Language Overflow

Damkerng T.

00:00

> hedarena endorenna durian enomema hareriima denumbamea

tchrist

Interesting.

I heard in the middle of that, "si no me mandan".

It's actually "sinome maruvan".

Damkerng T.

I haven't used my headset, so I could miss a lot of sounds.

tchrist

But I utterly cannot hear the second word he sings as anything except "mandan".

It only has 5 vowels, like Latin or Spanish, and he's a fluent Spanish speaker.

And "si no me mandan" means "if they don't send me".

Damkerng T.

Oh, the last vowel of the first verse is /o/ not /a/. (Now I'm on my headset.)

And the last two syllables should be "metta".

tchrist

Yes.

It's a language with a huge lot of case endings instead of prepositions, like Finnish.

> Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien. Sinome maruvan ar Hildinyar tenn’ Ambar-metta!

Damkerng T.

00:04

I heard "si" as a sort of "she", with a short i.

tchrist

That may be your L1.

Damkerng T.

Could be.

tchrist

> Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In this place will I abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world

Damkerng T.

Beautiful.

tchrist

Hildinyar is a plural, I believe.

"I am come" is one word.

Damkerng T.

00:07

Interesting. On my headset, I heard it as henyarero endorenna huturian sinomemmara haherihiya enambametta. -- I can't hear his /l/. (Just look at the transcription.)

tchrist

Ah, so you cannot hear maruvan either. Neither can I.

He should have front L's for both of those, not dark L's.

But since he is not really using English phonemes per se, it may not match to the same things in your L1.

Damkerng T.

nods

tchrist

It's a lot shorter to write Endorenna in Tengwar than in Latin.

Damkerng T.

I remember the letters, but I can't read them.

tchrist

The vowels of diacritics.

That follow the consonant.

If there is no consonant, the dotless i or j holds them.

Damkerng T.

00:13

Some diacritics are under the line.

tchrist

Yes.

The line underneath means to double the consonant, and it should be geminated in speech.

The colon is a full stop.

The rounded swishy consonants are liquids, so R and L.

Some of the consonants have a built-in nasal before them, the the second glyph in Endorenna meaning "nd".

The "m" is actually an "n".

I forget what two dots below means now. Ug, how sad.

The 9 is an S, of course.

Damkerng T.

The single dot is /i/, I think.

tchrist

Yes.

The acute accent looking thing is an E.

Three dots is an A.

A curl to the right is an O, and to the left a U.

He has two different glyphs for R, depending whether it is in the coda.

Damkerng T.

Thanks!

tchrist

The yellow top ones are Quenya mode, so apply hear.

It is a very beautiful script.

Damkerng T.

00:27

Indeed.

I'm missing my calligraphy pens!

tchrist

Damkerng T.

New Middle Earth!

tchrist

I think some of those are spelled wrong, but I may be using the wrong mode.

The double S is a double curl.

Translation here

Pronunciation here:

J.R.R. Tolkien reciting "Namárië"

►

Damkerng T.

00:43

@tchrist It's his real voice!

tchrist

Yes, it is indeed.

My goodness, people who don't know English well are going to be confused by all this. :)

Damkerng T.

Hehe! We can move all this to Language Overflow, if we'd like. :-)

tchrist

They’re your rooms. I'd be glad to move them if you'd like.

Damkerng T.

I think the owners of this room (MAR is one of the owners) would agree with me that it's better moved there.

tchrist

Ok, sure.

← 73 messages moved from ELL's Cabin

Damkerng T.

00:51

Thanks! @tchrist

tchrist

Anytime.

Anonymous

01:12

→ blog.burningman.com/2015/10/highbrow/…

Anonymous

The software I'm using is rendering the dots in the wrong place again!

Anonymous

I don't trust the pre-composed ellipsis anymore :-(

Anonymous

The link isn't intended to encourage anyone to read the article. It was just a link someone sent me to a page I haven't read very carefully. The ellipses distracted me!

Anonymous

Also, the way the page gets oranger and oranger the further you scroll down. (Beiger and beiger? Browner and browner?)

Anonymous

01:18

I probably get distracted too easily :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat It looks like another kind of three-dot!

Anonymous

In Japanese, it's usually in the middle like that.

Anonymous

But it's the same character either way: …

tchrist

01:35

@snailboat Whatcha doin' reading the Burrning Man log? You now Burners?

Anonymous

I don't know. I guess I do?

Anonymous

I don't know anything about Burning Man, really, except someone I knew a few years ago went.

tchrist

Ahah, yeah that's pretty normal there.

It's an interesting enough cultural event.

Anonymous

I'm looking at the Wikipedia page!

Anonymous

Does it involve a lot of fire?

tchrist

01:41

Yes, but not that much.

Fire looks cool at night.

The design of the city is very neat too.

Anonymous

Oh, um, I think I didn't quite understand the bit about Black Rock City. I imagined it was a city that existed year round that had a festival once a year until I just read otherwise :-)

Anonymous

01:57

I was just talking online about how much snails love cucumbers, and a friend in Canada responded using the abbreviation cuke for cucumbers. That's the first time I've heard that!

Damkerng T.

02:10

An interesting shorten word!

Anonymous

It's called clipping! :-)

tchrist

@snailboat It’s Brigadoon.

Nihilist_Frost

in which English dialects does /ç/ exist? Certainly not AmE

Anonymous

02:40

Well, we have [ç], but it's not a phoneme.

Anonymous

Which is why I wrote it in [square brackets] instead of /forward slashes/.

Anonymous

See phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/blog0901.htm and search for "huge query"

Anonymous

08:54

@DamkerngT. The thing about reduced vowels is that they tend to get reduced in length, and the less time you have to hear the vowel, the less the ear can really distinguish the quality of the vowel.

Anonymous

In our example earlier, I think being half as long as the other vowels would be pretty normal, but it could be even shorter or missing entirely.

Anonymous

But the shorter it is, the less the precise quality tends to matter. There can be a lot of variation in what we call 'schwa'.

Damkerng T.

I think it is, in general cases. I think it was quite longer than typical schwas in our example.

Anonymous

Oh, really?

Damkerng T.

I haven't checked. Let's see...

Anonymous

08:57

I had to listen multiple times to figure out what the vowel was! :-)

Anonymous

I haven't measured it either, though.

Damkerng T.

Yes, I think it's much longer than normal schwas.

Anonymous

Ah!

Damkerng T.

And it even has the general quality of /a/ (as in "ah"), if I'm not mistaken.

Anonymous

Oh, I didn't think it was that low or back when I heard it.

Damkerng T.

09:00

It's not all the way down, I think. It's more like half "ah" half schwa.

I've got a new monitor. :D

Anonymous

Yay!

Anonymous

Hey, I loaded it into Praat, but due to the other sounds in the background it doesn't work very well.

Damkerng T.

Oh, right! It has music in the background.

Anonymous

By my measurements, though, the middle syllable is a lot shorter than the other two

Anonymous

I haven't divided up the syllables yet.

Anonymous

09:05

I think the stressed vowels are at least twice as long as the schwa, though.

Damkerng T.

I bet that it's much shorter than the schwa in "strategy". :-)

Oh!

The schwa in strategy ~ 0.122s.

This schwa in maximize ~ 0.049s.

The phoneme that is really long in that syllable "xi" is /m/ ~ 0.166s.

(If we counted the part that schwa is co-articulated with /s/ in the beginning part of "xi", it would be ~ 0.071s long.)

Ah, I mistook /dʒi/ in strategy for /tə/.

Anonymous

I syllabified it /ˈmæk.səˌmaɪz/ following the Maximal Onset Principle, since /ks/ is an illegal onset but /s/ is kosher

Damkerng T.

09:33

I pasted his /tə/ from strategy, /səm/ from maximize, and /ən(d)/ from and side-by-side.

Usernew

13:49

Guys! Quick question. Is this correct: I am still searching/looking for my ring which got lost at the party yesterday.

or it should be I am still searching/looking for my ring that I lost at the party yesterday.

Fantasier

The latter is better, I think.

Usernew

hi @DamkerngT.

o[

hi @Fantasier

should it be "which" or "that"

?

Fantasier

Either is fine

Usernew

Thank you :)

what does "which got lost" implies?

Fantasier

@Usernew To me, it sounds as if your ring can actually walk around or something...

Usernew

13:52

yes, that's what I thought :)

THank you again

what's cooking?

Nihilist_Frost

15:30

https://goo.gl/photos/8DKAYbCEWbw48ch69

my several attempts to say /ɣ/

I thought it was gonna be fail at first sight

I think it's too far back.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

18:13

(/¯◡ ‿ ◡)/¯ ~ ┻━┻ Everyone is busy today.

Nihilist_Frost

I wasn't too busy

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

\o

Nihilist_Frost

I was waiting forever

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Nihilist_Frost . . .

Nihilist_Frost

which Cambridges are pronounced /keɪmbɹɪd͡ʒ/?

I know the one in England is pronounced like that

forgot about the one in Massachusetts

Damkerng T.

18:31

@Nihilist_Frost Hmm... Would you pronounce it differently from that?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Nihilist_Frost All?

Nihilist_Frost

I would pronounce it as /keɪmbɹɪd͡ʒ/ for all.

But I dunno

What about you @DamkerngT.?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@TCh I need help on this: english.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/148945

Damkerng T.

I pronounce it that way, too, "KEYM-bridge".

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

An ~~idiot~~ unaware reviewer rejected it for fun.

Nihilist_Frost

18:38

This is stupid.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

What is stupid?

Nihilist_Frost

he let swear words lie

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Yeah. Thinks having many rejects in editor stats would make people call them cool.

Nihilist_Frost

I flagged that one as rude.

Your edit clearly made the question more readable.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Don't bother yourself with it.

Nihilist_Frost

18:43

What a troll.

MAR you know who it is.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

?

Nihilist_Frost

I was trying to say that Rathony was being a troll by rejecting the edit

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Meh, my threshold for calling people trolls is a bit high.

Nihilist_Frost

oh.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I iz a goood guy.

Damkerng T.

18:55

If it's only about the sender's address, you can describe such a letter with unbouncable or unreturnable, but this is an adjective about such a letter, not a word meaning a kind of a letter. Also related is dead letter mail, but it's about undeliverable, not just about the absence of the address. — Damkerng T. 26 secs ago

I think the word that the OP is looking for doesn't exist.

Unless we coin a new word, e.g., unbouncable-letter, no-sender's-address-letter, etc.

What's a word for "I think the word that the OP is looking for doesn't exist"?

Methinks-the-word-that-the-OP-is-looking-for-doesn't-exist is the word, perhaps.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Hmm, won't all NS's choose to coin something than use something really uncommon?

Fantasier

@DamkerngT. Hey, compounding is cheating!

Damkerng T.

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I think it's common, but they don't use it very often, I think.

@Fantasier Hee

I kinda miss matte displays. Everything nowadays is quite glossy!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

:)

Thanks @TCh.

Looking at editor stats on ELU, I think I'm getting to the conclusion that there are way more rejections there.

0

Q: Which one is true?

This game is fun. I have a good time. or This is game is fun. I am having a good time.

grammaticality

(/¯◡ ‿ ◡)/¯ ~ ┻━┻

I should add a comment to every question on ELU saying that ELL exists . . .

2

Damkerng T.

I hereby coin a new word twyalfde (read "twailfd", one syllable :-), meaning "the word you're looking for doesn't exist".

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I sometimes do that! But only rarely.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

19:07

@DamkerngT. Twilift?

Fantasier

This is game is fun.

Let's see if we can somehow see that as grammatical. . .

Damkerng T.

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. It's pronounced similarly to twelfth.

Fantasier

(It's one of the games I like to play with myself.)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Fantasier This is the game is fun works though I think.

Fantasier

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. You mean as-is or punctuation marks missing?

Damkerng T.

19:09

BTW, can I answer that question with "Neither."?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

No, I was treating is fun as a clause, which would require that "game" have a determiner.

@DamkerngT. No.

Damkerng T.

Or perhaps, "I don't know. Let me play it first."

Fantasier

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. How can is fun be a clause?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Robots aren't allowed to play game at the moment.

Fantasier

>_>

Damkerng T.

19:10

Aww... -- sad

tchrist

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I’m rather displeased that one user rejected your edit.

Fantasier

You're discriminating against robots! No place for you in this new era of robot-human co-existence.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Fantasier Dunno, but won't it be "this is the game that is fun"?

@tchrist That was a cool typo. I rather it remained.

And thanks.

tchrist

I have no idea how it happened.

Fantasier

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Oh, er, me no agree.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

19:13

Ice cream.

Fantasier

I scream

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. 1925

►

Damkerng T.

1925!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

(/¯◡ ‿ ◡)/¯ ~ ┻━┻

I wasn't referencing that.

,

Fantasier

I know. lol.

Damkerng T.

Argh! My monitor's loud speakers are not functioning!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

19:17

Use your own speakers.

Fantasier

I thought you had that ultimate ultra-super-hyper built-in robotic headse...

Damkerng T.

I thought so too...

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

He does,

they're rusty.

Damkerng T.

vanuula!

Fantasier

19:44

I wrote an Answer! Yay.

0

A: What is the answer to "Don't you know?"

I believe I understand your concern because similar confusion arose at some point in my English study, too, due to a linguistic difference between my native tongue and English. Your language is perhaps like mine, Thai, where you answer to the truth condition of the statement of the question rathe...

Been too long.

Damkerng T.

Yay!

Fantasier

I wonder what the speaker's native language is.

Interesting to find a language that's similar to Thai (in this aspect)

Damkerng T.

Judging from their (his?) name, I think it's Hindi.

Fantasier

Oh, quite possible

Damkerng T.

I think most languages in South Asia work like Thai in this respect.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

19:55

Oh, so your first tongue is Thai @Fanta? I thought you were Indian . . .

\o @Snail.

Fantasier

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Wut. Haven't you seen me talking in Thai to @DamkerngT. ? lol

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Fantasier Scratches head -- What have I eaten for lunch?

Anonymous

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Most native speakers won't coin a new word if the word is too rare. They'll either use a more common word or use multiple words to express the same thing.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat No I meant coining something vs. using some really obscure word few have heard of.

Anonymous

Circumlocution is a vital communication strategy—using more words to express something when you have a vocabulary gap. Learners need to use this strategy.

Anonymous

19:58

I understood, @Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ., but I believe it's a false choice.

Anonymous

Most of the time native speakers don't do either of those things.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

It's false unless your name is San Lambda Yr.

Hmm.

Anonymous

And it's even more important for learners not to do either of those things very often.

Fantasier

1

Q: Is there a principle that make easier to understand how to form a phrasal verb?

I have seen a lot of web site and some book that explain what phrasal verbs are and then mostly examples. But is there a general way to get how to form a phrasal verb and especially to get the real meaning of the phrasal verb after adding up/with...etc?

sentence-construction phrasal-verbs

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. India is very linguistically diverse and although Hindi is very common, it's not uncommon for it to be a second language rather than first.

Fantasier

20:09

I think that is a good question (for learners).

Anonymous

But since 'phrasal verbs' are very often lexical and idiomatized to one extent of another, there isn't really :-(

Anonymous

They tend to be noncompositional.

Fantasier

Yes, that's why I think it's a good question :-)

For learners, it's good to know that there isn't a rule :-P

I have wondered that myself, long ago.

Anonymous

They're not entirely noncompositional. You can form new ones with predictable meaning.

Anonymous

More or less.

Fantasier

20:12

Ahh, interesting.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I think most phrasal verbs make sense once you know their meanings.

Fantasier

Could you give an example?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat Yes.

Damkerng T.

@Fantasier stand up, stand back, stand out, stand down. :D

Fantasier

@DamkerngT. stand out would be difficult, I think.

and stand down, too.

Damkerng T.

20:15

Hmm... once you know its meaning, I think it's easy to visualize it.

Fantasier

Ohhh, I see you misunderstood.

That message was meant as a reply to snail :-P

But your message popped up right before mine, so, a little confusion.

Damkerng T.

I was wondering that myself, but I took the liberty of giving some examples. :P

Anonymous

Well, there are two things to talk about: how compositional existing (lexical) combinations are, and how productively new ones can be formed with predictable meaning

Anonymous

Up is relatively productive

Damkerng T.

Let me coin a new phrasal verb: He was tindering away from his office before his lunch.

She just googled it up.

Anonymous

20:21

Hmm

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I Wikipedia'd up the phrase and it returned odd results.

Anonymous

Maybe this discussion is dangerous :-)

Damkerng T.

Let's flick it off the log. :P

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Maybe this discussion is up dangerous.

Anonymous

What have I done!? :-)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

20:26

What have out you done?

Nihilist_Frost

I do edit Wiktionary.

Usually providing IPA transcriptions, and etymology

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I do edit up Wiktionary.

Oh wait, we have "edit up"/

Damkerng T.

Does Wiktionary have talk pages like Wikipedia?

Nihilist_Frost

Yes.

Anonymous

Hmm

Nihilist_Frost

20:30

I am Hillcrest98 there.

Anonymous

Do you know the difference between phonemic and phonetic transcriptions, @Nihilist_Frost? That seems like an important point to get down if you're contributing transcriptions

Nihilist_Frost

yes.

Anonymous

I noticed you put some things in slashes that didn't make sense earlier, is why I asked

Nihilist_Frost

yeah, I was being too lazy to put the correct brackets.

Anonymous

Though it's hard for me to respond properly at the moment typing on my phone

Anonymous

20:33

Make sure you only use forward slashes when you want to assert that a symbol represents a phoneme in the relevant language (and remember that transcriptions in forward slashes are language specific)

Nihilist_Frost

I remember some hilarious mistakes (I'm gonna link diffs)

https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=speedometer&diff=35264386&oldid=33792021

(I fixed a shoddy, nonsensical IPA transcription)

(I took the new transcriptions from Cambridge)

en.wiktionary.org/w/…

(A series of four edits I made in order to get the etymology correct)

Even then, I don't know if that derivation was entirely correct.

Anonymous

Hmm

Anonymous

You should read phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/e-and.html

Nihilist_Frost

They don't sound like /e/ to me.

probably a similar reason as the R phoneme being /r/

convention.

Anonymous

20:49

/r/ is simpler than /ɹ/.

Anonymous

Either would work to represent the same sound since English has no contrast between the two, so people tend to go with the simpler one.

Nihilist_Frost

and it's easier to get to /e/ instead of having to get an epsilon every time.

English also has no contrast.

/eɪ/ is thought of as something separate.

I wonder if a second language speaker would transfer their native R sound to the new language.

Anonymous

That's very common.

Anonymous

Some languages only have one liquid, and they have trouble learning languages with two.

Nihilist_Frost

hence the infamous r/l confusion of Japanese people.

Anonymous

20:54

But if your language has two liquids, you're not likely to confuse them, even if your L1 /r/ is very different from the L2 /r/.

Nihilist_Frost

since the Japanese R is used as a catch-all to all liquids.

Anonymous

That's a general problem facing learners that have small numbers of phonemes in their L1s.

Anonymous

Japanese only has 5 vowels.

Nihilist_Frost

English has up to 20-something.

Anonymous

So the problem is actually worse for other sound pairings. Think of how many vowels end up as /a/ in Japanese!

Damkerng T.

20:56

Only 14 or 16, I think.

Nihilist_Frost

ɑ, æ, and ə would all be converted to /a/.

Anonymous

Japanese does have a length contrast, though, so you could say they have 10. It's not usually analyzed that way, but it's probably a helpful analysis in this context.

Nihilist_Frost

yeah, phonemically.

Anonymous

So let's go with the Japanese vowel set /a i u e o aː iː uː eː oː/ temporarily, keeping in mind that's not how Japanese is most commonly analyzed.

Damkerng T.

In school, I was taught that Thai has 32 vowel sounds, but it actually has only 9 pure vowels, so it depends on how we count.

Anonymous

20:59

The long vowels don't differ noticeably in quality from the short ones (in Japanese).

Transcript for