USA cricket team defeated Pakistan last night, at Dallas in a world cup match. That's a huge upset. Good achievement for USA cricket. And the match itself was exciting as it was tied. But USA won in Super Over (which is extra 10-15 minutes of play).

:O

We have a cricket team??

I did not know that.

And they were playing in Dallas?

Wild.

@alphabet Yup. Hosted by USA and West Indies.

@alphabet Very few native players in team.

@Vikas Ah, that makes sense. Outsourcing, a fine American tradition.

I think you could call that offshoring in this case.

🏏🤯🏏

Starship flew successfully yesterday

Copilot, an AI bot, gave me an answer from ELL.

wtf

I asked it to compare hot and cold.

😆

I talked with a couple of different persons on a 'sell-your-stuff' site, and now find it hard to open the chat windows again, despite the fact that these communications are run-of-the mill, business communications. I don't know what's up with my brain.

@jlliagre or 9

@CowperKettle 'bottoms ups' is (very subtly) funnier than 'bottoms up' (I think the embroidery version may have mistakenly left out the second s, but I'm not sure).

funnier because 'up' is never a verb itself (just the particle in a phrasal verb) and is never decined (has an 's' added to it. So the solecism of adding an 's' sounds funny.

'bottoms up' is a set phrase which is presumably a shortening of 'turn the bottoms of your thing upwards' (ie flip them over). It is is used as a kind of toast to mean 'empty your glass'.

@Xanne Nobody realizes the junk that these things get trained on. Even well-voted things are not guaranteed (or even likely) to be correct or even good.

@Xanne What was your prompt and what was the ELL answer (link)?

@Mitch I've reöpened this question per your request. The needful awaits.

bíro bítey bìtty chìmney chína chîno cìty díno Dîno fîlo fìn fínd fíne fîno gìvey grímy grípy grìppy hìck híke híney híree Í Í’ll ìll ísle ívy kîlo kìn kínd lìly líma Lîma lìmo Lîsa lìtho líve lìve Lìvy Líza Mìckey mícro mìdî Míkey mílo míme mìmeo mínd míne mìnî mîso pìty Plíny Plìny prîmo prìthee prìvy rhíno Ríley shíny sílo spìc spíce spíky tìnny tíny tíro vìdeo whíny wífí wíld Wìlma wínd wìnd wíno zìtty

Good luck with wind and live, where both versions exist and mean different things, and Pliny where both versions exist but mean the same thing.

This is completely rooted in the Great Vowel Shift, which saw stressed long /i/ become /ai/.

Only new words borrowed from elsewhere that didn't go through that have Latin's /i/ there now. I can't account for Lisa.

So primo has /i/ because it's a loanword. It didn't experience the GVS.

Yet primer comes in both versions.

Meaning /ai/ and /ɪ/, but no /i/.

In the list, /ai/ (aka /aj/ etc) is represented by í, /ɪ/ by ì, and /i/ by î.

Another odd one is the wild beast we call wildebeest. You can blame that one on the Dutch.

Gnus to you, I know.

I think what's going on with Pliny and primer and such, where it gets reinterpreted as a different vowel, is "ignorant" spelling pronunciations by those who've never heard the word spoken aloud, and then that becoming popular because it "looks like the spelling". Which is why we should take great care in spelling things in a way that will let people predict the proper pronunciation, since whenever we don't, we risk ruin.

@CowperKettle I love cross stitch art. It's amazing what cross stitch can do, such as this one.

Lisa vs Liza.

@tchrist To the closer's point, the needful is a lot.

Allot more time.

The right answer is a frame challenge: this is not the way to achieve the stated goal of prediction.

It doesn't take many examples to prove that.

@tchrist Right.

Unfortunately the OP has not clarified if it is about how to pronounce 'i' in general, or just those examples where 'i' is /aj/ (which is what he says he's doing but probably not the best way to get what he wants).

@jlliagre ^^^

Wind up your live doll in the wind so that it might live.

Ian ion.

Prius prion.

Linux Linus.

Mint us mind us.

More kind than kin.

cinders finders

@tchrist Just a fleeting thought. Maybe there is (or there will be) an AI model out there, based on statistically derived rule of pronunciation of English, and also one of Portuguese (from millions of samples) that can THEN isolate words in English that most likely trick an ESL Brazilian student to pronounce them wrongly.

Portuguese never writes /ai/ as i.

And /ɪ/ does not exist there.

SO they'll often mispronounce /ɪ/ as /i/, but /i/ for the i spelling is rare like in primo and Lisa.

But a prima donna has /i/ because it's unassimilated.

Wow... English has so many exceptions to the rule. I'm just so used to talk in English that I don't even think about it. I really think the brain neural network takes care of it.

Yep.

It takes a lifetime of use to become a good predictor.

Or at least a childhood.

Lyre but lyrical, satire but satirical.

Tyrant but tyrannical.

@tchrist Do you think it's the same with collocations? In IELTS evaluation Writing and Speaking, correct and rich collocations seem to be one major scoring criteria.

@GratefulDisciple I have not thought about it.

Both pronunciation and collocations seem to be much harder to ESL student than comprehension and grammar.

I don't know how that exam works, what "correct and rich collocations" means here.

Collocations?

Quick googling: Tips of using Collocations in IELTS Writing

Iris but iridescent.

First is wrong.

@tchrist All those examples seem to be regular sound changes (when things added).

Those are all adjective plus noun, not noun plus noun.

@Mitch Maybe.

Iris may have gone through the GVS where iridescent for multiple reasons did not.

Irises has /ai/ yet learnèd irides does not.

@tchrist Agreed, that article needs some touch up and proof reading.

And iridden is something else. :)

pint but mint

First Germanic, second long-assimilated Latinate.

< menta

Anyway, ESL students today are spoiled that in the age of Internet, even pronunciation by native speaker can be heard with click of a button from online dictionaries. They probably need to hear many such examples to train their brain neural net.

Then again, mind and mental are similar in kind being distant kin long ago separated.

Oh, there's the other mint for coinage.

Not the plant.

@tchrist What does it mean? I only heard iridescent.

@tchrist Thanks. geriden sounds Dutch. I hear a lot of "ge" prefix from people speaking Dutch.

@GratefulDisciple Oder Deutsch, nicht war.

@tchrist Of course.

But tracing the origin of "riden" really helps explain today's pronunciation. If you are an ESL teacher, would you suggest your students to consult that kind of table if they ask you why that word is pronounced / spelled that way?

Now you have to learn three languages diachronically just to learn one synchronically.

First language acquisition is always learnt as a snapshot of now without resort to history. But deep understanding can come only through historical progressions. I don't think most ESL students would be helped much here, and many would be confused. I might make an exception to this for originally Germanic first language speakers, but they seldom have trouble in these areas.

@tchrist Yup, it's fun. Especially for Biblical words which have gone through 3-5 languages until English.

@tchrist I see. Yes, it makes sense to distinguish the primary language of the student.

Every English word has gone through many languages to get here. It's just that in some cases three of those are also called English.

@tchrist Yes, I'm still stuck in modern Standard English, or at best Early Modern English.

Gotta go. TTYL.

@Mitch Fake :-)

and outdated

/ai/ including [aj], [ɐj], [ʌj], [ʌɪ], [ai], [aɪ]: alkaline alpine bovine canine clementine columbine combine concubine confine crystaline divine feline endocrine genuine iodine lupine paludine passerine pericline Philistine quinine saccharine serpentine supine Thorazine turbine turpentine Valentine

/i/ including [ij], [ɪj], [i], [iː]: atropine aubergine Benedictine brigantine carbine chlorine endocrine fluorine gasoline guillotine Josephine langoustine limosine machine magazine marine mezzanine murine paludine Philippine purine quinine ravine routine saccharine sardine Sistine tangerine tourmaline vaseline

/ɪ/ including [ɪ], [ᵻ], [ɨ], [ǝ]: adrenaline alkaline carmine Catherine crinoline crystaline doctrine endocrine engine ermine genuine imagine intestine lupine medicine pelerine Philistine saccharine thiamine tourmaline turbine urine vitamin

And yes, many of those are in two, some even in three, rows.

@tchrist All of them in the single /-in/ row in French :-)

Raccoons study tree-climbing at elite private school

Masked bandits are taking over the world, one trash can at a time