English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

/ae/ is hard to say.

In archaic Latin, it was often spelled AI.

@tchrist That, and it is also simply not how anyone says it.

The Romans didn't, at least not that I know.

I really don't know why the Romans switched to spelling AE, it makes no sense.

Spanish tends to pronounce maestro as [ˈma̯estɾo̞] with only two syllables, but that reduced /e/ will tend to collapse further in rapid speech.

One is not supposed to reduce unstressed syllables, but /ae/ is not very stable, whether in hiatus or as a diphthong.

I suppose if you pronounce it fast, one will sound much like the other...

8:04 PM

My problem is that I first starting learning Latin when I was in Spain, so I don’t have the English pronunciations.

That is good, I suppose.

Since English mangles vowels so badly.

Stephen Fry often lapses into classical pronunciations of Latin instead of English ones. I doubt most viewers notice the difference.

In Dutch, we have either the older pronunciation (like the Romance languages), or the neoclassical one, as in classical Latin.

Both are respectable.

This is a really simple system:

So you could say /kerberus/ or /serbərəs/.

8:07 PM

It does break down in places, where there is no "right" way to express which of two weak vowels gets the stress.

The famous scholarly city of Coimbra in Portugal is a great example of this. The Spanish pronounce it /kojmbra/ and the Portuguese /kwimbra/.

Oh, really?

I was only aware of the Portuguese pronunciation, although I would have rendered it more crudely.

But stress on the i is what I mean.

Yeah, because in Portuguese unstressed O reduces to /u/, and they interpret that as Coïmbra.

Yes, the stress is on the I in Portuguese in that word.

Right.

They have different syllable rules. ES Mario, María becomes PT Mário, Maria.

And there is no damned difference in pronunciation.

Although the Portuguese pretend that both have 3 syllables and the Spanish pretend the boy's name does not.

Ah.

8:12 PM

I guess there is a difference in pronunciation because the PT unstressed A becomes a schwa.

Or close enough as to make no difference.

Sometimes it’s an upside-down a in IPA.

Unstressed final -O in Portuguese becomes /u/. So someone named Nuno is invariably pronounced /nunu/.

That's why their speech sounds like "oozh" all over the place.

I knew that, final o becoming u.

So perros is PT /pɛʁuʒ/.

Ai, se eu te pego.

At least in the fabla culta of Lisbon or Coimbra.

Is that Portuguese?

8:17 PM

Unstressed E is normally like in French.

It also happens in the fabula minus culta of Brazil!

@Cerberus Parts of it are. :)

menos, but yeah

I can only respond in Latin.

mas o menos?

And te becomes /ti/.

8:18 PM

PT menos is pronounced /mɛnuʒ/.

@Cerberus Only in Brazil.

Or even something like /tʃi/.

Right.

Yes, that is very Brasilian.

I enjoy learning languages by looking up the libretti, even if it be silly pop songs.

How bad is crime outide of the big cities in Brasil?

frente for forehead sounds like Frenchy in Brazil. )

8:18 PM

I still enjoy them as long as they aren't in Dutch or English.

But sounds like frent in Portugal.

Have you ever been to Brazil @tchrist?

@Mitch My guess would be: not so bad in most regions, bad in a few regions?

A final E in Portugal is like in French: mute.

@infinitesimal More than once.

Ah.

8:20 PM

Cool.

Also, in Portugal que is pronounce as though it were French. ALWAYS.

@tchrist But only unstressed, I presume?

@Cerberus crime is annoying.

@Cerberus Right.

@Mitch Quite.

8:20 PM

So até doesn’t go silent of course.

@tchrist ke?

Crime can be deadly

Not just annoying @Mitch

Não sei o que dizes-me.

No sé lo que me dices.

@infinitesimal It sounded like Laredo was unlivable 10 years ago (bcause of drug-war related crime) but regular people continue to live there, it wasn't depopulated.

Sorry, plain diz is either 2s imperative or 3s indicative.

The Brazilians say Jeeze a lot. :)

8:24 PM

Yes, it is hard to leave a ghetto.

You can step over the rope.

The same rope they use to hang them with?

Back in the days ...

Jump, then.

I recall they hung a black doll from a tree as a Halloween joke once in Tennessee

@Robusto Butthead would have your lunch.

This “question” seems like a veiled peeve disguised as a strawman argument people are expected to tilt at, not a legitimate point of inquiry. — tchrist 8 mins ago

8:44 PM

@infinitesimal People are idiots

I had an idiot stand in the middle of the road in front of my car last night.

Were you checking the oil?

No, I was driving home.

I had no choice but to stop or hit him head on.

Sounds like alcohol was involved

Yep, as soon as I saw his glossy eyes I took off.

8:51 PM

@Cerberus You should have said "Pronounciation". That would have been funnier.

Haha, you naughty naughty...

user116848

@Mitch Being a non-native speaker of English that's the spelling I always imagine of "pronunciation".

user116848

It makes sense that way somehow, doesn't it? :)

Nope.

announce > annunciation, denounce > denunciation, pronounce > pronunciation, renounce > renunciation

THAT is what makes more sense.

And, by cosmic coincidence, that is also how it works.

Good examples^

@arrowfar it does seem "intuitively" to make sense, but you need examples, right?

8:59 PM

@arrowfar right. english spelling was made by a bunch of crazy people. the idiocy of crowds. actually, 'pronunciation' is pronounced like 'nun'. even more crazy!

It's worse than chinese spelling!

(chinese pronunciation is -totally- regular with only a small handful of sound changes.)

What does that even mean?

He's talking about pronunciation

I do not understand what it means for pronunciation to be regular.

Tomato, tom at toe

What is the irregularity there?

user116848

9:05 PM

@infinitesimal Yeah tchrist gave good examples.

user116848

@Mitch :-)

Annunce would make more sense...

@tchrist pronunciation with spelling.

Didn't an Ivy League politician misspell potato as potatoe?

VP under Bush Sr

9:07 PM

@Mitch No, no, no. There is no spelling.

what's his name

@tchrist writing spelling whatever

Gore?

nope.

Given that there is no spelling in Chinese, it is nonsense to say that its pronunciation is somehow "regular" compared with its non-existent spelling.

joke middle name of danforth

I'm not kidding I can't remember his name

9:08 PM

Pin.

pin yin

Yinz gotta be kiddin.

@tchrist how is chinese written? so you don't call it 'spellling'.

Yes, you do not call it spelling.

@tchrist Cómo?

9:10 PM

@Robusto I really don’t want to stoop that low.

@infinitesimal Dan Quayle!!

Dan Quayle Misspells 'Potato'

►

Pinyin

Pinyin, or Hanyu Pinyin, is the official phonetic system for transcribing the Mandarin pronunciations of Chinese characters into the Latin alphabet in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan (Republic of China), and Singapore. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese and a pinyin without diacritic markers is often used in foreign publications to spell Chinese names familiar to non-Chinese and may be used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into computers. The Hanyu Pinyin system was developed in the 1950s based on earlier forms of romanization. It was published by the Chinese government...

Great work @Mitch :D

I found Netflix's Marco Polo series to be entirely unwatchable.

9:12 PM

That's the one where everybody's blindfolded?

@Robusto I agree. Because I haven't seen it.

I don't mind people taking a little latitude to create historical fiction, but when it's a complete and utter fabrication grafted onto a slick, 300-style framework, I draw the line.

Muscle magazines, what?

I'm fairly certain that Marco Polo (if he existed at all) was not chiefly concerned with learning martial arts.

Haha wow.

9:13 PM

He should have gone by boat.

That is utterly ridiculous.

@Robusto They took a lot of longitude. You know to get from Italy to China

Then he've been Mark Twain instead of Marco Polo.

@Mitch Well, in point of fact it was more latitude than longitude.

Or he could have been Mark O'Polo, famed Irish explorer.

The movie producers took a lt of latitude with the story

9:14 PM

> On Rotten Tomatoes the show holds a rating of 30%, based on 27 reviews, with an average rating of 4.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "An all-around disappointment, Marco Polo is less entertaining than a round of the game that shares its name."

That's an insult to the game.

Word.

That game is fun!

@mitch Quayle tells the kid "Write phonetically" :D

swimming under people, holding your breath underwater.

9:15 PM

I would rate the show as being vastly less fun than, say, a barrel of monkeys. And I don't find monkeys fun at all.

Pirates of the Indies?

@Robusto That's dangerous if you ask me. On second thought, don't ask me, it's dangerous.

I take a more fun-emic approach to English. If I can't make jokes about it, I don't enjoy it.

The Three Privateers?

Hmm, so far I've learned norte, sur, and oeste, but they don't seem to want to teach me east.

9:17 PM

Raiders of the Last Khan?

@infinitesimal ha ha... he was just backforming from the plural.

@Robusto They wouldn’t want to affect anyone’s orientation.

Quayle actually never said 'Latin america bl abl ah lblha speak Latin blah blah blah '

@Mitch also his name has an "e" on the end too

@Robusto they don't want you to go there.

9:18 PM

Hey, Dan, what's the capital of Europe again?

African or British?

"When in doubt, add a silent 'e'"

Like Bolivia, the Netherlands, and South Africa, it has two

@Mitch That is capitalism at its most excessive.

Stupid Question of the Day

Monaco doesn't even have a capital. Bunch of commies.

@Mitch Typefaces don't have capitals. Oh wait, they do!

What is the majuscule of Europe?

9:23 PM

Rome, Byzantium, Aachen, Paris, Berlin, Brussels.

@Robusto Sans Serif is the capital of San Marino.

Sans serif is grotesque.

Or maybe gothic.

@tchrist And one with an 'S'. Stalingrad? Stuttgart? Salamanca?

Strasbourg!!

No, Prague.

Hector Salamanca?

@tchrist appears to be a praguematist, at least in this regard.

9:27 PM

L’Afrique commence aux Pyrénées.

Jusqu'à Poitiers/Tours

heh

C'est l'Arabie!

L'Arabie? C'est où dites? Par là mec

!!rimshot

user116848

9:36 PM

So sometimes I have to keep Google translator handy when I visit this chat

user116848

But Google translator is silly

user116848

I mean it is kinda bad.

I like wordreference

Quel est le fruit que les poissons détestent le plus ? La pêche.

user116848

@crl But that is a site. No good chat like here.

9:37 PM

hehe

Why does a flamingo stand on one leg?

Because if he picked it up he'd fall down.

French is weird. They seem not to distinguish frutas from frutos.

user116848

I haven't given any answer on the main site in a while now. I think I should give it a thought. Lazy I guess.

Le fruit de mon travail, le fruit de la passion. Only context can give a sense

@arrowfar It's the only thing I use

@arrowfar It's not perfect. YOu have to know the language already to judge right.

user116848

9:40 PM

@Mitch You mean really?

user116848

I see

Fruta fresca versus frutos secos. :)

user116848

I thought only people like me used it. I only know a couple of languages.

@arrowfar ha ha of course not. I also use dict.leo.org. But you have to go to German first. to get anywhere else. But people will sit there and discuss, like normal people, sorry like intelligent people, what something means.

user116848

I see :)

9:44 PM

@crl OK I still don't get it.

L’Afrique commence a l’Arabie.

@Mitch it sounds like "L'Arabie Saoudite? Par La Mecque"

"Arabia, it is said to be where? Over there man." Is there a pun on 'la mec'?

Qu'est-ce que c'est, La Mecque?

Maroc?

Sigh.

oh...Mecca!

ha ha ha ha ha

ok I stopped.

A: Using apostrophe s before gerunds (nouns ending in `-ing`)

9:47 PM

Parla-t-il Marocain?

-3

load of bollocks and get a life.

Do the Right Thing.

done

Quayle is a bird brain.

m.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=532536

While serving in the Guard, he earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1974 at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law and he can't spell "potato"