lɪŋˈgwɪstɪks

« first day (101 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (4712 days later) »

Stack Exchange

05:16

Q: What is the distribution of English dialects that pronounce -day as -[deɪ] vs -[di]?

The days of the week in English, such as Monday, are sometimes pronounced with a final -[deɪ] and sometimes with a final -[di]. For example, Merriam-Webster gives Monday as \ˈmən-(ˌ)dā, -dē\ and Wiktionary gives /ˈmʌn.deɪ/, /ˈmʌn.di/. This is evidently true for both British and American English. ...

13 hours later…

Alenanno

18:16

hey guys @OtavioMacedo and @Cerberus... Wait to see my new gravatar lol :D

It still has to change I think

Otavio Macedo

@Alenanno what's it gonna be?

Alenanno

@OtavioMacedo Well, if I tell you, that's not a surprise

lol

It's not original, I admit that, but it suits my standard one

Otavio Macedo

hehe fair enough :-)

Alenanno

do you see it?

Otavio Macedo

no, not yet

Alenanno

18:18

try reloading

Otavio Macedo

oh, now I see!

merry Christmas, @Alenanno!

Alenanno

merry Christmas, @OtavioMacedo!

I'm Santa Claus lol

Oh-Oh-Oh

Otavio Macedo

don't forget my presents, then

Alenanno

You behaved this year?

Otavio Macedo

I think so

Alenanno

18:21

I'll get you the train model you so wanted

here

Otavio Macedo

oh, that's nice!

Alenanno

(I'd love that stuff by the way)

Otavio Macedo

are you having a Christmas family dinner tonight?

Alenanno

Yup

you?

Otavio Macedo

yes, me too

Alenanno

18:27

by the way, since I always have a sort of "prejudice" thing, like I think some users are males when they are females, age is wrong too, etc... How old are you? If you don't mind me asking

Otavio Macedo

no, not at all

I'm 29

Alenanno

Oh ok, we're kind of close then, I'm 25

Otavio Macedo

here in Brazil, there are lots of people of Italian descent

especially in São Paulo

Alenanno

Oh I guess that comes from when the portuguese and spanish went there no? Also italians joined, if I remember well

Otavio Macedo

and they are known for their family dinners and lunches

Alenanno

18:30

but

ahah

yeah we like that lol

Otavio Macedo

no, it's more recent than that

Alenanno

at least here where I live

Otavio Macedo

late 19th century

Alenanno

ah, because of something specific?

Otavio Macedo

end of slavery in Brazil

and the government was looking for people from other countries to join our workforce

Alenanno

18:32

so late?

the end of slavery?

well, now that I think about it

Otavio Macedo

yes, that's a sad part of our history

Alenanno

when did it end in US?

around that time

Otavio Macedo

1865

Alenanno

it's close

Otavio Macedo

in Brazil, the law that ended slavery altogether was proclaimed in 1888

Alenanno

18:34

who were the slaves? African men or also descendants from american indigenes?

Otavio Macedo

african people

for some reason, indians were not enslaved

there's a great debate as to why

Alenanno

I see

I don't think I ever studied history in south america? but a long time passed, I might be wrong

Otavio Macedo

I don't know Italy

but I will

someday :-)

Alenanno

You're planning on visiting?

Otavio Macedo

me and my wife are planning on visiting Europe next year

but we don't know yet which countries

Alenanno

18:40

what are you two interested in mostly?

Otavio Macedo

history, culture, languages

Alenanno

good good

@OtavioMacedo by the way, since you're a mod, earlier you reminded me that I've been nominated as Mod on Chinese SE too... I was a bit surprised to see that

Otavio Macedo

I reminded you?

Alenanno

yes, when I was talking to you, I meant that

Otavio Macedo

well, congratulations!

how's the site doing?

Alenanno

18:51

Uhm well, today a user posted like 20 questions... almost one after the other

Otavio Macedo

hehe he's probably been saving those for a long time

do you speak Chinese?

Alenanno

I wish! I'm studying/learning it on my own

Otavio Macedo

it must be very difficult

Alenanno

the pronunciation is challenging, but the grammar is very simple

Otavio Macedo

and, of course, there's the writing system

Alenanno

18:57

Do you mean writing or reading?

Otavio Macedo

both, I think

Alenanno

Reading yes, especially when I'll start increasing the number of characters lol :D but writing, at least for now is actually enjoying for me

Otavio Macedo

by the way, how do you use an English keyboard, for example, to type in Chinese characters?

Alenanno

you know the pinyin?

Otavio Macedo

Alenanno

19:00

it's the romanization system for the characters

for example

中 is trancribed as Zhōng

(read it as Jong in english)

so if I want to type that character

I type "zhong" and there comes out a list

a drop down list

I click the number that corresponds to the character I want

and voilà

Otavio Macedo

very clever

Alenanno

if I want to write something longer

the system is intelligent enough

and knows the most used occurrences

so it prioritizes the choices

and I don't have to go down the list usually

for example 我在意大利住。(I live in Italy), I just write wozaiyidalizhu without spaces and the result I need is the first one

what languages do you know?

Otavio Macedo

only English and my native Portuguese

and, of course, I can understand Spanish pretty well

Alenanno

are you interested in some other languages or what is your field?

Otavio Macedo

I'm a software developer

I'd like to learn another language, but there's not much time

Alenanno

19:08

so you know C, C++, Objective-C?

Otavio Macedo

it's been a while since I programmed in C/C++

Alenanno

eheh

what do you use now?

Otavio Macedo

Java, mostly

Alenanno

I'd like to learn some programming language, but it doesn't look like an easy thing

maybe someday

Otavio Macedo

well, once you grasp the basic concepts, it's easy to learn a programming language

the hardest part is to master algorithms

Alenanno

19:12

as in complicated code stuff?

Well, it's almost time for dinner here... We'll continue next time if you want. :) Catch you soon and Merry Christmas again!

ping me if you need me to read something here

see ya :)

Otavio Macedo

have a good time!

merry Christmas, @hippietrail!

hippietrail

19:30

შობას გილოცავთ otavio!

no hard parts to learn about programming are stuff like currying, closures, lambdas, ...

Otavio Macedo

19:46

@hippietrail do you know Lisp?

I'm studying by the SICP book

hippietrail

19:57

no. javascript is bending my brain enough these days now that people use it like lisp

oh i forgot one thing that harder than all of those together... monads!

Otavio Macedo

yeah, I don't get monads

I swear I've tried hard

but some people say it's deceptively simple

hippietrail

20:41

i hurt my brain on closures yet again yesterday but will use them in my travel.se project when i sober up anyway

Otavio Macedo

travel.se project?

hippietrail

just a thing that looks at the 3-letter tags, which are supposedly reserved for airline codes and compares them to the airline codes from a web service i found

Otavio Macedo

21:00

sounds interesting!

hippietrail

well i'm getting a bit rusty at coding so needed a project

Otavio Macedo

where can I find documentation about those queries?

hippietrail

21:30

api.linguistics.stackexchange.com/1.1/usage

here's my hacky buggy sloppy messy tool: gist.github.com/1513820

it's just a single web page should run fine in any web browser