English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

jlliagre

01:02

#WhenTaken #246 (30.10.2024)

I scored 760/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 185 km - 🗓️ 7 yrs - ⚡ 184 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 2307 km - 🗓️ 13 yrs - ⚡ 123 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 567.5 metres - 🗓️ 4 yrs - ⚡ 196 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 330 km - 🗓️ 10 yrs - ⚡ 174 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 6848 km - 🗓️ 15 yrs - ⚡ 83 / 200

https://whentaken.com

Tightrope, a daily trivia game | Britannica

Oct. 30, 2024

T I G H T R O P E
✅ ✅ 💔 ✅ ✅ ✅ 💔 ✅ ✅ 🎉

My Score: 1670
I can't spell :-)

#travle #686 +1
✅✅✅🟧🟩✅
https://travle.earth

Wordle 1,229 X/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟨🟨⬛
🟨⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟨🟨⬛⬛🟨
⬛🟨🟨⬛🟨
⬛🟩⬛🟩🟩

It's been a while since I last failed Wordle.

Daily Octordle #1010
7️⃣3️⃣
🔟🕚
5️⃣8️⃣
🕛9️⃣
Score: 65

Daily Sequence Octordle #1010
5️⃣6️⃣
7️⃣8️⃣
🔟🕚
🕛🕐
Score: 72

CowperKettle

01:36

CowperKettle

02:18

> Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 | Tech News

> .. To put this into perspective, the world's GDP is equivalent to about $105 trillion, a minuscule fraction of the fine.

Cerberus

Funny.

Maybe more zeros would help.

Mitch

@Cerberus Use nines. They're bigger.

CowperKettle

I'm trying to read something in order to translate it and to make a post in my friend's blog, but my brain gets tired and I start reading something else.

The local state psychiatrist referred me to a psychologist whom I'll visit on November 11, but my psychiatrist friend says it's all a sham. He says that state clinics only pretend to work.

Cerberus

02:53

@Mitch Yeah replace all the zeroes with nines and it will be 9/0 times bigger.

@CowperKettle Attention deficit?

alphabet

03:20

Word of the day: creps. (British) "An informal name for training shoes."

CowperKettle

@Cerberus I do not know.

I lost the ability to translate fast in November 2020.

I get constantly tired in my brain.

At least I could resume work, albeit as a food deliverer, this Spring.

It takes a humongous effort to make myself do something related to congitive exertion and mental concentration.

CowperKettle

03:45

State clinics here are enamored with anythings starting with "schizo". They slap the "schizo-something" diagnoses left and right and prescribe antipsychotics by the trainload.

Thus my psychiatrist friend hates the mention of state psychiatric clinics.

There was a joke about the Soviet psychiatrist Snezhnevsky that to him, a patient with a common cold would be a patient with sluggishly-progressing somaticized schizophrenia

Andrei Snezhnevsky

Andrei Snezhnevsky (Russian: Андре́й Влади́мирович Снежне́вский, IPA: [sʲnʲɪˈʐnʲefskʲɪj]; 20 May [O.S. 7 May] 1904 – 12 July 1987) was a Soviet psychiatrist whose name was lent to the unbridled broadening of the diagnostic borders of schizophrenia in the Soviet Union, the key architect of the Soviet concept of sluggish schizophrenia, the inventor of the term "sluggish schizophrenia", an embodier of history of repressive psychiatry, and a direct participant in psychiatric repression against dissidents. He was an academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences,: 221 the director of the Serbsky...

> Some of Snezhnevsky's employees say that one day in a selected auditorium, when discussing the situation in the country, he also gave the diagnosis of sluggish schizophrenia to Andrei Sakharov in absentia.[4] Also in absentia, he diagnosed Joseph Brodsky with the same disease and concluded that he was "not a valuable person at all".

> .. According to the psychiatrist Marina Voikhanskaya, Academician Snezhnevsky and his "school" have debased, reduced Russian psychiatry to a semi-amateur level and single doctrine about schizophrenia, in the terms of which alcoholic psychoses and alcoholism are considered schizophrenia; congenial idiocy in the children of alcoholics is considered premature schizophrenia; and dissent is considered schizophrenia with delusions of reform.

Atlas Goes Hands On

►

Cerberus

04:42

Hmm changed the meaning of the term quite a bit, then.

@CowperKettle I see what seem to be video artifacts.

The rack on the right, for example, seems to change shape locally for a second, then reverts, near the end of the demonstration.

What does that mean?

CowperKettle

05:01

@Cerberus Maybe the robot dropped the part, and they had to edit it out?

Or maybe the slots are a bit elastic to allow for tolerances

Cerberus

05:13

@CowperKettle But they warped of their own accord, the robot was not touching anywhere near them.

It looked more like a blip.

@CowperKettle Never mind, I get what is happening.

The slots are elastic and all connected together.

When the robot extracts his hand, he pushes open his fingers, pressing against the sides of the slot. This deforms the slot and also many other slots. They spring back into their normal shape as soon as his hand is fully out.

CowperKettle

07:31

What's the opposite of formaldehyde? Casualdejekyll.

CowperKettle

09:58

> Renewables accounted for more than half (52%) of all electricity generated in the European Union in the second quarter 2024, new data shows.

theprogressplaybook.com/2024/10/29/…

tchrist

10:41

@Mitch Thou shalt not pronounce Portuguese as though it were Spanish. Troubadour rules apply here, not Castilian ones. Deliberately, in fact. The name of the letter ‹s› is written ese in Spanish but necessarily esse in Portuguese so that it can be unvoiced. See all the ways en.wiktionary.org/wiki/casa works out, depending on the grapheme-to-phoneme mapping in the different Romance tongues.

So it works like French, not like Spanish.

You double the written ‹s› to devoice it intervocalically.

Spanish doesn't need that because it doesn't have that phonemic contrast.

All dialects of English and Portuguese I've ever heard of always pronounce the name of the wood and country with phonemic /z/.

If you use /s/, you must be Spanish. :)

  1 [b̥ʁɑˈsilˀjən]
  2 [bɹəˈzɪɫ]
  3 [braˈzile]
  4 [bɾɐˈziɫ]
  5 [bɾaˈsil]
  6 [bʁe.zil]
  7 [ˌbraːˈziliə]
  8 [bʁaˈziːljən]
  9 [bɾaˈziʊ̯]

@Mitch Try to match those nine pronunciations of the name of the South American country with which country says its name using the given pronunciation. Good luck.

I do not recommend looking at the respective Romanization to figure this out, because then you would have to know nine different mappings of the Latin letters, and it is different in each country.

Because: Notice that up there no Latin letter used in writing the word invariably maps to the same sound in all nine of those versions.

Not a single one of them.

This is the Big Lie of writing things using the Latin script.

How hard can it be? :)

The unlettered are far better at learning other languages: they are unhampered by the Big Lie.

Once you assume letters mean the same thing in another language as they mean in your own, all hope is lost. You will always sound like a clumbzy dummy. :)

You must learn to hear and say a language without using your eyes.

Your lying eyes.

I'll give you a hint: Japan is not one of the answers. :)

All answers are countries known to any of us here, and indeed most of us live in one or another of them, and have probably been to most if not all of them.

That should narrow it down considerably.

8

Q: Pronunciation of foreign words by foreign speakers

I've used English for a long time and it isn't immediately obvious to others that I'm native French. Whenever I say a French word or place name in English I wonder whether I should pronounce it like English or French speakers would. (Of course I always use English pronunciation for common place n...

Whether that's a duplicate or not seems to be in dispute.

tchrist

11:52

Of course, even though there is a clearly identifiable country to be had for each of those pronunciations, that should never be taken to mean that there are no other completely valid pronunciations in that country nor that no other country than the identified one ever uses that pronunciation.

Robusto

13:18

@tchrist I've always thought Portuguese sounds like a drunken Spaniard trying to speak French, or vice versa.

3

Conrado

@CowperKettle After watching Atlas work, my neck hurts more than if I had just done the work myself.

Robusto

#travle #687 +0 (Perfect)
✅✅✅
https://travle.earth

tchrist

13:55

@M.A.R. @CowperKettle Any chance either of you might care to show us some sweet IPA for how you'd yourself pronounce the name of the country whose capital was Rio de Janeiro from 1763 to 1960 in your own languages?

Mitch

@tchrist I should kick myself in the ass for assuming the OP was ... correct? talking about speaking and not writing?

tchrist

@Mitch Hardly clear, was it now.

Mitch

@tchrist It was clear that they were talking about speech when I first read and answered. And I then assumed that the spellings they gave was voiced vs unvoiced. Not one but two errors in reading!

tchrist

@Mitch Yes.

Plus you were confused about which rules governed the voicing.

Mitch

I actually think now the social rules for writing go towards the 'write it like English' variety because socially wriiting is more formal.

tchrist

14:01

Notice there are only two that are unvoiced out of the nine I listed.

Mitch

@tchrist I was not confused at all. 's'-> /s/, and 'z' -> /z/. It's just I was confidently wrong.

tchrist

3 hours ago, by tchrist

  1 [b̥ʁɑˈsilˀjən]
  2 [bɹəˈzɪɫ]
  3 [braˈzile]
  4 [bɾɐˈziɫ]
  5 [bɾaˈsil]
  6 [bʁe.zil]
  7 [ˌbraːˈziliə]
  8 [bʁaˈziːljən]
  9 [bɾaˈziʊ̯]

Chose or be chosen. Lose or be loosely lost.

Mitch

Which one is Japanese?

tchrist

A looser loser would not choose.

None. That was the hint.

Mitch

oh

now I want to see/hear the Japanese.

M.A.R.

14:04

@tchrist now, my IPA-fu is not very potent, but /'bɛrɛzɪl/ sounds about right.

tchrist

@M.A.R. Cool, thanks!!

M.A.R.

Sure

tchrist

You don't do anything weird with unstressed vowels, it looks like.

M.A.R.

We're straightforward like that

tchrist

Commendable.

Mitch

14:06

ブラジル sounds voiced?

tchrist

@Mitch And tetrasyllabic.

Put that one up in neon.

Mitch

@tchrist and some inbetweeny r/l sound.

tchrist

NB: /ˈkae̯sar/ not /ˈkae̯zar/.

Mitch

@tchrist So which is which?

tchrist

@Mitch Cowherd! :)

  1 Denmark      [b̥ʁɑˈsilˀjən]
  2 England      [bɹəˈzɪɫ]
  3 Italy        [braˈzile]
  4 Portugal     [bɾɐˈziɫ]
  5 Spain        [bɾaˈsil]
  6 France       [bʁe.zil]
  7 Netherlands  [ˌbraːˈziliə]
  8 Germany      [bʁaˈziːljən]
  9 Brazil       [bɾaˈziʊ̯]

Mitch

14:13

@tchrist Nice

would you say, with respect to word final 'l', that contrary to expectations European Portuguese is more conservative than Brazilian Portuguese?

tchrist

@Mitch That we should all use the same Caesarean script but assign completely different values to those glyphs each time is merely God revisiting his Tower of Babel punishment upon the scions of Rome unto the seven-and-seventieth generation.

@Mitch Different paths.

Brazilians also don't use intervocalic fricatives/approximants the way the Spanish and Portuguese and Catalans all do, either.

Robusto

@Mitch Sounds like "boo-rah-jee-roo"

tchrist

A proper Hallowe’en greeting.

@Mitch You can actually find L-vocalization in that position in Portugal as well, but it's considered uneducated speech there.

By those who don't do it. :)

The thing is, the final L is so extremely far back in both Portugal and Catalunya that our own ears may miscue.

We sometimes have similar issues apprehending Romanian.

They're all too dark and shadowy to be easily apprehended. :)

Mitch

14:28

@tchrist The /iʊ̯/ ending sounds really... well I don't know who says that but it sounds like that's all Portuguese, no idea about Europe vs Brazil.

Like how Cockney pronounces word final l.

Robusto

@tchrist BTW, the "roo" in the above is a tongue flap, not a rhotic r.

Mitch

@Robusto isn't it a little 'l'-like?

Robusto

Neither "l" nor "r", my friend.

closer to a "d", really.

But not quite.

Mitch

You can learn all the IPA possible and still it doesn't capture the 'accent'.

Like, in a very insular way, when I hear a native speaker, they always sound like they have a -really- good accent.

I mean, they -are- native so you'd probably expect that.

tchrist

@Mitch In Coimbra (QUEEMbruh) or the Algarve (alGARV)?

           Brazil:  /bɾaˈziw/   [bɾaˈziʊ̯]
         Portugal:  /bɾɐˈzil/   [bɾɐˈziɫ]
Southern Portugal:  /bɾɐˈzili/

Mitch

14:32

But it still sounds really... on target.

Robusto

Ask a Japanese Teacher! Is the Japanese R like an English R or L?

►

tchrist

Hell, or in Porto? (PORtu).

Mitch

@Robusto TLDR: Yes.

tchrist

@Mitch That's called L-vocalization, sirruh.

L-vocalization

L-vocalization, in linguistics, is a process by which a lateral approximant sound such as [l], or, perhaps more often, velarized [ɫ], is replaced by a vowel or a semivowel. == Types == There are two types of l-vocalization: A labiovelar approximant, velar approximant, or back vowel: [ɫ] > [w] or [ɰ] > [u] or [ɯ] A front vowel or palatal approximant: [l] > [j] > [i] == West Germanic languages == Examples of L-vocalization can be found in many West Germanic languages, including English, Scots, Dutch, and some German dialects. === Early Modern English === L-vocalization has occurred, s...

alphabet

@Mitch On the other hand, when you hear a non-native speaker who doesn't have a characteristic accent, you don't know they're a non-native speaker. A few times I've been quite surprised to learn that someone isn't a native English speaker.

tchrist

14:36

> In Portuguese, historical [ɫ] (/l/ in the syllable coda) has become [u̯ ~ ʊ̯] for most Brazilian dialects, and it is common in rural communities of Alto Minho and Madeira. For those dialects, the words mau (adjective, "bad") and mal (adverb, "poorly", "badly") are homophones and both pronounced as [ˈmaw]~[ˈmaʊ], while standard European Portuguese prescribes [ˈmaɫ]. The pair is distinguished only by the antonyms (bom [ˈbõ]~[ˈbõw] and bem [ˈbẽj]).

> West Iberian languages such as Spanish and Portuguese had similar changes to those of French, but they were less common: Latin alter became autro and later otro (Spanish) or outro (Portuguese), while caldus remained caldo, and there were also some less regular shifts, like vultur to buitre (Spanish) or abutre (Portuguese).

> In pre-Modern French, [l] vocalized to [u] in certain positions:

between a vowel and a consonant, as in Vulgar Latin caldu(m) "warm, hot" > Old French chaud /tʃaut/
after a vowel at the end of a word, as in Vulgar Latin bellu(m) > Old French bel > Old French beau /be̯au̯/ "beautiful" (masculine singular; compare the feminine belle /bɛlə/, in which the l occurred between vowels and did not vocalize)
By another sound change, diphthongs resulting from L-vocalization were simplified to monophthongs:

alphabet

So if you only count people who you know aren't native speakers, they will almost always sound dissimilar to native speakers.

tchrist

> In early Italian, /l/ vocalized between a preceding consonant and a following vowel to /j/: Latin florem > Italian fiore, Latin clavem > Italian chiave.

Neapolitan shows a pattern similar to French, as [l] is vocalized, especially after [a]. For example, vulgar Latin altu > àutə; alter > àutə; calza > cauzétta (with diminutive suffix). In many areas the vocalized [l] has evolved further into a syllabic [v], thus àvətə, cavəzetta.

Mitch

@alphabet On the other other hand, I find it much easier to understand someone in another language if they have an American accent in that language.

tchrist

And by L-vocalization, I had not been including the standard and obvious yoddification effects where /l/ > /j/ after a stop that were common to Late Common Latin qua Early Proto Romance.

Mitch

@tchrist It's almost like there are a small handful of possible mutations, and -some- variety takes one. But not consistently with other mutations. or maybe sometimes.

tchrist

14:41

Which I reference for you here:

5

A: Porque tendem os verbos, no presente do indicativo, a ser mais irregulares na 1ª pessoa do singular?

English Irregularities that are otherwise inexplicable if considered synchronically can sometimes fall into recognizable patterns if instead looked at diachronically. This is true for the verbs you mention. These are important irregulars to learn because it is the first person singular of the pre...

Mitch

@Robusto When did Japanese start writing non-Kanji?

tchrist

@Mitch Yes. Ask Janet sometime.

Araucaria - Him

Nice question here:

3

Q: Syntactic function of Not

He does not like this. Here, what's the syntactic function of not?

grammar syntactic-analysis adverbs negation

Needs reopening though!

tchrist

@Araucaria-Him I'm not convinced the asker and answerer are connecting with each other.

Which calls for further answers.

Mitch

@Araucaria-Him 👍

but it would be nice to have more details from the OP.

tchrist

14:45

I do somewhat worry that the asker only meant part of speech rather than higher syntactic properties, but I cannot tell absent clarification from him.

Robusto

@Mitch Over 1,000 years ago, roughly. The kana ("shoulder writing") was invented by women for easier reading.

Araucaria - Him

@Mitch What kind of details would you like to see?

@tchrist Yes, agreed!

@tchrist I'm glad you wrote an English answer there!

tchrist

@Araucaria-Him heh

Mitch

@Robusto got it. I was curious about when more accurate sound changes could be found (attested by text) which is much more difficult with just kanji.

Robusto

@Mitch IIRC, it was because women weren't allowed to learn kanji writing, or something like that. Memory fades ...

Mitch

14:49

@Araucaria-Him well, a single short sentence whose only content word is 'syntactic function' is just underspecified or is asking for a book.

...but I firmly believe nothing is 'too broad' here, that one can always give a starting summary to a book.

tchrist

@Araucaria-Him I remember referencing a Spanish SE answer from somewhere on Portuguese SE and getting complaints that that ES.SE one was only in English so didn't help them on PT.SE. So I addressed the problem by translating the ES.SE answer into Spanish. :)

Mitch

@Robusto Women are the mother of ... well... everything.

Robusto

@Mitch Indeed.

tchrist

To which the complainant said, "Better. :)".

But in Portuguese.

Of course.

Araucaria - Him

@tchrist Ha!

Mitch

14:52

Por supuesto.

@tchrist wait... so how are part of speech and syntactic function (and for that matter grammar) different? (beyond POS is just a superficial treatment of the others).

Does 'function' narrow things down that much?

It's just a way of saying... what is it good for?

(and POS is an extremely abbreviated way of doing that)

tchrist

Adjective is a part of speech, whereas modifier is a syntactic function.

Noun is a part of speech, whereas subject is a syntactic function.

These also have scoping and span distinctions.

@Mitch I thought you knew this bit. But ask @Araucaria-Him for more info.

Syntactic functions apply not to words but to syntactic constituents.

Parts of speech apply only to a single word.

Mitch

@tchrist OK got it.

not thinking.

but bear with me... a subject is a noun phrase used in a particular way, and a noun phrase is sort of like a noun.

I'm just lumping rather than dividing.

tchrist

So just because a verb phrase can be the clause's syntactic subject does not in some fashion make that verb a noun. Similarly, just because a noun phrase finds itself in a modifier role does not make it an adjective or an "adverb" or an intensifier, etc.

@Mitch That is probably wrong.

Mitch

1 min ago, by Mitch

I'm just lumping rather than dividing.

tchrist

For you to learn this is all I dare dream of. <--- no nouns there, sir

But you will agree that my matrix clause has a subject, I am certain.

Nounlessly.

Robusto

15:07

#WhenTaken #247 (31.10.2024)

I scored 534/1000 🎉

1️⃣ 📍 217 km - 🗓️ 1 yrs - ⚡ 191 / 200
2️⃣ 📍 3937 km - 🗓️ 23 yrs - ⚡ 74 / 200
3️⃣ 📍 3728 km - 🗓️ 4 yrs - ⚡ 129 / 200
4️⃣ 📍 1434 km - 🗓️ 29 yrs - ⚡ 80 / 200
5️⃣ 📍 1513 km - 🗓️ 57 yrs - ⚡ 60 / 200

https://whentaken.com

Yeesh.

Mitch

@tchrist Noun phrases though

tchrist

@Mitch As in S := NP COPULA NP you mean?

X is Y.

While you're there, see whether you think that sentence has any prepositions. :)

Mitch

@Araucaria-Him So the -function- of 'not' is usually to modify the VP, logically negating it? Do you think that's what is being asked for?

tchrist

Predicatory negators.

> Please put your dirty shoes NOT in the house!

Can you raise that negative? :)

I think seaquill folk will tell you that "not in" is a thing. :)

Conrado

Dr. Geoff Lindsey on "a" article before initial vowel (vs "an").

I tried it; and I can do it, if I include a full glottal stop between "a" and "extreme", although it feels like a violation.

I say "a" before universal: "That's a universal verity".

And before hotel.

But not before under: "While we remained friends, we reached an understanding to never talk about that subject again."

Robusto

15:28

@Conrado That's because of the y-glide before that particular u.

Conrado

Yes, a (semi?) consonant sound.

Robusto

It's the "yu" sound in words like cucumber and uniform.

Conrado

15:43

"I have a independent business." The article is pointing to business, but needs to be separated from the initial i of independent. This feels to me like less of a violation than "a extreme example", where both begin with a vowel.

alphabet

@Mitch Nope. The subject can even be a prepositional phrase: "In the kitchen is a good place to put it."

alphabet

16:04

@Conrado I think "a understanding" is particularly bad because you're putting an /ə/ right before another /ə/.

I'll watch the video later, but I've noticed myself saying things like "I took a[ʔ] Uber there."

@Robusto Or "statue" or "issue"--just in those words the /j/ gets blended into the preceding consonant.

Robusto

@alphabet Yes, and in words like issue it turns the /s/ into /sh/("ishoo"), at least for Americans and down-market Brits.

Also "statchoo" for statue.

alphabet