English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Robusto

12:02 AM

What’s happening in Iran? Here’s what people there are saying.

When they're not talking about pharmacology &c.

;-)

Robusto

12:23 AM

Last Week in the Republican Party - September 20, 2022

►

M.A.R.

@Robusto uh, I wish the guy had more to say than "here are some tweets"

Robusto

@M.A.R. Well, yeah.

But you'd think the government would be blocking Twitter at this point.

M.A.R.

@Robusto Besides, wildly different issues. I personally think sanctions are inhumane, and the line that "we will put the soles of our boots on their necks until they change their regime" is also inhumane. In theory, they're not supposed to impact things like life-saving drugs, but I've seen them do

Robusto

@M.A.R. Who said that?

M.A.R.

Regarding the protests, the guy comes off as a bit too hopeful for honesty's sake. The protests are disorganized, they don't have a clear goal in mind, besides dismantling the regime or something like that, and they're not afraid of riling up different groups of people.

No room for compromise, no clear demands, just get on the streets and yell things.

Robusto

12:30 AM

@M.A.R. Don't forget that the general groundswell of discontent was the starting point for getting rid of the Shah.

M.A.R.

And this regime is closer to Shah's regime in the 1960s, for example, than 1979. Sure enough, he crushed protests then too

@Robusto sure, I'm just saying this one is definitely not it, while the guy is saying "WHAT IF!"

@Robusto nobody in particular in recent memory, but isn't that the justification for sanctions that affect normal citizens?

Nick

@M.A.R. Is "Ninjas cut out a slice of my heart and liver to feed my man eating cat." a 911 call that's worth the effort.

Robusto

@M.A.R. I don't know. Don't all sanctions affect normal citizens? If so, what you're saying is that sanctions should never be an option.

M.A.R.

People get mad at Russia. A politician is looking for some easy PR points. One thing leads to another

Robusto

@M.A.R. Yeah, this is why it's labeled "Opinion." But it is rather stirring, even salutary, seeing people express their discontent with the government.

M.A.R.

12:35 AM

@Robusto well, there are more reasonable ones, which are admittedly less effective as well. But if you sanction an entire branch of army of a country, which probably gives aid to some unfortunate regions in said country, you're hurting those people and giving Russians or the Chinese a client.

Robusto

Yeah, I don't know. Solving these problems is way above my pay grade. Maybe above anybody's.

M.A.R.

There was this recent meta.SE post of angry people demanding to block Russian traffic. People were quick to point out that such measures antagonize and alienate people, but never harm the organizations we want to harm. You'd think if knowledge on SO is used to build a rocket, the builder knows how to use a VPN. I'm saying I haven't seen people be so diligent when it comes to a middle Eastern country.

@Nick nah, can't catch them ninjas anyway

Robusto

@M.A.R. Well, absent other means, what would you suggest?

What sanctions are now is like chemotherapy. You sicken the host to attack the cancer. We don't yet have the magic bullet we need.

Nick

@M.A.R. thanks, i'll just be here enjoying your conversational ability for free learning purposes.

8 hours ago, by M.A.R.

So we're gonna first learn how to make every sort of tissue in the lab, then organs, then maybe an individual

add me to the patient group, doctor.

@Robusto Key: cancer is "can sir" for "yes, we can, sir" anyway.

Cancer causes AIDs

AIDs is an HIV mind thing.

Cure English language and everything will be fine.

Robusto

@Nick Sorry, I don't catch your drift.

Nick

12:50 AM

@Robusto Can you visualize the ghost of akira using his motorcyle on a curvy road?

Robusto

Did you come in here to troll?

Nick

Or the grand torino in akihara reaching the electronics store at akihabara ... NOT TROLL

@Robusto Troll is toilet roll. What I'm saying makes sense to my hypnotherapist side of the brain.

Robusto

I dunno, feels like trolling.

Nick

Ok, thn, I'll just send an image (which is worth a thousand words) and leave Stack for the day.

bye

Mitch

1:12 AM

I've heard that sanctions don't work

Or at least they don't do what they're intended to do

But I suppose

Sometimes you can't just not sanction

Like say currently Russia

Gezellig

He says, apropos if nothing

Robusto

Apropos of sanctions.

I think.

Can we get enough push in here to scroll that stupid animaged GIF out of sight?

BTW, I pronounce it like GIFt only without the /t/.

I don't care how the idiot who created the format pronounces it. He can get it wrong, you know.

Very wrong.

@Mitch Are you gonna help out here or what?

So here is a recent cover of The New Yorker. It feels familiar for other reasons.

I seem to recall a different artist doing a self portrait with his hand out toward the viewer like this.

But I can't place it.

Anybody else?

CowperKettle

5:33 AM

This genre is called Trompe-l'oil

Trompe-l'œil

Trompe-l'œil ( tromp LOY, French: [tʁɔ̃p lœj]; French for 'deceive the eye') is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. Trompe l'oeil, which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into perceiving painted objects or spaces as real. Forced perspective is a related illusion in architecture. == History in painting == The phrase, which can also be spelled without the hyphen and ligature in English as trompe l'oeil, originates with the artist Louis-Léopold Boilly, who used it as the title of a...

> "Putin was pushed by the Russian people, by his party, by his ministers to come up with this special operation," Berlusconi told Italian public television RAI late on Thursday, using the official Russian wording for the war.

reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/xbh97v/…

reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/ett1fw/…

landgeist.com/2021/04/06/prevalence-of-obesity-in-europe

Xanne

7:46 AM

#Worldle #246 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

Wordle 462 4/6

🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
⬜🟩⬜⬜🟨
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

CowperKettle

10:41 AM

57-yo man in the Urals receives a call-up notice

Robusto

1:23 PM

#Worldle #246 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

Oh puh-leeze ...

🌎 Sept 24, 2022 🌍
🔥 24 | Avg. Guesses: 6.37
⬜⬜⬜🟧🟥🟩 = 6

#globle

Wordle 462 5/6

🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜
⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
🟨🟨🟨🟩⬜
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

@CowperKettle It's OK, he's a body that can be sacrificed to salve Putin's ego.

jlliagre

Wordle 462 4/6

⬜🟨🟩⬜🟨
🟨🟩🟩⬜🟩
⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

#Worldle #246 1/6 (100%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🎉
https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

🌎 Sept 24, 2022 🌍
🔥 4 | Avg. Guesses: 7.38
⬜🟥🟥🟥🟩 = 5

#globle

Robusto

1:52 PM

Iran Protests Surge to Dozens of Cities

> In many cities, including Tehran, the capital, security forces opened fire on crowds. On Boulevard Ferdous and at the Shahrak Ekbatan apartment complex in Tehran, the forces fired at windows; in the city of Rasht, they threw tear gas into apartments, according to witnesses and videos on social media.

> ...
In Iran’s northwest, the small city of Oshnavieh reportedly fell to protesters when local security forces retreated after days of intense fighting, the editor of a Kurdish news site said.
“I can confirm the city is in the control of the people,” the editor, Ammar Golie, an Iranian Kurd based in Germany who edits the news site NNS Roj, said in a telephone interview. He added, “The security forces that remain have retreated into an old fort located in the center of the city.”

tchrist

Does Iran still have Internet?

Robusto

The article says it is largely blocked.

Women everywhere are standing up and saying, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore."

Here in this country too.

Good on ya, sisters!

Network - Mad as Hell Scene

►

tchrist

Scarf burning seems deadlier than bra burning.

Robusto

But not as deadly as voting. Cf. Kansas.

M.A.R.

3:28 PM

2 days ago, by M.A.R.

Yay, still kicking

@Robusto well, I think more like poison. They wreck everything, except maybe the most limited of sanctions, and hurting people they're supposed to is a side effect.

Of course, this is not to say the showrunners here, the less nasty ones, are not stubborn, blind, irrational fools that prefer isolationism anyway.

@Nick you're weird.

There. I fed the troll. But it's not midnight

Robusto

@M.A.R. For shame.

@M.A.R. Except chemotherapy is poison. That's the point.

M.A.R.

@CowperKettle IIRC we're standing at something like 25%

Definitely more now

@Robusto well, you have selective poison, antibiotics are selective poisons. And you have DDT.

Robusto

Yes. And by the same token, sanctions are more like chemotherapy than they are like potassium cyanide.

M.A.R.

I hope so

I've definitely not analyzed them one by one to see what they do that they're supposed to and what that they're not.

Robusto

Hey, I don't like sanctions either. I'm sure they're more like bludgeoning a tumor with a mallet than excising it with a scalpel. And I hate that they're hurting the good people of Iran and Russia. I don't have an answer for that.

M.A.R.

3:36 PM

Of course, a volatile market benefits opportunists and hoarders too. So new sanctions are announced, the importer hoards the drug to sell it at a higher price, and its lack in the market is blamed on sanctions. I'm sure this happens often enough

The solution is, be like Walter White. Make your own meth

Eh, close enough

Cerberus

Any reason to think current protests in Iran are bigger than the green protests of a decade ago, or the protests against water shortages and the decency police of recent years?

M.A.R.

I have no idea about the scale of the protests, but I'm almost certain they will be suppressed, the protesters will be labeled "foreign agents" and "looters", and everything will be back to 'normal' until something like this happens again

Cerberus

Yeah.

M.A.R.

There's not much direction to the protests that I can tell. No end goal, just "we're gonna get out and let them know we're angry". And they're not wary of pissing off normal people and turning them against the protests, any more than the media will do with their skewed coverage.

Robusto

Iranian Troops Fire on Crowds

That's from 1978. Only difference is they were the Shah's troops, and he and they were gone the following year.

Cerberus

3:43 PM

@M.A.R. But I think it will happen eventually.

The old men cannot enforce their orthodoxy forever, with a youngish population eventually taking over.

M.A.R.

Iran has long ceased to be superreligious like in the 80s, but you have a good quarter of the population at least, that'll take great offense to burning mosques and Qurans. Even fabricating such a story drives a lot of people, older people that run things, mad.

@Robusto but he had been doing it for two decades by then. So it's not much of a prediction to say things will change any time between the next year and the next half-century

Robusto

@M.A.R. I'll take the under on a half century, definitely.

Pahlavi had Savak, secret police who hunted down dissidents. I had a friend in the US who had fled from them.

Cerberus

@M.A.R. Yes, but those older people will die off in a few decades, won't they?

M.A.R.

@Robusto shrug I just hope the next regime would be less like Saudi Arabia and more like, I dunno, do we really have an example of that this side of the world?

Robusto

I don't know. Maybe you can provide one.

Cerberus

3:48 PM

Even Turkey is quite a lot better.

Robusto

I'm really disappointed in Tunisia opting to return to dictatorship. That is a poor example for the rest of the Muslim world.

Cerberus

"Opting".

M.A.R.

@Cerberus well, I think that religious blood runs through the veins of people that are around 40 right now as well, so that's around three decades for them to die off

Robusto

@Cerberus Well, they voted for it.

Cerberus

It is a poor example indeed.

@Robusto How do you mean?

They elected a president, but did they elect for him to usurp dictatorial power?

Robusto

3:50 PM

Let me look for the appropriate article.

Cerberus

@M.A.R. Hmm I thought 40 was around the borderline.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus there was a recent referendum about this usurping

@Cerberus maybe 30. I dunno, I'm making stuff up as I go

Cerberus

I see.

@M.A.R. No, I read 40.

Robusto

> On 25 May 2022, President Kais Saied issued a decree for change of constitution by 25 July.[120] The referendum was held that day. The overwhelming majority of the voters accepted the new constitution, strenghtening significantly the presidential power.[121]

Cerberus

People under 40 generally being much less religious than those above, in Iran.

Robusto

3:51 PM

Wikipedia

Cerberus

Hmm I will have to read about this later.

Robusto

Tunisia referendum: Voters give president near unchecked power

M.A.R.

@Cerberus well, I think some of those less religious people will still fall under the 'protect regime at all costs' camp, but who knows what will happen in times of chaos

Cerberus

Sure.

Robusto

> Fewer than a third of Tunisians voted in the referendum, with 94.6% of those balloted supporting plans to hand President Kais Saied broad new powers.

But opposition groups, who boycotted the vote, said the results were "not credible" and "inflated".

Mr Saied has claimed the changes will break Tunisia's political paralysis.

The 64-year-old has already been ruling by decree since this time last year, when he dramatically moved to suspend parliament and dismiss the government.

Cerberus

3:53 PM

But I think time is on the side of more freedom in Iran.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus what I'm worried about is thugs don't announce their plans before getting to power. Nobody says beforehand that they'll be a dictator.

Faheem Mitha

@M.A.R. It would be so much nicer if they did.

Though if you are paying attention, it's usually pretty obvious.

Case in point - the old Nazi who is currently masquerading as India's Prime Minister.

M.A.R.

Anyway, all these protests in the past decade, and little was achieved. I'm afraid the current protest will go down the same route. There will be no repercussions for any agents of the morality police.

Faheem Mitha

Counterpunch had plenty to say about him in 2013-2014. None of it good. Unfortunately not many Indians read Counterpunch, probably.

Robusto

@M.A.R. True. The problem with revolutions is they leave a power vacuum, which cannot be filled by a mob.

M.A.R.

3:57 PM

If the protesters were smarter, and emphasized the fact that people under custody shouldn't be beaten to death

Faheem Mitha

And it's been many many years since anyone with half a brain had anything good to say about the Tories. But they keep getting elected.

M.A.R.

That would have been much less debatable. Now the official channels cherish the opportunity to mischaracterize the fight as that of celibate holy monks vs. rapists who want to see naked women on the streets.

Cerberus

@M.A.R. I mainly meant more freedom from orthodox religion.

M.A.R.

@Cerberus can't wait for that day

Or year

Age?

Robusto

Epoch?

Cerberus

4:09 PM

Once the current under-40s are in power, perhaps that will change.

Robusto

Except the under-40s too soon become the over-40s .. and -60s.

I'm appalled at how many of my generation are the most rabid right-wing fearmongers.

If that is the way of the world, I'm glad to retain my immaturity.

Cerberus

It is true that there is a direct age effect.

But there is also a generational effect.

And I suspect that will be quite important in Iran.

M.A.R.

VPNs sind kaputt

Maybe this chat is working only for some weird reason

Robusto

You have entered the Twilight Zone.

CowperKettle

6:24 PM

Word of the day: couching

> early, largely obsolete, method of treating a cataract by using a sharp object to displace the opaque lens in the eye

I don't know

Maybe from the verb meaning "to lay something somewhere?"

By displacing the lens, we are laying it on the bottom of the eye chamber

user 726941

nvm, a quick google answered it

needle work

> In embroidery, couching and laid work are techniques in which yarn or other materials are laid across the surface of the ground fabric and fastened in place ...

a technical use of the word "couch," I guess

tchrist

7:31 PM

Why questions whose answers are all equally valid are not ours to answer.

Mitch

@Robusto re GIF I'm with you. What I think the reason some people say it like gift is that they (meaning you and I) have the Kids peanut butter brand name to -aviid-. I feel like it is not in the public consciousness anymore and so younger people prefer 'dzuf' which is what orthography would predict.

@user726941 I would not couch it in those terms.

Robusto

@Mitch Orthography would not necessarily predict that. Cf. gill, gilt, git, gimp, etc., incl. gift.

Mitch

@Robusto exactly. The olds may die off but there are plenty of young people who want to take their ideological place

Robusto

PLUS ... the initial "g" stands for graphics. Hard "g" ... I must rest my case.

Mitch

@Robusto I think there are more 'gi' that are affricates. Which is to say I feel like your list is a small set of counterexamples.ñ and that there are many more that are affricates

Robusto

7:38 PM

@Mitch Only @tchrist would be able to tell for sure.

Mitch

@Robusto oh if you want to prove that other people are both wrong and dumb, yes I agree with you

Robusto

Thank you. That's all I ever ask.

Mitch

@Robusto I'm sure we could do a search on the month pronunciation dictionary.

But that would require work

Robusto

Feels like too much work. I just did an hour's coding, which means 30 minutes to understand all the issues, 25 minutes to look at current code, and 5 minutes to do actual coding.

Mitch

Even the simplest things... sigh

Robusto

7:42 PM

Prep is 92.5% of the job. Or something like that.

Mitch

No matter what AI fever dream eventually happens, it'll still be a struggle to change just that color a tiny bit on that one button

Also, the threshold of set free vs execute from 50/50 to 51/49

Robusto

BTW, I left out the "submit to QA for testing" part, so I'm going in bareback. But at least now I have the whole thing in my mind so if I screwed something else up I should be able to fix it pretty quick.

user 726941

@Mitch that makes sense, couching it in those terms.

Robusto

8:00 PM

If you pierce your finger with a needle doing that, though, you would be ouching it in those terms.

Mitch

And if you lose your lunch on the site if blood you might be uching yourself

And if you're reading the first of the Chinese classics it would by the I Ching

And if you were a tiger hidden in the grass waiting to strike, you might be crouching

@Robusto I just heard the other day that a number of apps don't have a QA or staging environment. They just deploy directly to prod

I think terrier was one of them

Both the app skipping stage and the one I heard it from

Robusto

@Mitch None of the places I worked at did that.

Mitch

@Robusto none had 'straight to prod' or none had a stage environment?

Robusto

@Mitch None went "straight to production."

user 726941

8:19 PM

Wow, there are some deep answers here.

16

Q: Why can't numbers be 'used up'?

I was speaking with a young student who has been learning about addition and subtraction (essentially functions, but he doesn't know that yet) with the idea of a 'number machine' and he could not understand how when you put '2' into the machine it's not gone or 'used up', you can get it back and ...

tchrist

@Robusto It's hard to say for sure, but likely fewer affricates. Is "more" based on count or commonality? One doesn't know how to count inflections and compound words, and many spelling-pronunciations lead to confusion by folks who've only read something like gibbous.

Robusto

@tchrist Count or commonality? Yeah, good question.

tchrist

Are gillions and jillions the same word, or two? Are the words that are gibber with a stop different words from the words that are gibber with an affricate? They mean different things, and have different origins. But they share a spelling.

There are so many different "words" spelled gib, with a widely varied distribution of ones with the stop vs with the affricate, that it is probably impossible to say anything there.

Robusto

Pronunciation can diverge over time, so origins aren't necessarily operative.

Still, the only word I can think of that starts with "gif" is "gift"—which the hard /g/ sound.

tchrist

The babbling verb gibbers ends up being pronounced both ways because people are uncertain. Same with gibbous and many more.

But the noun gibbers is only with a stop.

@Robusto giff-gaff has a stop because it's about give and take.

Robusto

8:33 PM

Hmm, I don't recall encountering that one.

tchrist

That's because it's Scottish. :)

As are giffs in general.

> Scottish.
In phrase the giffs and the gaffs: the givings and the takings, the gains and the losses. Cf. giff-gaff n.

Robusto

Heh. So is ghillie (or gillie) Scottish.

user 726941

When did the "r" controlled vowel come into fashion?

tchrist

In fact, gif is a Scottish conjunction meaning "given how/that".

user 726941

As a "must be taught" idea.

tchrist

8:35 PM

> Scottish and northern dialect.
1. Introducing a condition: = if conj. Also gif that. Now rare.

@user726941 What do you mean? What's a fashionable r-controlled vowel? The one in Washington?

I don't think there are any gif- words that are wholly unrelated to giving and gifts.

I cannot make a call on all the words spelled gig. Some are one, some the other.

user 726941

A vowel immediately preceding an "r" is r-contolled

We never learned that in school

Faheem Mitha

This article on CounterPunch has a link to this amazingly candid letter from some Republicans to the White House. I wonder if it was leaked. Did they really make this public?

gallagher.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/gallagher.house.gov/…

This appears to be a link to an official govt site, so the answer is yes, apparently it was intended to be public. Including the part about "leverage". OMG.

Maybe they just assume Americans can't or don't read. I don't know.

Robusto

@FaheemMitha This is true, but it is a condition not exclusive to Americans.

Faheem Mitha

@Robusto What is true?

An educated guess is that you meant the not reading thing.

Ah, I see you linked to that. Never mind.

Am I the only one who is a bit surprised by it?

Robusto

I used to think everybody read. But I was quickly disabused of that notion.

user 726941

8:47 PM

Re: George Dawson

tchrist

Not complete: gibbon, gibbous, giddy, gift, giggers, giggle, gilbert, gild, gill, gillaroo, gilpy, gilt, gilter, gimbals, gimlets, gimmick, gimp, ging, ginkgo, ginnle, gird, girder, girdle, girl, girn, girning, girt, girth, gismo, git, gith, gittern, give, gizzard.

@user726941 It's a sop to the anarrhotics amongst us.

I'm just kidding.

Faheem Mitha

It's also interesting that apparently Republicans understand how things work. Well, some of them, anyway. One just assumes they are clueless Neanderthals.

tchrist

Any vowel can be rhotacized in phonetics.

 ɚ  025A        LATIN SMALL LETTER SCHWA WITH HOOK
        * rhotacized schwa
 ɝ  025D        LATIN SMALL LETTER REVERSED OPEN E WITH HOOK
        * rhotacized lower-mid central vowel
 ˞  02DE        MODIFIER LETTER RHOTIC HOOK
        * rhotacization in vowel
        * often ligated: 025A = 0259 + 02DE; 025D = 025C + 02DE

Robusto

@FaheemMitha If it's evil, Republicans know how to work it.

tchrist

But how it gets written varies greatly.

Faheem Mitha

8:49 PM

(With apologies to Neanderthals, who were probably fine people. But it's the accepted idiom.)

tchrist

R-colored vowel

In phonetics, an r-colored or rhotic vowel (also called a retroflex vowel, vocalic r, or a rhotacized vowel) is a vowel that is modified in a way that results in a lowering in frequency of the third formant. R-colored vowels can be articulated in various ways: the tip or blade of the tongue may be turned up during at least part of the articulation of the vowel (a retroflex articulation) or the back of the tongue may be bunched. In addition, the vocal tract may often be constricted in the region of the epiglottis.R-colored vowels are exceedingly rare, occurring in less than one percent of al...

Faheem Mitha

> Debt is a form of social control. You can force people to do all kinds of things if you put them in debt first, including waging unjust wars, killing and hurting other people, and risking (their) own life and limbs.

That's well said. They don't teach you that in school.

tchrist

> R-colored vowels are exceedingly rare, occurring in less than one percent of all languages.[1] However, they occur in two of the most widely spoken languages: North American English and Mandarin Chinese. In North American English, they are found in words such as dollar, butter, third, color, and nurse.

Robusto

@FaheemMitha So here's a thought: If you want to weaken your enemy, at least militarily, make them prosperous.

Faheem Mitha

@Robusto As Baldrick might put it, that's a cunning plan.

tchrist

8:55 PM

What's happening is that we were taught that something like "color" has five distinct phonemes, an alternating sequence of 3 consonants and 2 vowels. That's one representation, and fine for native speakers who actually do that. But not so good for those who don't, or perhaps for non-native speakers.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Do you speak Mandarin Chinese?

user 726941

It must be the Mandarin Chinese influence

tchrist

@FaheemMitha No.

Faheem Mitha

It's also interesting that the US Military is involved in video game production. It's something you'd assume they would approve of and encourage if they could, but I didn't know they actually made those things.

user 726941

The letter r is very harshly pronounced in Mandarin

tchrist

8:58 PM

If you start writing [ɔ˞] in words like north and war, you'll get into a lot of trouble because almost nobody has an open/lax vowel before R in North America, and most can't even hear the difference. UK speakers often have one there, though they then have troubles with the R. :)

War and wore are homophones here, and they have the same vowel as woe for most of us.

They do not have the THOUGHT vowel.

It is not at all this way everywhere.

Robusto

@FaheemMitha It wouldn't surprise me if they were behind the Call of Duty franchise.

Faheem Mitha

@Robusto I assume that's also a video game.

Robusto

Yes. A huge multplayer game.

tchrist

> In words such as start, many speakers have r-coloring only in the coda of the vowel, rather than as a simultaneous articulation modifying the whole duration. This can be represented in IPA by using a succession of two symbols such as [ɑɚ] or [ɑɹ], rather than the unitary symbol [ɑ˞].

If there's r-coloring, then it's not possible to say the vowel without any R in it. Think of murder. Twice.

So it's a single vowel, not a vowel plus a consonant.

Nor a glide, or whatever you want to call it.

In words like beer, the R doesn't change the vowel enough to make it a different vowel.

In nurse, it does.

Orange you glad I didn't say Sheila?

user 726941

Why don't they say "the silent 'e' controlled vowel" then?

tchrist

9:04 PM

I don't understand.

Silence cannot control anything. Silence is not a sound.

user 726941

Sam vs same

tchrist

You've lost me.

user 726941

The silent "e" controls the vowel.

Can vs cane

tchrist

You're talking about spelling. Please go away. I'm only talking about pronunciation. There is no such thing as a silent e.

Sam is often [ˈsɛjəm] rather than [sæm], but same is [seɪ̯m]. None of those vowels is silent.

Many speakers have an r-colored vowel in wash and Washington.

I suppose those who do not might be said to have a silent R there, but that's just silly.

There's a silent X in everything then.

Which one has more silent T's in it, [ˈdɔgi] or [ˈkʰɪʔn̩]?

Neither, for both have infinitely many? Or the latter, because the infinities have different cardinalities?

user 726941

9:26 PM

@tchrist I'll reread this, thanks.

tchrist

Scarlet is the letter that dares not speak its name.

> in some languages, like English, voiceless vowels are allophones of a consonant phoneme English /h/ is a voiceless vocal onset, a voiceless version of whatever vowel it precedes)

> English has no other uses for voiceless vowels, so they're available as allophones for /h/.

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A: Is there such a thing as an unvoiced vowel?

Voiceless vowels are quite possible, and occur in one way or another in many languages. After all, all vowels and all consonants that are whispered are ipso facto voiceless. Whisper [a] and you have pronounced a voiceless vowel. However, the overwhelming majority of vowel sounds in speech are vo...

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A: Why is /h/ called voiceless vowel phonetically, and /h/ consonant phonologically?

A good question, and a very basic one that illustrates an important difference between Phonetics and Phonology (or, as it used to be called, Phonemics): They use different criteria for what's a vowel and what's a consonant. First, an important caveat: This is only true of English; i.e, it's...

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