Language Overflow

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:00

Oh crud.

I haz nothing to say.

Damkerng T.

Goofy - Teachers Are People

►

Oh, Goofy sure talks!

@snailboat Let's free Pluto!

Anonymous

Pluto is a better name than Goofy, too.

Anonymous

Lord of the Underworld.

Damkerng T.

But Pluto is not a planet now. -- sad

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Nah, that means he was a "people" all along, whatever that is.

Heh.

I think you're more or less correct. However, parts of speech are important for many learners because without having some ideas about the PoS of English, it's almost impossible for learners to understand complicated sentences. Then again, the PoS that learners need to know, IMHO, don't have to be a very precise set, just enough to enable the learners to see sentence structures would be fine. However, in part-of-speech tagging tasks (computational linguistics), you may need to be more precise, and may need to force yourself to deal with ambiguous cases (e.g. what is here in They're here.) — Damkerng T. Jul 22 at 11:39

@Dam king's weird comment is the only thing in that question.

Anonymous

19:02

Wow, he pronounced Thailand /θaɪlænd/ at 3:49!

Damkerng T.

Indeed!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

1

Q: "Misspelled" vs. "Mistyped"

If I enter a letter incorrectly, for example vagetable instead of vegetable, then "a" is a misspelled letter or mistyped letter? What is the difference in general?

phrase-meaning

Damkerng T.

Can't blame him, 'cause he's Goofy!

Anonymous

Well, it was 1952, and I think the name Thailand was new to English speakers

Anonymous

But in 2015, it'd be hard to imagine English speakers pronouncing it that way!

Damkerng T.

19:05

Oh! I can't remember when we changed the name from Siam to Thailand.

Oh, 1939!

Anonymous

But

Anonymous

1939-1945 Thailand

Anonymous

1945-1949 Siam

Anonymous

1949- Thailand again

Damkerng T.

Yes! That was quite confusing!

Anonymous

19:07

When I was growing up in the 80s, they told not to say Siamese anymore (but people still said it)

Damkerng T.

Siamese is still fine for cats and twins, I think.

and probably a few other things. Not sure.

Anonymous

Actually, that's the main one.

Anonymous

Twins.

Anonymous

The politically correct term is conjoined twins.

Anonymous

People still say Siamese cats :-)

Damkerng T.

19:08

nods

Hehe! I like that name!

Anonymous

People still say Siamese twins too, but other people get grumpy about it.

Damkerng T.

So, we've got both Siamese cat and Persian cat. :-)

Anonymous

Yay!

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Oh, really? I didn't know that!

Anonymous

Yuh-huh. Conjoined twins causes minimal grumpiness.

Anonymous

19:10

I don't know any twins, conjoined or otherwise.

Anonymous

So it doesn't really come up very often in my daily life.

Damkerng T.

Talking Siamese Cat VERY talkative! She answers all my questions!

►

Anonymous

There are twins in my (extremely large) extended family.

Anonymous

But I have so many relatives I don't know most of them.

Damkerng T.

A Siamese cat that probably can speak English (sort of). :P

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:12

> Talking Siamese cat VERY talkative!

Anonymous

Aww :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

That is one smart sentence.

Anonymous

That's an adorable cat.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Twins are interesting. They seem to be very much alike their twins even though they're not living together.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I did not click on the link, but the cat looks like a camel.

Anonymous

19:13

@DamkerngT. Yeah, twin studies are very common

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M The cat has a typical Siamese cat's face.

Anonymous

I would say: They seem to be very much like their twins even if they're not living together.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Ah, so Siamese cat == Camel

Damkerng T.

I thought about like too, but I overlooked even if. Thanks!

Anonymous

Alike is used without a complement: "They're very much alike."

Damkerng T.

19:15

Hmm... even if fits better indeed, but I can't explain why.

Anonymous

Even though would be appropriate if we had a particular example (or set of examples) of twins and knew for a fact they lived separately.

Damkerng T.

A-ha!

So, this even if works pretty much like even when.

Anonymous

I think that's fair.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

ell.stackexchange.com/q/62705/#comment119944_62705

Anonymous

I won't go so far as to say they're identical, but yeah.

Damkerng T.

19:16

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M What?!?

Anonymous

Sadly, they're not actually good communication person.

Damkerng T.

A real irony!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. What.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I read that answer and I said "What?!?" :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. I read that message and I said "What." :-)

Damkerng T.

19:19

Hehe!

BTW, I missed this set of stamps. Would be nice to have one.

(Is it image not found over there?)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Unfortunately, no. :(

Damkerng T.

Oh, so it's all right!

Anonymous

I think that answer would be better off as an answer than a comment. We can't downvote comments :-( — snailboat 2 mins ago

Damkerng T.

I read 'misspelled' implies that you didn't know the correct spelling and I said to myself "What?!?"

Anonymous

Yeah, nope.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:22

@Snail's on the smart remarktrack today. ™

@DamkerngT. That would be abspelled.

Hey, we could even coin ill-spelled!

Damkerng T.

I'd say it'd be me-dunno-how-to-spell. :P

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

me-no-know-how-spell

One really necessary tag for ELL.

Damkerng T.

:D

Anonymous

A lot of non-native speakers seem to be really good at spelling.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

That one I agree, unfortunately.

Damkerng T.

19:26

Because a lot of them (us) learn a second language visually.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Unfortunately indeed.

Anonymous

I'm a native speaker, and I was always really good at spelling, but I think I've actually been getting worse―and it's most noticeable after I spend significant amounts of time with languages other than English

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Anyone higher than A2 doesn't usually happen to have misspellings in common words, unless it's weird cases like conceive, believe etc.

Damkerng T.

I forgot the spellings of some of infrequently used Thai words, but I think that's okay. It's the easiest thing to fix, in no time, even.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat That has been my secret plan for years (not really) MWAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHA! (not really)

Too bad my native language doesn't even have a separate alphabet. :(

But I hardly ever misspell stuff in Persian.

Anonymous

Onomatopoeia. Amenorrhea. Aliquot. What's a hard word to spell?

Anonymous

19:28

Gimme IPA!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat A hard word to spell.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Ah, the reflexive property.

Damkerng T.

For examples, the 6 species of Siamese Thai cats: วิเชียรมาศ สีสวาด ศุภลักษณ์ โกญจา ขาวมณี และแซมเสวตร. I guess I would be able to spell only 4 out of 6 correctly without looking at them.

Anonymous

I can't spell any of those.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I guess that's fair!

Anonymous

19:29

There are probably lots of species names I can't spell properly from memory.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I can spell them correctly. Here: วิเชียรมาศ สีสวาด ศุภลักษณ์ โกญจา ขาวมณี และแซมเสวตร.

Damkerng T.

LOL

Anonymous

Amastridae. Yay, I did it!

Damkerng T.

Actually, the 6 are วิเชียรมาศ สีสวาด ศุภลักษณ์ โกญจา ขาวมณี แซมเสวตร. The word และ means "and". :D

Anonymous

Unfortunately, it's hard to quiz myself on spelling.

Damkerng T.

19:30

@snailboat Yay!

Anonymous

I'll just end up picking words I already know the spelling of.

Anonymous

So I'll get 100% right, even though in real life I'm not that good :-)

Damkerng T.

:D

Anonymous

There are lots of words I couldn't write the kanji for from memory in Japanese.

Damkerng T.

Oh, because of the input method?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:33

No duh. Because they're sacred.

Anonymous

Well, that's true of pretty much anyone who's literate in Japanese or Chinese.

Anonymous

'Cause there are thousands and no one remembers how to write all of them.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

-4

Q: The lack of MathJax in chat

This is shocking. This is a lack of basic literacy. Obviously MathJax is needed in chat.

feature-request

Damkerng T.

FYI. there were 23 kinds of Siamese cats, but now we have only 6 kinds. 17 of them were gone.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

It was about time I see the word literacy again. Literacy, so we meet again. . .

Anonymous

19:34

Ask native speakers of Chinese to write 'sneeze' :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Eh, is that a tricky word?

Anonymous

You won't find many who come up with 打喷嚏.

Anonymous

嚏 is hard.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Hey, it's Mad Scientist again!

@snailboat I can't even tell the number of strokes!

15?

Anonymous

It's not always complicated characters, either. It's just characters people don't write very often by hand, which often means characters that are used in very few words.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:35

@snailboat I'd come up with ɘzɘɘnƨ.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I'm sure you're selling mirrors for a living. :P

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

No, but I sell organic ice cream.

Damkerng T.

Oh, interesting! How would organic ice cream be different from the inorganic ice cream?

Anonymous

It's 17.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. " . . . "

Damkerng T.

19:38

@snailboat Oh!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Figure that out, and you'll burst laughing.

Anonymous

bihua.51240.com/e59a8f__bihuachaxun

Anonymous

And anyone can read it, but that doesn't necessarily mean they can write it from memory.

Anonymous

Japanese speakers can generally all read 魑魅魍魎, but can't necessarily all write it.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Isn't that kinda bad?

Damkerng T.

19:39

@snailboat It looks like a different character on my screen!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Shrugs

Anonymous

Maybe due to zoom?

Damkerng T.

Oh, yes!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oh O.o.

Damkerng T.

Must've zoomed in thrice before I can see its true shape!

Anonymous

19:40

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M There's no doubt that having thousands of Chinese characters makes it much more difficult to become literate in Japanese or Chinese.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Those chars are like lambdas between windows.

@snailboat Doesn't simplified Chinese have only 100 chars?

Anonymous

Native speakers of both languages spend years learning to read characters in school.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M No, to read Simplified Chinese, you'll want to know 3000-6000

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Holy . . .

Anonymous

You don't need to know quite as many for Japanese, but in Japanese, one Chinese character can have a lot of different pronunciations, so in a way, it's more complicated in Japanese

Anonymous

19:42

I'd say 2000-3500 for Japanese

Anonymous

There's no hard cutoff, but I think most college educated speakers of Japanese can read 3500+ and of Chinese can read 6000+

Anonymous

Very large dictionaries contain upwards of 50,000 characters

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

K, so the golden question: Why was there a need for so many chars?

Do they operate something that other chars in other languages don't?

Are they kinda special?

Damkerng T.

It may sound like a lot, but you can think of most of the characters as a conglomerate of smaller common pieces, fitted into a block.

Anonymous

You still have to learn them all independently, though.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:45

Do they somehow play the roles of words also?

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

It's true that there are only 200-300 common elements that make up the larger characters.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. So that does mean they act somehow like word, right?

Hmm.

Damkerng T.

What snailboat said. (I don't really know those characters. I think I know only 100-200 characters, which is very limited.)

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Originally, in Old Chinese, there was almost a one-to-one correspondence between characters and words.

Anonymous

19:47

For this reason, the hanzi ('Han characters') are called a logographic script

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Dang!

The Chinese naturally like quantity, hehe.

Anonymous

The Chinese languages have been moving gradually toward two characters per word

Anonymous

As they become phonologically reduced

Anonymous

Mandarin has the most simplified syllables, so it naturally has the most two-syllable words

Anonymous

Other Chinese languages have more one-syllable words, even today

Damkerng T.

19:49

Thai is more like other Chinese languages in this respect.

Anonymous

Cantonese, for example, has retained more syllable codas and has more tones, so its syllables are more unique, and there's less need for compounding

Anonymous

Mandarin is exceptional in how simplified the syllables have become

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

<noise>Meatie's slowly gaining repz again, and haz a new question.</noise>

Anonymous

In Japanese, Chinese characters tend not to represent single words, though sometimes they do.

Anonymous

What we can say is that Chinese characters almost always represent single syllables in all the Chinese languages

Anonymous

19:51

I know there are exceptions, but they aren't very common.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Has any other group of languages in the world developed like this?

Anonymous

The Egyptian Hieroglyphs are a famous example of a logographic script

Damkerng T.

The logographic quality?

nods

Anonymous

Of course, just like Chinese, the Hieroglyphs do represent sounds

Anonymous

(There's a common misconception that they do not.)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:53

Hmm.

Anonymous

Cuneiform (one of the earliest known writing systems) is similar, too.

Anonymous

As far as we're aware, the alphabet has only been invented once in the history of mankind.

Anonymous

All systems of writing we'd refer to as alphabets today are related.

Anonymous

Cyrillic, Greek, Latin

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

But revised and modified many times.

Yeah.

My internet's wobbly again, for no good reason.

Damkerng T.

19:55

Maybe the Korean script reinvented itself.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

What? It's not wheel. . .

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. The story of Hangul is a great one! :-)

Anonymous

Korea was using Chinese characters, essentially writing Korean down like it was Classical Chinese

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I think pretty much this version of Persian is just applied Arabic.

Anonymous

And as a consequence, the country was almost completely illiterate.

Damkerng T.

19:58

A-ha! So they invented their own script!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat I think this is true for many past nations.

Damkerng T.

(Which looks sort of like Chinese, but it's not!)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Due to varying reasons.

Anonymous

And Sejong the Great (then King)

Anonymous

Decided to do something about the problem of widespread illiteracy

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:59

Ancient Arabs were basically wild animals; being literate among them was a disadvantage .

Anonymous

And he had a script created which represented in simple graphic form the articulatory phonetics of the Korean language

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Wait, what?

Anonymous

Combining the three parts of the syllable together into characters in predictable, easy-to-learn fashion

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Waits Yeah, it's true @Dam.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I really like that idea!

Transcript for