Language Overflow

Damkerng T.

03:40

I wonder how do you appraise such a writing style, stringing together all those ornate words and phrases? — dennylv 1 hour ago

@dennylv Good models and nearly 70 years of practice. — StoneyB 49 mins ago

Somehow the dialogue seems to be out of sync to me.

Good comment. I surely am not qualified to judge the writing style of the Economist which takes on various manners with so many excellent writers. I am just an English learner with very superficial learning. I just want to say, within my very limited reading experiences, I am more inclined to Hemingway's works. — dennylv 31 mins ago

Hmm... interesting. The dialogue was back on track.

I wonder if using appraise like this is normal.

Anonymous

Do you think they meant achieve?

Damkerng T.

04:03

@snailboat I think using appraise like this (for evaluation) comes from business English.

Also, I think the How do you in the first comment didn't mean what StoneyB seemed to think it means.

Unless The Economist is about 70 years old.

Anonymous

Oh, I read it in context just now.

Damkerng T.

(Or some comments were deleted.)

Anonymous

I was actually interpreting dennylv's comment based on the context of the response.

Anonymous

I'm a little bit lost now :-)

Damkerng T.

His first comment could only make sense if StoneyB appraised the style of writing of that sentence first, imho.

Anonymous

04:08

I think StoneyB assumed he meant something other than appraise, something like manage or achieve.

Anonymous

Right?

Damkerng T.

So, I'm not sure what each of the two meant by appraise, and I'm not sure about that How do you, either.

@snailboat I'm still not able to crack it!

Anonymous

Well, the how do you is probably ungrammatical

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Hmm... could be, but appraise doesn't have this sense, I think.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Right, when I read StoneyB's response I took appraise as a mistake

Anonymous

04:12

You have to repair the comment for it to make sense anyway

Anonymous

But they might have meant appraise.

Damkerng T.

When I first read the comments, I thought the OP asked either "How could you admire this style of writing?" or "What is your idea about this style of writing?"

Anonymous

Yeah, I think it could mean that.

Anonymous

But I think StoneyB's response only makes sense if you assume he read it as intending to say something else.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

04:13

Two comments, passing in the night.

Anonymous

→ en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ships_that_pass_in_the_night#Etymology

Damkerng T.

Oh, it's an idiom (or something well-known)!

0

A: Is it right to say 'You don't ever learn to fly if you won't try'

It's the other way round. You don't use the if-clause in the future. In this sentence the if-clause should be in the present with the main clause in the future. As commented by Jasper, the correct sentence is: You won't ever learn to fly if you don't try.

user3169 has become Jasper!

I wonder what's happening on ELL!

Ah, he edited it!

Damkerng T.

07:17

2

A: Use of Past Perfect in Leo Rosten's "O Kaplan! My Kaplan!"

You're right. The action of "had admired" and "had put" is in the same timeframe as "once enlivened", not further into the past. The phrase "once enlivened" is not a perfect aspect construction, but it does have something that marks its timeframe as further in the past than the surrounding ...

An interesting analysis.

Damkerng T.

07:51

Reading that Maulik suggests We have a thing of utmost importance made me wonder if utmost importance was right. (I expected the utmost importance.) So I searched...

books.google.com/ngrams/…

Utmost importance without the is relatively new, it seems!

Oh, and it looks like the only word before utmost importance without the is of! This graph is like "utmost importance - the utmost importance"!

Ah, the OP just added the source of his example!

> I bring up, based on these three observations, a challenge with an utmost importance: we must radically change our fundamental perspective to grasp the world.

> An Ecological Vision of the World: Toward a Christian Ecological Theology for Our Age by Hyun-Chul Cho. Gregorian Biblical BookShop, 2004.

Before you might think that it was because the author is a non-native speaker, here is another example:

> I gave ____ an importance of ____ because ____.

> Reading to Learn in the Content Areas By Judy Richardson, Raymond Morgan, Charlene Fleener

> But even then not only of the mind and the heart, but also—and of paramount importance, an importance that has been tragically forgotten*—a new attention of and from within the physical body*.

> An Unknown World: Notes on the Meaning of the Earth By Jacob Needleman

I wonder if OED lists importance as a countable noun, too.

Damkerng T.

08:26

> He searched into the notable particularities of all kingdoms, republics and their churches, with all the importances that hung upon them.

> (OED1)

GATA

11:02

Hi all. Could someone please check my wording? "Thank you . for your diligent answers."

Damkerng T.

I think I'd simply use "Thank you for the answer". Using diligent with answer sounds a little strange to me.

Though we can surely say timely answer, superb answer, and so on.

Another possible option is "Thank your for your diligence", though I don't think I've heard it before.

GATA

@DamkerngT. HI :) I googled it. It seemed to be common.

Damkerng T.

Oh, it's good, then. :D

Ah, "Thank ~~your~~ you for your diligence."

GATA

@DamkerngT. OOPS :) As always, Thank you DamkerngT.

Damkerng T.

Hehe! Anytime!

Nihilist_Frost

15:27

Would you ever use "x had need of y"?

Anonymous

I'm not sure. I might not have ever used that expression

Anonymous

I usually max out around semiformal :-)

Nihilist_Frost

15:42

I still front so many /θ/s

Schoko

16:16

@snailboat yakisoba!!

(just dropped by to say hi)

(past bedtime. ciao)

ノシ

Anonymous

Oh, have a good night! :-)

Anonymous

16:31

It was my first time making yakisoba. I loved it! :-)

Anonymous

I was really happy it turned out well. I was afraid I'd make it really badly

CopperKettle

16:47

@snailboat That's great!

Soba

Soba /ˈsoʊbə/ (そば or 蕎麦) is the Japanese name for buckwheat. It is synonymous with a type of thin noodle made from buckwheat flour, and in Japan can refer to any thin noodle (unlike thick wheat noodles, known as udon). Soba noodles are served either chilled with a dipping sauce, or in hot broth as a noodle soup. It takes three months for buckwheat to be ready for harvest, so it can be harvested four times a year, mainly in spring, summer, and autumn. In Japan, buckwheat is produced mainly in Hokkaido. Soba that is made with newly harvested buckwheat is called "shin-soba". It is sweeter and more...

Lovers of buckwheat kasha in Russia would love this. (0:

Good evening all!

Toshikoshi soba

Toshikoshi soba (年越し蕎麦), year-crossing noodle, is Japanese traditional noodle bowl dish eaten on New Year's Eve. This custom lets go of hardship of the year because soba noodles are easily cut while eating. == History == The custom differs from area to area and it is also called misoka soba, tsugomori soba, kure soba, jyumyo soba, fuku soba, and unki soba. The tradition started around Edo period (1603-1867) and there are several theories believed that long soba noodles symbolize a long life. The buckwheat plant can survive severe weather during growing period, soba represents strength and...

In Russia, a New-Year dish is Olivier salad, invented by a Belgian-born cook.

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Note that /ˈsoʊbə/ is the American English pronunciation. In Japanese, it's [so↓bɑ]

CopperKettle

@snailboat Thank you! If ever I get to Japan, I'll try to keep that in mind! (0:

Anonymous

Hehe!

CopperKettle

Lest I remain unfed!

@DamkerngT. I'm still not very certain why there is that Past Perfect..

Anonymous

17:02

Sometimes I wish we could use the same transcription for the GOAT vowel in both AmE and BrE

Anonymous

Wikipedia, misrepresenting lexical sets since, well, I dunno, a long time ago . . .

CopperKettle

I'm out to lunch on this.. I've looked up the page "Lexical sets".

goat əʊ o soap, soul, home

Anonymous

Which is wrong.

Anonymous

General American GOAT is oʊ

CopperKettle

Because "soap" is not pronounced with "monotonous o"?

Anonymous

17:08

Right, it's not pronounced with a monophthong

Anonymous

The quality shifts during the vowel

Anonymous

books.google.com/books?id=FjLc1XtqJUUC&pg=PA90

Anonymous

I just looked, and people have fixed that mistake and mentioned it on the talk page, but other people reverted it

Anonymous

We English speakers tend to diphthongize /o/ in languages we're learning, even if /o/ is a monophthong in those languages :-)

CopperKettle

(0:

So, an American will pronounce polye as poʊlye ("field" in Russian)

Anonymous

17:13

Ah! I see

Anonymous

I learned a new word! :-)

CopperKettle

(0:

pronounced like this

Anonymous

It's interesting that ‹е› represents /je/

CopperKettle

Kulikovo Field

Kulikovo Field (Russian: Куликово поле, or Kulikovo Pole; lit. "snipes' field") is a field in Tula Oblast in Russia where the famous Battle of Kulikovo took place on September 8 of 1380. As established by Stepan Nechayev, the battlefield is located between the rivers of Nepryadva, Krasivaya Mecha, and Don some 140 km away from Tula and 23 km away from the Kulikovo Pole railway station. Today, Kulikovo Field is home for a museum complex which includes a 28-metre column on the Red Hill (Красный Холм) built in 1848-1850, and a memorial church in honour of Sergius of Radonezh (built in 1913-191...

Kulikovo polye

Anonymous

(And I mean the "y" sound when I write /j/)

CopperKettle

17:16

@snailboat Yes, the letter L is "soft, and there's "j"

Anonymous

So it's only four letters in Russian

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Oh, I see :-)

CopperKettle

But when you're learning Russian grammar, you have to remember that in some tasks you should write the sound j - using the Latin letter

There are tricky tasks like "how much sounds are in such-and-such a word"

For example ёлка is transcribed as joлка

Anonymous

Oh!

CopperKettle

yolka - a fir tree

Anonymous

17:21

That's a nice sounding word :-)

CopperKettle

Yes. (0:

Rhymes with palka, a stick, to make yolki-palki, a kind of a swear exclamation

Anonymous

!

CopperKettle

Or yoli-pali for short, but really with ы at the end, not i

Anonymous

I forgot what the ы is!

CopperKettle

@snailboat ы is like i, but more "throaty"

Anonymous

17:24

It's ь + i?

CopperKettle

no, it a letter consisting of two parts: ы

(one keystroke)

how to pronounce Ы

Anonymous

Oh, I see :-)

CopperKettle

7

Q: Pronunciation of 'ы'

Several resources that I am using say that 'и' and 'ы' represent the same vowel sound, and that the only difference is the palatalization of consonants preceding 'и', but I perceive two different sounds. The same sources say that 'и' sounds like the 'ee' in "see," and that 'ы' sounds like the 'i'...

произношение

The sound ы reminds me of Mongolian singing really.

Anonymous

I wonder where the ¨ in ё came from

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Oh, thanks! :-)

CopperKettle

17:27

You're welcome!

@snailboat ё is yo (but o is a monophtong)

The letter ё was proposed on 18 November 1783

at a session of the Russian Academy of Sciences

by Countess Romanova

Who asked the present gentlemen how would they write yolka

They said that the word was written ioлка

And she proposed to economize by introducing ё

Thus "hedgehog" ceased to be iож and became ёж (yozh)

Or, in a hypochoristic version, yozhik = ёжик

Good evening, @Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

\o guys.

OH MY EYES IT'S RUSSIAN EVERYWHERE.

CopperKettle

(0:

@snailboat I guess these two dots are akin to the dots used in German for their umlauts

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Checking the pronunciation of "umlaut" I read it as "omelete".

CopperKettle

Quite logical, since in 1783 Russia was ruled by a German woman

..who only learned Russian at age 15 or 16

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

1783? Hmm, that year's familiar . . .

Anonymous

17:38

ёжик means 'hedgie'? :-)

CopperKettle

@snailboat Yes, "a little hedgehog" (0:

ёжик Соник is a very cool computer game personage (0:

Anonymous

Is it like German -chen?

CopperKettle

@snailboat Good question! I never thought of this. Could it be?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

1783

1783 (MDCCLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Sunday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar. == Events == === January–June === February 3 – American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain acknowledges the independence of the United States of America. At this time the Spanish government does not grant diplomatic recognition. February 4 – American Revolutionary War: Great Britain formally declares that it will cease hostilities with the United States. February 5 – 1783 Calabr...

CopperKettle

@snailboat Ah, yes, it's like it, but they are not cognate

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

17:41

> The last British troops leave New York City 3 months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

That's it.

CopperKettle

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Oh, how could I forget this! Probably the invention of ё overshone this event for me. (0:

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Well then be careful next time. ಠ_ಠ

CopperKettle

The same year, in Russia:

Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Empire

The territory of Crimea, previously controlled by the Crimean Khanate, was annexed by the Russian Empire on 19 April [O.S. 8 April] 1783. The period prior to the annexation was marked by Russian interference in Crimean affairs, a series of revolts by Crimean Tatars, and Ottoman ambivalence. The annexation began 171 years of Russian rule in Crimea, which ended with the transfer of the territory to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954. Russia annexed Crimea for a second time in March 2014. == Prelude == === Independent Crimea (1774–76) === Prior to the defeat of the Ottoman Emp...

"The Crimean Khanate, which had existed since 1441 and was the last remnant of the Mongol Golden Horde, is annexed by the Russian Empire of Catherine the Great"

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

O__O "Annexation of cream by the Persian Empire"

@CopperKettle BTW interestingly Mongol means idiot in Persian.

CopperKettle

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Strange. Probably because Down's syndrome was called "mongoloidism" or something like that in the olden times

By the way, the name of Leo Tolstoy was Lyov Tolstoy - Лёв

also with ё

And Gorbachev has ё (the last Soviet leader)

Горбачёв

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. In Russian, the word for peach is persik, from Persia

(0:

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

17:50

@Snail @TCh how much space should be before and after em-dashes?

@CopperKettle I'M NOT FAT! (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

CopperKettle

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. what have peaches to do with fatness?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

The shape.

Why else would big bad Russians call peaches us?

CopperKettle

There's a surname in Russia, a very rare surname, which consists only of the letter ё (from French oeau or something like that)

Anonymous

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I think em dashes are typically used without spaces.

CopperKettle

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. It's the old latin name for peaches, "apples of Persia", borrowed into Russian in the 17 century ( malum Persicum )

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

17:54

Copper ё Kettle.

@CopperKettle Ahh.

@snailboat Oh. Good.

Anonymous

But I think it depends on how you're using it.

Anonymous

I'm looking at the book tchrist recommended, and Bringhurst appears to dislike em dashes to set off phrases:

Anonymous

> The em dash is the nineteenth-century standard, still prescribed in many editorial style books, but the em dash is too long for use with the best text faces. Like the oversized space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography.

Anonymous

(The Elements of Typographic Style, p.80)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

meta.chemistry.stackexchange.com/posts/3015/revisions

Anonymous

17:57

> Used as a phrase marker – thus – the en dash is set with a normal word space either side.

CopperKettle

2

(Monument to the letter YO, in Ulyanovsk)

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Wow! :-)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

That's my use, but you need a way to have a different hyphen.

CopperKettle

@snailboat Russia has a lot of strange monuments. There's a keyboard monument in Yekaterinburg. (0:

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@CopperKettle Looks like a teddy bear.

CopperKettle

17:58

... And a mosqito monument in Noyabrsk.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

WTH

CopperKettle

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Is there a . . . fenestrane monument?

Anonymous

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. You can use em dashes to set off phrases if you like. I think you shouldn't put spaces around them in that case.

CopperKettle

(because there are billions of mosquitoes in Siberia)

Anonymous

18:01

I'm trying to get to know my new friend the en dash :-)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat –

Anonymous

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Yes–no questions! Who–whom!

Anonymous

@CopperKettle That's actually really creepy :-)

CopperKettle

@snailboat A cool steampunk mosquito! (0:

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat Cahn–Ingold–Prelog priority nomenclature rules!

Anonymous

18:03

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Sure! That thing!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

18:15

Cahn–Ingold–Prelog priority rules

The Cahn–Ingold–Prelog priority rules, CIP system or CIP conventions (after the scientists;Robert Sidney Cahn, Christopher Kelk Ingold and Vladimir Prelog) are a set of rules used in organic chemistry to name the stereoisomers of a molecule. A molecule may contain any number of stereocenters and any number of double bonds, and each gives rise to two possible configurations. The purpose of the CIP system is to assign an R or S descriptor to each stereocenter and an E or Z descriptor to each double bond so that the configuration of the entire molecule can be specified uniquely by including th...

Hey! @Snail @Dam look at the rep.

Anonymous

8989?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

101 × 89.

Anonymous

×

Anonymous

Yay

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat And a left arrow, please/

Anonymous

18:17

←

Damkerng T.

18:33

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. There must be a cool name for the number! (Not Palindrome, but something similar)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

17 mins ago, by Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

101 × 89.

Cool enough for me. :)

Damkerng T.

LOL

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

meta.chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/3012/… —No answers, it must be really hard. :o

CopperKettle

found an audio file with ы - the word ты means you in Russian

Close central unrounded vowel

The close central unrounded vowel, or high central unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɨ, namely the lower-case letter i with a horizontal bar. Both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as barred i. In American tradition this symbol (and the name "barred i") denote a slightly different sound, that of the second syllable of roses when distinct from Rosa's; see also near-close central unrounded vowel. == FeaturesEdit == Its vowel height is close, also known as high, which means...

The page says that English "rude" could be pronounced with ы, but it's hard to imagine how.

Anonymous

18:51

@CopperKettle Be careful using Wikipedia for phonetics.

Anonymous

It has some good information but also some bad information, and the sound clips aren't produced by trained linguists.

Anonymous

I recommend web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/charts/IPAlab/IPAlab.htm for a set of audio files produced by a phonetician.

Damkerng T.

The clip sounds a bit like pay (/pe:/) when /p/ is unaspirated.

@snailboat I can't see that crossed i in the chart.

Oh, found it!

LOL -- You are listening to: "a close central unrounded vowel". -- But there is no sound!

Anonymous

It's a central vowel, so it's in the middle column. It's an open vowel, called a close vowel in IPA, so it's at the top of the column. And it's on the left-hand side of the pair because it's unrounded.

Damkerng T.

Where is that emoticon often used by MAR?

Anonymous

18:53

Oh! That's too bad. I can hear a sound on my computer.

Damkerng T.

I feel like I wanna flip a table! (ﾉ｀□´)ﾉ⌒┻━┻

Anonymous

Search for ちゃぶ台返し顔文字 maybe :-)

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

Anonymous

Wow, there are a lot of variations on table flipping.

Anonymous

┳┳ヾ( ´ー｀)

Damkerng T.

18:56

Haha!

A-ha! The sound clip is at web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/charts/IPAlab/IPAsounds/…

Oh, it sounds like many vowels. (Obviously, I can't identify that vowel just by listening to it.)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ ╯︵ ┻━┻

Damkerng T.

That's... that's... sort of a mixed feeling!

Anonymous

It's cute, though :-)

CopperKettle

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I thought this meant "a guy pushing the seat of a swing"

Damkerng T.

Happily, even!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

19:01

@CopperKettle They mean what you want them to mean.

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Oh, I love that :-)

CopperKettle

@snailboat thanks, Snails!

(0:

Damkerng T.

1

Q: What does an expression "there + a verb" mean?

I'm curious whether it is correct to replace such sentence as "There is an interesting file in the root directory" with "An interesting file is in the root directory". I think the phrases are semanticaly equivalent. But I haven't made sure that other people will understand if I say "there lives a...

sentence-construction expressions existentials

> I'm curious whether it is correct to replace such sentence as "There is an interesting file in the root directory" with "An interesting file is in the root directory". I think the phrases are semanticaly equivalent.

An interesting assertion.

Now I wonder whether they really are semantically equivalent.

CopperKettle

No, they are not equivalent, of course.

Anonymous

The information is the same, but it's presented differently.

CopperKettle

19:05

"I'm an agnostic dyslexic insomniac. I lay awake all night wondering if there really is a dog"

Anonymous

English has a broad preference not to put new information in subject position, so it's natural presenting new information using an existential construction, putting there in subject position and displacing the NP to post-verbal position

Anonymous

This is called there-insertion in generative linguistics, and an existential construction more generally.

Anonymous

It's part of a large category of information packaging constructions, used to present the same information in different ways.

CopperKettle

"I lay awake all night wandering if a dog is (exists)"? O_o

Anonymous

Using existential constructions is generally optional (it's not ungrammatical to put new information in subject position) but is often very natural sounding.

Damkerng T.

19:07

Oh, right. I should read that chapter (which appears in several books!) like I'm supposed to read it for real some day.

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Probably a good argument against calling it there-insertion :-)

Damkerng T.

@CopperKettle I think it's ambiguous in the quote!

Anonymous

And yeah, you have to use exists rather than be in the canonical version.

Damkerng T.

But because it tries to draw a parallel on some other concepts, I think they meant "if a dog exists".

Anonymous

By the way, when we use expletive there with a verb other than be, it's called a presentational construction rather than existential.

3

CopperKettle

19:11

"There fell the rain, there drifted the snow, there blew the winds"

Damkerng T.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat There goes nothing.

Damkerng T.

Can you guess which clip (right or left) is easier to understand?

(Sorry for switching the topic too fast. We could talk about many things at once, I hope! :-)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@DamkerngT. left

Damkerng T.

@CopperKettle "There lies a dragon." :-)

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Yes! I was wondering why two sequels of the same series, 10 years apart (Heroes and Heroes Reborn), one is so easy to understand, and one is not.

CopperKettle

19:17

10

Q: What is the origin of the phrase "There goes the neighborhood" and does it have racial connotations?

I understood the meaning of the phrase to be relatively benign and mostly used facetiously. Can it be viewed as offensive in contemporary conversation?

etymology slang

Damkerng T.

(The old one is more difficult for background listening.)

CopperKettle

7

A: What is the origin of the phrase "There goes the neighborhood" and does it have racial connotations?

It can definitely be used both ways. I'm not certain of the origin, but the ngram is steady at zero until the early 1960s. It seems to have originated during and because of the American Civil Rights Movement and desegregation, so I believe it does have racial connotations.

@DamkerngT. "There be dragons" (0:

Damkerng T.

@CopperKettle Ah, is this irrealis? :-)

CopperKettle

Dunno (0:

Nihilist_Frost

19:33

Spell these words from IPA to English:

/hum, just, mus, il, but/

should not be too hard

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Multicomp?

Anonymous

@Nihilist_Frost Haha, I like that :-)

Anonymous

Three of the five activate lexical representations based on their conventional spelling rather than as transcriptions, which makes it difficult to activate the less used pathways for reading IPA. In a way, it's a trick question.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Nihilist_Frost I suddenly felt very sleepy.

Anonymous

Whom used moose eel boot.

Damkerng T.

19:36

@snailboat What is "Multicomp"? Is it a company name?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Separate the audio into frequency bands with a series of band-pass filters, compress individually

Damkerng T.

Oh, I didn't do that kind of thing. They were just cross-sections of some samples in a couple of spectrogram charts.

Anonymous

Sorry, I should try expressing things with more than one word once in a while :-)

Anonymous

I meant that the source audio might have been passed through that sort of processing.

Anonymous

It looks very consistent across the spectrum.

Anonymous

19:39

And overall the levels are higher.

Anonymous

So I took a guess :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Hmm... I thought you could mean that. I don't know what they did to the soundtrack, though. Maybe it's just old and gone through too many replications.

Anonymous

I wouldn't really be able to guess without using my ears.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Yes! The floor of the white noise is at about -65 dB, and this part of the show (the female FBI who got the man who could read mind into the FBI) was particularly challenging for me, so I did a rough analysis.

I virtually wasn't able to understand what she said at all (except for the most stressed words) on my TV.

Basically, the information of her speech was packed into the range of 0-2.75 kHz.

And the max of most formants are at only +25dB above the white noise.

Anonymous

Wow, really?

Anonymous

19:50

Maybe it's been tandem encoded.

Anonymous

Encoded, decoded, processed, encoded again . . .

CopperKettle

Are you both acoustics experts?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat nods -- I guess they might've been rerunning the original series from CD!

Anonymous

I'm reluctant to call myself an expert in anything, but I know a little bit about psychoacoustics, perceptual audio coding, and so on . . .

Damkerng T.

@CopperKettle I wouldn't call myself expert, but I'm sure an enthusiast. :-)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

19:53

Pssht.

CopperKettle

Nice. (0:

Anonymous

I thought of tandem encoding because it's unfortunately common, and it's a common way to end up with way more noise than you should have at a given bit rate.

Anonymous

Basically, when you're using a perceptual audio coder (like when you're making an MP3), you're throwing out information.

Anonymous

And you do this by adding noise.

Anonymous

But first, you divide the audio into different frequency bands and look for places that you can insert noise without the listener noticing.

Anonymous

19:55

That's because we can't hear everything in an audio signal.

Anonymous

There's a phenomenon called "masking" where one sound covers up another sound, and we only hear one of the two sounds.

Anonymous

A tone at one frequency and amplitude might make noise at another frequency and amplitude inaudible.

Anonymous

That's why it's called perceptual audio coding, 'cause we're adding noise in places we think you won't be able to hear.

Anonymous

Not just that you won't notice. That you physically will be incapable of noticing because of how the ear and mind work.

Anonymous

So, depending on how many bits you need to throw out, you decide how much noise to add and where,

Anonymous

19:57

and if all goes according to plan (ha!), when you decode your encoded version, you'll have something that sounds identical to the original.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat ,

Anonymous

If you looked at the signal with your eyes, you'd be able to see all sorts of differences. They might not even look all that similar.

Damkerng T.

I guess it would sound pretty much like the original in the first compression.

Anonymous

But to your ears, they should be the same. In the real world, which is not so ideal, they might just sound pretty similar. It all depends.

Anonymous

It might sound identical to you.

Anonymous

19:58

@DamkerngT. Yeah, so the first time you do it, you've got all these masking thresholds calculated and you try to insert noise that doesn't rise above them.

Anonymous

Now you decode it.

Anonymous

Let's say because you want to process it in some fashion.

Anonymous

Maybe you want to make it sound louder, so you run it through a multicomp into a limiter.

Anonymous

That alone might bring make inaudible noise audible.

Anonymous

But let's assume that it doesn't, and your processing does exactly what you want.

Anonymous

20:00

Now you encode it again. What happens?

Anonymous

You can't add the same noise again. It's already there.

Anonymous

You can only add additional noise.

Damkerng T.

We're encoding noises, even!

Anonymous

Yeah! And the majority of the new noise you're adding is probably going to be well above masking thresholds.

Anonymous

So the first encode might have been perfect from a perceptual standpoint, creating what sounds exactly like the original.

Anonymous

20:01

But the second encode at the exact same bitrate might add tons of audible noise and sound terrible.

Anonymous

Perceptual audio coding is a final delivery system only.

Anonymous

See? I used bold, so I got a star. Works every time :-)

Damkerng T.

For some reason! :D

Anonymous

Anyway, in today's world this sort of thing is frustratingly common. People don't use these things the way the folks who came up with them designed them to be used.

Damkerng T.

It could have a good use, though. For example, if we start with a hypothesis that native speakers can tolerate the speech that went through encoding-decoding-encoding more than non-native speakers. Not sure about the implications, but it could be useful in some ways.

Anonymous

20:09

Native speakers can generally tolerate audio degradation more easily than non-native speakers because they can make up for any deficiencies using context more effectively.

Anonymous

If you use phonotactically valid strings that aren't actual words, though – that is to say, when there is no possible way to figure out what was said from context – that advantage disappears.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. If you tested your hypothesis, maybe you could identify particular types of degradation on different kinds of sounds. Aliasing, temporal smearing, and so on.

Anonymous

Like, you could hypothesize that temporal smearing makes aspiration contrasts more difficult to perceive.

Anonymous

And test with both real speech and phonotactically valid nonce words.

Anonymous

Psycholinguistics, the topic of the day! :-)

Damkerng T.

20:17

Oh, right. It's not only the context. Phonotactics is important too.

@snailboat Along with the existential there. :D

BTW, I got your note about perfect absolute constructions. Still haven't look it up in CGEL, though. :P

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Meanwhile

in Fall 2015 Moderator Election Chat on Stack Overflow Chat, 19 mins ago, by ElectionBot

Unofficial results: Winners are josilber, Ed Cottrell, and Madara Uchiha.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I don't know if you'll be able to find that combination covered specifically or not.

Anonymous

I have to write my answers to the moderator questionnaire on Meta.Japanese

Damkerng T.

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Haha! I just noticed the last name!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

The meteor dude.

Well, you won't notice him anymore.

Damkerng T.

20:22

It's a formidable character from Naruto.

You can think of him as Harry Potter's You-Know-Who. :D

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Well, he's the guy that gave me Periodic Table RO-ship.

Damkerng T.

"There's an amazing fish living in my pond" is probably how most native speakers would tell you about it, at least in the American dialect I speak. You are more likely to find "An amazing fish lives in my pond" in a written work. For a long time, it was taught that to begin a sentence with existential-there was flabby style. — TRomano 1 hour ago

Oh, that's new to me, the flabby style thing.

Damkerng T.

20:39

"Interviewing for a teaching job" sounds unnatural. Out of the two you wrote, the first one sounds the best. — Riley Francisco 11 mins ago

Hmm... really? I don't see anything wrong with it.

If you are interviewing for a teaching job, you should be wearing a nice panty and dress sounds native-like enough to me.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I concur.

Damkerng T.

20:57

Word of the Day: ameliorate

It's funny how everyone I encounter is really optimistic about self-driving cars except the 1 person I know who codes self-driving vehicles.

Tweeted by ThatAndromeda on November 24, 2015 at 6:05 PM

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