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16:01
When you need a graph to represent tones in your language...
@Robusto Agreed! The uncertainty principle should kick in soon enough.
isn't cantonese one of those w/ 7?
ha! teh interwebz tell me that Guangzhou cantonese has NINE tones
But I do love the names we have for quarks: up, down, bottom, top, strange, and charm. The last two especially. The middle two seem too BDSM for my taste.
@Robusto should have stuck with the names Truth and Beauty
16:03
@JSBᾶngs — /nod
That would be BTSM, or BTSC.
@JSBᾶngs Wow, fascinating stuff. Interesting that they use accent for meaning while these distinctions are intuitively insignificant for us.
The standard pronunciation of the Cantonese language is that of Guangzhou, also known as Canton, the capital of Guangdong Province. Hong Kong Cantonese is based on the Guangzhou dialect and has diverged only slightly. Cantonese dialects in other parts of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, such as Taishanese, are often highly divergent. Cantonese Syllables A syllable generally corresponds to a word or character. Most syllables are etymologically associated with either standard Chinese characters or colloquial Cantonese characters. Modern linguists have discovered there are about 1,760 syllabl...
Look what you made me do.
@kiamlaluno — What are you talking about?
16:04
I am reading about Hainan, the Li people and the Yue people now.
And tons more.
^ la wik says that cantonese only has 7 tones, the other two being short-vowel realizations of those seven
@kiamlaluno I have no clue what you're trying to say, but have a preemptive THWACK anyway.
Latin wiki?
@Cerberus lolz. i loves it. i read a great paper about tai-kadai historical reconstruction these days
@Robusto Well, it's "Bottom Top Strange Charm."
16:05
@Cerberus la wik = wikipedia in my crazy shorthand
@JSBᾶngs I see you are an exophile.
Or xenophile.
@JSBᾶngs Haha, I see.
You also use "da wiki"?
@kiamlaluno — I was making a joke: BDSM = Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, Masochism. "Bottom" and "top" are roles in that kind of play. Or so I'm told.
And the Teheranian dialect no doubt has "teh wiki".
now why would i say something like that?
@Cerberus Is that the Russian Wiki?
16:07
@Robusto Or so you are told.
@kiamlaluno Hehe, perhaps.
^ anybody interested in a reconstruction of Proto-Tai should read the above
@Robusto Uhmmm… Those should be Master/Mistress, submissive.
actually, that link just goes to a summary
i have the whole paper saved in my email if anybody wants it
If you go in some visual chats, Dominants/Dommes have a higher position than submissive people.
@kiamlaluno — I bow to your superior experience with this subject. Wait ... I mean ... uh, we do have a safe word, right?
16:11
@Robusto That is the ABC; I am not superior.
@Robusto safe words are for wusses
@JSBᾶngs It was a joke about BDSM; they use a "safe" word for when the play should stop.
@kiamlaluno He knows.
And how they say, in BDSM it's the submissive who has control.
Jez
Jez
hello
16:16
If you want to have fun, you can look at Gorean and their Panthers / Huntresses who live in the forest.
They have also "red silk kajiras."
@kiamlaluno i really don't think i'm up for that kind of
@kiamlaluno i don't know what that means and am not going to google it
@JSBᾶngs I meant, if you want to laugh at the words they use.
@JSBᾶngs It's just a term for a Gorean slave.
@JSBᾶngs The definite article -l, as well as the final -l in -ul are often not pronounced in the spoken language seelrc.org:8080/grammar/pdf/stand_alone_romanian.pdf
however often is not the same as almost never-but i take back "all letters are always pronounced"
16:34
I guess that is not true for Italian either.
@BogdanLataianu i can't say that i hear native speakers pronounce the -l in -ul at all except when they're being very pedantic, but i guess that's splitting hairs at this point
At least it is not true for i in cielo, h in chiesa (which changes the pronunciation of the c).
@kiamlaluno romanian has that, too, but i don't think it counts. the {i} and the {h} there do contribute to the pronunciation
at least the h does. i'm not sure about the i
@JSBᾶngs Then it's just cielo or similar words; in cielo the i is not pronounced.
@JSBᾶngs do you consult any Romanian grammar/pronunciation book?
16:38
@BogdanLataianu for what?
@JSBᾶngs for reference
@BogdanLataianu yes, sometimes. but what in particular are you referring to?
Any lego fans here?
Another example is the i in camicie; apart the accent, the word is pronounced as camice, and the i is to differentiate between camicie and camice.
16:40
leads Reg away to crazy bus Don't look! That gentlemen isn't waving lego blocks: those are just poisoned candy.
@JSBᾶngs I use two grammar books that I found online-maybe you have something better. I dont have paper books since I am not in Romania
Incidentally those are the collectible minifigs series 5
@BogdanLataianu i don't have any grammar books handy. dex-online.ro for looking words up is great.
i'm not sure how much i would trust a romanian-language grammar book, as they have a prescriptivist bent
Yay prescriptivism!
do you mean in general the grammar books are prescriptivist, or specifically romanian-language?
16:44
@BogdanLataianu grammar books written in romanian for romanian speakers tend to be prescriptivist, in that they describe the way that they think people "should" speak. the same is true of most grammar resources for native speakers in most languages, actually.
but as a linguist i'm much more interested in the description of how people do speak. hence my insistence that the -l in -ul is not really pronounced, since in common speech it's just not there
But perhaps the prescriptivist books better represent literary circles.
@Cerberus i rather doubt that. they proceed from a mistaken set of beliefs about the relationship between written and spoken language
for example, after the spelling reform a lot of people started to think that the word sunt (formerly sînt) is supposed to be pronounced with an [u] rather than an [ɨ], despite the fact that an [u] in that word is completely unetymological, and the intent of the reformers was not not change the pronunciation! (and in reality nobody says [sunt] except, again, when they're being pedantic)
I think many descriptivists do not do prescriptivists justice. I, for one, am very well aware of how language works. And yet I like prescriptivist grammars. It depends on what you want from a book; but a good prescriptivist grammar—or style book, if you will—does not pretend to describe.
i'm all in favor of rational prescriptivism. a style guide is a good thing to have
OK.
I will concede that some prescriptivists do what they shouldn't be doing and describe things incorrectly.
16:52
i'm against materials that misrepresent the nature of the language, or which actually make your writing worse
Of course.
for example: a bad prescriptivist would say "ain't isn't a word". that's objectively false. a good prescriptivist would say "ain't is not acceptable in higher registers, so don't use it in writing or in formal conversation"
What if you interpret the former as the latter?
@Cerberus then you're doing the job of the style guide writer for him. he should have been clearer
@JSBᾶngs I was not following a (prescriptivist) book, but my "observation". I have no professional training, it's just a hobby. However, I use books with a critical approach though.
16:55
@BogdanLataianu i also mostly am following my observation
@JSBᾶngs Or the critic is interpreting the prescriptivist by means of his own terminology. Consider "grammatical". For most ordinary people, this means "what would not be advised against in common grammar books". For anti-prescriptivists, it means "what is never observed in spoken or casual language". The latter presume that the prescriptivist was using their definition, while in fact he was using the ordinary definition.
interesting argument
When I say, "ain't isn't a word", I mean "you shouldn't use that in the register I advise you to use".
I don't mean "noöne has ever uttered those sounds"; of course not: that would be absurd.
A straw-man fallacy.
i understand what you mean, but i think that the average person does not understand the same thing that you mean
Then again, there are some prescriptivists who like to cloud their judgement of what is with what ought to be, according to their criteria. That is a bad fallacy as well.
@JSBᾶngs Perhaps not. It is a complicated issue, and context plays a large part.
I just feel that often descriptivists are choosing the easy way with their simplistic moralism, without really thinking along.
17:04
@Cerberus Wait, are you saying descriptivists are immoral?
STOP THE PRESSES!
@MrShinyandNew安宇 I was saying their were being unduly moralistic!
@Cerberus You lost me. But that doesn't make as good a sound-bite.
Sometimes I hate their goodie-goodie guts... and sometimes I hate prescriptivists' guts for their lack of realism and silliness.
the descriptivists are not the side of this debate that i would have described as "goodie-goodie"
@MrShinyandNew安宇 I mean, if certain anti-prescriptivist descriptivists are too quick to point fingers, I call them too moralistic.
17:07
@Cerberus like, Geoff Pullum and his constant attacks on Strunk&White?
@JSBᾶngs They shouldn't be. The good ones aren't. But what calls itself "descriptivist" is often merely anti-prescriptivist with a hidden prescriptivist egalitarian agenda of their own.
@Cerberus I assumed that there was a big bust-up over it at some point and the descriptivists had the better of the argument... not that it's simply easier (although it is)! But I've never actually read any of the theory behind it.
@MrShinyandNew安宇 To some degree, yes. He often legitimately points out errors in S&W, which is fine; but he routinely goes too far and misinterprets them—but perhaps I am not doing him justice: I have only read a few of his blogs.
@Cerberus this i can get behind. i, for one, think there's no shame in calling something non-standard or deprecated, and in encouraging people to avoid it
@z7sgѪ I'd say that as far as linguistics as a science goes, it seems clear that descriptivism is the more scientific approach (as is the case in all science, really)
17:10
@z7sgѪ LL has said it brilliantly: a good prescriptivist answer and a good descriptivist answer are nearly indistinguishable in content; they just offer different perspectives. The point is that each should stay within his own domain. But they often wander where they don't belong, both of them.
Who is LL?
Also that seems like another easy way out to me..
@JSBᾶngs I don't think descriptivism seeks to avoid giving advice on usage and encouraging people to write more clearly or in a higher register. At least, in my understanding, if you want to describe language you have to describe how your listeners hear you as well, that's part of it. So it's not enough to say "ain't is a word, go ahead and use it", that's an incomplete description.
@z7sgѪ Language Log
@JSBᾶngs Exactly, Kosmonaut agreed with this as well. But if I say "that is wrong", I just mean that it is non-standard. The anti-prescriptivist has no right to construe this as "morally wrong" or "is never used that way". The paradox is that he would in fact be prescribing my usage. An attenuating factor might be that some descriptivists lost touch with layman terms a little bit; I suppose that isn't evil.
@MrShinyandNew安宇 absolutely. the register and social signifiers attached to a word are part of its meaning!
17:13
@z7sgѪ Oops I meant PLL.
What are you guys talking about?
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū prescriptivism vs. descriptivism, triggered by an exchange between me and Bogdan about the pronunciation of romanian -ul
@MrShinyandNew安宇 Well, advising as to what to do or advising on how things are done within a certain group? The difference is sometimes merely one of perspective, not content, but it is real: advising someone to do something is clearly prescriptivist.
I'd say that descriptivism that ignores the listener's reaction is equivalently as bad as prescriptivism that makes up rules or promotes rules with no current basis (for a given register).
@Cerberus this is where the idea of "descriptive prescriptivism" comes in. you can tell someone what to do, but your advice should be based on actual data regarding what educated english speakers say, not just based on latinate superstitions and irrational peeves that have somehow become ingrained in a certain subset of english teachers
17:16
@Cerberus I guess what I mean is, telling people "always do this" is prescriptive, but "if you do this, X consequence occurs, maybe you want to avoid that" is more descriptive + advice.
@JSBᾶngs Yes! Middle ground
good morning all
morning @simchona
@simchona Good morning. Are you on the west coast by any chance?
@MrShinyandNew安宇 Mhm
@MrShinyandNew安宇 Well, it would just be incomplete descriptivism. If it thereby misses certain relevant points, then, yes, it isn't very good. And prescriptivism is allowed to make up rules if it wants to: noöne need heed it anyway. I could write prescriptively, "hey we should stop saying manager committee because it is ugly", and there is nothing objectively wrong with that. You can either agree with me and follow me or not.
But if I say that "noöne says x" while everyone says it, then, yes, I am a very bad prescriptivist. I am using descriptivist arguments which are factually wrong.
17:19
not pro in this topic.. whistles
@Cerberus What about the more subtle "Never say X, it's incorrect".
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū This too shall pass. Just sit tight.
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū If you're interested, just start reading Language Log. That should keep you busy until the topic of this room turns back to... whatever. :p
@MrShinyandNew安宇 One of the LL guys was my prof
It happens that in English there is no prescriptivist authority that could impose its will. The Germans had their spelling system changed right under their noses and they just sucked it up.
17:21
@simchona Cool, which one?
@MrShinyandNew安宇 Lieberman
@simchona Yeah, any minute now we'll return to our usual incomprehensibility, instead of all this linguistic incomprehensibility. :þ
@JSBᾶngs That depends. There is no objective standard as to what prescriptivism can prescribe (as long as I don't claim "nobody says x"). If I propose something new, and people like it, what's wrong with that? I agree that a "good" prescriptivist will correctly assess what's commonly used in the right registers and use this as an important building block for his prescriptions. But he doesn't strictly have to, certainly not always and in all details.
@Marthaª I'm waiting for when I can talk about the user that prompted me to make a meta post
@Cerberus I guess I'll agree with you about a good prescriptivisit essentially needing to have a good descriptivist understanding. I'll concede that anything on top is a matter of taste and style.
17:23
@MrShinyandNew安宇 I interpret that as, "in the circles for which this book is meant, that is considered unacceptable, so I strongly advise against it". If it is a complex matter, then I agree that the prescriptivist is being lazy and hasn't thought about it well enough; but if a prescriptivist says "ain't is incorrect, so never say it", we all know what he means, so it is pretty clear. I don't really see a problem. For the record, scientific papers can by definition never be prescriptivist at all.
@simchona Hey, just jump in. Topics are like socks. Every so often you have to just change them.
@z7sgѪ We Dutch resist our spelling authorities with fervour!
@Cerberus Well, good on you! Ze Dzschömmens are so obedient.
@Cerberus Ah, the subtle distinction between "unacceptable" and "wrong". :) I think we mostly agree about this topic.
allright. call me back when there is new disscussion.
17:25
@simchona what did you post on meta?
@MrShinyandNew安宇 OK. Perhaps prescriptivist writing is easier to swallow for descriptivists if it is labelled as "style": that is basically the same.
@JSBᾶngs This:
5
Q: Will the revenge down-vote script kick in, in this case?

simchonaRecently, a user posted several questions within the space of about a half hour. I downvoted four of them because I felt that they were poorly researched, and because they were out of the scope of the FAQ. The votes were close together because of the timing of the questions. Will the revenge down...

@z7sgѪ Hehe yeah they are... I suppose it is Reg's Russian spirit that keeps him to the old German spelling of ss v. ß.
@Cerberus Yeah. But it needs to be style, but also based on reality. Which is one of the major failings of, say, S&W's "elements of style".
@MrShinyandNew安宇 Yeah we do, because we understand each other. But many pre and de people seem to misunderstand each other on purpose and thereby appear each to the other to be treading on his ground!
@MrShinyandNew安宇 That is very complicated. Perhaps the book wasn't really meant for most of the people who read it.
17:28
@Cerberus I still mentally pronounce your name like "Cerebus" though. Sorry. :p
Aahhh~
I prescribe the right pronunciation!
@Cerberus So, that initial consonant... S? or K? (or TS?)
I will let you choose between s and k. Both are acceptable to me.
i mentally pronounce your name like Kerberos :)
I say k myself.
@JSBᾶngs Good!
Most people seem to pronounce it s.
17:30
@Cerberus Very accomodating :) I pronounce it S because in English initial C is almost always S. Cereal, Certain, Curtain... oh wait...
@Cerberus that is the normal english pronunciation, but i am not normal
Wait... Kerberos = Cerberus? That explains so much
Mind = blown
@Martha! what does ciganka sam mala mean? ciganka is obvious, but the rest?
I pronounce it as in Italian.
Well, time for me to go. It stopped raining. later folks.
17:37
@JSBᾶngs Doesn't sound Hungarian. Is this supposed to be a phonetic rendering?
@Marthaª no, that's the way it's written in my source. i thought it was hungarian, maybe i was wrong. transliterated bulgarian? slovak? something else?
@JSBᾶngs Roma?
@MrShinyandNew安宇 C before e!
@JSBᾶngs I know.
17:38
@Marthaª possible but unlikely
@MrShinyandNew安宇 Adios!
Whoops, gotta go. Food!
I told language tools to detect the langauge. Its Esperanto. They can't translate it yet. I'm surprised.
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū it's not esperanto
@JSBᾶngs I suspect kiamlaluno would have known the Esperanto if it happened to, actually, be Esperanto
17:39
Wait, how do you know?
ReG!
@MrShinyandNew安宇 you mistyped "will".
Reg, do you know this langauge? ciganka sam mala?
@simchona plus gypsies don't sing in esperanto. that would be weird.
3
@JSBᾶngs I would've guessed Hungarian too, then. Could it be some dialect of it? Since I wouldn't know if gypsies spoke standard Hungarian?
Anything could be possible
17:42
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū Have you asked @Kiam?
Who pinged me?
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū Ciganka is obviously Slavic, gipsy woman.
2 mins ago, by ChaosGamer ΕΛ-Υ ēel-ū
Reg, do you know this langauge? ciganka sam mala?
It looks almost African to me.
Nah, South Slavic.
Possibly West.
It seems the title of a song singed by Milena Ceranic.
17:44
@kiamlaluno Now that name is as Bosnian as it gets.
In Russian "Cerberus" sounds as "Tserber"
@RegDwightѬſ道 Still, they speak a slavic language, in that area.
@Reg, do you know the answer to this?
19 mins ago, by simchona
5
Q: Will the revenge down-vote script kick in, in this case?

simchonaRecently, a user posted several questions within the space of about a half hour. I downvoted four of them because I felt that they were poorly researched, and because they were out of the scope of the FAQ. The votes were close together because of the timing of the questions. Will the revenge down...

@simchona Even if I knew, which I don't, I wouldn't disclose it.
I suppose you will notice soon enough.
@simchona Only Jeff Atwood knows the answer.
17:46
When I pasted Ciganka sam mala
Oci moje gore
Igram, pevam, plesem
Celu noc do zore
They said it was Bosnian
Heheheh.
I win.
@RegDwightѬſ道 True.
I can even translate some of it.
"Celu noc do zore" the whole night until dawn.
"Igram, pevam, plesem" playing, singing, dancing.
"gore" is a possible false friend.
So I'm not touching that.
oci = eyes?
Never touch who is not your friend!
17:48
If anybody is in need of translating Korean, don't use translater, but tell me!
@z7sgѪ Quite probably.
I thought it was "yes."
user19161
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū language, it's
If oci means eyes, then it's closer to my dialect than I though.
@kiamlaluno It's not related to gli'occhi.
17:49
@RegDwightѬſ道 But my dialect is not Italian. :-)
@kiamlaluno Your dialect is not a Church Slavonic one, either.
user19161
@kiamlaluno You can't touch your friend in the wrong places either!
@JasperLoy that... sounds wrong..
@RegDwightѬſ道 That is true, but I would find difficult to classify it.
This user managed to beg me for an upvote (because he lost 2 points!) and then lose all of his rep due to other people last night
user19161
17:51
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū translator
wasted your vote on that poor wretch
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū Full stops come in groups of 1 or 3
@JasperLoy That is quite right! Once you touch a friend, it's not a friend anymore.
Not 2
@simchona Penelov seems to be a girl's name.
17:51
Penelope?
@z7sgѪ I'm still scared I'll get revenge down vote scripted, even though I'm not the only one
user19161
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū Sounds Russian.
I thought it was the male equivalent.
user19161
@simchona Even if so, no need to worry.
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū Penelova would be female
17:52
Could be English too.
I think it's Bulgarian. And a last name.
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū Not really.
@simchona downvoted by who?
@Reg so have we agreed that the song is Bosnian? i can live with that
Penelov isn't gonna be doing any downvoting!
@z7sgѪ I downvoted 4 of his spammy questions. Other people downvoted too.
17:53
That must be a record: 10 asked questions, and 8 closed questions.
@simchona You need 125 rep to downvote though.
@kiamlaluno And losing all of his rep in one night.
@simchona Addressed.
@simchona is He/she pissed off?
@z7sgѪ I'm worried that the script will get me, not that he'll come back to deal with me
17:54
@simchona Is there a badge for that? :-)
user19161
@GraceNote Efficient!
I'm aware that it's basically a non-answer, but it's all we can give.
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū Well, he asked me "to please vote up" because he had lost 2 points (gasp!) on a downvote
@JSBᾶngs Well, I have no idea what language that really is, but hey, I can understand like 90% of it, so I kinda don't care.
@GraceNote I thought you changed the avater. Current one is much cuter.
17:55
@kiamlaluno Sadly, that is not the current record.
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū I did
user19161
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū avatar
I don't actually remember the record right now, but e.g. Petra managed to get all her 5 questions closed.
@simchona If it does then we should get it fixed because this downvote pattern is legit.
@RegDwightѬſ道 Oh, and who got that record?
17:56
Don't think too hard on it.
@z7sgѪ Thank you. I'm counting on all y'all to vouch for me
I mean, apart spammers.
I imagine though they already have it fixed so you can downvote low quality questions as much as possible.
@kiamlaluno I could look that up but I don't wanna be pointing fingers right now.
@GraceNote vgv?
17:56
I'm surprised that nobody managed to get "Tumbleweed""Tenacious", and "Unsung Hero" badges yet. I'm going to be the first. >:)
@simchona He actually has a surprising amount of stuff open, even to this day.
@RegDwightѬſ道 That is not pointing fingers, if you are not pointing them. ;-)
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū Tumbleweed is hard to get. Thursagen always bothers to give an answer even to the most pointless question.
user19161
@RegDwightѬſ道 But he does have some good questions, and good humour!
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū that requires you to ask a question that's bad, but not bad enough to be deleted. And not good enough to even be viewed
17:57
@z7sgѪ You misspelled Thursagen.
@simchona Eh?
5 out of 5 is not a record.
@RegDwightѬſ道 Are you sure it's not related? No common IE root?
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū And you need more than 1 answer accepted.
I meant, "Don't think too hard about whether you are tripping the voter fraud script".
17:58
@Cerberus Of course I am not sure about PIE, but I am against @kiamlaluno's folk etymology.
I always relish a challenge. I'll get those badges if it is the last thing I do... besides, Tenacious and Unsung Hero sounds cool.
If you're doing enough to trip the script, you will probably feel it in your gut. If you aren't, and it feels natural, you should be fine.
I could look it up, but my Russian etymology dictionary is at work.
@RegDwightѬſ道 Which etymology?
17:59
@ChaosGamerΕΛΥēelū *sound

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