English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2011-10-27 (page 1 of 2)

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4:22 AM

Are there any objections to reopening this question:

3

Q: Is there a term for loanwords that are borrowed back into their original language?

Is there a word for double loanwords? The only example I can think of right now isn't in English, but it should clarify what I mean. Küçük, meaning small/young, the original Turkish word, was borrowed into Farsi and pronounced kuchak (also meaning small/young). Turkish re-borrowed kuckak as kö...

single-word-requests terms

Pinging users who voted to close: @Mitch @kiam @dr65 @simchona @Alain . It seems like a valid single-word-request to me.

5:14 AM

I think it's better for linguistics.Se particularly because then other examples from other languages can be used more liberally.

But I'm not against the question itself

5 hours later…

10:39 AM

Why has this been revived? (irk)

13

Q: Difference between "try to do" and "try and do"

What is a difference between "try to do" and "try and do"? To me (non-native English speaker) asking someone "try and do this" seems a bit rude. To me it's like saying "you can try all you want but at the end this must be done, try and fail not an option". While asking someone "try to do this" m...

word-choice verb-phrases

The accepted answer is horribly flawed yet it has 19 votes.

@z7sgѪ I added an anser

Thanks. I was thinking this is the sort of answer we need here: alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxtryand.html

@z7sgѪ The accepted answer links to that

But go ahead and create a new answer based on it

and downvote the accepted and add a comment

It's the tone of it I think, it's really neutral. And the most interesting bit (IMO) is missed out!

You cannot say "I tried and did" for example... I had never noticed that

10:56 AM

Hi.

I remember researching the CGEL for try and with people but we never posted an answer.

11:07 AM

Vitaly was involved, no? maybe we can look in the transcript

Yup.

I posted a scan of the CGEL section I believe.

user image

dl.dropbox.com/u/5056292/…

Jinx!

These are my scans.

May 26 at 18:22, by Vitaly

> 1652 (1476) Ripley's Pref. to Medulla in E. Ashmole Theatrum Chem. Brit. 392 Try and discerne within your hearte, By all the Lessons misticall.

May 26 at 18:24, by Vitaly

> 1660 G. Duncombe Scutum Regale 379 Oh therefore let our distracted England be a warning-piece to all Nations, that they never attempt to Try and Judge their King, for what cause soever.

i wonder if one of us is actually going to make this into an answer this time?

Who knows, it may be you!!

@z7sgѪ This one's probably not a try and.

11:18 AM

@Cerberus yes i see that

= try their King and judge their King

Yeah.

dl.dropbox.com/u/5056292/Visser%20-%20Section%201193%20only.pdf

This is the Visser reference from CGEL.

dl.dropbox.com/u/5056292/…

This is another article or paper on the subject that I had on my hard drive.

that last one is pretty good

Hmm I don't recall reading it.

11:44 AM

?

Sorry.

Wrong room.

That was about a game.

ah , you guys are still playing that game!

Yeah sort of.

Mostly the others.

You're welcome to join!

12:07 PM

i see you have recruited ms kit. but no thanks i have too many distractions from work as it is

Wise.

2 hours later…

2:03 PM

@waiwai933 1 - it's a great question. 2 - it's a question about the word in English to describe a phenomenon. but 3 - it necessarily involves multiple languages at least one non-English, and 4 - it is localized technical vocabulary for linguistics. It should be migrated to linguistics.SE (the question could be made a little better by giving examples from English or from any other languages).

3:02 PM

-1

Q: Can I omit the (c) when listing several consecutive nouns protected by copyright?

I'm reviewing a technical document, and one secton contains a list of consecutive nouns protected by copyright. I can understand occasional usage but the following excerpt seems excessive: Is this necessary?

grammar typography typesetting

off topic

4 hours later…

6:34 PM

1

Q: Are contractions worth all the trouble?

One of the more difficult things for even native speakers of English to learn is the correct use of contractions. To this day when I type it and want to follow with s I have to spend a fraction of a second reading the sentence out loud to see if it is will fit. Then there's the question of wher...

^ wtf? i voted not constructive

arguably also NARQ

why is nobody here? why am i so bored?

Because it's a rainy, droll Thursday

ugh, i hate getting home insurance quotes

"rebuild cost of your house", i dont know, ask a builder

check the cost of new home construction in your area

you should be able to get a phone quote from a builder

6:50 PM

user image

Which two languages are present in this text?

And, the most important question, for which you'd have to read the first few lines and think: in which state?

user image

Oh, I know! I know!

Except that I can't even decipher the letters, much less the words.

Can you read the second word?

It starts with a weird capital: an A.

Oh dear, there's an ambulance and police in the street.

I did hear a loud bang not long before.

it looks like latin and franch to me

Ding!

Now the state.

ha ha "franch"

6:58 PM

And the approximate date.

i don't know the state. i don't speak french

Hmm.

You could glean it from the Latin title.

you overestimate my ability to understand the script

Heh.

i could make out "de toto tempore", which let me figure latin for one of the languages

but the two words following "tempore" are a mystery to me

as is pretty much the entire second line of latin

7:00 PM

user image

Which letters can you read?

I think you can read some.

I think you can probably read all the letters of the first word except the capital.

first word is Regis ???

Yes!!

second word i have no idea

You know what that means?

Bexxiaqu???u

of course i know what "regis" is

7:03 PM

The e is right.

OK.

Reinnaquannti

Then you know what kind of word to expect after Regis?

There are two words after Regis.

i expect another genitive, probably

"of the king of ___"

Can you see the capital of the second word? It looks like the minuscle letter in modern script.

@JSBᾶngs Could be that, or...

an H?

7:05 PM

Yes!

He...

Do you see the name of the King anywhere?

Henna

@Kitḫ Hen is right!

But that must be Henri or something, right?

7:06 PM

Yes!

In Latin, Henricus is Henry (from Germanic Henrik). This is the genitive, Henrici.

Then what do you expect after that, the last word?

So, from the court of King Henry?

Yes.

But which Henry?

i think it's quinti as the last word, so V

Yes!

Jesus, that blew.

7:08 PM

Now read the King in the second line.

Most of the letters look the same.

Yeah.

Sexti? Sixth?

Yes, sexti!

So which Henry VI can you think of?

I couldn't tell if it was Sexti or Septi, so I guessed.

7:10 PM

It would have to be septimi, so the x/p must be an x.

What do mean, which? Isn't there just one?

Nope.

Then I haven't a clue.

There were several kingdoms with Henries.

Let me transcribe the second line.

> Incipit statutum apud Westm. editur anno primo Regis Henrici Sexti.

Westminster?

7:13 PM

Yes!

That's a bit odd for Latin, innit?

Why?

Because it's not Latin.

> Incipit statutum apud MA editur anno primo Regis Henrici Sexti.

for instance, would seem weird.

(where MA meant Massachusetts)

Because it is not a Latin word?

Yes. Anyway, I must go! Talk to you later.

7:14 PM

They used Latin for everything in the Middle Ages, so they also had to name Germanic places in Latin.

OK bye!

Henricus is also a Germanic word.

You did well in any case.

first it was the map game, now it's the deciphering medieval latin mss game.

man, Cerb is full of games

i should invent the "other people do my work for me" game

Hehe.

I do like games.

But I'll try to keep my inclinations under control.

Nevertheless I'm always up for a game!

8:01 PM

@Cerb are you still struggling to make some good bread?

@JSBᾶngs Not really, but I could always use some tips?

my wife has made an awesome rosemary herb bread

Oh?

she bakes her bread in something we call a dutch oven

Yeah that's just a steel pan, isn't it?

8:03 PM

user image

Yeah.

it's a heavy pot with a lid

anyway, it turns out very well

We call that a large pan.

well, whatever. i'm not necessarily on top of all of the terminology myself

Yeah I heard about using Dutch ovens for bread and that they work very well.

8:03 PM

anyway, it's delicious

What's so good about it? Consistency? Crust? Taste?

the dutch oven helps with consistency and crust

OK.

the rosemary and pepper help with taste

Ah, yes.

8:05 PM

i think she adds rosemary, thyme, and ground black pepper to the dough

i don't know all exactly what's in it

but it's amazing

Rosemary, thyme, and pepper, I'll keep that in mind.

If I ever come across a cheap Dutch oven I'll buy it.

i'm disappointed by linguistics.se

Yeah?

In what respect?

right now we have too many dillettantes and not enough actual experts

i was hoping for a good body of real research-level questions

perhaps we'll get there as the community grows

the quality of the answers is pretty good, though

2

Q: If similar phonemes are pronounced the same, will this be difficult to understand for a native speaker?

In French, phonemes like /e/ and /ɛ/ are so similar in sound. In English, phonemes like /o/ and /ɔ/ are just so similar too. Brief is that, in almost any language, there are phonemes which are very similar to each other. The question is, how much does a listener lose comprehension, if a speaker ...

phonetics pronunciation phonemes

^ this question is a catastrophe, for example

Hmm I think many questions could be interesting enough; it's just that many of them would require a lot of research to arrive at a good answer.

@JSBᾶngs Yeah OK.

Absolutely.

But if you compare the level with English or Philosophy, there are many more interesting questions.

8:09 PM

@Cerberus maybe.... the truth is that i stopped visiting regularly

Same.

but i just followed a link from someone's comment to a great paper on PIE, so that's a plus

It's just that many of them are so technical that not many people could give a good answer.

huh. i saw it the opposite. most of them aren't technical enough

looking at the current front page... the top two are v. good, the third is terrible, the next two are very mediocre, the next is arguably OT, and the next (about ergative/unaccusative) is very good

@JSBᾶngs Not the questions, but what would be required of a good answer.

8:13 PM

actually, calling the ergative one "very good" is probably a stretch

6

Q: How different were the Tangut and Khitan logographic scripts derived from Chinese Hanzi from Hanzi?

Japanese uses a writing system called Kanji, which is a moderated version of Chinese Hanzi. The Kanji characters are similar to or often the same as the corresponding Chinese character, with the same meaning. Koreans and Vietnamese had similar applications too. In the Middle Ages, the Tangut and...

written-language

This one, for example, not many people could answer.

@JSBᾶngs Perhaps you're right, but I still think it's much better than many other sites, like English or Phil.

i haven't looked at phil. i'm not surprised to hear that it's full of garbage.

@Cerberus this is a fantastic question

@JSBᾶngs But only people knowing all four scripts could answer.

look at this comment on Slashdot about Hallowe'en:

So it is great, but no wonder there is no answer yet.

8:16 PM

"What the hell is up with the ' there?"

They should ask that here.

user image

Pretty cool map.

what is it of?

what is this a map of?

Guess.

Hehe.

Malaria

8:19 PM

Nope.

languages with pharyngeal consonants

Close.

But it's much simpler.

languages

Ding!

> Each dot represents the geographic center of one of the 6,909 living languages in the Ethnologue database.

wtf?

that was a joke

user19161

8:21 PM

@Cerberus Dang!

@Jez Well you're even right when you don't mean to be!

Hi Jasper.

"geographic center"... that's a bit meaningless. does that mean English's dot is in the centre of the Earth?

It probably means where the oldest attested form of the language was spoken.

That's what I'd do.

But I'm not sure, it isn't entirely clear.

so virtually everyone in Indonesia speaks a different language

No, most languages have very few speakers.

user image

The big version.

8:25 PM

i can understand the americas and africa, but i find the number in Asia and particularly Indonesia surprising

actually a lot is papua new guinea too

"Official language(s) Indonesian"

"Official language(s) English, Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu"

4 out of a few thousand aint bad

papua new guinea has the highest language density of anywhere in the world

its interior is inhospitable and very mountainous, meaning that nearly every valley and village has its own language

dustyprogrammer

quick question

is there a difference between profanity and swearing?

@dustyprogrammer not really

@JSBngs communication there must be a nightmare

@Jez well, mostly they just kill and eat each other

certain parts of the americas would probably reflect a similar linguistic density, if they hadn't been largely exterminated

8:30 PM

I still wonder about the density in Middle America.

density per sq km or per inhabitant?

@Cerberus they're really dense

Heh.

Nah Mexicans are quite bright.

dustyprogrammer

can someone be profane without using swear words

i think they can

so they are different?

I think it depends on what you define as a "swear word" versus a "profanity"

when used as count nouns, "swear word" and "profanity" are pretty much synonyms

8:33 PM

user image

To my understanding, the point of a swear word is that it is a verbal profanity.

however, the adjective "profane" has a slightly different connotation

so it is possible to be profane without swearing. by, say, desecrating a sacred object, etc.

According to this, the gutteral "r" is not that common in southwest France; so how do they say très triste?

@Cerberus that's more central america though ;)

@Jez alveolar trill/tap, i'm guessing

8:34 PM

that's harder to do than the guttural

i can't really do it

some people say one or the other is harder. usually the one they can't do.

@z7sgѪ Well OK, southern Mexico then!

i wonder whether it has a correlation with whether you can roll your tongue

i noticed the franks/bavarians usually use the alveolar r but when i pointed this out to them it was strenuously denied

Heh.

8:38 PM

i don't know why... no shame in it!

Isn't there?

Many people will swear that they pronounce the n in lopen and paarden here.

Which is nonsense.

alveolar 'r'

is that like Scottish people pronounce "world"?

that one I can do, for some reason... it lends itself to the trill for the 'r'

but not très

The term Alveolar R may refer to several types of alveolar consonant: *Alveolar trill *Alveolar approximant *Alveolar tap or flap

/wɜː(ɹ)ld/

what does it mean when the sound in IPA is in brackets?

yeah some people think they pronounce clothes/close differently. but they don't.

8:48 PM

people often think that they pronounce things differently than they do.

eh, how could you pronounce them the same?

and they get really angry if you try to correct them

@Jez pretty much no one pronounces the "th" in clothes

it's a bit odd to get angry about it!

erm, i do

what's that pronunciation site again?

@Jez no you don't. you think you do, but you don't. this is exactly the phenomenon we're talking about here.

8:51 PM

i do as in i could record myself saying it and it would sound different

even though i've never heard you talk, i can state with > 95% confidence that you pronounce them the same, except when you're specifically being asked about the difference

with "clothes", my tongue touches my teeth. with "close", it doesnt

so right now your pronunciation is distorted b/c you're thinking about it and specifically attempting to produce the distinction

nah.

most people do distinguish the words if they stop and think about it

8:53 PM

i would never say "put some close on", it sounds totally wrong to me

@Jez interference from spelling b/c you're writing about it at the moment. we'll have to record you surrepetitiously in order to find out from sure.

i'm really, really sure about this

I just found out I use the uvular trill!

if you ask someone "how do you pronounce X?", they'll say it differently than if you just record them without specifically asking them about pronunciation

I do say more of a "closeline" than to stress the TH

I use the uvular trill when the r is in the onset.

8:56 PM

and this effect bedevils basically all efforts to analyze your own pronunciation

Likewise, I only mar "garage" if I think about it.

I remember the question where someone insisted he pronounced wood and would differently.

@Cerberus rubbish! but very common rubbish, alas

@Cerberus the only time I use the trill is accidentally if I'm using the tap when emphasizing a sentence, like maybe if I say "that is totally ridiculous" instest of "that's..."

@JSBᾶngs Yeah that was my position too, but he said he had performed some "tests".

@Jez Really? It sounds funny in English.

8:59 PM

there isn't really a way to pronounce those differently

@Cerberus whatever. it's sometimes impossible to convince people

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