English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

I’m really glad Fauci survived.

He's good: he knew it couldn't have been VX.

12:56 AM

What's the scariest thing you can see up in a tree along a Colorado trail?

A baby mountain lion, a pumacita!

Because in that moment you suddenly know that your eyes are directed completely away from your greatest peril.

Nobody got hurt, though.

That was about 25 miles away from me.

Cerberus

2:23 AM

Cute.

Mitch

2:44 AM

@tchrist Meow

Cockatoo Meows Like a Cat

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Mitch

3:02 AM

Attenborough: the amazing Lyre Bird sings like a chainsaw! Now in high quality | BBC Earth

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Clickable version with sounds.

4

Mexico's president tests positive for COVID-19

3:21 AM

In other news:

in This Is Fine, 17 mins ago, by Jolenealaska

@tchrist looks good for an audio linguistic approach

There, that one looks better. It's really very nice.

Yup.

Thnx for sharing

The 15 vowel phonemes arranged in the IPA trapezoid but without any confusing symbols. I like the little superscripts, the y and w, that tell you how to finish off the long/tense/diphthong versions when connecting to some other sound following it.

~~Thnx~~ Thank you.

It helps them say fun words like Wyoming, Iowa, and Ohio.

When all run together. :)

Ohiowayoming.:)

I know that Iowa is easy to miss, but it's right there between Ohio and Wyoming. :)

3:30 AM

The native language has a huge influence on pronunciation

15 vowels, or 13 without the two phonemic diphthongs, is a lot more than many languages have.

So they just don't have enough buckets, often enough.

Using that chart, it's obvious that there's a "w" connecting the first word to the second one in blue and black.

Because the "blue moon" section has a little "w" superscript in its upper right corner.

Or with "see and listen", there's a "y" connecting the first word to the second, and the "green tea" section has a tiny "y" superscript for the liaison.

You don't need any special symbols at all this way. You just have to see sounds in color. If that's hard, than perhaps @Cerberus can help you. :)

And with go and leave, it now obviously there's a "w" connecting the first word to the second because the pink "rose coat" section of the chart has a little superscript "w" in its top right corner.

Say with "boy and girl" with its turquoise toy box, or "guy and gal" with its white tie box: both have a little superscript "y" in their top right corner so you know how to join to the next word or sound.

Blending words have pretty strict rules for vowels next to vowels, etc.

That's what that is showing.

"me and Mike" has a "yand". :)

"no and maybe" has a "wand" that rhymes with sand.

Well kinda.

The checked vowels have no connectors.

Although really the R purple shirt one does, but it's an "r" connector. And the "cup of mustard" one can just peter off into the distance of diminishing schwas.

These are still considered segmental features, not suprasegmental.

Hm.

And what about Naomi? :)

3:46 AM

Speech therapists put most of their work into suprasegmental features.

For accent reduction, at least.

Not to be confused with stress reduction. :)

Yeah, stress patterns have to be introduced early.

One of that site's two PDF downloads talks about that.

Accent Reduction: An Introduction

Exactly.

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A hundred minutes!?!?!?

goes to bed

3:55 AM

cya

It's not short topic.

I can't stop hearing HER accent!

lol

4:38 AM

@Cerberus ^^^^^ There's a bit of a brain-teaser for you. :)

@tchrist yeah, her accent is from South Carolina

@user85795 Which is why the very first time she says accent, she goes through three or four different vowels before she gets to a consonant. :)

Her specialty is children speech problems.

So symbols are out

More of a audio linguistic approach

Audio-lingual method

The audio-lingual method, Army Method, or New Key, is a method used in teaching foreign languages. It is based on behaviorist theory, which postulates that certain traits of living things, and in this case humans, could be trained through a system of reinforcement. The correct use of a trait would receive positive feedback while incorrect use of that trait would receive negative feedback.This approach to language learning was similar to another, earlier method called the direct method. Like the direct method, the audio-lingual method advised that students should be taught a language directly, without...

Cerberus

6:22 AM

@tchrist Sardu?

It says Sarde at the top...

Faheem Mitha

7:09 AM

@tchrist That sort of thing is mild by British standards.

I remember reading Edgar Wallace. His stuff was incredible. The word racist didn't begin to describe it. One felt there should be another word.

Notably the Sanders series.

So Winston Churchill is a "statesman"? Funny term for a mass-murdering psychopath.

For example, here is the second sentence of "Sanders of the River".

> Long before he was called upon by the British Government to keep a watchful eye upon some quarter of a million cannibal folk, who ten years before had regarded white men as we regard the unicorn; he had met the Basuto, the Zulu, the Fingo, the Pondo, Matabele, Mashona, Barotse, Hottentot, and Bechuana.

8:23 AM

Alexei Navalny

Alexei Anatolievich Navalny (Russian: Алексей Анатольевич Навальный, IPA: [ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej ɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲɪtɕ nɐˈvalʲnɨj]; born 4 June 1976) is a Russian opposition leader, politician, lawyer and anti-corruption activist. He came to international prominence by organizing demonstrations, and running for office, to advocate reforms against corruption in Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Putin's government. Navalny has been described as "the man Vladimir Putin fears most" by The Wall Street Journal. Putin avoids directly referring to Navalny by name. Navalny is a Russian Opposition Coordination...

> In 2011, Navalny stated he considered himself a "nationalist democrat".[253]

> International media have often commented on his ambiguous but non-condemnatory stance toward ethnic Russian nationalism.[254][255] He also has been a co-organizer of the "Russian march",[256] which Radio Free Europe describes as "a parade uniting Russian nationalist groups of all stripes" and noted that Navalny had also endorsed a nationalist-led campaign called Stop Feeding the Caucasus to end federal subsidies to the Caucasian republics.[257]

> In 2011, Navalny defended his attendance at the march, where BBC News reported that racist slogans were chanted, saying to reporters that the rally was an outlet for anger at the government.[258][259] In a 2011 profile, The New York Times said that Navalny espoused Russian nationalist views and that he starred in a video that compared "dark-skinned Caucasus militants to cockroaches".[260]

> Early in 2012, Navalny stated on Ukrainian TV, "Russian foreign policy should be maximally directed at integration with Ukraine and Belarus… In fact, we are one nation. We should enhance integration."[261] During the same broadcast Navalny said that he did not intend "to prove that the Ukrainian nation does not exist. God willing, it does". He added, "No one wants to make an attempt to limit Ukraine's sovereignty".[261][262]

> In 2013, Navalny defended riots by nationalists in a Moscow district on his blog which was sparked after a murder was blamed on a migrant.[263][264]

Not the kind of opposition I would wholeheartedly opt for.

5 things to know about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny

> While Navalny is seen as a darling of the West, he has long aligned himself with Russian nationalists.
His nationalist streak, which at times has included anti-immigrant views and an insistence that he would never leave his homeland, has made it difficult for the Kremlin to portray him as a puppet of the West — despite having attended university in the United States.

> In 2006, he appealed to Moscow City Council that the Russian March — a far-right gathering — be allowed to take place. In 2007, he founded a political movement called The People, which allied itself with two nationalist groups, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration and Great Russia.

> He also expressed support for Russia during the Russo-Georgian war of 2008 and used a derogatory term for Georgians in blog posts calling for them to be expelled from Russia.

8:41 AM

Word of the day: take something under advisement ("Thank you for your suggestion. We'll take the matter under advisement.")

@Færd He is a populist, taking up themes that might be profitable for gaining popularity.

Since about 2011, he seems to have shut down this populist line altogether. And switched to corruption.

@Færd Up to 2014 I also wanted Ukraine to reunite with Russia, and did not feel it as being different from Russia.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, everything changed in this regard.

In a normal situation, I would not vote for him but vote for Yabloko instead. But Putin's Russia is not the normal environment, and Navalny is the biggest chance of restoring the free election system in Russia.

@Færd Just about everybody then supported the invasion of Georgia.

@Færd Yes, this is the thing that I don't like most about him. I would permit working migrants to live and work in Russia.

9:04 AM

@CowperKettle Interesting. I realize that in politics you usually can't have your cake and eat it too. So you have to see how you can handle the available options, and maybe play them against each other.

But still surfing waves of populism coupled with lack of principle, or rather inclination towards anti-immigrant nationalist principles, would concern me. Especially when it's cloaked under heavy media hype depicting him as a champion of freedom and the polar opposite of Putin.

I simply don't know enough about Russia to be able to accurately contextualize all those positions of his on Ukraine, Georgia, etc. They just seem rather unpalatable to me.

9:41 AM

I don't feel an inward conflict when I support Navalny. For instance, when I support Ukraine I feel an inward conflict because the war in Ukraine is partly a civil war, and Ukrainian nationalists did form volunteer battalions that committed atrocities. The Ukrainian state had to use force to disband them and send the culprits to jail.

In the case of Navalny, his anti-immigration stance is just what an average citizen of Yekaterinburg will say: "those Central Asians are coming in droves and crowding us Russians out of jobs".

Had there been a heavier nationalist rhetoric, I would feel some inner conflict while supporting him. Because I think that nationalists are kind of closer to animals. I dislike them, they are animalistically dumb often.

Personally I would support free movement of people across the globe.

Had I been a politician, I would not say it out loud in Russia. That would nullify my chances of ever getting elected anywhere.

Because there is a huge amount of xenophobic people in Russia.

It's common to refer to Central Asians as churka (a block of wood).

My friend says that Navalny is a fascist. But my friend is a devoted anarchist and says that every single person who strives for a position of power should be lined up against the wall.

So in a nutshell, yes, Navalny is 99% an anticorruption populist who will, if elected, restore free elections, independence of the judiciary and dismantle Putin's censorship system.

Putin's propagandists may play on Navalny's earlier nationalistic statements, but that would not work inside Russia because Russians know the context.

So this is a piece of propaganda that is aimed at the Western audience. Inside Russia, Putin's propagandists in 99% of cases refer to Navalny as a puppet of the West. The immoral, unstable, LGBT-loving, FBI- and CIA-controlled West.

10:00 AM

I am fully confident that right now Putin's regime has launched a full-blown denigration campaign to drag Navalny through the mud. I can only imagine what amounts of money are being poured now into the pockets of any Western journalist or public person who would agree to take part.

Nobody wants to play into Putin's hands here, or espouse radical pie-in-the-sky views.

But we must also try to study things on their own merit, regardless of who uses it for what kind of propaganda.

Who can guarantee that a politician won't renege on his rosy promises if he comes to power?

You can look at their character, their principles and principledness, etc.

And I think, as a crucial general rule, you should look at the forces that prop and propel them, and the kind of popular support that they have relied or capitalized on.

There is never a complete certainty about any politician.

That's a given.

South Korea had a string of leaders who became corruped and stood down, to be replaced by the next corrupted leader.

11:01 AM

The only Arabic word in my Anki dictionary

Robusto

2:12 PM

@tchrist Southerners are well known for gratuitous diphthonging.

SmokeDetector

4:19 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, potentially bad keyword in answer, toxic answer detected (159): Could someone deconstruct this sentence and explain where it is right or wrong grammatically? by Patrick on english.SE

4:44 PM

Street trees close to the home may reduce the risk of depression

4:57 PM

> The trees along this city street
Save for the traffic and the trains
Would make a sound as thin and sweet
As tress in country lanes