English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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Q: Cool rush of air uphill

Do you know the word to describe a cool rushing current of uphill air? I think it has something to do with the air coming from a cool place on a warm day.

british-english

And now for some Physics 101.

Johan Larsson

Termik in Swedish but then it is hotter air

The thing eagles use.

Thermal.

Thermal winds are warm. Whence the very name.

I don't know how cool air rises uphill.

2:05 PM

It does not.

@RegDwigнt It does if you put a fan under it.

Oh. That's alright then. I shouldn't know that.

@terdon ManU or Barça?

@skullpatrol thanks I try, it's like relearning things, fun but a bit worrying

@user2370114 Perhaps easier for thee than for me: I’m user-217132007. :(

2:06 PM

@RegDwigнt Either, as long as they yell loud enough to cause a current.

yesterday, by RegDwigнt

Well I have 105000 right here.

Should be enough for everybody.

But what do you call it?

An aerial shot.

user2370114

@RegDwigнt updraft

JSBձոգչ

what a weird hockey rink

Updraft is neither cool nor on a warm day.

JSBձոգչ

2:07 PM

why is there all that open space around the ice?

105000 persons, none of them smoking, that's a world record

Q: Word for disrespecting eldest half-sister by referring to her husband as girly-girl-manly-boy though he's amused but the rest of the family isn't?

35

Are these single word requests getting out of hand, or am I just still too new to this site to recognize a long-standing problem and standard ways of dealing with them? I thought that by using generally accepted words for heinous crimes, the OP would get the idea that common and well-known word...

discussion single-word-requests kinship-terms

@kwak I believe in you :-)

@kwak oh yeah? Where do you think all the smoke over the stadium is coming from?

@skullpatrol :)) really, thx

2:09 PM

:)

@RegDwigнt Odd how quickly, and wrongly, my brain leaps not to a 105mm shot but to a fisheye-lens explanation for that curvature. What are those wacky black curves reaching for the stars?

@RegDwigнt smoke bomb maybe? but in Usa that's not legal to smoke in a stadium right?

pot?

nah

@tchrist camera wires?

2:10 PM

Hm.

user2370114

@RegDwigнt Indeed, but then cool updraft on a warm day? :) Unfortunately, it appears this term to be regional, so. But then why have adjectives if they're built into the word?

Funicular?

they still do it at concerts

Shopped stilts?

He’s going to sing! He’s going to sing!

2:10 PM

That fell over?

Dec 5 '12 at 12:54, by RegDwighт

Parlait-parla-parlait-parla, jamme, jamme jà, parlait-parla-parlait-parla.

Do you hate it when people put just the initial capital on an acronym, like Usa, Nasa, Ovni

Déjà dit — ou bien, chanté.

To what end would I hate it?

I can hate a great many other things with smaller effort and better outcome.

Cue @tchrist's small caps...

I’m beeving over NASA right now.

2:12 PM

@RegDwigнt To the end of wanting to kill its author

And to what end would my heart be wasted on such an insatiable desire?

I could wish for a donut instead and then actually have it. Or LEGO.

@RegDwigнt a circular periodic end

like 1 is the end of Sinus

Or even Lego.

valeur d'adherence in French

Voleur de bicyclettes.

2:15 PM

Limit point

In mathematics, a limit point of a set S in a topological space X is a point x (which is in X, but not necessarily in S) that can be "approximated" by points of S in the sense that every neighbourhood of x with respect to the topology on X also contains a point of S other than x itself. Note that x does not have to be an element of S. This concept profitably generalizes the notion of a limit and is the underpinning of concepts such as closed set and topological closure. Indeed, a set is closed if and only if it contains all of its limit points, and the topological closure operation can be thought...

@RegDwigнt No I'm a volee of bicyclettes, at least 3 times I've been stolen

Grosse Pointe Blank

Grosse Pointe Blank is a 1997 American comedy film, directed by George Armitage, and starring John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Alan Arkin, and Dan Aykroyd. The film received positive reviews from critics. The soundtrack, produced by Joe Strummer, features mainly independent music from the 1980s. == Plot == Professional assassin Martin Blank finds himself depressed, irritable and dissatisfied with his work. A major irritant is his chief rival Grocer, whose effort to cartelize the hitman business puts him at potentially lethal odds with the solitary Martin. Following a botched contract, Martin receives...

@AndrewLeach The radiobeeb was chattering on about NASA the other day, and freaked me out with their /ˈnɑzə/ pronunciation instead of the normal /ˈnæsə/. I swear that the best way to convert back and forth between RP and GA is the invertible tr[æɑ][ɑæ]. Very bizarre.

@kwak volaaaaaareee, oh-oh.

@RegDwigнt cantare, oohoho

And flights of angels wing thee to thy rest.

2:18 PM

@tchrist Never heard them say that, even in the days of the Lillbullero World Service.

@AndrewLeach I hadn’t either; I wanted to ask you and @MattЭллен whether you had heard such a thing before.

@tchrist What is perl mainly used for?

I never used it so far

@kwak EVERYTHING!

What it really shines at though is text manipulation.

oh like php you mean? "good for everything"

Hides

2:23 PM

No, more like python.

Dons tin hat

Unlike PHP, Perl actually is good for many things.

@terdon ah better indeed

@AndrewLeach But in an accent that yields /ˈɹɒːzbɹɪ/ for /ˈɹæzbeɹi/ and /ˈmætʃəʊ/ for /ˈmɑtʃoʊ/, I figured anything might be possible. Notice how there again RP ⇿ GA is again some sort of tr[æɑ][ɑæ] operation.

@kwak if by everything you mean "templating html documents"...

2:24 PM

@MattЭллен my everything is very narrow-minded

:D

I mean, there are other little things too, but the the swap-around of the stressed vowel is the one that most stands out upon casual inspection.

It's a little bit mathematical, but the question is more language related. I have a slide with those three messages:

* Circles have a very usefull property.

* Every point on the circle has the same distance to the center.

* [So], segment AC has the same length as segment AB.

I don't find the word "so" that good sounding, but I don't have room for "therefore" in the slide, any other alternatives ?

useful one l

^^

@Kasper Use the symbol

Therefore sign

In mathematical proof, the therefore sign (∴) is sometimes placed before a logical consequence, such as the conclusion of a syllogism. The symbol consists of three dots placed in an upright triangle and is read therefore. It is encoded at U+2234 ∴ therefore (HTML: ∴ &there4;). While it is not generally used in formal writing, it is often used in mathematics and shorthand. It is complementary to U+2235 ∵ because (HTML: ∵). == History == According to Cajori, A History of Mathematical Notations, Johann Rahn used both the therefore and because signs to mean "therefore"; in the Ger...

2:26 PM

∴

macbook# uninames therefore
‭ ∴  2234       THEREFORE
        x (historic site - 26EC)
‭ ⛬  26EC       HISTORIC SITE
        x (therefore - 2234)
‭ 𝈉  1D209      GREEK VOCAL NOTATION SYMBOL-10
        * vocal A
        * this is a modification of 039F and is therefore not the same as 03D8
‭ 𝈓  1D213      GREEK VOCAL NOTATION SYMBOL-20
        = Greek instrumental notation symbol-28
        * vocal first sharp of d
        * instrumental g
        * this is a modification of 0395 and is therefore not the same as 0046

o that means therefore!, I found it once, and remained confused

@kwak That’s why I have a codepoint-name–grepper.

I'm not sure if my audience has been introduced to that symbol.

@tchrist I wouldn't put it past the beeb to say NASA like that but I don't think I've heard it.

2:27 PM

It is a educational game for high school students.

Or a double-stroke right-arrow, something like =>

which probably has a Unicode code point.

@MattЭллен Doubtless a class marker. :)

macbook# unichars 'NAME =~ /ARROW/' | wc -l
     346

But could I use a word like "Thus" in this context (i;m not so good with english language)

because i feel more like using words, as I never use symbols anywhere else

grep ∴ foo.txt

@Kasper No, please don't. Thus is horribly abused in scientific writing. It means in this way not therefore (usually). Also it is usually just pretentious.

2:30 PM

macbook# uninames RIGHT\b' 'ARROW\b' -LEFT -COMBIN
‭ ⇴  21F4       RIGHT ARROW WITH SMALL CIRCLE
        x (left arrow with small circle - 2B30)
‭ ⍼  237C       RIGHT ANGLE WITH DOWNWARDS ZIGZAG ARROW
‭ ➩  27A9       RIGHT-SHADED WHITE RIGHTWARDS ARROW
‭ ➭  27AD       HEAVY LOWER RIGHT-SHADOWED WHITE RIGHTWARDS ARROW
‭ ➮  27AE       HEAVY UPPER RIGHT-SHADOWED WHITE RIGHTWARDS ARROW
‭ ➯  27AF       NOTCHED LOWER RIGHT-SHADOWED WHITE RIGHTWARDS ARROW
‭ ➱  27B1       NOTCHED UPPER RIGHT-SHADOWED WHITE RIGHTWARDS ARROW

@tchrist OED: Brit. /ˈnasə/ , U.S. /ˈnæsə/

Should "sector" not be "radius"?

@MattЭллен Yeah, weirdoz.

"Hence" is even more pretentious no?

"Obviously"

Hence is short enough

2:31 PM

"Trivially"

would Hence fit in this context ?

@tchrist but I don't get the difference (according to wikiepdia) between [æ] and [a]. cat and hat sound the same to me.

@MattЭллен Well, they shouldn't.

one sounds "drier" maybe

macbook# uninames RIGHT ARROW -left -COMBIN -up -down

‭ ˃  02C3       MODIFIER LETTER RIGHT ARROWHEAD
        * backed articulation
‭ ˲  02F2       MODIFIER LETTER LOW RIGHT ARROWHEAD
‭ →  2192       RIGHTWARDS ARROW
        = z notation total function
‭ ↛  219B       RIGHTWARDS ARROW WITH STROKE
        * negation of 2192
        : 2192 0338
‭ ↝  219D       RIGHTWARDS WAVE ARROW
‭ ↠  21A0       RIGHTWARDS TWO HEADED ARROW
        = z notation total surjection
        = fast cursor right
‭ ↣  21A3       RIGHTWARDS ARROW WITH TAIL

2:33 PM

@MattЭллен Isn't one of them the long vowel form? As in war vs. ware?

@KitFox in terms of the vowels!

Hey Kotfix

Hi.

@MattЭллен yeah me too

@kwak Notice the arguments to that CLI program I just posted; this is a good demo of something that is easy in Perl compared with other languages.

@MattЭллен The vowel in both cat and hat is surely [æ] in both RP && GA.

2:34 PM

@terdon war and ware don't use the vowel sounds I represent above.

@MattЭллен Ah, OK. I really don't know IPA.

Nice and easy IPA:

@MattЭллен Quoth Wikipedia.

antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm

@terdon therefore is sense 2 of thus in the OED.

2:36 PM

@tchrist just checked the OED. you are correct! phew. I wonder what wikipedia means then

IPA is overrated.

> The links labeled Amer and Brit play sound recordings (Flash is required) where the words are pronounced in American and British English. The British version is given only where it is very different from the American version.

That makes no sense.

They say the same IPA sign is pronounced differently depending on where in the world you are.

I've never listened to any of it.

I don't have sound.

You don't need to listen, just read.

IPA is the hieratic language of linguists, poseurs, and people who wish to seem erudite. Not sure those aren't all the same person.

@RegDwigнt The signs are pronounced differently depending on which region you're in in the same country. A few dozen symbols can't represent all the phonemic nuances of all speech.

2:39 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I know, which is why I added the "(usually)". I still feel it is not a full synonym though. Granted, I can't seem to formulate exactly why.

@RegDwigнt Well well well. There are a broad range of phonetic realizations for a single underlying phoneme. People are perhaps a bit careless about /foo/ versus [foo].

@terdon Possibly you just suffer from word aversion to it

@Robusto yes, but you just can't say that the "a" in "cat" is an æ, then go on to post a recording of it being pronounced "kʌt". When you say "kʌt", that would be actually transcribed as "kʌt", not as "kæt" with a footnote "Austr.".

They throw away the whole point of IPA, that the normal alphabet we use is insufficient for representing sounds.

@RegDwigнt Are they saying that the IPA is pronounced differently, or that the same IPA maps to different words in different regions?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 No, I just don't like using it as a direct synonym of therefore. I will use it for for this reason not in this way or as a consequence.

2:42 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 well why don't you just look at their table.

thusfore

AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa

:D

I'm sure IPA can be a useful tool in the right context, but explaining the pronunciation of words as in a dictionary definition just ain't it. Too many regional variations. That's why a respelling is better. Southerners here in the US rhyme pen with pin, more or less, for example. IPA would force them to say it a different way than is normal for them.

@RegDwigнt oh, ha, I read the table and didn't notice that. Yeah, odd.

2:43 PM

@Robusto I'm not following. You can write "pin" in IPA. And that's precisely what you'd do, if that's how they pronounce it.

@tchrist uninames is from or related to perl?

At the risk of hairsplitting casuistry, it may perhaps be that they aren’t distinguishing cat’s /ˈkæt/ from [ˈkʰæt̚].

@RegDwigнt So you should put in a dictionary that pen is pronounced whatever pin is in IPA?

@kwak It’s implemented in Perl, which makes it particularly easy to write such things.

@tchrist so perl is regex friendly I guess?

2:44 PM

@Robusto er, WUT?

You were the one to bring up pin.

@Robusto I think what Reg is saying is that IPA is meant to objectively describe sounds. So IPA is IPA everywhere.

@RegDwigнt Write pen in IPA for me, please.

@kwak Congratulations! You’ve just won the Understatement of the Century award!

@Robusto there is no such thing as "pen" in IPA.

@tchrist :))

2:45 PM

So if a dictionary writes a certain IPA for pen then that is the standard pronunciation they are describing for that word.

@Robusto Do you want a loose phonemic transcription or a narrow phonetic one?

As you said, different people pronounce it differently, and thus the IPA will be different.

C is pointer friendly

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But that's the problem. What a southerner says as pen sounds like pin. So there are as many IPA variations as there are pronunciations. Which does no one any good in a dictionary definition.

@tchrist Dunno. Surprise me.

@kwak C is not friendly. Period.

2:46 PM

@Robusto but how is that an IPA problem? It has nothing to do with IPA and everything to do with not enough space in a dictionary entry.

@Robusto Well, the dictionary can either prescribe a standard, which conflicts with certain accents/dialects, or it can try to list as many as it can, and indicate which ones are used where.

Which today is not a problem anyway as bytes are a dime a trillion.

@RegDwigнt No, it has everything to do with my contention that IPA is not a useful tool for dictionary pronunciations meant for ordinary people.

@RegDwigнt I think people are using IPA for phonemes a lot, which is a bit misleading. Lawler uses his own invention, tossing out IPA “j” for his “y” for example, and using only schwa whether stressed or not.

So it's weird that wikipedia shows an IPA symbol and then goes to show how every accent of English actually uses a different IPA symbol in its place.

2:47 PM

@Robusto because? Sorry, I am really not following. Any tool would not be useful when you only have room for one pronunciation.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Wikipedia encourages broad phonemic transcriptions using the “diaphonemes” given by that table.

In fact most dictionaries in your country do not use IPA. Are you saying they don't have the same issue? Are you saying they all include pin for pen?

@RegDwigнt Typically there are variant pronunciations, but none ever seem to address regional differences.

@tchrist I'm not sure what that means. They show a reference pronunciation, and then let you puzzle out the rest?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Actually, yes.

Well, often enough.

That’s the general rule.

2:49 PM

@Robusto precisely. So what does any of that have to do with IPA? You can fail to address regional differences in any system at all.

@RegDwigнt No. I'm saying that an e with a breve over it will be seen by southerners as being pronounced like the i in pin. But the IPA symbol will not.

@Robusto Um.

Hey Georges Pompadour

@RegDwigнt You could have a system that shows how words are pronounced relative to other words, and then once you learn a few accented pronunciations you can fill in the rest with rhymes. But that assumes that the same words rhyme in all accents, which we know is not the case.

@Robusto I would not know how to pronounce an e with a breve at all. And indeed since every American dictionary pretty much invents its own system from scratch, nobody would be able to pronounce it without looking it up in the index.

2:51 PM

c.f. every discussion I've had with tchrist where we compare rhyming pairs

Madame de Pompadour

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour (29 December 1721 – 15 April 1764, French pronunciation: [pɔ̃.pa.duːʁ]) was a member of the French court and was the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death. She was trained from childhood to be a mistress, and learned her trade well. She took charge of the king’s schedule and was an indispensable aide and advisor, despite her frail health and many political enemies. She secured titles of nobility for herself and her relatives, and built a network of clients and supporters. She paid caref...

wanna see a very poorly written and underhanded political attack on abortion?

Help talk:Pronunciation respelling key/Archive 1

This is such a complicated, counterintuitive system. Why not just use the IPA, which is sensible and easy to learn? --Angr/tɔk tə mi 1 July 2005 09:49 (UTC) Two good reasons: It's easier than the IPA for most native speakers, at least in the US, where people have no idea what the IPA is. It's actually more intuitive, because naive native speakers have a hard time accepting that ch = [tʃ], or that oe = [ʌʊ], since they hear them as single sounds. The IPA is fundamentally more difficult in much the same way that an alphabet is counterintuitive compared to a syllabary: People exposed to the idea of...

@RegDwigнt Thanks for the Russian translation of Um.

cause if so, you should click.

2:52 PM

I so did read dick for click there.

Two good reasons: Circular reasoning.

you can dick if you want tchrist.

Hey, enjoy your IPA in language. I prefer mine from a tap.

"People should not learn things they don't know yet".

@RegDwigнt now now. That's not what it's saying and you know it.

"Things people can understand more intuitively might be more practical than things you need to become an expert to use"

2:54 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 actually no, I do not know it. I've seen way too many school reforms and spelling reforms happen precisely because of this shit. Precisely because people do mean it like that.

Jul 28 at 18:02, by tchrist

Aug 2 '13 at 11:27, by tchrist

> “Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves.”

"Oh my kid sucks at spelling, well then let the correct spelling be whatever my kid uses!"

"Oh my kid sucks at maths, well let's just raise the grades across the board!"

sounds like American education

@RegDwigнt There are approx 400M Americans (and Canadians) who don't know IPA but can understand spelling pronunciations well enough.

reaches for the b-slapper

2:55 PM

@RegDwigнt But they should definitely use imperfect analogies that mischaracterize someone else's argument, yeah?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 there are approx. 400M figures I can pull out of my ceiling this very second.

if you throw in some fake disorders and amphetamines to treat them, you've got it right on the dot.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Not really. Not in any rational nor communicable fashion.

@GeorgePompidou I'm very pleased with the education my son is receiving.

Amphetamine treats make the best Halloweens!

2:56 PM

Well, both of them, but the youngest is in private school.

@tchrist No, really. Is IPA taught in any class other than college-level linguistics classes? Meanwhile people know how to rhyme words. Yes, the system is imperfect and unsuitable for linguistics.

@Robusto the solution to not knowing something is learning it. If I can't play the flute, I can't just say "yeah but I can play the piano". I still can't play the flute.

they teach classes about india pale ales?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Any junior high school student who takes a ferrin language gits sungk into it.

4 mins ago, by Robusto

Hey, enjoy your IPA in language. I prefer mine from a tap.

2:57 PM

Because they acquire a bilingual dictionary.

oh, good, yes.

I was late to that.

And that is the end of foolishness.

@KitFox but can he compete on an international job market with an average Korean kid?

@GeorgePompidou Not yet. Maybe when he's ten.

@RegDwigнt You keep coming up with these terrible analogies. Do you have a book of them?

2:58 PM

@RegDwigнt But how well do you not play that flute?

oh okay. retreats quietly and does some work

kids are only useful for their smaller limbs, so if he's smaller than a korean kid, he'll do fine.

@tchrist Well, maybe you guys have better dictionaries than we do. I've never seen one that used IPA. I still wager that most Americans and Canadians have no idea what IPA is or how to use it.

Thus far, public school has failed to be the horror show that I was expecting.

yay!

2:59 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I’ve never seen a bilingual dictionary that doesn’t use IPA.

linguism.co.uk/language/ipa-versus-respelling