English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2013-09-26 (page 1 of 3)

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12:05 AM

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 BST alert.

0

Q: Be/Come Up Against

For these two sentences: "He was up against a lot of problems." "He came up against a lot of problems." Does the first sentence emphasize the situation of him having to deal with problems, and the second sentence emphasize the process of going into the said situation?

@tchrist What are the red flags on this one? It doesn't have the usual wormsign.

Sure it does, but if I write them here, he’ll know.

Send me email and I will tell you.

How could he get in here?

Anyone can read the transcript.

I'm bszonye@gmail.com.

12:20 AM

k

Boyzone fan, eh?

heh

It's OK.

You mean Boy’s Own.

Beeton's Boy's Own Magazine, published in the UK from 1855 to 1890, was the first and most influential boys' magazine. ]] Boys' Own or Boy's Own or Boys Own, is the title of a varying series of similarly titled magazines, story papers, and newsletters published at various times and by various publishers, in the UK and the U.S., from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, for pre-teen and teenage boys. History In 1828 in London, and in 1829 in Boston, an encyclopedia for boys by William Clarke was published, titled The Boy's Own Book: A Complete Encyclopedia of all the Diversions...

@Cerberus Haha. It's “B. Szonye.” My friends usually pronounce it “basagna”

Which is slightly closer to the original Hungarian than the way I actually pronounce my name. But only slightly.

12:24 AM

As you say, as you say.

I had a poetry professor named Buosoño once or twice.

So you're Hungarian?

Such coincidence, his parents' names both being Buosoño.

Sort of. I'm Irish-English-Italian adopted by Irish-German and Hungarian-German.

Right, right, that makes sense, exactly what I expected.;

My birth mother was a nun and father was a car salesman. It's unknown whether either smelled like elderberries.

12:26 AM

Wow.

"Was" a nun.

So you grew up in Germany?

(That's actually a little speculation on my part. All I know for certain is that she got her degree and taught in a convent.)

Append “–American” to all of the above.

It would be a juicy story!

Oh, I see.

There's enough hyphens already without specifying nationality in addition to ancestry.

You Americans always do that!

You just plain say "I'm German" when you are American but have German ancestors.

While my name is (misspelled and mispronounced) Hungarian, that was actually the least part of my cultural upbringing.

12:28 AM

It's a funny language.

Well when you grow up in a town full of Irish-, German-, and Polish-Americans, you tend to assume that anyone with that ancestry has been around for a few generations.

I imagine people are a little more careful in towns (like SF here) with more actual immigrants.

But in my home town, “Irish” basically means “Roman Catholic Irish-American”

I often go by the screen name “Nutty Irishman,” which always prompts people to ask whether I'm from Ireland and/or whether I have an accent.

Heh.

Yep, a Detroit accent with Californian notes and a few Canadianesque quirks.

Or should that be Canadienesque?

Probably!

I wonder why this convention exists in your country but not in mine.

@BraddSzonye En route.

12:32 AM

The heritage-nationality convention?

People will call themselves "Dutch" unless they associate more strongly with another country.

So that's different.

A recent question brought up that Brits don't really do it either.

People don’t think of themselves as British.

People here will identify as American, Californian, San Franciscan, Irish, etc. depending on context.

They think of themselves as English or Welsh or Scottish.

12:33 AM

Oh, and it is more common with people from very different, non-European cultures, I suppose.

@tchrist A bit like us identifying by State or region.

For example, I'm also a Midwesterner.

@tchrist I wouldn't be so sure about that...

The USA is a big place with lots of subcultures and dialects.

But probably not nearly as many as Europe...

London probably has more different accents and dialects than North America!

I'm not so sure about that.

Have you ever been here?

12:35 AM

And I'm sure they call themselves Westender or whatever.

@Robusto How is that relevant? Yes, I have been there.

Well, did you go to a lot of different places?

I know it can be tough for Europeans to get a handle on how big and diverse the USA is.

I rather think it is something about migration being a more important cultural theme in your country.

@BraddSzonye Amsterdam alone has people from 178 different nationalities, let alone local origins...the whole world is very diverse!

For sure.

Maybe we should rent a boat and cruise the Pacific for a couple of island-states we missed.

Abduct a couple of people.

12:39 AM

In some ways (like language), America is more unified than Europe, but in other ways it's equally or more diverse.

Oh, and we have a North-Korean restaurant! I wonder what kind of food they have there. Or if.

I suspect that the common language leads people to think that America is mostly all alike in a way that they would not assume that Europe is all alike.

@BraddSzonye I suppose it depends on one's perspective...

For example, I doubt anyone would extrapolate that all Europeans are like Italians.

But people often extrapolate that all Americans are like Texans.

@BraddSzonye I don't know...I've heard some really weird American accents that I couldn't understand at all!

12:40 AM

Heh, me too.

Haha.

So in what way does America seem more varied than Europe to you?

@tchrist Thanks for the message! The only tell I knew about was the line noise, and I didn't realize why it was there.

Dup defeater.

Yeah, makes perfect sense.

It really is a lot of things.

12:42 AM

Perhaps he should have his own little private website.

But not know it.

Once you can all the deleted tripe, it will become clearer.

He does.

@Cerberus More blacks and orientals. More different climates. Bigger.

Definitely more Indians.

I'm not sure I would consider "more blacks" to be more varied.

More time zones.

That's not really cultural.

It’s varied.

12:45 AM

@Cerberus That's not my point. You said there were more accents in London than in all of North America. Which is either hyperbole or just nonsense.

Or both.

(Apologies for using America ambiguously to refer both to USA and North America – but we really do that ourselves all the time.)

Or more.

@Robusto That's what I heard someone say, but I haven't checked it, and it may depend on your definition.

Like the first American pope, Papa Paco.

12:46 AM

Sometimes we consider Canadians and Mexicans siblings, sometimes strangers.

Yes, good point.

@BraddSzonye No need to apologise, it's perfectly fine. Like England and Holland.

The Canadians are sibs, the Mexicans, menos.

@Cerberus I would bet you could hear as many accents and dialects in New York City alone as in all of London. And everything depends on the definition.

Any of the metropolises, really.

Even Detroit surprised me after I'd been away awhile. I never realized how diverse and cosmopolitan it is.

@Robusto There you go, then.

I can't understand people from certain neighbourhoods here.

12:48 AM

So define your terms.

Even over here, we often forget that even the most strongly stereotyped regions are quite diverse.

Let alone people from 200 km away.

Two more votes:

-3

Q: Be/Come Up Against

For these two sentences: "He was up against a lot of problems." "He came up against a lot of problems." Does the first sentence emphasize the situation of him having to deal with problems, and the second sentence emphasize the process of going into the said situation?

@Cerberus Unfathomable.

You're lucky!

I occasionally tease a friend of mine from Georgia, which is stereotypically “Deep South,” because he is a liberal vegetarian nerd who doesn't like hot sauce.

But that's not all that strange in his hometown.

12:53 AM

@BraddSzonye Strange echo.

So do you think many people from the south change their accent as they move to New York or some other city?

Can you understand him when he's talking to his sibling on the phone?

Our accents do generally drift when we move.

Although I've resisted the caught/cot merger that is one of the most prominent aspects of the local dialect.

I see.

I shall have to listen to what that sounds like again.

It is not always the same.

Does it sound more like ɔ or ɒ?

12:57 AM

Er, those are the same.

Haha.

To us.

I see you have been affected by it too!

No, that is not what the merger is.

The merger is that either all of those are rounded or that none of them are.

The latter is more common.

In any case, they are no longer distinct.

I don’t have it.

The most extreme cases are found in lower California.

Well, southern.

In Northern California, they merge to ɔ

12:59 AM

Right, and in south, to just a.

Is it like the merger between J.P. Morgan and Chase Manhattan?

They don’t round anything, even gone and dog and dawn.

Don sounds like Dawn here.

Sounds just ahful.

Or offal.

Ah, so like Philadelphia then.

1:00 AM

@tchrist Do they have a vaccine yet?

“harrible” is a Philadelphia favorite of mine.

I don’t even have the calm/comma merger.

I wonder when tall will fall.

Yeah, we don't merge much in the Upper Midwest, except for Mary/marry/merry

We even distinguish writer from rider.

Of course.

It boggled my mind when I first learned that not everyone does.

Well more precisely, it boggled my mind the way we distinguish them. It's not the consonant.

1:03 AM

I have the same bogglement when I learned that some people don’t have two identical voiced sounds in hourses.

Canadian rising.

raising

Right.

tight vs dyed

Different sounds.

People in Oklahoma pronounce oil like awl.

Rider has a slightly longer and higher vowel than writer does.

Spoken quickly there is little to distinguish rider from writer.

1:04 AM

Save for that.

[ˈɹaɪɾɚ] vs [ˈɹʌɪɾɚ]

The first vowel differs.

Yeah, because it's in the stressed vowel, it's quite distinct.

@Cerb Can you say both of those?

Even in fast speech.

Well, and hear them?

I would have a hard time figuring out how to pronounce ʌɪ if I didn't already know it natively!

1:07 AM

@tchrist What?

That’s why I asked him.

@Cerberus Can you pronounce those two as written?

[ˈɹaɪɾɚ] and [ˈɹʌɪɾɚ]

I'm not good at pronouncing sounds out of the context in which I learned them.

Is ʌɪ the vowel in Kuyper?

Most probably not.

Rider as [ˈɹaɪɾɚ] and writer as [ˈɹʌɪɾɚ].

1:09 AM

(That's how we pronounce it in English, wasn't sure about Dutch.)

In English, yes.

Right, well, I've never heard a non-Dutchman pronounce ui (uy is an older variant) correctly...

Ah, it looks like it's ʌy in Dutch.

For us it is just ʌɪ as in tight.

So they do that funny thing with their lips, eh?

OED says /taɪ/.

1:11 AM

That is phonemic not phonetic.

Yeah, ʌy is a bit more rounded.

@BraddSzonye When I try to make that sound, it sounds nothing like ui to me...

@Cerberus Both [aɪ] and [ʌɪ] are allophones of /aɪ/. This is the entire point.

So I guess ʌɪ would be like Dutch ui, only less rounded.

And it may be the other one with tie, but certainly is not with tight.

1:13 AM

You know, when I try to remember how e.g. ʌ is pronounced, I pronounce a word like hut. Then I compare some other word to hut to determine whether it might be the same vowel.

cut

mutt

pun

Yeah, it's the hut vowel, but it changes quality quite a bit when you slide into i.

none

@BraddSzonye I know Englishmen pronounce ui like that, but it sounds nothing like the way it's supposed to sound like us. Perhaps the phonetic distance is slight, but it is phonetically huge to us. Our ai is supposed to sound completely different from ui.

@BraddSzonye Yeah so then I don't know any more.

Yeah, it's much the same for writer versus rider to a Detroiter.

1:14 AM

@tchrist put

I'm sure!

They're phonetically quite similar, and yet easily distinguished.

@Robusto er no

Some Dutch accents pronounce ui like ai, though.

hood is different

1:15 AM

putt but not put.

Perhaps a great many, even.

@tchrist Er, yes. I'm just pointing out that put is a strange case.

Ah, OK.

@Cerberus Canadian-raised ite is midway between ui and ai.

Go to Scotland. It will ruin your vowels forever.

@BraddSzonye Sample?

1:16 AM

Yeah, put sounds like pewitt

Although my brain will probably flip this ite either towards ai or towards ui and refuse to believe that it is anywhere close to the other.

Most likely ai.

yorku.ca/twainweb/troberts/raising.html

Which page reminds me that we also do it for lout, loud

Is this sentence legit? It sounds funny to me.

> Who is this blue haired male character?

I would write that as “Who is this blue-haired, male character?”

Perhaps without the comma.

But I'm overly fond of hyphens and dashes.

hmm

1:20 AM

Canadian raising supposedly also explains about -> aboot.

@BraddSzonye Looks a bit better. ;) Thanks.

np.

@BraddSzonye To me, that's short a versus long a (both followed by i/y). I know that's meaningless, but it is what we would call it in Dutch.

But nothing like ui at all.

@BraddSzonye I agree 100 %.

The vowel in rider is indeed longer than the one in writer, but that's not the only difference.

Yeah, I know it's quality, not (only) quantity.

But we call that different in quality short v. long in Dutch, unfortunately.

1:23 AM

Also, I'm not sure that page reflects the exact way we do it in Detroit.

Just as we call ɪ short, i long.

It's all so complex!

Oh I meant longer in the geminate sense

not in the tenseness sense we use in English

Uhh...

I might write rider as [ˈɹaaɪɾɚ] and writer as [ˈɹʌɪɾɚ].

Although I know that's not the proper IPA for a lenghtened vowel.

In fast speech, the length difference vanishes but the height difference remains.

Heh.

I really think I would pronounce those two words identically, except for the t/d.

1:29 AM

(And I'm not sure how universal the length difference is, but it's prominent in my own speech.)

forvo.com/word/huis_oranje-nassau/#nl

Does this sound like /aj/ to you?

forvo.com/word/verhuisdoos/#nl

Hm, couldn't hear well enough from a single play and can't play repeatedly at the moment.

It's hard to find an ui that is neither in the first syllable of a sample nor after r.

But anyway, be warned: there exist probably tens of different ways of pronouncing ui in the Benelux.

I'm merely talking about "standard" ui.

@Cerberus Pronounced OOH-whee?

Uhh no!

This Dutch ui we're talking about, you oddly shaped Oktoberfest thingie!

1:42 AM

@cyberskull I did so tell you why. Ish.

hello :)

Hi!

@MετάEd tchrist and I were trying to explain Canadian raising.

@BraddSzonye Ah. In my world the ui is the user interface. :-]

Yeah, in much of my world too, but that's YOO-ee.

1:53 AM

Ohh...

Or GOO-ee.

Rarely, yoo-EYE.

Or maybe that last one is a spondee. YOO-EYE.

Hmm.

I wouldn't say YOO-eye.

But then I rarely if ever speak that word out loud.

I don't pronounce it with an EYE.

But I do pronounce Italian with an EYE.

Really?

But that's more my sense of whimsy than my dialect.

2:01 AM

Heh.

Whimsy I can appreciate.

It's not consistent. Italian and Eyetalian are in free variation for me.

Hmm.

My computer is making little whooshing sounds, like messages being sent or people leaving/joining a chatroom. But I'm not sure which app is doing it.

Huh...

How odd!

Maybe a browser tab?

Skype?

I haven't noticed it before, so I suspect something I don't usually have open. But I don't see anything like that.

2:13 AM

I would file a complaint with the NSA. They should oil their backdoors.

Perhaps the office is just quieter than usual.

Doesn't seem to be Gmail, iMessage, or ELU chat.

Is the NSA censoring my line for you?

Hm, what happened to Cerberus?

Oh noes!

Nobody can read me any more!

Or maybe it's because I haven't entered my password properly?

thedog

Hmm it isn't working. At least nobody could see my password.

Whee!

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

2:23 AM

@BraddSzonye mmm, basagna.

Heehee!

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@tchrist yes, well.

My dad was almost 45 when I was born. Mom was 33.

bisogna fare what?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Cerberus it isn't trefeninger?

Or however that was spelled.

What?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

2:25 AM

That word I recorded once.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Mine were 43 and 36, respectively.

Who wins?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

You do.

Oh!

Thanks.

20, 5, or 6 to 4.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

doo doo doo doo doo.

Should I try to chew some more?

2:27 AM

Hm, maybe it is ELU making the whooshing.

Oh noes!

I hear it not.

@tchrist Shouldn't that be 25 or 6 till 4?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@BraddSzonye are you by chance holding a seashell up to your ear?

I was trying to make it a score.

20:4 or 5:4 or 6:4.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Haha that's it!!

2:28 AM

Ah. I was just being snarky. ;)

Obviously, they say “quarter to the hour” in Chicago.

(The band, not necessarily the city.)

> Canadian raising can also apply across word boundaries in idiomatic expressions. Hence, high school [ˈhʌɪskul] as a term meaning "a secondary school for students approximately 14–18 years old" has raising of the vowel in "high", whereas high school [ˈhaɪ ˈskul] with the literal meaning "a school that is high (e.g. in elevation)" is unaffected. (The two terms are also distinguished by the position of the stress accent, as shown).

@BraddSzonye Is there another way? Well, besides of.

Yeah, apparently there was an epic flame war recently where somebody insisted that Americans only say till the hour.

in Mathematics, 1 min ago, by John Wilson

Twink are you lonely?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Annie, are you okay?

Hmm till does sound American to my ear.

2:31 AM

You'll hear it occasionally in some places here.

Right.

Anonymous

@Cerberus You mean it sounds American in the specific context mentioned above? (I haven't read the whole conversation)

@snailboat Yes.

You've summarised that quite adequately.

Anonymous

Oh. Good for me!

Hungry.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

2:45 AM

That's Hungary.

:D

Ha! No, that's where my name is from. Sort of.

Anonymous

I'm a little hunger-y.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Grab a Snickers!

I think it's supposed to be spelled Szanyi. Or perhaps Szányi.

All I know is that it's unpronounceable.

Anonymous

I should probably apologize to the English language more often

2:48 AM

At least, unpronounceable to this tongue that never properly learned a language outside of Northern Europe.

I know how to spell it phonetically in several other languages, though.

Spanish: Sañy

French: Çagnie.

Anonymous

How do you spell it in the IPA?

Hang on, I'm terrible at spelling IPA.

sɒɲi

Or possibly sɔɲi

If it's the former, that's a vowel and a consonant that are foreign to my dialect.

Although I can kinda fake the A.

So, kinda like sawn ye with a Boston accent.

I prefer basagna.

Which reminds me of food. Think I want nacho fries tonight.

Oh, I forgot that I have the IPA palette installed on my Mac.

Hm, chili verde, al pastor, or chipotle chicken?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

4:04 AM

-1

Q: ですですですですですですですですです

ですですですですですですですですですですですですですですですですですです

What language is that?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Spammish.

Is that related to Spanish?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

You're killin' me, Smalls!

Anonymous

4:23 AM

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 What a question!

Anonymous

@BraddSzonye I use this westonruter.github.io/ipa-chart/keyboard

Anonymous

@cyberskull I suppose the answer to that is "Japanese", but I hesitate to say that without scare quotes

4:46 AM

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Defaced, flagged, and voted to close.

We should have a button "spam: hide immediately" where a single high-rep user can hide a question. To be punished very seriously in case of abuse.

3

Anonymous

@Cerberus Isn't that more or less what the edit privilege allows you to do? (Albeit reversibly)

Anonymous

Oh, do you mean "hide from the list of questions"?

@snailboat Kind of (but it's too much trouble, having to come up with a long enough text for both title and body), and yes.

Anonymous

@Cerberus You could always edit in some ASCII art of a dinosaur. That way, anyone who clicks the question will at least get to see a dinosaur.

Umm right, I'll take it into consideration.

Anonymous

4:53 AM

Oh, I forgot my sense of humor was broken. I need to get that fixed before I try to be funny

Haha.

It was funny.

I just felt the appropriate reaction was that of a stuffy bureaucrat.

You know what I mean?

But it's bed time.

\o\ lol /o/

Happy slithering!

0

Q: Difference of "Be, Come Up Against"

-=--,.--=,.-,-., For these two sentences: "He was up against a lot of problems." "He came up against a lot of problems." Does the first sentence emphasize the situation of him having to deal with problems, and the second sentence emphasize the process of going into the said situation?

meaning differences ambiguity

@cyberskull What happened, your lol is sagging?

Hi and bai!

4:55 AM

later

pooves

5:16 AM

\o/ . /o\ . /o/ . /o\ Y.M.C.A.](youtube.com/watch?v=CS9OO0S5w2k)

5:50 AM

@cyberskull it is possible to animate it for a while, the rate is throttled though

@JohanLarsson dunno

6:04 AM

@JohanLarsson icic

→ i.stack.imgur.com/BUwxs.jpg

A C M Y

@cyberskull maybe collapse that one? Not a perfect fit for them who chat at work imo.

@JohanLarsson sorry too late

went afk laughing...

...it is labeled as "College" Humor.

Not sure which college.

Anonymous

6:59 AM

@cyberskull Do you want me to collapse it?

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