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01:19
@Mitch I guess it checks out a few boxes for boring. It's definitely not the sort of movie to watch if you're bored and want some handy escapism
The only reason the politics was relevant was . . . I dunno, Ben Affleck hating Matt Damon? Which could easily have been done without any political background. I don't have much idea about that era, and the politics wasn't enough to help me understand, so it really was superfluous.
@tchrist: We had 3231 new cases here today. That's 200 to 300% of the post-Thanksgiving totals.
02:16
@Robusto Same, mutatis mutandis. We had like 7900 today and like 8700 yesterday.
Hospitalizations are becoming a problem here.
But mostly the problem is not ICU beds but staffing. That's why the governor summoned the national guard, and why the president separately sent us active-duty military doctors and nurses.
State positivity rate is unthinkable. That's an average. The worst county is at 40% postitivity.
And we just hit 100% on the Little O.
In more chilling news, we got 8 new inches of snow last night, and I awoke to –2F.
03:02
That sounds cold.
 
2 hours later…
05:15
-8°С, snowfall
People are playing ping pong in the park
06:21
Carl Sagan's 1954 undergraduate reading list
I always get confused by the words undergraduate and graduate.
Does it mean that Carl Sagan was reading the books while styding for a Bachelor degree, that is, the first 4 years of an institute?
07:20
Etymology of the day: tungsten = heavy stone
 
3 hours later…
10:25
A graffiti saying "I want" (хочу)
 
2 hours later…
12:12
@CowperKettle well I get the degrees confused, so we can be confused together.
When you enter university, or college, or whatever it's called, it's the undergraduate course until you get a degree. After that degree, you can study for a PhD, for example, which has graduate courses
@CowperKettle it's actually saying "I want invisible paint"
@M.A.R. Do you always need a pronoun in such phrases in Persian, or is it possible to say "I want" using a single verb only?
 
1 hour later…
13:37
@CowperKettle pronoun? Uh, you mean object?
I think "want" is only transitive in Persian
At least almost always transitive
Red is 'subject pronoun is necessary', blue is pro-drop or 'subject pronoun not necessary' (pink is 'subject pronoun can be dropped under some circumstances)
So Persian looks to be pro-drop like Russian.
@M.A.R. I think he means 'is the subject pronoun always needed or never used or something in between'.
@Mitch aha, almost always dropped in spoken language, but it's considered "improper" in writing.
That sorta prescriptivist attitude that spoken language is not legit is pretty prevalent as far as I've seen
You can't trust speakers. where's the evidence that they spoke? nowhere. they'll say one thing now, and another thing later. Only deal with writers.
@Mitch so affixing to the verb is the same as not saying it?
or is it more that affixing means the pronoun is impled?
13:53
@MattE.Эллен That seems like a weird moving the goal-posts move, but yeah I think that's the rule they're using. Explicit pronoun word, but not an inflection for person (or a word particle attached to the verb)
So the WALS article (and wikipedia) both talk about the pro being dropped as the word-separable pronoun. so you can have inflections or particles and it's pro-drop if there's no separable pronoun (subject pronoun is all they care about, object and possessive pronouns can all go to hell as far as they're concerned
ah, ok! thanks
@MattE.Эллен I was about to say 'Buen provecho' because that's what I've heard waiters say in Spanish when they bring you your meal and you say gracias. But now I find out that it is the Spanish version for 'Bon Appetit' and now I'm replaying my entire life to see if I've told anybody I opened a door for 'Enjoy Your Meal!'
Kia Ora!
wait.. what?
14:03
@Mitch Thank you! I used to know this term, Snailplane must have told me about it. But I forgot.
@Mitch I'll be your dog
@MattE.Эллен Oh. Nice. Enjoy your meal!
now I'm thinking about the old Kia Ora advert, it might be slightly racist
I'll stop thinking
Because, I mean, that'd be the polite thing to say to a dog
@Mitch that's all they want in life
14:05
@MattE.Эллен I think most all Kiwis say Kia Ora, regardless of heritage
But maybe its weird against Kiwis?
@MattE.Эллен It's a laudable goal which I share
@Mitch oh, no. I'm watching now. I think it's fine
hmmmm
I'll share it, and you can decide
@Mitch Maybe it's the scale, but it looks like they think Japanese is only pro-drop under some circumstances. In fact, Japanese people avoid pronouns in most cases, unless you consider a noun circumlocution a kind of pronoun.
@MattE.Эллен what -is- Kia Ora (the thing being advertised)? Also what are those animals... crows?
@Mitch yes and yes
Kia Ora is too orangy for crows, hence them wanting to be dogs
@MattE.Эллен OK that's just freaking weird but I guess not racist.
maybe the basketball player?
14:10
I wondered about the washer woman
The crows in Jungle Book were a bit racist (I mean in a different way than the rest of the movie)
I guess if no-one complains it must be fine?
and I kinda got that sorta vibe
but
nothing overt
@MattE.Эллен That wasn't a hippo?
@Mitch another crow
a big fat crow?
14:12
@Mitch What about the crows in Dumbo?
@Mitch yeah :D
@Robusto hmm...maybe I'm mixing those up. which ones were patterned after the Beatles?
the vultures in jungle book
@Mitch Those weren't crows in Jungle Book.
I think those were buzzards in JB.
@Robusto Oh
@CowperKettle Yeah. it's sort of the next level in saying 'Language X has this grammatical property' just beyond SOV or SVO.
vampire language is more vv
Pro-Drop status is supposed to be a parameter that implies a few other grammatical properties, but I've never found out which ones. It's supposed to be (and it seems logical that it should be) correlated with inflection, but since non-pro-drop is mostly just north-west Europe, it seems entirely independent
@MattE.Эллен +1
Another parameter is 'left-branching' vs 'right branching' which is also said to be correlated to other syntax features like SOV and SOV. But every language seems to have all sorts of exceptions.
eg French is ... let's see if I get this right... right branching which implies SVO and adjectives and relative clauses -after- the things they modify. -But- pronoun objects go -before the verb 'Je le vois' = 'I see it' and some adjectives go before nouns 'Le petit poule rouge' = ' the little red hen'
Or maybe SOV is more natural right branching?
In linguistics, branching refers to the shape of the parse trees that represent the structure of sentences. Assuming that the language is being written or transcribed from left to right, parse trees that grow down and to the right are right-branching, and parse trees that grow down and to the left are left-branching. The direction of branching reflects the position of heads in phrases, and in this regard, right-branching structures are head-initial, whereas left-branching structures are head-final. English has both right-branching (head-initial) and left-branching (head-final) structures, although...
which came out of the theoretical linguistics trand in the 80's:
Principles and parameters is a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general principles (i.e. abstract rules or grammars) and specific parameters (i.e. markers, switches) that for particular languages are either turned on or off. For example, the position of heads in phrases is determined by a parameter. Whether a language is head-initial or head-final is regarded as a parameter which is either on or off for particular languages (i.e. English is head-initial, whereas Japanese is head-final). Principles and parameters was...
I don't know what the current trend is now though but I think Principes and Parameters is out of fashion now.
nobody's got principles any more
@Robusto I thought Chinese (which grammatically is almost entirely the opposite of Japanese) was totally non-pro-drop (because absolutely no inflection at all), but the wiki article mentions 'topical pro-drop' which Chinese totally is (see their examples)
@MattE.Эллен The Psychopath theory of language
15:22
@Mitch I know little about Chinese other than that Japanese adapted some of the writing system for its own use, and a few other things with it.
But the Japanese don't use pronouns if the subject is understood. 会議に行きます (kaigi ni ikimasu, "I am going to the meeting") is literally "meeting in go." If it is necessary to identify who is going, then a pronoun may be used about oneself, but typically in polite discourse a name with honorific would be used, or else some spatial indicator ("that side" or "this side" or "other side") to avoid offense.
One Japanese woman I knew got dressed down by an older woman for addressing her as anata (you).
The Africa variant has been dominant in Amsterdam for weeks now. Why do we see this spike only now?
Isn't it a New Year's Eve spike, rather than a variant spike?
Maybe both?
Maybe.
But I'd expect the initial rise in cases, from the 29th of December, to be caused by the new variant, combined with Christmas.
@Robusto Yes, those are used in Dutch.
BTW, on that show I was telling you about they use the expletives fuck and fuck you in English.
Is it any good.
15:36
It's interesting.
I'd be curious to hear your take on it.
I do not know it.
It's probably available to you somehow.
I don't use any paid services, though, and I never really watch any television programmes or films myself.
New hospital admissions are still decreasing.
The more I hear of it, though, the more Dutch sounds like some version of Plattdeutsch.
It is, kind of.
15:39
Some of it I understand without looking at the captioning. Some just sounds like a mess of gargled syllables.
Heh.
Then you are progressing!
I often find that the greatest hurdle is distinguishing word boundaries.
@Robusto That's what the wiki article calls 'topical pro-drop' and labels Japanese, Chinese and Korean that way (while those three are otherwise almost entirely unrelated grammatically).
at some weird level Korean and Japanese must share some phonology given that I've heard so many people (probably including you here )have said that, as a speaker of one they often feel like they should be able to understand a speaker of the other if only they would enunciate more clearly. Obviously there's lots of interaction (a euphemism for military conquest) but there's no ... um.... genealogical relationship.
16:10
@Mitch Yes, I've definitely experienced it.
And apparently I'm not the only one.
7
Q: Are the Japanese and Korean spoken languages somehow related?

RobustoAccording to Wikipedia, Historical and modern linguists classify Korean as a language isolate. [A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical ... relationship with other languages] Yet whenever I hear Korean spoken, my ear is tricked for a sh...

The answer given by a native Japanese speaker suggests that it's definitely a thing.
And the link he points to (Wikipedia) has this to day:
> Korean and Japanese both have an agglutinative morphology in which verbs may function as prefixes[14] and a subject–object–verb (SOV) typology.[15][16][17] They are both topic-prominent, null-subject languages. Both languages extensively utilize turning nouns into verbs via the "to do" helper verbs (Japanese suru する; Korean hada 하다).
I wonder if "null-subject" is the same as "pro-drop" or somehow related.
@Cerberus Definitely a stumbling block in most languages.
Curiously, though, I think that's more of a problem with men speaking than with women. I find women enunciate more clearly than men much of the time.
@Robusto Yes. The wiki pro-drop article uses 'null-subject' as one of its varieties. Presumably it means the pronoun is not uttered at all but induces some word boundary effects. (ie the pronoun has some phonological effects but only by preventing elision between adjacent words where it might have shown up between otherwise)
16:53
I wonder what it says
17:13
> New data shows 63% of COVID patients in England are being treated primarily for COVID, down from 67% last week and 75% in October
@CowperKettle Tzaneiro is probably Janeiro.
Indicating the geographical location of the statue.
Lake Plastiras (Greek: Λίμνη Πλαστήρα) also called Tavropos Reservoir (Greek: Τεχνητή Λίμνη Ταυρωπού) is an artificial lake fed by Tavropos (Megdovas) river, located in Karditsa regional unit, near the city of Karditsa, Greece. The lake is named after the Greek general and politician Nikolaos Plastiras, who was the first to visualize the construction of an artificial lake in the area. == Initial plans == The idea of building a reservoir in the area was allegedly first conceived by general Nikolaos Plastiras who, in 1925, was visiting his hometown in the area. During this time the whole area was...
Ah! Thank you!
Reads like "LIMNI"
The η is a long, open e in Ancient Greek, but a kind of i in New Greek.
 
1 hour later…
18:44
My Grandfather survived pepper spray and mustard gas attacks in WWI.. came home a seasoned veteran.
Mustard gas would seem more harmful than pepper spray?
@Cerberus read the last part again
19:05
@Mitch Ohh.
I'm bad at puns.
They're not in my system.
19:50
@Cerberus To be clear, I immediately thought 'that seems wrong, did they actually have pepper spray in WWI, and boy that's a bit tactless to call having experienced either 'seasoned' as in spent a good long time.
But then I put things together, 'spray' and 'gas' and then the punch with 'veteran' and had a good laugh.
20:05
@Mitch Yes, the alliteration of 'spray' and 'gas' is hilarious.
And of course vet - veteran - veterinarian.
(I thought the same thing about pepper spray, by the way.)
21:03
@Cerberus haha you get it
I will look at this later and have absolutely no idea what is going on.
Also, I'm still worried about @CowperKettle's grandfather.
21:30
@Mitch Same here.
@Cerberus: They say "sorry" in English as well.
@Robusto Yes, that is extremely common.
It is still somewhat frowned upon by conservatives, amongst which I, but it has been in use for...I don't know how long, could be a century?
I use it occasionally.
What do you use instead, some variation of leider?
Het spijt me = it spites me = I regret it.
Excuses = apologies.
Also, the back-of-the-throat /r/ in German seems much more front-of-the-mouth in Dutch (as in some German dialects as well).
21:39
Dutch has all the r's, depending on region and class.
All German, French, and English r's.
Yeah, I've heard the rhotic /r/ sometimes.
Right!
What do we call the German /r/ again? Uvular fricative? Something like that?
So the kind of r you will hear depends on position in the syllable, on region, and on class, I suppose.
@Robusto I must confess I can never remember which r's the IPA signs are.
I suppose a throat r would be uvular?
I am unimpressed by IPA. It seems cumbersome and not as perfect as it purports to be.
21:43
Hah.
There are so many more variations on phonemes than the few dozen it represents.
Especially vowels.
Oh, true.
It does have various signs you can use to indicate smaller variantions, I believe.
But it will never be as precise as an acoustogram.
22:31
@Robusto It isn't meant to be phonemic. It's meant to be phonetic.
@tchrist It still fails to satisfy in that respect.
@Cerberus Right, if you just use the base glyphs without diacritics, there's a whole lot unspecified. You want that on broad transcriptions where the reader knows the phonological accommodations of a particular language. You need a specialist narrow transcription for indicating languages or effects unknown to the reader.
22:51
Yeah.
@Robusto I don't understand what you mean. You mean like how you and I say hand not as /hænd/ but as the phonetic diphthong [heˑə̯nd] while some Southerners make that a slightly nasalized triphthong, [hɛ̝̃ɪ̯̆ə̯nd] that you and I may well perceive as disyllabic [ˈhɛ̝̃ɪ̯̆jənd]? Or how Spanish desde isn’t actually /ˈdesde/ at all but [ˈd̪e̞zð̞e̞] with dentals-not-alveolars plus fricatives and non-phonemic voicing and raising?
You can specify these nuances. It's almost never done.
@tchrist The former.
The pin/pen thing, etc.
Written English is like sheet music. Different people play it differently.
It seems that phonetic systems, IPA included, operate from a basic premise that there are "correct" ways to play the music.
English hand does that with very fine detail. Ditto Spanish cinco. It's dickshunaerys that have the misleading problemitas suθios.
And they don't. Look at those two links pretty please.
So it is not IPA that's at fault here. It's that people give a pronunciation that is so broad as to be false in most cases.
When looked at in the narrow.
23:08
@Robusto If you roll over those weird narrow IPA transcriptions at those links with your mouse, each one plays the sound clip from a native speaker in that language which was used to create the API in the first place.
The amazing thing is that not only do we all eventually mostly understand each other speaking radically different sounds for the same word, we almost never even notice this.
23:27
I love how good the Brits are with geography.
> Joe Biden is in Colorado to view the destruction caused by the abnormal winter wildfires that devastated two towns outside of Denver last week and left thousands displaced.
I fully expect that if Queen Elizabeth visits Calais, they will say she's visiting a town outside of Dover. The distance is the same.
Hah.
"Outside of" is rather vague...
In this case, it means 22 miles.
Of course, we all know that Dover has been a suburb of Calais since Caesar.
That's not very far.
I know, but these are Boulder suburbs not Denver suburbs.
And the fire started less than a mile south of Boulder, then spread east to those towns just a few miles away.
Any fires now?
23:33
21 hours ago, by tchrist
In more chilling news, we got 8 new inches of snow last night, and I awoke to –2F.
We've had more than a sesquifoot of freshfallen snow since the fires. One presumes they have succumbed.
Sesquifoot is my absolutely favoritest sesquipedalian term.
I haven't checked the news for it lately. Doing so was giving me nightmares.
OK that sounds better.
Seems they've decoded one set of remains and given a name to the deceased, a 69-year-old man, near the source of the fire.
How many died?
Two, apparently.
Alas.
23:46
This one was barely a half-mile from the origin point. One does not know if these event are connected. It is all under careful investigation, and they are not saying nothing untoward occurred in either circumstance.
I see.
Well, only two humans. Many beloved nonhumans also died. But many have also been found alive against all odds. Singed, some of them.
Poor things.
It's now up to 1,084 homes, businesses and barns notwithstanding. They're only estimating half a billion in damages to residences now.
Houses are expensive.
23:52
Median price is now like $900,000.00 in those communities, but of course nobody bought those at that price when they built them lo these two or three decades past.
But insurance won't cover anything like that amount, of course. It's not like you're having to buy a new lot.
It is very difficult to understand how a normal family 3 or 4 bedroom home is running nigh unto a million bucks here.
> When he saw smoke coming from a shed on the Twelve Tribes property, he picked up his phone and braved the winds to find out more.

“I said ‘Oh boy, this is not a good situation,’” he said.

When Zoltowski walked over to see what was happening, he found three people huddled between two vehicles. One of them, an older man, had fallen and sustained a dislocated shoulder.

“I asked them what the hell’s going on here? They said, ‘Oh, one of our dwellings caught on fire. It’s under control,’” said Zoltowski. “I was like, ‘This doesn’t look under control.’”
The opening paragraph of that article from today is: "Law enforcement vehicles have barricaded a 5-acre compound west of Boulder for days, but officials have not said what they are doing there."
More people who have bad geography. Sigh.

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