflected for the second-person singular in English.

Cerberus

@AndrewLeach See?

tchrist

Or rather, had been till just now.

Cerberus

2 hours ago, by Cerberus

And it may not have much effect: similar measures in America and Japan had little effect, they say.

@Mitch Nah, nobody was playing with that money; it will be created.

tchrist

@Mitch between

Cerberus

12:59 AM

@tchrist Why?

tchrist

@Cerberus Because I don’t use thou forms very often in English.

Cerberus

Only if you were generally disinclined to use the past subjunctive would I expect you not to use the second person singular.

Ah, that singular.

tchrist

When using the plural second-person pronoun to refer to a single person, you are also introducing a disagreement in number. Wert thou so sorely vexed by this "disagreement in number", surely thou wouldst here another pronoun have used. :) — tchrist 14 mins ago

Cerberus

Ah, better.

tchrist

> be Forms Past Subjunctive 7b. 2 sing. wert /wɛɚt/, /wɝːt/, formerly were. = OFris. wêre, ON. værir, OS. and OHG. wârîs, Goth. weseis. The final -t in Eng., formerly -est, -st, is on the analogy of the indic. Forms: 1–2 wǽre, 2–6 were; 6–7 werest, werst; 6– wert.

> C. 1300 Harrow. Hell 131 ― Were thou among men.
1535 Coverdale 2 Esdras v. 30 ― Though thou werest enemye.
Coverdale Ezek. xxviii. 6 ― As though thou werst God.
1611 Bible Rev. iii. 15, ― I would thou wert cold or hote [Wyclif, Coverd., Cranmer, Rhem. were, Genev. werest].
A. 1796 Burns ― Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast.

I would thou wert cold or hot.

What’s the Dutch?

Wait, you don’t use a Du form any longer, do you?

Cerberus

1:07 AM

We do not; du is long dead.

tchrist

Thought so.

Cerberus

Only in some expressions does it still live.

tchrist

Frozen phrases?

Cerberus

Yes.

Mijn en dijn.

tchrist

Refrains, aphorisms, proverbs — what have you.

Cerberus

1:08 AM

Or perhaps it is mijn en dein.

tchrist

Mine and thine, sure.

Cerberus

Yes.

I forgot what the exact history of our modern words was, jij and U.

I believe jij came from gij, which has the exact same status as thou.

tchrist

Can haz txt msjng?

Cerberus

But probably not the same origin.

Excuse me?

tchrist

heh

I would think jij cognate to ye.

Cerberus

1:10 AM

Perhaps gij is related to you.

I don't know, I thought jij came from gij.

tchrist

I was teasing about txtspkrz who write U to our fury.

Cerberus

G- in Dutch often corresponds to y- in English/German.

I am ignoring that line.

tchrist

The velar fricative wasn’t very stable.

Cerberus

Ginder.

Gist.

tchrist

Laȝamon

Cerberus

1:12 AM

What?

tchrist

Super-famous author of Brut.

Layamon

Layamon or Laghamon (US /ˈleɪəmən/; [ˈlaɣamon]), spelled Laȝamon or Laȝamonn in his time, occasionally written Lawman, was a poet of the late 12th/early 13th century and author of the Brut, a notable English poem that was the first English-language work to discuss the legends of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Layamon describes himself in his poem as a priest, living at Areley Kings in Worcestershire. His poem provided inspiration for numerous later writers, including Sir Thomas Malory and Jorge Luis Borges, and had an impact on medieval history writing in England. Print-era editors...

Cerberus

Ah.

tchrist

The [ɣ] sound tends to turn into [j] or [x].

Or just gets lost entirely.

The [ɣ] in Spanish agua is barely audible, because it has become more of an approximate than a fricative.

How this played out in English, Dutch, and German from whatever they’re calling Proto-Germanic these days differs depending on language and use/case.

Compared to the other two, Dutch has a lot of [x], or even [χ].

The Wikipedia IPA table gets fancier every time I look at it.

I guess the velar approximate in agua should be written [ɰ], although there is no fricative–approximate phonemic distinction.

Hm, that says that [ɰ] is in Dutch "a very rare pronunciation of /r/, distribution unclear." I know you’ve said Dutch has a zillion rhotic realizations.

Cerberus

1:43 AM

It does.

@tchrist I don't know, the sample doesn't sound specific enough to me.

Robusto

2:09 AM

@tchrist I'm finding that tú sounds almost like tow sometimes when I hear it. And b and v and l, when unstressed, can get blurred.

tchrist

2:25 AM

@Robusto Um.

First, the spelling of b versus v never ever ever matters.

However, there are two possible pronunciations, which depend on the position in the word.

The intervocalic version is a voiced bilabial approximate, so start with a voiced bilabial fricative and then don’t quite get there.

The version after an l or at the start of an utterance is essentially the same as the English version.

So in el burro it is a voiced stop.

But in el ave, it is not.

The Spanish u is not rounded the way it is in French. It’s just a regular [u].

You’ll probably have trouble hearing tú as NOT being du, because there is no aspiration.

@Cerb It is bizarre that nobody knows where bizarre comes from:

0

A: Etymology of "bizarre"?

The OED reports Littré’s Basque theory, but does not quite seem to believe it (bold emphasis mine): Etymology: mod.Eng. (17th c.), a. Fr. bizarre ‘odd, fantastic,’ formerly ‘brave, soldier-like’; cf. Sp. and Pg. bizarro ‘handsome, brave,’ Ital. bizzarro ‘angry, choleric,’ dial. Fr. (Berry) bi...

It seems to have first appeared in Italian in the Middle Ages. If it were Basque, you would expect to find it in Spanish or perhaps French, but you don’t.

I couldn’t be arsed to translate all the French and Spanish for folks, giving only compressed summaries.

Oh well.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I just misread terdon's pinned comment about the sexes of nouns as "The sexes of nuns have neither rhyme nor reason..." and I thought "Wait a minute. Pretty sure there was reason..."

tchrist

2:40 AM

heh

Bill Clinton will be glad to explain how nuns do not have sex among themselves. But he uses words funny.

tchrist

3:17 AM

-5

Q: I can learn Java but can't program it?!?! HELP

I have read a ton of books teaching me Java but i just can not program one single line. I know what import and public and all the basics are but like i said dont know when to implement it in the IDE. PLEASE HELP I want to be a programmer and i cant.

american-english

NB: That’s ELU not SO.

tchrist

5:31 AM

@Rob The 'soft b/v' is more like a b that doesn't touch than it is like a v that doesn't touch because you don't pull in the bottom lip towads your lower teeth. It's bilabial not labio-dental. If you use the fricative instead of the approximate that's good enough. But you musn't use the stop (our b) where the other is called for or you may confuse people.

The b/v become a true stop under a few other phonetic environments, places where the nonstop won't work like after a liquid or nasal. Con vaca or en botella have the 'hard-b' but la vaca and la botella don't. Voy thus sounds like boy in initial position, but not with a vowel before it like yo voy or no voy or si voy.

tchrist

5:48 AM

This mandatory reduction of intervocalic voiced stops (b, d, g) to the corresponding fricative and thence approximates is really hard for Germanic speakers, who lack those sounds. Closest perhaps is the soft-d like in cada or Toledo, being nearly our voiced th from the, but lighter. That is because all t/d sounds are further forward in your mouth in Romance, being dento-alveolar, and even just dental in some speakers.

A Beautiful Mind

Hello @mahnax.

tchrist

A good exercise is making minimal pairs using the formula ca?a, where ? is each consonant phoneme. carra, cara, cada, cava, caga, caca, casa, caza and all the rest. No schwas or reductions allowed: both a's pure and full. No aspiration.

tchrist

6:23 AM

caja - box, cajero - cashier.

Caga and caja both have a second consonant that English lacks, and these are VERY different phonemes from each other in some sense but similar in others.

Jason Marsh

7:09 AM

I have a quick question

What is the title of a body-part that is located right beneath the stomach and it has your testicle in its centre?

Fat people tend to have them quite visually.

In addition, it looks like a triangular object that is holding your ding-dong.

A Beautiful Mind

8:41 AM

Hello @MattЭллен.

La tertulia

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…