English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2018-07-30

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5:39 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, pattern-matching website in body, potentially bad ns for domain in body: health full care by addizension on english.SE

5:53 AM

0

Q: A gender-neutral term for son or daughter?

I am looking for a term that could be used to describe one's offspring* in a gender neutral manner. Normally, female offspring are called daughters and male offspring are called sons. The three terms are can think of to describe an offspring with no gender are: Child - implies an age under that...

single-word-requests gender-neutral

1 hour later…

6:57 AM

1

Q: How to describe efficient usage of coins/notes?

Let’s say that you owe someone $15. Using Australian currency, the most efficient way of expressing this amount of money is with a $10 note and a $5 note. If you gave that person a $10 note and 10 50c coins, how would you apologise? Would you say: Sorry I can’t express this amount of money wi...

single-word-requests word-choice word-usage expressions

7:08 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, toxic answer detected: Origin of the term "grounded" by rtrertgtrewerewef on english.SE

2 hours later…

9:04 AM

0

Q: Single word for a move in an argument

I'm writing a piece about how each move in a particular debate functions rhetorically, and I'd like to introduce my recap at the end of the piece as follows: "Because the debate is complex, it behooves us to recap the function of each ??." Is there a better word than "move"? Thank you!

single-word-requests

2 hours later…

10:56 AM

0

Q: Word for "a change not noticable, transparent to users"

I'm making a change in the software which should be unnoticeable to users. What would be a single word that describes it best?

single-word-requests phrase-requests expression-requests

5 hours later…

3:57 PM

hello, i asked this question and it seems to have been not very clear. I just edited it to try to make it more clear - would anyone mind taking a look and letting me know if it's clear/what needs to be improved?

0

Q: One question, help

Sorry my English, I'm French I'm working on a little project about a man who died in 1987. I know he wanted to marry a woman, but I don't know the period. I'm writing a letter to a relative of this woman who can help me. How to ask him a question? Which option is correct? 1) When had he propose...

single-word-requests meaning grammar grammaticality verbs

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@heather It's clear to me, but Lawler already answered your question in his comment.

It's a common misconception that letters are vowels or consonants. They are not.

They are used to represent vowels or consonants.

They are not used consistently nor comprehensively. Some consonants require multiple letters. Some letters encode multiple consonants. It's a mess.

Likewise for vowels.

i'm asking if there is an etymological explanation for the different relations between the symbol and the sound it makes at the beginning of a word (i.e., in some cases it is common (as in my example of "b") for it to make what is it's "common" sound, whereas in others (as in my example of "t") for it to make multiple different sounds.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

The thing is "t" and "th" are different consonants whose spelling happens to use "t" in both

right, but there aren't really combinations of "b" and some other letter which makes a different sound other than /b/-whatever.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:05 PM

There used to be a different letter, thorn, for the "th" sound but its use fell away when modern printing presses were developed in Europe, and they didn't have a thorn letter, so they used different letter combinations to represent sounds

(at the beginning of a word, anyway, that I'm aware of; i know there's things like "dumb" or what-have-you at the end of a word)

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 and there was also eth and such. i'm asking what letters that is/isn't true for, i suppose. that's kinda the type of explanation i'm looking for.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Hm

i'm sorry, looking back on it, my original revision was horrifically unclear.

and possibly should've been posted on linguistics, not here, apparently?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

But your question is flawed in assuming a correspondence between letters and phonetics. It's a loose correspondence. Some letters are used for only one kind of sound, some for more than one.... Probably most are used for more than one.

"flawed in assuming a correspondence between letters and phonetics" - the existence of a correspondence is literally the whole point for letters - a written way to convey the phonics.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:09 PM

well

yeah

but it's not a rigourous system

Well, no.

Anonymous

@heather Writing systems tend to be rather out-of-date representations of sound. English is particularly out-of-date, and some spellings were never accurate.

and as you said in your example with thorn and t, the reason that letter anyway is used for multiple sounds is because in the past there were multiple letters for different sounds but they merged.

The whole point for letters is to convey a whole number of things. Of which pronunciation is just one.

Anonymous

Usually as time goes on, the two get farther and farther out-of-sync and the correspondences grow weaker.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:11 PM

I mean, there IS a correspondence. But in English it's very weak.

@snailboat well, yeah, those darned Normans screwed everything up. but it's interesting to know why for some letters the correspondence stayed "strong" but for others it isn't anymore.

Anonymous

Sometimes people get together and decide to reform an orthography, which may or may not work, and if it does then they're close together for a time.

Orthography reforms are always carried out by the people least qualified.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@heather You could rephrase your question like that.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 probably a good idea, but is it even a valid question? for all i know it could be too broad and a rather stupid thing to ask.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

4:12 PM

It might be too broad.

(and, for that matter, is it different enough from my current question that i should just ask a new one?)

Anonymous

@heather So your question is something like this? "Why does word-initial ‹b› in spelling seem to rigorously correspond to /b/ in pronunciation, while other correspondences seem to be weaker, sometimes much weaker?"

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

But it boils down to the alphabets being non-comprehensive in terms of enumerating the possible sounds, the spelling being standardized in a random process, spelling reform happening in some cases for weird reasons (like technological reasons: e.g. the lack of thorn on presses), pronunciation shift over time, etc.

Anonymous

By the way, according the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, ‹b› is silent in two groups of words: before ‹t› in words like debt, doubt, subtle, and after ‹m› at the end of a word or stem as in climb, lamb, thumb, bomber. Otherwise it's regularly pronounced /b/.

@snailboat i think so

but then that might be unanswerable.

4:19 PM

@snailboat yeah, that. And both "bt" and "mb" in English are codas, not onsets.

Anonymous

@heather I think that's an interesting question, although I think it would boil down to something like "Language has all sorts of (mostly regular) sound changes which can lead to a weakening of spelling-to-sound correspondences, but there weren't any regular sound changes that involved word-initial /b/ between Early Middle English and Present Day English."

Unlike in some African languages or Thai, say.

@RegDwigнt thanks for the edit =)

np

@snailboat it's interesting to know things like "there weren't any thorns on printing presses, so "t" got double-duty"; so that's the kind of answer i'm looking for.

Anonymous

4:20 PM

It's a big series of historical accidents.

yeah, which is why it's probably too broad and possibly unanswerable in some cases =)

do you guys allow resource requests on here?

i know one of the answers i have recommended a book on the subject, which is why i ask.

On meta we do. Main site, I've no idea myself.

btw @RegDwigнt, there're a bunch of obsolete comments on the question, should i flag or would you mind cleaning some of them up?

Anonymous

I never quite understood why some sites keep their resource requests on main, others on meta, and others still nowhere.

Anonymous

But all of the SE sites I use actively seem to close resource requests on main.

4:23 PM

@snailboat on the sites i'm mostly used to, i'm used to them being on main but with strict guidelines (physics, quantum computing, math)

@heather depends on if you want that badge for flagging or not :-D

but these seem to be the exception to most of the network

@RegDwigнt lol, i don't really mind either way, whatever's easier for you =)

Well I rolled the dice and cleaned up some but now I'm bored and must practice the violin. You want more gone, merry flagging.

Lators

Anonymous

@RegDwigнt Enjoy!

@RegDwigнt thanks =)

4:27 PM

Mornin campers.

hello

@snailboat so I suppose, is the final consensus to - ask it as a resource question on meta, ask it as a new question on main, or edit my current question, or just not ask a question altogether?

0

Q: Term for police seal on door

The police and other authorities sometimes seal the door to a crime scene or similar with an adhesive seal. Here is an example from Germany, where it is called a "Verschlusssiegel", literally a 'closing seal': What is this called in English? Either officially (the technical term) or colloquial...

single-word-requests

Anonymous

@heather So if I understand correctly, you're not just looking for resources on spelling-to-sound correspondences (also called grapheme–phoneme correspondences), you're looking for a more historical perspective on how we ended up with the orthography we have today and why it differs from pronunciation?

yeah.

Anonymous

A few messages back, RegDwigнt said resource questions are allowed on EL&U meta, so I guess meta would be the place.

4:37 PM

cool, thanks.

Anonymous

There's a meta tag for it, resources.

4:59 PM

@snailboat A resource request is subjective. Subjective questions are welcome, but they have a fairly high bar. They should be expert-level, unique, particularly interesting and thought-provoking, show substantial effort and research, and demand responses that meet these same standards.

See: “Good Subjective, Bad Subjective – SE Blog”; “Real Questions Have Answers – SE Blog”.

@snailboat At meta, we want questions about running the site. That might include questions about resources which are helpful for answering questions at main.

Anonymous

Thanks for elaborating, @MetaEd. That seems like a sensible policy.

0

Q: Are there any mistakes?

"I still don't understand if they were more than best friends? Did they have an affair?"

single-word-requests meaning grammar word-usage grammaticality

5:29 PM

i asked a meta question on the subject. thanks everyone for your help! =)

5:51 PM

0

Q: Verb meaning "to present the truth"

I need a verb meaning "to present the absolute truth". E.g. Judge says to witness "go ahead word here". I know using multiple words is easy but I need it to be one word.

single-word-requests verbs

1 hour later…

6:55 PM

0

Q: Victorian English slang

Is it true that Victorians would understand earnest in a slang sense to mean gay? For example, in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is there an assumed pun on "earnest"?

single-word-requests

1 hour later…

8:06 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer: Distinguishing "long-term" African-Americans from more-recent African immigrants by Helena on english.SE

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Jul '1830

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