@snailboat Remember that we talked about [ɲ] a couple days ago?

I've just noticed that in the chart above (chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/23579194#23579194), Pali has it!

(I thought to type at first but I didn't know how I can type an n with a tilde over it, so let's use a screenshot instead.)

[ɲ] is there, in the bottom-right corner!

So, in Romanized Pali, this letter is written as an n with a tilde. Traditionally, this letter is written in Thai script as ญ.

In the revised phonetic for Pali, the Romanized phonetic transcription for this sound is [ɲ], and in Thai phonetic transcription [ญ].

(If I'm not mistaken, Pali is mainly a spoken language, there wasn't a true Pali script, so we can expect a one-to-one mapping between the letters and the sounds.)

In Thai, when ญ is the beginning consonant, it's pronounced like a "y" (as in "yes") in English. When it's the ending consonant, it's pronounced like an "n" (as in "ken") in English.

I think the real [ɲ] sound would sound different than that.

According to the table, it's a voiced-palatal-nasal sound.

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via: People Aged 7 To 93 Give Advice To Younger Selves (Hindsight is always 20/20)

Language of wisdom is usually simple, and clear.

​

We've mentioned toys for children recently. I like LOVE this one!

via: huffingtonpost.com/entry/…

It's beyond toy; it's so touching. (BTW, there's a video in the post on HUFFPOST.)

LOL

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From an old tab:

> As it turns out, a language is rarely truly forgotten, merely submerged.

Language Log » I've forgotten more Czech than Barbara Partee has learned

@DamkerngT. And, as a native speaker, my answer is ... What's an adjectival phrase? - If you're overly wrapped up in grammar terms, you're not really learning the important things.

@Catija Indeed. I usually differentiate the two things as "learning a language" and "learning about the language".

Sometimes grammatical terms help; sometimes, not so much, imho.

:D I think it's amazing that people know so much about the grammar... but differentiating between two types of usages that the average native isn't even aware exist... that's a waste of time... to me. I'm not sure how knowing which it is helps understand that particular phrase.

Anyway, it could be troublesome for non-native English teachers. Students expect their teacher to know.

@DamkerngT. That's one of the problems with teaching a language... they have to "classify" things that weren't necessarily meant to be classified.

I don't know what grammar is like in Thai... but I bet there are as many exceptions as there are in English.

Indeed. And some students expect the teacher to classify every word right to the last one.

@Catija So true!

@DamkerngT. Ugh. I bet those are the students who get annoying. :D

And most of the time, afaict, Thai teachers will teach only "proper" Thai. I think it's pretty much the same in teaching English.

@Catija I think they want to know that because they believe that that is the only way they can learn a second language.

In proper Thai, grammar is more coherent. There are fewer exceptions, etc.

@DamkerngT. Probably. I mean... I live in Texas, where a huge percentage of the population speaks Mexican Spanish... and yet, in school... they teach Castillian Spanish, the Spanish spoken in Spain!

Oh! :-)

@DamkerngT. But they probably don't know all of these random parts of speech for their own language... and they speak that just fine... Meh. I only speak English, so I'm clearly not in the same boat but I don't really think that's an effective way of learning a language.

@Catija Exactly!

I think most adult language learners let their analytical part of their thinking to be too dominant.

So, they keep analyzing things, rather than absorbing things.

@DamkerngT. It would help if there were easier ways to actually converse with a fluent speaker... When I took Japanese, I did horribly on the oral stuff because I never had the chance to practice outside of class with anyone who could correct me. If you practiced with another non-native speaker, you could both end up being wrong!

I suppose if I'd had access to the Japanese.SE, that might have made a difference but it wasn't around at that time, I think.

nods -- The proper Thai, or the classroom English (sometimes I called it a "canned" English), works better as a shortcut to learn formal writing. On the other hand, it may be harmful if the student thinks that it's the only possible way to use the language.

@Catija I think we can fix that by bringing the non-native teachers up to the level of near native first.

@Catija When I read Japanese and find a word or a phrase that I can't make sense of it after looking it up in dictionaries, a lot of times I find that JSE will come up on the first page when I google for it.

@DamkerngT. Yeah, that's definitely a big problem. Here, all of the teachers I've ever had are native speakers of the language but I certainly hear a lot of students quoting their teachers here, and the teachers are incorrect.

Eh?

My Japanese teacher in college is from Japan and all of the TAs for the class are Japanese kids who came to my university to study in English.

Do you mean, by "their teachers (here)", the teachers are non-native speakers?

@DamkerngT. More that I only ever had teachers who are native speakers, so for me, that was never an issue.

Ah, I see. So those students who quote their teachers as being incorrect have non-native speakers as their teachers.

@DamkerngT. That would be my guess.

nods -- Getting to the near-native level is, imho, really, really hard.

But it's not impossible, imho. For example, @oerkelens is a good example.

@DamkerngT. Yeah. But, one of the awesome things about English is that natives can (often) understand what you mean even if your English isn't that great.

Same in Thai! We are pleased almost we faint when people from other languages say "Hello" or "Thank you" in Thai!

@DamkerngT. I'll have to remember that if I ever go to Thailand. :D

@Catija I think that the main reason that I could get by relatively comfortably in my first years working abroad. Things will become different in academic settings or official writing, and so on, tough.

@DamkerngT. Do you mean that you did this in the past? Or are planning to do it in the future?

@Catija :D -- Here are the phrases: "Hello" = สวัสดีค่ะ Sa-was-dee-ka. "Thank you" = ขอบคุณค่ะ Kohb-kun-ka.

@Catija I meant my personal experience in the past, but the assertion (in academic settings and formal writing) is in general.

I mean, the bars for English in everyday English and academic/formal English are different.

My maxim is, English is easy to learn but really, really difficult to master.

@DamkerngT. Ah, sure. And that's the same even for native speakers. Poor writing skills are a big issue for people in this era of texting and shorthand writing... it takes some people a bit of time to adjust to the fact that they need to know how to write a real sentence.

@DamkerngT. Yeah. That's what I hear all the time, too.

@Catija I'm not very sure but it's probably the same in a lot of languages.

@DamkerngT. Probably. There was a list somewhere that ranked languages by the ease of learning them...

twentytwowords.com/…

That's nice! and neat!

I wish we had a similar chart but ranking the ease of learning English based on first languages.

The two directions should be at least somewhat correlated, I think.

@DamkerngT. Probably... For example, English has a lot of words in common with French and German, so that should make it easier to learn for them.

I was looking up some Thai pronunciation guides... and... Thai sounds funny to me. It seems really ... vowel-y? With harsh consonants.

@Catija We have more vowel combinations than English, I think.

Though the true vowels (monophthongs) in Thai are fewer. (Just 9)

Most consonants should be easy for English speakers, except for the three unaspirated ones.

These two are really cute.

Hehe!

What does it say on their shirts?

Oh, the one worn by the Thai says "Thai" (ไทย), the one worn by the English speaker says "Farang" (ฝรั่ง), practically it means foreigner (or expat, etc).

Ah, I see. The non-Thai girl sounds like she's not actually a native English speaker, either... Maybe Dutch? Not sure.

Ahh.. that's possible.

Here is a tip about the Thai gesture (called "wai" ไหว้) we do when saying "Hello": we don't need to put our palms together too tightly. Doing it moderately and comfortably is better, as the palms represent a lotus. :-)

Ah, so the tips of the fingers are more open?

No, ideally all the tips of the fingers should touch the ones on the other palm.

Ah, I see. A not yet open blossom.

The palms or the hands are supposed to look like that. Yes!

That's a Miss Universe! :D

Oh, really? I just looked up images for wai and that was what came up. :D

She used to marry to one of our best tennis players soon after she won the title. :D

She's famous, so she has her own Wikipedia page :-) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Glebova

... Wait... so she's Russian?

Russian-Canadian, I think.

@DamkerngT. Interesting that she ended up in Thailand.

The Miss Universe that year was in Thai, iirc.

That's a muscle-y man.

Ah, yes. That's her ex-husband. :D

So... in English, we call the country you live in "Thailand" and the language "Thai"... do you call the country "Thai"? I feel that I should use the correct terminology if I'm talking to someone from there. :P

Yes, we call our country and language and people in our language "Thai". Though it will sound to you like "Tai". :D

I always thought is was something like "tie" as in "tie your shoes". :P I've never pronounced the h.

The "th" is supposed to mean the aspirated "t" sound. We have three related sounds: "d", aspirated "t" (transliterated in English as "th"), and the unaspirated "t".

@Catija That's the correct way to pronounce the word. :D

Well, yay! I've been doing something right.

Thai has no English "th" sound.

@Catija Yay!

Hi @snailboat :D

@snailboat I'm not sure if most native speakers (of English) are aware of the difference.

Good evening! @snailboat

@snailboat Stool certainly seems to have a softer "t" sound to me.

Whereas I really hit the T in tool hard.

Oh, I just saw the stickied comments... happy belated birthday :D

Is the /t/ in softer aspirated or unaspirated more often?

I don't know about softer but I hear people say buddon instead of button, particularly from the NE US.

I usually pronounce it as "bud-n".

@snailboat Yeah. Same.

@snailboat On Tuesday I was at my Pool league and someone had broken off a piece of the white chalk they use for your hands... and I was writing kanji with it... I really love the artistry of writing in Japanese.

Aww... the song "Softer, Softest" has neither of the words softer and softest!

If those resources existed 7 years ago, when I was taking Japanese, they didn't tell us about them in school.

@Catija Oh, you mean the chalk? Is it called "chalk" in there?

@DamkerngT. There are two types of chalk at a pool (billiards) hall.

There are two of them?

There's the cubes of chalk used to "chalk" the tip of the cue... it's usually colored to match the table felt.

There's white chalk to chalk your hands, to reduce friction or dry them out.

@snailboat In snooker, there is a special kind of chalk for the tip of the cue. I guess it's the same in pool.

That's cue chalk.

Ah, I'm familiar with that one!

Cone chalk... for your hands.

I think I've never chalked my hands.

The cone chalk is the one that someone had broken off a piece of.

Ahh

Looks similar to chalks for blackboards. Must be fun to write or draw with it.

@DamkerngT. Yeah, I think it's probably about the same thing. If you put it on your hands, you leave white hand-prints everywhere.

This is the first time for me too!

@Catija I suppose so! :D

Aww... brush pens are popular in Japan!

@snailboat That's really awesome.

He's so perfect about his form...

I usually write in pencil because I have to work at it a lot to make it right. But I think I got pretty good after two years.

I wish I had such a brush or a pen. I have only watercolor brushes, and they can't draw anything like that.

@Catija Neat!

Thanks for the keyword!

It really is designed to be written with a brush, though... It looks so much nicer in brush script.

I'm sort of surprised how squared off some of the curves are... like the a and su.

I remember it took me a while just to make my a look presentable. :D And I didn't even use a brush yet!

I don't think my professor ever told us that the hi needed to have a point at the bottom...

@snailboat That's good to know. I tend to like the rounded style better, personally... but I think that's mostly because it's more fluid to write.

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> A translator often has to strike a balance between literal but clumsy language and elegant but inaccurate language.

> --Gil Fronsdal (The Dhammadapa: Teachings of the Buddha)

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Welcome back!

@snailboat I think I'm gonna disappear the rest of the afternoon soon. :D

About the had never done ringing sentence, our answer is spot-on. However, I'm not sure if it's clear enough for our OP. I hope it is.

Maybe I worry too much. :D

If they don't understand it in the first reading, they may in the second or the third. :D

nods -- I'm not sure if it's a real test. The passage the OP wrote after the quote looks like something from a prep book.

Yeah... there's not even any implication that that specific sentence is needed for the answers...

I got interested in the question because of the word Artaxerxes. :D

Oh, no! I hope it won't rain today. I have to make a long trip this evening!

sat.collegeboard.org/practice/…

@snailboat Yeah, I just finished writing a comment to that effect.

And later, in fact. The writer is using the bell to exemplify the change in his opinion of the theater. When he was a child, it was magical... now, it sounds mechanical and hollow.

It happens to me all the time... I watch a funny YouTube video and then I get my husband to watch it and it's often not as funny the second time so I worry that he'll think my judgement of funny internet videos is poor... but he usually laughs.

Aww... maybe I have to leave early, to compensate the possibility of a delay caused by the rain.

See you later!

@DamkerngT. Bye! I'm going to head to bed, anyway. Have a great afternoon!

Thanks! Have a great time chatting and everything. :D

And good night for Catija.

@snailboat Night! Have fun doing whatever you're going to do.

@Dam you here?

Sorry, I was just gonna say that I'm busy with an answer on chem and then I've got tons of math homework. Which is why I won't hang here.

FYI, that answer on chem is 12000 characters, as of now.

> Word of the day: Bonfire

@DamkerngT. Blush :)