Language Overflow

Anonymous

00:45

I managed to find a brand of tortillas at the store that didn't have 'partially hydrogenated' or 'interesterified' on the label. They're from a brand called La Tortilla Factory.

Anonymous

Comparing different brands, or even different products from the same companies, I was surprised to find just how many products had one or both of those! And how inconsistent it was!

Anonymous

Apparently this company uses palm fruit oil instead, because that's solid at room temperature without hydrogenation.

Damkerng T.

LOL -- I thought tortilla is a kind of noodles at first. :D

It looks a bit like nan, I think.

Anonymous

Oh! Yes, it's a very flat form of bread.

Anonymous

You can use tortillas in Mexican food, or in other sorts of foods that are based on Mexican food ("Tex-Mex", etc.)

Anonymous

00:58

Most things I like to eat with tortillas I like just fine without tortillas.

Anonymous

I don't always use them.

Anonymous

But if I want to get more calories, they're an easy way to do it :-)

Damkerng T.

But it's better with tortillas, perhaps?

Oh, I see. :D

Anonymous

Yeah, I think they're pretty tasty!

Anonymous

They're very calorie dense, though.

Damkerng T.

01:08

Corn, I think?

Wow, corn has over three times as many calories as rice!

Anonymous

Well, they're bread.

Anonymous

latortillafactory.com/view/products/…

Anonymous

> ingredients: enriched bleached wheat flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, palm fruit oil, contains less than 2% of each of the following: soy lecithin, aluminum free baking powder (sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bicarbonate, corn starch, monocalcium phosphate),

Anonymous

> sea salt, monoglyceride, dextrose, yeast, sodium bicarbonate, enzymes, sodium metabisulfite, to maintain freshness (sorbic acid, calcium propionate, potassium sorbate).

Anonymous

Mmm, processed!

Damkerng T.

01:15

Oh, they have something called 100 calories tortillas, too!

latortillafactory.com/view/products/100-calorie-tortillas

Anonymous

I got the "Traditional Flour Tortillas, Soft Taco Size"

Damkerng T.

0

Q: -eer vowel (accent/dialect variation?)

Examples: hero, cheer, fear, searing, here, ... Most dictionaries will cough up /ɪə/ or even short I for this vowel. Unfortunately I cannot hear such a thing. Instead I hear /i/. I am a native speaker (North American), and I also asked two other natives on what they hear. They said pretty...

dialect

Interesting...

I guess the OP probably hears it as /ɪr/.

tchrist

Well, /ir/.

I hear /ir/.

Because hear is just like the word he with /r/ added.

The vowel doesn’t change.

Damkerng T.

I wonder what dictionary they used to look up those words. /ɪə/ looks like a BrE pronunciation.

tchrist

Yep, poor guy. Most people don’t talk that way. :)

StoneyB

01:49

@snailboat The palm oils are solid at room temperature because they're about 50% saturated fat.

@tchrist Hmm ... my dialect is strongly rhotic, but -eer words have /ɪr/, not /ir/.

Anonymous

02:02

@StoneyB But I think current studies show that saturated fat isn't as bad as people used to think it was: ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/… - ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/08/04/…

Anonymous

Sorry for taking Language Overflow so far off-topic! :-)

Anonymous

I've been trying to learn about nutrition all year.

Anonymous

02:35

I'm curious about /ɪr/ and /ir/.

Anonymous

It's conventionally transcribed /ɪr/, right? But there's no contrast between /ɪr/ and /ir/

Anonymous

We could just talk about the NEAR lexical set.

Anonymous

But that skips over the question of what the vowel quality is actually like and how much it varies, which I don't know much about.

Anonymous

I think mine is closer to [ɪ] though.

Anonymous

04:21

→ 8 messages moved to ELL's Cabin

Anonymous

08:53

0

Q: Asking for the attitude of the writer towards a character

In test I received a question that asks: What attitude does the writer have toward XXX I am supposed to respond to this by looking at how the writer has characterised that character such as looking at how the characters speak and their actions. I think so far my assumptions on how to get th...

grammar

Anonymous

File it under mind-reading?

Anonymous

"What does the author think of such-and-such character?" "I don't know. I haven't asked her!"

Araucaria

09:27

@snailboat Yes, but palm oil is still poisonous.

Araucaria

09:45

@snailboat Or perhaps not ...?

Anonymous

10:10

I think it's been controversial! It's frustrating trying to learn about nutrition because it's so easy to find contradictory claims and so many people have some sort of agenda or personal belief they let drive their writing…

Anonymous

wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/07/…

Anonymous

I have a headache so I'm just lying down reading about this stuff on my phone.

Anonymous

Anyway, I sure hope it's not going to kill me! I have to eat something :-)

Anonymous

10:55

Luckily, in 2015 there's all sorts of research to read, easily accessible :-)

Damkerng T.

11:41

5

A: What are the differences between "check it" and "check it out"?

...but if I add 'out' after the word 'held out' (David held out the box) does not make any sense, i.e I can not understand the meaning. This is a literal application of the word "out." As in, David is holding the box outwards from his body -- he is stretching his arms away from his body whil...

> "Check it out" and "check it" can have roughly the same meaning, but "check it" usually implies a quick, routine check, rather than a thorough examination.

I'm not sure if "check" always means a quick check.

An implication in the answer:

> a) Hey, can you check out our server? The web service seems to be down. -- a more thorough examination

Anonymous

Yeah, I think it can be a little more involved than a quick check.

Damkerng T.

> b) Hey, can you check our server? The web service seems to be down. -- a quick check, a look

Anonymous

I wish the question had examples. Those strings have multiple meanings.

Damkerng T.

I think we can also say, I want you to check our server thoroughly.

And even without thoroughly, I think check can go both ways.

Good morning!

Anonymous

Hey, check out my spiffy new hat!

Damkerng T.

11:45

That one is a quick check!

Anonymous

And a different kind :-)

Anonymous

Some speakers use check it in this meaning now, too. Hey, check it, I got a rockin' new hat!

Anonymous

Good morning!

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Yes, I think I ran into this usage of check it only recently.

Anonymous

I think it's been around for a while, but it might be becoming more popular over time…

Anonymous

11:50

I think originally you needed the out!

Damkerng T.

I remember it sounded weird the first time I heard it!

Anonymous

I'm 34 and to me it sounds like something kids say.

Anonymous

Although things kids say do seem to invade my speech somehow :-)

Damkerng T.

I think that happens all the time, more or less. :D

Anonymous

Probably! :-)

Anonymous

11:53

I find myself resistant to some innovations but quick to pick up a lot of others. I don't know why.

Anonymous

What even is that? sounded just wrong the first time I heard it. Now it seems normal.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I think some new words or usages are too exotic(?), perhaps.

Anonymous

I'm sure we all have our own personal taste when it comes to language, whether L1 or L2.

Anonymous

I find some expressions distasteful. Others just don't suit me, even though I like them fine in theory :-)

Damkerng T.

nods -- I think so. I only recently learned about สาววาย [Y-girls]. It's about girls or women who like yaoi and yuri manga!

Anonymous

11:58

I try not to use disparaging language, but it evolves very rapidly and is really interesting! Distasteful but interesting.

Damkerng T.

That's fine, then there are a bunch of related words which don't make much sense to me. I think they're more like in-group words/phrases.

@snailboat Hah! Agree, especially the latter part!

Anonymous

In Japanese girls who like yaoi are 腐女子 fujoshi, lit. 'rotten girls'

Damkerng T.

Ugh!

tchrist

@StoneyB I don’t perceive the same vowel that occurs in hit, bit, nit, pit as being the same vowel in here, beer, near, pier — do you? The second set has the vowel of he, bee, knee, pee to my mind.

Anonymous

It's a well established term, though it sounds degrading and it certainly can be, but people apply it to themselves without meaning it in a negative way.

Anonymous

12:03

Contrasting A but B but C doesn't sound very good. Well, somehow I tend to come up with clumsy sentences on phone chat!

Anonymous

Ooh, I need to figure out how to type IPA on my phone.

Anonymous

Later one of us should get some clips and run them through Praat to see how the NEAR vowel looks.

Anonymous

I have audio corpora of spontaneous English we can use! :-)

Damkerng T.

I have a hunch that some speakers use /i/ and some use /ɪ/ in words like beer, pier.

Anonymous

I definitely feel like my NEAR vowel is definitely somewhat lowered relative to /i/.

Damkerng T.

12:08

Oh, I remember that the word bear in Brave sounded a little exotic (in a good and interesting way) to me. I remember it sounded sorta like a mix of many vowels!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I think that's possible! I don't think there's a phonemic contrast in that position, so we don't need to represent the difference in phonemic transcriptions, and we might not notice the variation in everyday speech, assuming it exists

Anonymous

When I use [i] it sounds hyperarticulate to me. It reminds me a bit of what they call the transatlantic accent or mid-Atlantic accent (think Cary Grant)

Anonymous

But introspection about your own speech can be quite difficult!

Anonymous

When I'm up and about I'll be able to crack open a book or three and see if I can find any discussion :-)

Anonymous

It seems like the sort of thing Ladefoged might have talked about

Damkerng T.

12:15

Oh, I just checked it in some trailer clips. Her bear sounds relatively familiar, but her fate is distinctive to me. So I think I misremembered which words made her accent sound distinctive. (I really like her accent, btw. :)

Brave Trailer

►

Anonymous

I haven't seen that yet!

Damkerng T.

A-ha! It was her mother's bear!

Clips Not Shown in Pixar's Movie Brave

►

StoneyB

13:13

@tchrist For me the vowel is lowered and laxed. Where I come from we tend to diphthongalize it, too: /nɪər/.

Nihilist_Frost

Seems to be an accent difference.

tchrist

14:01

@StoneyB Mine is high and tense, same vowel as in the versions without the /r/, which of course is not really [r] but [ɻ]. If it weren't at the end of the syllable and utterance, it would be [ɻʷ].

StoneyB

14:34

@tchrist Yah, mine's retroflex and 'way postalveolar, but without any labialization. Jumping in cold, I can't pronounce near with /i/ -- I have to introduce a glide: /nijər/

@tchrist The dictionary prescription that raises my eyebrows is terminal /ɪ/ (as in friendly, quickly), which for me is always /i/.

tchrist

@StoneyB Indeed.

@StoneyB Oh well, maybe that's what I actually say!

Damkerng T.

BTW, it's /ˈfren(d)li/ and /ˈkwɪkli/ in Macmillan Dictionary. (Sorry for the interruption.)

StoneyB

@DamkerngT. Collins gives /i/ for American, /ɪ/ for British, but Oxford gives /i/ for both.

(Actually Oxford uses the US non-IPA notation /ˈfren(d)lē/ , but it amounts to the same thing.)

Damkerng T.

17:46

Anyone know his name?

Nihilist_Frost

17:56

Another silly eyebrow-raising transcription is for Macmillan's to transcribe short E as /e/ instead of with /ɛ/.

The /e/ in the long A diphthong and the short E do not sound the same to me.

probably convention

Damkerng T.

@Nihilist_Frost I suppose so. I think most dictionaries don't strictly use IPA.

Nihilist_Frost

Let's keep poking

Damkerng T.

I remember I found a Wikipedia page about this. I can't remember the name of the page, but I remember that "respelling" is the key word.

Nihilist_Frost

Dictionary.com uses /y/ to transcribe /j/

lol

Damkerng T.

Found it! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_respelling_for_English

I bookmarked it, but I didn't remember that I had it bookmarked. :D

Nihilist_Frost

18:01

And 95% of dictionaries rotate the /ɹ/ because otherwise it would look weird

R sounds can be a pain in the butt.

dictionaries always using trill symbols

different languages have different R's

Damkerng T.

There are so many ways to pronounce /r/s in different places in words in different dialects.

Indeed.

Nihilist_Frost

yup

different languages' R's range from a uvular fricative to a labialized approximant

Damkerng T.

I'll admit that I can't nail Chinese /r/ (for example, ren meaning "man"), and my Japanese /r/ is far from perfect.

Nihilist_Frost

Japanese R has a vague range

some sort of flap.

That Chinese R, agh.

Voiced retroflex sibilant

The voiced retroflex sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʐ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is z`.Like all the retroflex consonants, the IPA symbol is formed by adding a rightward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of a z (the letter used for the corresponding alveolar consonant). Some scholars transcribe the laminal variant of this sound as /ʒ/, even though it is not palatalized. In such cases the voiced palato-alveolar sibilant is transcribed /ʒʲ/. == Features... ==

Southern Vietnamese has it too.

Damkerng T.

Apparently!

Nihilist_Frost

18:12

A sibilant R!

Damkerng T.

I think it's more like [ɻ] in ren.

Nihilist_Frost

One of the first Vietnamese words I can remember is rồi (already)

from my Vietnamese grandpa.

Damkerng T.

Ah, I can't speak Vietnamese. :D

Nihilist_Frost

I can't speak it with any coherence either.

I used to misremember the R sound in that word as a Z.

because it was indeed a sibilant R

Damkerng T.

It sounds more like a /z/ sound to me.

Nihilist_Frost

18:16

Exactly.

Damkerng T.

A-ha! His name is Charlie Rose, a CBS anchor.

Nihilist_Frost

I asked my mom, also Vietnamese, to enunciate a Vietnamese R.

It seemed like a sibilant.

Damkerng T.

What did it sound like? Ahh.

Nihilist_Frost

Tones are next, lol

Tones are the reason why if you hear Vietnamese speech, the rhythm sounds like mood swings.

My little brother keeps misinterpreting tones as yelling.

Damkerng T.

LOL

Nihilist_Frost

18:22

In each language I feel like there is one feature that clearly identifies it.

I find it easy to tell between Romance languages.

Damkerng T.

Probably so. I can't really tell some languages apart, though, like Spanish and Portuguese, even though I know that they're not quite the same. I mean, I have to try really hard if I want to tell which is which.

Nihilist_Frost

except maybe Spanish vs. Portuguese

Germanic languages are easier to tell apart, except Scandanavian ones from each other.

Damkerng T.

I'm not used to Scandinavian, but German, French, and Italian are easy to tell.

Nihilist_Frost

Spanish is also easy.

Damkerng T.

nods -- I wonder if I can tell Finnish from Danish.

Nihilist_Frost

18:25

but watch out for Portuguese.

lol

Finnish is Uralic, while Danish is Indo-European.

Japanese and Chinese can pretty much be told apart with not too much trouble.

especially writing

Damkerng T.

Except when it's only in kanji in Japanese.

But their hiragana and katakana characters are quite distinctive.

Nihilist_Frost

But if you can smell a kana, it's damning.

Damkerng T.

I kinda like these oriental letters/characters. :D

Nihilist_Frost

I don't find them practical though

Damkerng T.

Gotta take a break. It was a nice chat.

I hope to see you more often around here. BBL

Nihilist_Frost

18:32

Bye

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

19:03

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ I missed @Nihilist's company.

Damkerng T.

19:22

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Wrong room!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@DamkerngT. There's never a wrong room for a fight. ;)

Damkerng T.

→ 2 messages moved to ELL's Cabin

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

(/¯◡ ‿ ◡)/¯ ~ ┻━┻

Damkerng T.

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Well, I just had a short conversation with Usernew this evening.

So I think it's better to add additional messages over there.

BTW, good evening!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Hhhheeeeeey, you're starting to become like me: Bedtime stories with cute pictures in meta posts. — Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. 12 secs ago

@DamkerngT. \o

BTW @Dam bow down to the Steward!

chemistry.stackexchange.com/users/7448/…

Damkerng T.

19:25

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Hmm... What series is that Brace Yourself image from?

Congrats!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@DamkerngT. I dunno, but it's everywhere.

Damkerng T.

It looks like something from Game of Thrones, except that I don't think it's from that series.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

0

Q: How to determine bond order for special cases?

In AP Chemistry, we learned two ways to determine bond order. The first method is: Bond order = (bonding electrons - antibonding electrons)/2. The second method is: number of bonds / number of bond locations. Applying the first method for the bond order of CO gives an answer of (8-2)/2 = 3. Using...

molecular-orbital-theory

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ Some paragraphing goes a long way . . .

Damkerng T.

19:46

Puzzle of the Day 20151030 (What did he say?): dropbox.com/s/ib0xyoykto4tfsc/…

Nihilist_Frost

20:28

I remember this one. ell.stackexchange.com/questions/71601/…

A simple mishearing

I went too far in trying to guess why he made the error.

Anonymous

20:55

> In a syllable closed by /r/, there is no contrast in quality between a tense vowel and the lax vowel nearest to it. Consequently, as often happens in contexts in which there is no opposition between two sounds, the actual sound produced is somewhere between the two.

Anonymous

(A Course in Phonetics, 6th ed., Ladefoged & Johnson, p.99)

Damkerng T.

21:20

@Nihilist_Frost It's quite common for learners.

Also, it depends on the environment and equipment. A lot of times I misheard many things on TV or my display's speakers (my display's speakers can be quite challenging), and found that it was quite easy on my headset.

Anonymous

Is it "Presidential contenders will share a stage"? It sounds like it's cut off partway through the last consonant.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Yes! The original was cut off exactly at that point, or to be more exact, they pasted another part of the same news right after it.

Anonymous

Oh!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Japanese also has its own set of simplifications for kanji that aren't the same as Simplified Chinese.

Anonymous

So you can usually but not always tell the difference.

Damkerng T.

21:24

I wasn't able to come up with anything that made sense to me on my display's speakers. On my headset, I can hear the latter part, but the "tial con" is really challenging.

"president took can dentists will share (a) stage" is what I heard. :-)

Anonymous

It's a tough clip.

Anonymous

My speakers are higher quality than my headphones.

Anonymous

Still, there are times I can hear details on the headphones I miss on the speakers.

Anonymous

This time I just listened on my speakers.

Anonymous

Sometimes I can hear details on my speakers I miss on my headphones :-)

Anonymous

21:30

But switching between headphones and speakers is a good trick if you can't get something during transcription.

Anonymous

Or just listening on speakers in another room.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I think it was tough because they chopped only that sentence out of the news.

Anonymous

It's always harder transcribing words without context.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat It really helps sometimes.

Anonymous

Too bad I can't type a superscript schwa in chat.

Anonymous

21:44

udel.edu/~parrell/pdfs/Riera_2009.pdf

Anonymous

Oh, here's the good stuff: Quality of American English front vowels before /r/ (Clark & Hillenbrand 2003)

Anonymous

@Nihilist_Frost @tchrist See this message and this message for some discussion of ir vs ɪr

tchrist

22:01

> Discriminant analysis using the first three formants and listening tests using 60 ms vowel excerpts yielded results consistent with the idea that the pre-/r/ vowels are acoustically intermediate between their tense and lax neighbors but resemble /i/ and /e/ more closely than /I/ and /E/.

Bad IPA copy, but still.

They seem tenser than laxer to us.

Nihilist_Frost

22:29

Every language seems to have a sound change that can feel nonsensical at times

For English: /x, ɣ/ -> /f, g, ∅/ (the gh shift)

going to /f/ is weird

Damkerng T.

Speakers of some dialects use /f/ and /v/ for /θ/ and /ð/.

Anonymous

Online IPA keyboard: westonruter.github.io/ipa-chart/keyboard

Anonymous

Online IPA chart with audio: web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/charts/IPAlab/IPAlab.htm

Damkerng T.

Thanks!

Anonymous

23:01

You think too much. The implication is not there. — Damkerng T. 24 mins ago

Anonymous

I agree with your comment, but I want to add my own comment about one particular detail of how it's phrased.

Anonymous

You think too much (present simple) seems like a generalization. The listener always thinks too much, or habitually thinks too much.

Anonymous

You're thinking about it too much (present progressive) limits it in time, and so it seems more like an observation about the listener's current state. The listener is overthinking this particular example.

Anonymous

So to my mind, You think too much seems like a statement about the person, while You're thinking about it too much / You're overthinking it seems like a statement about the person's current behavior.

Anonymous

So the latter is just a little bit more appropriate.

Anonymous

23:05

My personal preferred phrasing is with the verb overthink.

Anonymous

But I think the key to making it sound like it's not about the person is using the progressive.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Ah, that's a very good point!

Anonymous

23:40

I'm always so happy when I see † or ‡ in answers.

Anonymous

They're two of my favorite characters.

Anonymous

I like them so much better than numbers for footnotes.

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