English Language Learners

Damkerng T.

00:00

I see. I see you! (I borrow the line from Avatar.)

Anonymous

That's a fairly transparent error--congratulation.

Anonymous

Perhaps more interesting are the class of errors that are harder to detect because they form valid utterances in one's L2.

Damkerng T.

I think this consonant-cluster thing is rather unfamiliar to most languages around here.

Anonymous

Going from Japanese to English, that might include for example aspect errors.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. English does allow an unusual set of consonants in its clusters, doesn't it?

Damkerng T.

00:01

Of course!

Anonymous

They're cumbersome, even in English. We usually reduce some of the more complex clusters in speech.

Damkerng T.

Perhaps not much in each word, but in natural speech we pronounce them consecutively.

@snailboat I tried to fill in a verb there.

Perhaps have.

I asked Steve ... is a simple example, yet we have -s-k-t-s-t-

Anonymous

Oh, whoops. I'm leaving out lots of stuff today! I meant to type reduce.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Sure. But I'd never actually pronounce it that way.

Damkerng T.

Oh, I noted a phrase in a news a few days ago. Looking ...

Anonymous

00:04

I'm fairly certain I'd always drop the middle t.

Damkerng T.

> Honey Dew Donuts has been cleared to open one of their stores there.

When I read it, "cleared to open" is fine. Then "their stores there" threw me off balance.

The -v-th-...-s-t-...-z-th-.. sequence is a bit difficult for me.

Now I'm sure it's [s]. I definitely pronounce store as [st], even after "their".

Anonymous

00:26

Oh, phonetics is hard!

Anonymous

Trying to analyze my own speech is too difficult.

Anonymous

I can't come up with a good example of progressive assimilation in English across word boundaries.

Anonymous

I'm reading that it doesn't happen often in English.

Anonymous

00:46

@DamkerngT. But the sentence was fine to you other than phonetically, right?

Anonymous

It was just that you had trouble pronouncing it properly.

Cerberus

I can't think of an example.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Moving my tongue between the [s] or [z] position and [th] position back and forth quickly is a bit difficult. :D

I cheated sometimes. :D

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Just pretend you're a snake!

Damkerng T.

I think this part "Honey Dew Donuts has been ..." in the sentence also perplexed me a little, so maybe I was still thinking "should it be has or have" when I reached "one of their stores there."

@snailboat Ah, like a Slitherine, I think. But I'm no Harry Potter. :D

Basically, I think I usually insert a small pause between "stores" and "there" when I say "one of their stores there".

However, in my natural speech, it might be reduced to "one of their store[th]ere".

Anonymous

00:55

Hmm.

Anonymous

I might pronounce /stɔrz ðer/ to /stɔrz zer/ in relaxed pronunciation, but my own pronunciation isn't a good model :-)

Damkerng T.

I think I might transcribe my version as /stɔrðaer/. (Sorry about that [ae]. I'm too lazy to find that character.)

Anonymous

æ?

Damkerng T.

Yup.

Anonymous

westonruter.github.io/ipa-chart/keyboard

Damkerng T.

01:00

Bookmarked. Thanks.

Damkerng T.

01:12

dropbox.com/s/k6ekdugf6lij88y/Honey%20Dew%20Donuts.wav

I tried to speak it several times repeatedly, so I could forget that I'm reading it. I think this one is a good representative for what I would speak in my natural speech.

Damkerng T.

01:24

Take 2. (Saying the same line, after doing something else for a while.)

dropbox.com/s/qnfhpqoynnlbibf/Honey%20Dew%20Donuts%20%232.wav

Anonymous

Ahh, the miracle of Linux audio! Attempting to record in Audacity consistently crashes my computer.

Anonymous

Why did I choose to run Linux, again? :-)

Damkerng T.

Ahh... Poor Audacity.

Anonymous

(Answer: because people weren't bothering to support FreeBSD for stuff I needed to use.)

Damkerng T.

LOL :D

Anonymous

01:27

I has a Windows 7, too.

Damkerng T.

Mine is still XP.

I bought a few licenses of Windows 7, never really used it myself, somehow.

Anonymous

Watch out--security updates are going to end.

Anonymous

Having not booted that computer into Windows 7 for months, it apparently wants to do lots and lots of updates.

Damkerng T.

By then, I think I will just simply use a new machine, and probably Ubuntu.

Anonymous

Three reboots so far.

Anonymous

01:29

You know, Ubuntu is a pretty sad attempt at an OS.

Anonymous

I say this having used it for the last seven years.

Damkerng T.

It works good enough for general purpose, I think.

Anonymous

My guess is that there are better alternatives in the GNU/Linux world.

Anonymous

But, you know, since I haven't really been using any of them, I don't know.

Anonymous

I used to run Slackware. :-)

Damkerng T.

01:30

Nice!

Anonymous

FreeBSD was a nicer alternative back then, since the OS was overall more stable and better-designed (or perhaps "more cohesively" would be appropriate), although it lacked some of the hardware support Linux had

Damkerng T.

I know that I can retreat to my iMac anytime, if need be.

Anonymous

And because /usr/ports was nicer than what Linux-based OSs ("distros") had back then.

Anonymous

But these days, I don't know.

Anonymous

Ahh, my mac has been growing sad of late.

Damkerng T.

01:31

Why so? What happened?

Anonymous

It's too old. It's a PPC mac.

Anonymous

It's not really useful for anything except Logic Pro now.

Damkerng T.

Ahh... I see.

Anonymous

Doing something complicated like viewing a web page or chatting is too much for it.

Damkerng T.

Hehe.

Anonymous

01:33

I'm not sure either of those things have actually improved in the last decade, but they sure take a lot more CPU power these days!

Damkerng T.

So true!

Remember that someone said 640K is too much.

Anonymous

Hah

Anonymous

Oh, that was back when I was learning to program.

Damkerng T.

I was particularly good at writing efficient code.

A byte for a byte. Heehee.

Anonymous

I remember I made a tiny program which changed the address in memory (controlled by BIOS) which reported total RAM, so that it said I had 64MB of RAM total. Of course, that was crazy--no one could ever have that much RAM! ;-)

Damkerng T.

01:35

Knowing a handful of assembly thingies forced me that.

Anonymous

I wrote lots of fun programs like that when I was starting out.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Hah!

Anonymous

These days, you can't have fun like that.

Damkerng T.

Me neither, but I missed them, times like that.

Anonymous

There was lots of fun stuff you could do with VGA, too. You could write a TSR that cycled the text mode palette.

Damkerng T.

01:37

My first TSR was virtual printer!

Anonymous

Oh!

Damkerng T.

It would capture everything you send to LPT1: (or LPT2:) to a file.

Anonymous

Oh, that's neat!

Damkerng T.

Yup. It was rather popular among my colleagues.

Anonymous

I was a little kid, so I liked to write cheats for games or other hacks

Anonymous

01:38

Some of those were TSRs, though at first I had to start out with simple stuff like editing save files :-)

Damkerng T.

Hehe. Cheating is also fun.

Anonymous

I only cheated once at an online game, probably because that was harder to do rather than because I was principled as a child

Anonymous

I was on a BBS in the 90s which had an 'archery' game

Anonymous

I found a skeleton terminal program that used a fossil driver written in Pascal

Anonymous

And I used that as a base to make a program that played the archery game perfectly :-)

Damkerng T.

01:40

I remember that we had this game (oh, I forgot the name of that game), and we played it together for months. Nobody won that game. We couldn't figure out the right answer to enter the final chamber.

@snailboat BBS games are also neat! If they are still around.

Anonymous

The BBS had a credits system. Each second online consumed one credit. You were allowed to spend credits playing games, too, and potentially win much more than you spent.

Anonymous

But the games were all really hard, because the idea was to get you to pay money to the sysop.

Damkerng T.

Finally, I got a little bored. So I dumped the saved file, hacked into the data, and moved myself into the final chamber. End of game. :D

Anonymous

But I let my archery game run overnight, and then I had ten million credits :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Hah

Anonymous

01:42

Editing save files was usually the path of least resistance back then.

Anonymous

I had a lot of fun trying other stuff, though.

Damkerng T.

Given many choices, I usually take the easiest one. :D

Anonymous

One of the first things I learned to do was to identify the VRC loop in a game, and back then, most games synced to a vertical retrace

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Only if you can turn them into real money.

Anonymous

So I NOPed out the vblank wait loop, and the game ran faster. It wasn't really a cheat, but it was amusing :-)

Anonymous

01:43

@DamkerngT. Oh, no! They weren't worth real money.

Damkerng T.

A-ha! I don't know how to do that myself, sneaking into a vertical retrace. Sounds really neat!

Anonymous

Oh, did you mean "If only" by any chance?

Damkerng T.

Oh, yes.

If only I had ten million dollars, I would start an interesting project.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, you read in from 0x3DA (the VGA status port) and check bit 3

Damkerng T.

Maybe Skynet. :D

Anonymous

01:45

If not, try again. A simple busy loop

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I think I can remember that port!

Since DirectX came out, I think I didn't deal with those ports directly much.

Anonymous

Oh god, it's been, um, how many years?

Anonymous

I wrote little video games when I was in grade school

Damkerng T.

I can remember how long.

Anonymous

I was lucky to have family who were programmers :-)

Anonymous

01:46

So I can't remember a lot of details.

Anonymous

For example, I can't remember which interrupts you hook for a TSR (0x09 and 0x1C?), or how you adjust the frequency with which your callback is called

Anonymous

My brother still does all sorts of low level stuff. He works at a company that does virtualization.

Damkerng T.

Oh, I think I need to look up those old books, which I don't know where they are.

Anonymous

Me, my trajectory has been from low level to high level.

Damkerng T.

I think 0x1C is safer.

@snailboat That's neat!

Anonymous

01:48

I haven't written ASM in years.

Damkerng T.

Me either.

Anonymous

I don't even write a lot of C anymore. Still some.

Damkerng T.

I still do C sometimes.

Anonymous

People still expect me to be an expert on C, which is pretty intimidating since I don't write much of it.

Anonymous

Fact is, C isn't a very big language, so you can commit the whole thing and a set of good practices to memory. But if you don't use it, you'll forget stuff eventually! ;-)

Damkerng T.

01:49

When I saw a C code, I could see it in assembly. :D

Anonymous

Quite unlike C++, which is a giant labyrinth.

Damkerng T.

Oh, I hate C++.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yeah! It worries me that most new programmers these days don't understand anything low-level.

Damkerng T.

I hate C++ because it encourages you to do something trivial in a very superfluous way.

Anonymous

Hah.

Damkerng T.

01:51

Say, you want to copy a file.

Anonymous

I use C++ more often than C. But I use a particular subset of the language.

Damkerng T.

In C++, you probably first think, which object should I start with? Lalala...

Anonymous

Although I love functional programming, I do very little template metaprogramming, for example.

Anonymous

The last few times I used C++, I didn't use any OO stuff, actually.

Damkerng T.

Oh, I have lots of choice, maybe I'm gonna use this iterator thingy. Things like that.

Anonymous

01:52

Although I'm fairly flexible when it comes to approaches--I don't approach every problem in the same fashion.

Anonymous

So OO is fine with me if it's appropriate to the problem, and so is FP, etc., etc.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Functional programming is another breed. I see it as a cool thing, and it can help you to write good code.

Anonymous

You can actually write terrifying FP code, though.

Damkerng T.

You sure can.

I think we can create monsters out of any languages or tools we choose.

Anonymous

Oh, sure.

Anonymous

01:54

I like perl. (Most of perl. Not all of perl.)

Anonymous

Some people think that using python over perl automatically gives you better or more readable code.

Anonymous

I've never figured out why people think so, though.

Damkerng T.

I prefer Tcl/Tk than Perl. (Hoping that tchrist won't see this message.)

Anonymous

HAHA.

Anonymous

Oh, I've never been a fan of tcl/tk.

Anonymous

01:55

I used it only a couple times. The most annoying thing I ran into was the incompatibility between different versions.

Anonymous

Well, I say "it", but I suppose I should say "them", since they're two different things.

Damkerng T.

It could be mind-boggling at first. But finally, I could see it as a language that allows me to think in Lisp and C alternately, and very flexibly too.

@snailboat I think I like its 8.4 version the best.

It's rather stable in that stage.

Anonymous

But to be honest, I abandoned it relatively quickly once it was no longer necessary for my job.

Anonymous

This was maybe 12 years ago.

Damkerng T.

I see.

I think 12 years ago, it must be 7.3 perhaps.

Anonymous

01:57

Yeah, that sounds right.

Anonymous

Don't hold me to that, but sure, 7.3 :-)

Damkerng T.

7.3 wasn't very mature yet.

Anonymous

It also felt rather slow.

Damkerng T.

I think many cool stuff were added at 8.

Anonymous

Ah, I would be unfamiliar with all of that, then.

Damkerng T.

01:58

It's sure slow.

Someone got a cool idea to introduce dual-representation in Tcl 8, and then it's not slow anymore.

I think it's even faster than Perl and Python.

Not sure about Ruby though.

But I don't think that Ruby is particularly fast.

Anonymous

I just typed banandoned when I meant to type abandoned

Anonymous

I think Ruby is kind of yecchy.

Anonymous

I prefer Python.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

To be honest, I often use perl instead of Python simply because I've been using it for twenty years, so I'm pretty good at making tiny programs in it.

Damkerng T.

02:00

Between Python and Ruby, I choose Python.

Anonymous

But a lot of the time I prefer Python over perl. Why?

Anonymous

Well, Python is worse for FP.

Anonymous

That's not really an argument in its favor ;-)

Damkerng T.

Hmm... Never thought of it that way.

Anonymous

But it doesn't have the annoyance that is perl references.

Anonymous

02:01

Seriously, references in perl are really annoying.

Damkerng T.

Maybe if I wanted to write FP, I could go back to Lisp.

And frankly, Tcl is good enough already.

Anonymous

Yeah, or scheme

Damkerng T.

Ah, yes.

Anonymous

I like Scheme.

Anonymous

Actually, I particularly like Lua. It's like Scheme with nicer syntax.

Anonymous

02:02

It has two big disadvantages.

Damkerng T.

Oh, Lua is also interesting.

Anonymous

First, in Lua, stuff is all one-based.

Anonymous

This is annoying, though you can get used to it.

Damkerng T.

I'm not a big fan of one-based.

Anonymous

Second, Lua has a relatively paucal standard library.

Damkerng T.

02:03

Makes me think of COBOL.

Anonymous

The big advantage of a language like CL isn't just that you can express tons of stuff in it.

Anonymous

It's that other people already have expressed a lot of stuff in it.

Anonymous

It saves you work. Lua does not.

Damkerng T.

Lua has its niche I think, especially embedding stuff.

Anonymous

I should use a better word than paucal there. Meager?

Damkerng T.

02:04

Probably.

Anonymous

Yeah, and that's nice. When I was young, I designed a few embedded languages.

Damkerng T.

A-ha!

Anonymous

They were all terrible. I'm so happy to have a round wheel around :-)

Damkerng T.

I tried that once (a FoxPro-based language), didn't turn out to be so great.

Anonymous

I'm not familiar with FoxPro--besides the name, that is.

Damkerng T.

02:05

dBASE?

Anonymous

Yeah, some sort of db thing, right?

Anonymous

I've never done a lot of database work.

Damkerng T.

Anyway, if you don't know it, you don't miss anything. :D

Anonymous

At one point in my career, it was decided for me that I should already know all about databases.

Anonymous

This never actually happened, but everyone assumed that it had.

Anonymous

02:06

This was slightly awkward for me. :-)

Damkerng T.

FoxPro was among the first few that allow us to access data in databases record-wise or sequel-like.

Anonymous

Oh, I see.

Anonymous

Hey, I've heard people say "sequel", but written I always see SQL.

Damkerng T.

And it comes with event-loop concept for GUI and background handling, so it's rather popular back then.

Anonymous

Well, I suppose technically they say /ˈsikwəl/ and not "sequel".

Anonymous

02:08

But you know what I meant. :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I think so too. Somehow I wrote it the way I said it out.

I think I know. :-)

FoxPro was popular, until Microsoft bought it.

Anonymous

The more time I spend with Japanese, the more I end up "transcribing" stuff--spelling it like it sounds in my head rather than with what I know as the proper spelling.

Anonymous

I was always a particularly good speller, but these days I make more errors than I used to :-(

Anonymous

(Could be early-onset dementia. Hooray!)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Ah, when was that?

Damkerng T.

02:10

I don't think so. It might be a good indicator showing that you know many languages. :-)

Anonymous

Hah!

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Hmm... Not sure.

But probably around the same time that Microsoft C turned into Microsoft Visual C/C++.

Anonymous

I don't usually claim to "know" Japanese.

Anonymous

Usually I tell people I'm "learning" Japanese.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I'm sure that you're good at it.

Anonymous

02:11

@DamkerngT. Oh, I'm not sure precisely when that was. Sometime in the mid-90s? I was using Borland C++ back then.

Damkerng T.

I think maybe around the time Borland C++ 3 came out?

Anonymous

I didn't have a choice, as I had no purse-strings myself :-)

Anonymous

Oh, that was when I was nine!

Anonymous

I was still using Turbo Pascal back then. I hadn't really started learning C yet.

Damkerng T.

No wonder why you don't know FoxPro. It disappeared before you went to college. :D

Turbo Pascal is cool.

Anonymous

02:13

I loved it!

Anonymous

It's still around these days, I think in the form of something called "Delphi", though I've not used it myself

Damkerng T.

I downloaded its copy from Borland museum a few years ago.

I think that web is gone now.

Anonymous

Once I started using C, I never went back. Somehow C felt more professional to me.

Anonymous

And, in fact, awfully similar to Pascal! The biggest change I noticed early on was the disappearance of non-zero-based arrays

Anonymous

Later on I came to realize that C was a bit closer to the metal, more ASM-like.

Damkerng T.

02:14

Delphi is also popular, I think. Perhaps it's the only contender of Visual Basic back then.

Some people are still sticking with Delphi.

Anonymous

I think I could have used is there, since it's still true. But was feels better, maybe because I realized it a long time ago.

Damkerng T.

When they posted their code, I thought to myself, "how can I run it?" :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Sticking?

Damkerng T.

nods Thanks.

Anonymous

I wonder if the myriad errors I've made today are primarily grammatical or typographical :-)

Anonymous

02:16

I'll assume the latter out of charity for myself.

Damkerng T.

I wonder that too. :-) -- though not about your errors, it's about mine.

Anonymous

(You can do it, brain! Blame those fingers!)

Anonymous

Ahh! I thought you were impressed with the sheer number of errors I've made today.

Anonymous

Sometimes I feel like I make more errors than most native speakers.

Anonymous

But then I take comfort, knowing how often I notice other native speakers make errors ;-)

Damkerng T.

02:18

In real life, when we speak or talk fast, it's unavoidable.

At least that's what I think.

I'm sure I made a lot of errors in my own language too.

And I think I could notice them in others', if I really wanted to, but I'm not that picky.

Anonymous

I can type relatively quickly, though perhaps not on this laptop keyboard. Maybe I can blame my fingers, after all! ;-)

Damkerng T.

I remember I could type faster. Now it's not very fast.

Anonymous

I think that a lot of us gloss over errors relatively easily. We repair errors in (spoken) utterances and in (written) text without even realizing we're doing it.

Damkerng T.

But it's fast enough for my needs.

Anonymous

When someone leaves out the word not, or repeats a word accidentally, or the like.

Damkerng T.

02:20

Ah, dropping not is one of my specialties. :D

Anonymous

Some people are better than others at noticing this sort of error.

Anonymous

It's very difficult, though, to reliably detect errors.

Anonymous

And it's very taxing on the brain to pay enough attention to do so.

Anonymous

Proofreading really burns me out.

Damkerng T.

It sure is, for me.

A casual proofreading by reading the text aloud is okay for me. I usually did that if I was very careful.

Anonymous

02:23

Yes, reading aloud helps a lot. :-)

Anonymous

It's possibly the best technique for finding errors.

Damkerng T.

Yes. Sometimes I wonder why I typed it that way the first time. :-)

But it's undeniable that I did type it like that. :D

Anonymous

More than errors, it can help you find unnatural-sounding phrasing and so forth.

Anonymous

I've noticed something amusing, at least to me.

Damkerng T.

Yes?

Anonymous

02:25

My off-the-cuff "natural writing" style, where I write whatever comes to mind as though I'm speaking mentally . . .

Anonymous

It's different from my "revision" style, where I go through and rewrite.

Anonymous

I consistently make different choices of word order, for example, if I revise.

Damkerng T.

I think it's the same for most people. You can count me in, too.

I think it's about unplanned vs. planned thinking.

Anonymous

Well, usually when we speak we "plan" at least our next few words as we're thinking. When we run short, we have gaps that need to be filled with words like "um" and "uh"

Anonymous

(So-called "dysfluencies", because the language ceases to "flow")

Damkerng T.

02:27

"you know" is also popular. :-)

Gotta grab some food. It's a nice chat. Thank you. See you later.

Utkarsh

._.

Can anyone Help? I have copied someone elsse's matter from his site and i want to change it to my language. Like, The meaning of the words is same but the words are different. Can I do this by any online tool or can i post a question on the site?

Anonymous

It's unclear what you're asking.

Anonymous

Yeegh. Six reboots, Windows Update, really?

Anonymous

Has it really been that long since I ran Windows? :-)

Utkarsh

I never update windows

Anonymous

02:39

Are your data costs expensive or something?

Utkarsh

nope

I do backups

Anonymous

Backing stuff up is good. :-)

Anonymous

@Utkarsh Are you saying you want a program that paraphrases something someone else wrote?

Utkarsh

yes

Anonymous

I don't think there are programs that do that acceptably well yet.

Anonymous

02:45

There are programs that do a bad job at it. (See, for example, a lot of spam emails.)

Utkarsh

Can you changge some words

so that it looks mine?

Anonymous

What is the purpose of changing these words?

Anonymous

Uh, no?

Utkarsh

I have copied it

Okay leave it

Anonymous

I'm sorry, but it sounds like you want to hide plagiarism by changing a few words here and there.

Damkerng T.

02:48

nods -- My food is still in the microwave.

Anonymous

Hooray!

Damkerng T.

Still in the microwave.

Ah, ding

Anonymous

Ding! In Japanese, that's chin! And that's the informal verb for microwaving something in Japanese: chin suru. (Suru is the contentless verb corresponding to "do", here allowing chin to act like a verb.)

Anonymous

I guess in English we have the informal nuke for heating something in the microwave, but I never say that personally.

Damkerng T.

That ding of mine is the sound my microwave makes when it's done. :-)

Utkarsh

02:56

@DamkerngT. what should i do to make this page better?

Damkerng T.

I think I should set it to nuke my food a minute more, but this is okay, I think.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh! Yes, you'll be pleased to know I understood :-)

Damkerng T.

Of course! :-)

Anonymous

People associate ding with microwaves, even though I think microwaves usually beep, personally.

Anonymous

Maybe they used to ding, but as far back as I can remember they beeped.

Anonymous

02:58

So maybe it's just a personal choice.

Damkerng T.

@Utkarsh Looks generally okay, I think. Perhaps some caps and punctuations could be improved.

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