English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2011-09-12 (page 4 of 7)

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1:08 PM

0

Q: What is the cork British / Irish English spelling of Yoghurt?

Is it Youghurt Yoghurt Yogurt Is there a correct spelling, or are all of them right?

british-english spelling irish-english

^ looks like gen ref to me, but i'm willing to give it a chance if someone sees something legitimately interesting there

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Yoghurt, yogurt or yogourt (, ; , ) is a dairy product produced by bacterial fermentation of milk. The bacteria used to make yoghurt are known as "yoghurt cultures". Fermentation of lactose by these bacteria produces lactic acid, which acts on milk protein to give yoghurt its texture and its characteristic tang. Worldwide, cow's milk is most commonly used to make yoghurt, but milk from water buffalo, goats, sheep, camels and yaks is also used in various parts of the world. Dairy yoghurt is produced using a culture of Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus sa...

grr, that link has a # to the "spelling" part

so gen ref it is

Matt Эллен

@JSBᾶngs also, there is no word "youghurt"

user19161

Hello dear @matt!

Matt Эллен

but there is a yoghourt

1:14 PM

Well, he is asking for a specific region, and there are variants in the UK spellings...

Matt Эллен

@Jasper Hello my friend

@JSBᾶngs But I'd prefer that you answer my Y question instead.

Matt Эллен

@Kitḫ I've not found youghurt so far, except in the urban dictionary

yeah, but the whole story seems to be "there are these variants". look in the dictionary if you want to know which one is correct for your region

@Kitḫ i though your top-voted answer did pretty good

> In the United Kingdom, "yoghurt" and "yogurt" are both current, "yogurt" being more common on product labels, and "yoghourt" is an uncommon alternative.

@JSBᾶngs Myeh. It's all copypasta.

user19161

1:16 PM

@MattЭллен You got my email? No need to reply though.

@Kitḫ copypasta that answers the question. what exactly are you looking for?

Matt Эллен

@Jasper I've got it, I haven't had a chance to reply yet. I'm giving it some thought :)

@JSBᾶngs Does the dictionary specifically cover Cork British/Irish English?

user19161

@MattЭллен Sure, I hope you weren't shocked at some of the details.

@Kitḫ presumably there is a standard irish english dictionary, yes? i really really doubt that cork has its own standard

i also doubt that there's really a difference between irish and english spelling conventions

Matt Эллен

1:18 PM

@Jasper believe me you're not the first person I've met with such problems

@JSBᾶngs OK then. Gen ref, it is.

but this what i meant when i said that i could change my mind if someone found an interesting angle

user19161

@MattЭллен Right, I know some people like that, some of whom are not in this world anymore.

Matt Эллен

@Kitḫ what is Cork British?

@MattЭллен Dunno.

1:19 PM

@MattЭллен british spoken with a cork in your mouth, aka irish

Matt Эллен

@JSBᾶngs really! I never knew that :D

Hey ppl, is there an IPA pronunciation tool anywhere?

like you can copy/paste IPA symbols in and it'll pronounce them?

Matt Эллен

yes...

oh, no

@Jez kind of

would that be a valid question

1:20 PM

pretty much every wikipedia page for an ipa symbol contains a recording

@Jez as a resource request, i wouldn't consider that a valid question

Matt Эллен

I should create one that uses my voice ;-)

yeah but it's not the same as being able to get the whole thing

Matt Эллен

then all NNS will sound like me

if you're having trouble with a particular symbol, you could ask on the imminent linguistics.se

@JSBngs well as what would you consider it a valid question? ;-)

1:21 PM

@Jez resource requests in general are off-topic as per the faq

I'd like something like Google Translate's pronunciation thingy but for IPA.

user19161

@Jez See the answers there.

there? where?

user19161

@JSBᾶngs I thought "imminent" usually refers to danger.

@Jez if this existed, it would be a tremendous leap forward in the realm of text-to-speech. so, no, it doesn't exist yet

Matt Эллен

1:23 PM

imminent just means soon, e.g. imminent arrival

@Jasper you think linguistics isn't dangerous?

user19161

@Jez I was referring to "that they be separated". You can use the left arrow.

@JSBᾶngs I don't feel like it answers the question. It's sort of tangential. It focuses on various uses of Y, one of which is not current, and only kind of touches on an answer at the end. "They can be interchanged where they represent the same vowel sound." But does Y makes all the sounds that I makes, and vice versa? I don't think the answer covers that.

@JSBngs would it? i'm surprised it wasn't invented before Google Translate's pronunciation thingy. The IPA symbols are designed to indicate how to pronounce stuff.

user19161

@JSBᾶngs Well, not that I know of. I only know that high heels are dangerous as they make you trip and fall.

1:23 PM

wouldnt they actually be the easiest place to start?

user19161

@matt You weren't around a few hours ago when lots of exciting stuff took place. You can read the transcript! A few things have been removed of course.

@Jez in principle, yes. but going from a database of isolated sounds to something that approximates what they sound like when they're put together is a huge undertaking

Matt Эллен

@Jasper do you think I do work at work? ;-) I catch up on EL&U chat.

user19161

@MattЭллен Back to work then, no skiving! But chances are you missed what was removed unless you were there at the exact time.

Matt Эллен

@Jasper Yeah, sleep means I missed some pics

1:26 PM

consider an english text-to-speech engine: first you have a mapping from spelling to pronunciation in some phonetic rendering or another. that part is just a map, easy as pie. the hard part, the thing that people are still working on, is going from the phonetic rendering to something that people actually recognize as the word in question

Matt Эллен

and stuff

user19161

sips coffee

@JSBngs Google seems to go from text -> phonetics -> sound.

that works rather well

why not be able to cut out the (English) text part?

@Jez 'twould be an interesting project. but to the best of my knowledge, it doesn't exist

yet

i expect that it will exist in the near future, for certain values of "near"

it probably already exists in a lab somewhere

Matt Эллен

before the sun consumes the earth in heat

1:29 PM

plus, if you know that the word you're going for is English, then you can make lots of helpful assumptions. a language-agnostic pronunciation engine has a much harder row to hoe, unless you feed it a very narrow transcription

an english-language pronouncer can rely on implicit knowledge of english phonetics to render something reasonable based on a broad transcription

@JSBngs you could select language before entering the IPA symbols.

but really, if the IPA symbols don't unambiguously indicate pronunciation, isn't that a sign that the IPA symbols need improving?

Yeah, I was just thinking, if you're going to select the language, why not just... submit the word itself?

user19161

Hello @grace!

because i wanted to check that my IPA representation was right

Hi Jasper

1:34 PM

@Jez we've discussed "narrow" versus "broad" here before. the ipa gives you tools to transcribe a sound at a variety of points along the spectrum, but if you're doing a relatively broad transcription, then you (the human) are implicitly relying on your knowledge of the language to fill in missing phonetic detail

it's possible to describe every sound a human can pronounce in explicit detail.

maybe IPA could be extended to do that.

at least for the major languages

it already does this. i'm not sure what you're unclear about

i thought you were implying that it didnt; "then you (the human) are implicitly relying on your knowledge of the language to fill in missing phonetic detail"

let me reverse this. transcribe the english word "preen" for me

in IPA. (i assume you know enough IPA to do this)

1:53 PM

not really, but i know how to look it up

/prin/

;-)

@kit--if you thought my answer to your question was only tangential, why didn't you say so?

@simchona Do you think you know enough about phonology to really answer it?

I hate to have you put in a lot of work if a linguist can answer it faster.

From a phonology perspective, no. But your question seemed to me t only be about whether I and y can be used interchangeably

To Which I said yes, as a vowel sound

@Jez thank you for taking the bait. pronounced strictly as written, this would not sound very much like English "preen". rather, you should have written something like [pʰɹĩːn]... and this is my point. to accurately represent any real language requires a lot of phonetic detail which is available in the IPA, but which is often elided. this is what we call "broad" transcription

so if you feed a language-agnostic IPA pronouncer a broad transcription, you won't get what you're expecting

i'd be interested to hear /prin/ then

:-)

2:03 PM

and there are other problems. once you add in all of the phonetic detail of a narrow transcription, you're face with a combinatorial explosion of sound snippets that you have to have available for combining

@Jez to our ear it would sound something more like "breed"

@JSBngs yeah but once it's done, it's done.

@simchona So the vowels sounds of i and y are completely identical? That would mean there are no sounds that i makes that y cannot also represent. Is that true? And what sounds are represented by y that are not represented by i? Are these from particular roots or is y-used-as-a-vowel from a particular lineage?

because english speakers are attuned to the aspiration on the [p], and without it they tend to interpret the sound as /b/ even if the consonant is not actually voiced. and a word-final nasal always triggers nasalization of the preceding vowel, and without that we're likely to hear the [n] as /d/

oh, plus [r] is actually the trill. if you use the more common alveolar approximant, then you have to write [ɹ]

many english words had their spellings changed from 'y' to 'i' (fayre -> fair, byrd -> bird)

tyre -> tire in US english.

@Kitḫ when spelling a vowel, "y" and "i" are used to represent an identical range of sounds

"y" is used for spelling Greek loans (and sometimes Welsh loans), as well as for representing word-final /i/

2:07 PM

though I maintain the difference is handy to distinguish the verb from the noun

Matt Эллен

@JSBᾶngs except in "is"

and "in"

@MattЭллен huh?

Matt Эллен

the i in "is" is not a y sound

user19161

@Kitḫ I must say I am still trying to understand the question.

Matt Эллен

you cannot substitute them

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:08 PM

@MattЭллен I think you have it backwards. It's the Y that makes the "I" sound

Matt Эллен

@MrShinyandNew安宇 maybe I do

@Matt Are you sure yt's not yn there?

Matt Эллен

yes, I see what I did there. I confused spelling and speaking

@MattЭллен you've missed the point

@Jez is correct there

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez For all examples I can think of, when Y is at the beginning of a word in English it's not at all like an i.

2:09 PM

Ypres? :-)

Matt Эллен

:D

this question and the conversation is exceedingly confusing, and very confused

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez That's not an English word.

Matt Эллен

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Yvonne

y is used almost exclusively to represent [j], the semivowel that begins words such as "year"

2:10 PM

it's a word in English in that it's spoken in English sentences

@MrShinyandNew安宇 is that what you're thinking of?

it's self-evidently the case that y and i are not interchangeable in spelling

Interesting how "j" is hard in English, soft in French (so the French have to put 'dj')

Matt Эллен

Yvette

same with "c" usually. Chad, in French, Tchad.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez sigh obviously foreign names with foreign pronunciations that retain their foreign spellings are exempt from any conversations about English rules.

@JSBᾶngs yes

user19161

2:11 PM

@simchona Ya the [j] sound is also what I thought of first.

@Jez the french are lazy and dissolute and so they deaffricated all of their affricates

Matt Эллен

@MrShinyandNew安宇 sigh why is it obvious?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен is that a serious question?

as well as destroying all of their final consonants, many of the unstressed vowels, and most of the verbal system. the french, they are incorrigible ravagers of sound

2

@JSBngs yeah, but it takes persistence to maintain the guttural 'r' when you have a sore throat already

Matt Эллен

2:13 PM

@MrShinyandNew安宇 yes, since we have so many loan words from over the ages that have changed their pronunciation or effected how English is spoken, why exclude them?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен proper names != loan words

@MattЭллен For the same reason you can't take my surname (Jaeger) as note that J is pronounced like a Y in English, because it isn't.

Matt Эллен

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Sure they are

they are words we have taken from another language

people's names

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен they are not words with meanings. They are simply labels attached to a concept.

Matt Эллен

they are part of the language

2:14 PM

@JSBᾶngs ju: meɪk ɪt swiːp taɪm ɡeɪn pwiːz

user19161

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Why is ! used to represent "not"?

Matt Эллен

@MrShinyandNew安宇 um... a word is a label attached to a concept

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jasper programming

@aediaλ "you make it sweep time gain pweez" ?

@JSBᾶngs et leur langue ressemble un mur de son quand je l'entend aussi...

2:16 PM

@JSBᾶngs Uh huh. Tired.

user19161

@aediaλ I have no idea what you mean.

@aediaλ OOHHHHHH

Matt Эллен

@JSBᾶngs I had the same moment

@aediaλ gəʊ næp tʰaɪm baɪ baɪ

user19161

@JSBᾶngs go nap time bye bye

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:18 PM

@MattЭллен I mean to say, a proper name is not the same as other words in that a proper name only represents a concrete person place or thing. When it is a foreign name that is simply adopted and it is used unchanged, that "word" in no way is constrained by any English rules or what-have-you. And since it's not a word in the normal sense, but rather a stand-in for its real-world counterpart, it doesn't change the way normal words do.

@Jez Cripes, he uses "thon" in French as well.

eh????

totally lost me.

@JSBᾶngs tʃer noʊ kəmfi

user19161

@aediaλ chair no comfy?

@Jez I was demonstrating my French expertise.

2:23 PM

where is 'thon'?

@Jez Hence the demonstration of my expertise.

Matt Эллен

@MrShinyandNew安宇 So when a name, say Matthew (which is adopted from from Hebrew) changes it's pronunciation in English over time according to how native English speakers speak, that doesn't count because it's a proper noun? Or It didn't count when we started using it, but it counts now?

@aediaλ tʰɹaɪ flo:ɹ

user19161

@JSBᾶngs try floor

hi all

2:24 PM

There is not enough salad for my dressing. Pls give more salad.

@Fx You look good in blue.

user19161

@Kitḫ Just use less dressing.

Matt Эллен

@Kitḫ you could set up a "Just Giving" page, and do a charity auction, to get more salad

@Jasper Too late for that.

user19161

How to use less dressing? Just remove clothes.

@Kitḫ thanks, I'd have preferred green, but I will wait a bit before filing this feature request

2:26 PM

@Fx So shall we call you Turquoise Dragon now?

user19161

@Fx preferred

woah, woah, woah. who gave F'x this awesome power?

@Jasper fuck the double consonnants!

2

user19161

@Fx consonants

Matt Эллен

lol

2:28 PM

@Jasper sound of joke going over Jasper's head

@Jasper en.wiktionary.org/wiki/irony

user19161

@Fx OK. I have another brand of humour.

Matt Эллен

pepsi vs coke

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен Yes, now it's anglicized. But a person's name is different than a place name. Each time it's bestowed on a new person it has opportunity to change.

user19161

@MattЭллен I prefer pepsi to coke.

2:29 PM

@JSBᾶngs FL&U pro tem mod

Matt Эллен

I prefer coke, but I prefer 7up to sprite

user19161

@Fx Blue is easier on the eye.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 This is how we get names like "Jayden" and "Rashonda."

@JSBᾶngs speaking of Languages SE, I'm so excited to see Linguistics launched!

@Fx that's pro tem

altho you're right that it's short for "pro tempore"

2:30 PM

@Fx Huh. I thought the abbreviation for pro tempore was pro tem.

@JSBᾶngs erər : flɔ:r[ɛdiə] noʊ faɪndəd

@JSBᾶngs Jinx!

@Fx It already launched?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Kitḫ Perfectly cromulent names.

@GraceNote now, I meant, I'm so excited to see it being so close to being launched

2:31 PM

@Fx Well, it's either launching today or tomorrow. The email goes out a tinge after the actual launch, though.

As such your ability to have a low user ID is correspondent on both precognition and timing.

@JSBᾶngs “the french, they are incorrigible ravagers of sound” — that a joke, coming from an American? :)

@GraceNote or careful scripting

@MrShinyandNew安宇 OMG, I just totally guessed your children's names, didn't I?

@Fx That's a timing thing

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Now here's a philosophical debate. I always thought that "Cruithne" was a good name for a girl. It's the name of the rock that follows the earth around but isn't quite a moon. It's also the name of some Celtic goddess or something. But I like the pronunciation "croo ITH nee" however it's supposed to be "crooEENya". Who's right, me, or my wife, who says "you'll never name any child of MINE that."

@Kitḫ Actually I don't mind the name "Jayden" except that it's to "trendy" these days.

@GraceNote well, having a script check regularly if a webpage is updated is not above me, I've done it before for important events in my life :)

2:33 PM

@MrShinyandNew安宇 I'm not qualified for advice because I'm still tempted to name my child "Novel", with the option of a "No'el" nickname.

@GraceNote I so wanted to name my first-born Europe, if she was a girl

@MrShinyandNew安宇 I hate that it is spelled with a Y in it. Jaden = OK, Jayden = trailer trash who can't write.

(No offense to anyone with children named Jayden.)

@Fx Hence, timing success!

Matt Эллен

lol

it's such a beautiful name, yet as soon as I floated the idea, the whole family preemptively hated my guts for two weeks :(

then we learn't it'd be a boy…

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:35 PM

@Kitḫ Jaden, Jayden, Jaidin, whatever. Just not J-den.

@Fx That does put a damper on that kind of a plan.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 I like J-den better than Jayden, It's got kind of a G-d thing going for it.

user19161

@GraceNote You should wait till they are born first, or at least in the making.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Kitḫ teehee If you look at it THAT way... :)

@GraceNote and with theoreticalphysics being launched any day too, I guess I should send a notice to my team saying not to expect me to do any real work in the upcoming weeks :)

2:36 PM

@Jasper Nothing stops you from preparing names in advance. Sure, not nearly as fancy as planning a wedding but it remains an option.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@GraceNote "Novel" isn't the strangest name I've heard for a child. A friend of mine named her daughter "Lumiere".

Lovely!

@MrShinyandNew安宇 well, you're Mr. Shiny, so why not Lumière ?

(but please, the accent)

@MrShinyandNew安宇 I've actually met girls named Lumiere, though.

(Probably with an accent, too, but hejudas if I know where it goes)

I tried to convince my husband to let me name our firstborn Lucifer.

user19161

2:37 PM

@GraceNote I see Grace plans 3 - 38 steps in advance, like me.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I'm "Mr. Shiny and New" on the INTERNETS not in real life.

@Jasper Plotting is what I do best.

user19161

@MrShinyandNew安宇 That is obvious.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

My neighbour's name is "Rain". But she's Chinese so she gets a pass.

I think Lucifer Morningstar has such a nice ring to it.

user19161

2:38 PM

@GraceNote Plotting sounds wicked, planning sounds better.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 The internet's still a part of real life. Just not in the same physical sense.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Rain is a great name. Also a good nickname for Lorraine.

@Jasper As such, I plot

@Kitḫ in France, they actually can refuse a name if they think it'll be prejudicial to the kid

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

(Actually her name is 宇 which is a homonym for rain and she thought it'd be weird if she told people to call her "universe")

2:38 PM

@GraceNote Try matplotlib. It's great for python plots.

and of course, in Soviet Russia, baby names you!

@Kitḫ I'm not a fan of constricting languages.

user19161

@Kitḫ Try gnuplot instead.

@Fx Come on, what's the harm in "Lightbringer"?

there's even a Saint Lucifer!

2:41 PM

@Kitḫ Just name them, like, Firucel Starmorning and let them figure it out later.

Matt Эллен

@aediaλ and name the second kid Alucard

Or maybe Lightbringer Albastra.

@Fx eh? american english is more conservative than british english

user19161

Name your kids Raphael, Michaelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo after TMNT.

@JSBᾶngs what about all those vowels your turn into chewing-gum?

2:44 PM

Oh, man. I was really disappointed when I realized I couldn't grow up to be a teenage mutant ninja turtle.

@MattЭллен Come on then, I'd only name my children after real people. ;-)

@aediaλ I turned 11 and was upset I wasn't a witch

@Fx i don't know what you're talking about. our vowels are as pure as the driven snow

Matt Эллен

@Kitḫ :D ah yes, for specific values of real!

user19161

@simchona Really?

2:46 PM

@Jasper Kind of. I kept waiting for that owl and it never came

Broke my little heart

@simchona That too, or that I was never going to wake up one day to the bushes in my yard having grown into a giant magic labyrinth with living statues or anything.

user19161

@simchona I didn't know witches have owls. Well you can have Reg now.

I was upset that my telepathic abilities didn't augment when I hit puberty.

Instead, I just started menstruating.

someone remember to remind @RegDwight that he's been gifted to simchona

4

@Kitḫ that must have been a disappointment

I don't think he'll like that...

2:48 PM

i didn't even get that much

@JSBᾶngs Huge disappointment.

user19161

@Kitḫ I didn't menstruate, I did something which sounds similar.

@Kitḫ I had a great book about that too! That was also a bummer.

@Kitḫ on the bright side, some twenty-odd years later you got to have a baby. you may or may not consider this sufficient compensation

@JSBᾶngs Well, it's kind of like thinking you will have your favorite kind of cake on your birthday, but instead your cat gets run over. And no cake.

2:49 PM

@Kitḫ No! Save the kitty!

Matt Эллен

I was disappointed when I realised astronauts have to be physically fit and clever.

@Kitḫ awww. here, have some cake

user19161

@MattЭллен Aren't you both?

Matt Эллен

not to that level!

@JSBᾶngs Thanks. But I got over the trauma of menarche after the first five or six years of it.

Matt Эллен

2:51 PM

plus, asthma

user19161

@MattЭллен I had that in childhood, but it's gone now.

user19161

I used Ventolin inhaler.

user19161

@Fx BTW, I don't trust wiktionary, though I like wikipedia.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Wow, science fiction and fantasy has been a real downer for you people, hasn't it?

Although I am still annoyed that I can't move things with my mind, nor channel Saidin.

user19161

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Scifi and fantasy will be the last class of books I ever read.

Matt Эллен

2:58 PM

@MrShinyandNew安宇 I blame Hollywood and their fixation with happy endings

@MrShinyandNew安宇 It can't have been that much of a downer or I wouldn't keep reading it.

user19161

@MattЭллен Did you watch Slumdog Millionaire? Feel-good movie of all time.

Matt Эллен

@Jasper I did not. It does not look like my kind of thing

@Jasper what? what's wrong with you?

I was trying to find the one book I loved about a girl with telekinetic powers, but I keep coming across The Girl with the Silver Eyes, which I also loved. Now I just want to go live in the children's section of the library for a while.

user19161

2:59 PM

@MattЭллен You like tragic endings then?

@aediaλ i read half that book, but didn't much like it

Matt Эллен

@Jasper Well, I like appropriate endings

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