Language Overflow

Damkerng T.

00:00

Fewer than 10% of oftens are pronounced with the "t", I think.

Anonymous

Here are 29 more oftens from Switchboard: quarplet.com/often2.zip

Anonymous

Selected at random.

Anonymous

It's a corpus of spontaneous speech with speakers from all regions of the United States.

Anonymous

catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC97S62

Anonymous

Just going through these, without actually counting, it seems like the pronunciation with /t/ is indeed the minority pronunciation in AmE.

Anonymous

00:04

I don't have a corpus of spontaneous BrE speech.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I've tried 6-7 clips in the second set. Still found no "t"!

Anonymous

So I'm afraid I can't provide any evidence one way or the other for BrE often.

Anonymous

I have to say I wouldn't be surprised if the /t/ were more common in BrE, but I simply don't know.

Anonymous

Aren't audio corpora nifty? :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Nifty indeed!

Anonymous

00:13

Today's example of epenthesis:

Anonymous

Knish

A knish /ˈknɪʃ/ or knysh is an Eastern European snack food consisting of a filling covered with dough that is either baked, grilled, or deep fried. Knishes can be purchased from street vendors in urban areas with a large Jewish population, sometimes at a hot dog stand or from a butcher shop. It was made popular in North America by Eastern European immigrants from the Pale of Settlement (mainly from present-day Belarus, Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine). In the most East European traditional versions, the filling is made entirely of mashed potato, ground meat, sauerkraut, onions, kasha (buckwheat groats...

Anonymous

A friend just described this to me online as "kanish" :-)

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

Damkerng T.

01:27

Let's try to translate Home of the Lions.

> 1. (used in TV): บ้านสิงโต -- approx. back trans.: lion house

> 2. บ้านสิงห์ -- approx. back trans.: lion house (สิงห์ sounds a little better than สิงโต)

> 3. แดนสิงห์ -- approx. back trans.: land of the lions

> 4. ถิ่นกำเนิดสิงโต -- approx. back trans.: habitat of lions / the place where lions are from

> 5. ที่บ่มเพาะสิงโต -- approx. back trans.: the place where we develop / incubate / nurture / teach lions

> 6. ณ สิงหสถิต -- approx. back trans.: the place where lions live / be

> 7. สิงหอาลัย -- approx. back trans.: home of the lions

Damkerng T.

10:28

0

Q: The plane arrives/will arrive at 3:30

The plane arrives/will arrive at 3:30. My Approach: I think the the sentence express a prediction by the person or guess and hence I used will.Though it is not explicitly mentioned to be prediction but can be used in this sense.Hence,I used will arrive Am I right in my approach?Please corr...

future-tense

17 hours ago, by Fantasier

Anyway, that book is so much like most English learning books for Thai students these days.

This is worrisome.

It's rather obvious what the result of using this kind of book would be.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. FLAWLESS

Damkerng T.

Yes!

o/ @snailboat!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. The tag future-tense makes sense if you use the semantic definition of 'tense', that is, future tense being an expression of future time reference.

Anonymous

Of course, if you do that, English is left without a grammatical future tense... Which it would be without anyway, but still :-)

Damkerng T.

I wonder which answer the book wants (in that question).

Anonymous

10:35

Wait, they're supposed to pick between them?

Damkerng T.

Yes!

Anonymous

I thought it was just showing an alternation between the forms with and without will for the same meaning.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Snail (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ

Anonymous

Well, almost the same meaning.

Anonymous

The problem is the question doesn't give any criteria to pick one or the other. No context, for example.

Damkerng T.

10:36

The OP wrote "My Approach". So we can safely assume that he was trying to choose the correct answer.

Exactly!

Anonymous

In context, a speaker could pick between the two or declare that both are acceptable.

Damkerng T.

Oh! Cookie Monster!

Anonymous

So the question isn't really clear, but Maulik's answer looks okay (though it should probably read 'doubt' rather than 'a doubt').

Anonymous

= epistemic weakening

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Hello!

Anonymous

10:38

@DamkerngT. Hello!

Damkerng T.

nods -- I think his answer is okay, though I remember that he wrote almost exactly the same answer before, possibly more than once.

Anonymous

Probably.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat \o

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Hello redux!

Damkerng T.

1

Q: Should I use "the" with quadrotor?

I've seen some people use "the" with "quadrotor" whereas other group of people drop the usage of "the". My question is that when should we use "the" with quadrotor? For example, should we add "the" in the following sentence? Quadrotor is getting more popular in both military and civilian miss...

definite-article

Anonymous

10:41

Quadrotor, eh? I'm not familiar with this quadrotor!

Damkerng T.

I remember that a (supposed to be) native speaker wrote something that when it's thought of as a label, it's acceptable!

So I keep bouncing back and forth between thinking of this kind of sentence as grammatical or not.

Anonymous

Well, maybe try thinking of it in reverse. If you just write "Quadrotor is getting more popular", how does it force you to construe quadrotor?

Damkerng T.

(Like, Man is mortal, or possibly Dog is man's best friend.)

Anonymous

Those aren't examples of what you just described.

Anonymous

Were they provided as examples of labels?

Damkerng T.

10:44

@snailboat It's hard to conceptualize "quadrotor" as something abstract. Perhaps the activity?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Ah! Good point! There are multiple ways it could be construed.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I remember that Man is mortal was one. I can't remember other examples. (I think there were two more.)

Anonymous

As a non-count noun representing a material―seems very marginal! "This sandwich has ham, cheese, and quadrotor!"

Anonymous

As a name: "Quadrotor is my best friend, and I won't let you take him away from me!"

CopperKettle

@snailboat A Sikorsky Sandwich probably (0:

Good afternoon all.

Anonymous

10:46

Whoosh! went that joke as it went over my head :-)

Damkerng T.

Good afternoon!

CopperKettle

(0:

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Greetings! I supply greetings for all! And I am not in short supply!

Damkerng T.

Quadrotor could be yummy for robots. :P

CopperKettle

(0:

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

10:47

I'm about to leave in ten minutes and come back in 7 hours.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I can believe that. I still don't know what quadrotor is, so I have no idea what its grammatical status is. I guess it has something to do with having four rotors!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

And I haven't slept at night.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M See you in 430 minutes!

CopperKettle

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M or "didn't"?

Anonymous

You need to sleep to avoid wasting the time you spent during the day trying to form memories.

Damkerng T.

10:48

I think I've seen my neighbor playing a quadrotor before.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh! Now it sounds like a musical instrument.

Damkerng T.

(His kids, actually.)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@CopperKettle daven't.

Damkerng T.

A toy-heli with four rotors, I think.

Anonymous

"I play the viola, the electric kazoo, and the quadrotor!"

Damkerng T.

10:49

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Have a good sleep soon!

CopperKettle

Yep, sweet dreams, Muhammad!

Anonymous

Your mind's like a sponge. You spend time soaking stuff up all day, then it gets full and you need to sleep to squeeze that sponge out, letting the memories you formed into your long-term memory store, getting the sponge ready to absorb stuff again the next day.

CopperKettle

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine.

(I just translated Snail's words into poetese)

Anonymous

Hah!

Anonymous

Are you sayin' a brain sponge ain't poetic!?

CopperKettle

10:53

(0:

Anonymous

I'll be right back after I finish looking up embower'd

Anonymous

I mean, um, er, Word of the day! embowered

CopperKettle

It's a very good word - nice sounding and imaginative.

Anonymous

It is nice! :-)

CopperKettle

(0:

Anonymous

10:54

I love that I never stop learning new words, even in my L1!

CopperKettle

Because English has too many of them!

Anonymous

Oh, it sure does!

Anonymous

Of course, other languages have too many, too! :-)

Anonymous

That's what makes language fun.

Anonymous

It's pretty hard to meaningfully compare vocabulary sizes across languages, sadly.

CopperKettle

10:57

With Russian words, you can often guess, since one root begets dozens of words.

Anonymous

But you do have to learn tens of thousands of English words to be relatively literate.

CopperKettle

nods

Anonymous

(Whatever it means to "learn a word", I still don't know! Each word has its own story to tell, and so often we don't know the whole story...)

CopperKettle

nods

Anonymous

I'm a big fan of just reading a lot :-)

Anonymous

11:00

I don't know how people do stuff like learning words from lists.

CopperKettle

@snailboat Haven't you memorised lists of words? I still have some copy books.

Damkerng T.

What is word? The word word can mean either word or words. Isn't that a little amusing?

CopperKettle

And I threw away a whole box of old copy-books used for memorisation.

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Well, I have, but I don't like it.

CopperKettle

I still write some new words and expressions into the copy book. The latest are aphid, houseparent, ambit, Pennies on the dollar.. etc

Anonymous

11:03

I always feel like things I've learned in context are things I've learned much better :-)

CopperKettle

I see (0:

Anonymous

Although I love dictionaries, and I have learned words just flipping through them for fun.

Anonymous

And I like it when people share words! :-)

Anonymous

My study buddies and I bounce words and such back and forth fairly often.

Damkerng T.

My word of yesterday: preferment

Anonymous

11:05

Is that a legal term?

CopperKettle

Pre-ferment

A pre-ferment is a fermentation starter used in bread making, and is referred to as an indirect method. It may also be called mother dough. A pre-ferment and a longer fermentation in the bread-making process have several benefits: there is more time for yeast, enzyme and, if sourdough, bacterial actions on the starch and proteins in the dough; this in turn improves the keeping time of the baked bread, and it creates greater complexities of flavor. Though pre-ferments have declined in popularity as direct additions of yeast in bread recipes have streamlined the process on a commercial level, pre...

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure. It's from a quote in a question.

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Wow, that's totally not how I parsed it!

Damkerng T.

> He suppressed all his letters of recommendation, which he justly concluded would subject him to a tedious course of attendance upon the great, and lay him under the necessity of soliciting preferment in the army, than which nothing was farther from his inclination;

CopperKettle

@DamkerngT. Soliciting fermentation starter in the army? Good luck. (0:

Anonymous

11:07

I read it as [prefer]ment, not pre[ferment].

CopperKettle

" advancement or promotion in dignity, office, or station"

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. What century is that from?

Damkerng T.

the 19th century, I think it's 18-- something.

Possibly 182x.

Anonymous

First published in 1753

Damkerng T.

books.google.com/…

1821.

Anonymous

11:08

→ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Ferdinand_Count_Fathom

Damkerng T.

Oh! I missed the first published date!

Anonymous

The author was born about 300 years ago.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. It's a pretty interesting sentence!

Damkerng T.

Indeed!

Anonymous

Well, part of a sentence.

Damkerng T.

11:13

The order of words, though understandable, is obviously different from modern English!

(I think it sounds a little like legalese.)

Anonymous

I like the use of than.

Anonymous

What was the question about?

Damkerng T.

I wrote an answer to unpied-pipe it!

Exactly about the than which part!

0

Q: Why does 'than which' seem wrong when it precedes the subordinate clause?

[Source:] The clause in the question should become obvious if we rewrite it as two clauses: God is something than which nothing greater can be thought = [ God is something ] + [ Nothing greater than (that thing) can be thought ] Question 1. Does the above contain a missing step (4 bel...

relative-clauses syntax

Anonymous

Erm.

Anonymous

I think I'll pass on that one :-)

Damkerng T.

11:18

I think there must be some better explanations. :-)

In any case, God is something than which nothing greater can be thought is from the 12th century.

I wonder if it sounds more like something in another language than in English.

Anonymous

That sentence isn't from the 12th century!

Damkerng T.

Eh?

Anonymous

It might be translated from something from the 12th century :-)

Damkerng T.

A-ha! Huh?

But the writer was an Englishman. (A priest or a monk, I think.)

Anonymous

Writing in Latin, perhaps?

Damkerng T.

11:20

That's what I'm not sure.

Anonymous

If it were in 12th century English, it'd need to be translated into Modern English for us to understand it.

Damkerng T.

I think it's a fixed phrase (because someone important in the history wrote it).

Anonymous

> Forrþrihht anan se time comm
> 　þatt ure Drihhtin wollde
> ben borenn i þiss middellærd
> 　forr all mannkinne nede
> he chæs himm sone kinnessmenn
> 　all swillke summ he wollde
> and whær he wollde borenn ben
> 　he chæs all att hiss wille.

Damkerng T.

Ugh! It could be even before that!

Anonymous

Here's some 12th century English.

Anonymous

11:22

My guess is you can see the resemblance to Modern English but can't actually understand it.

Damkerng T.

Interesting. I thought the unwound structure would ease the understanding.

So he wrote the original in Early Middle English, perhaps.

Anonymous

Latin.

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

jstor.org/stable/2182266?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Anonymous

Proslogion

The Proslogion (Latin Proslogium; English translation, Discourse on the Existence of God), written in 1077–1078, was written as a prayer, or meditation, by the medieval cleric Anselm which serves to reflect on the attributes of God and endeavours to explain how God can have qualities which often seem contradictory. In the course of this meditation, the first known formulation of the ontological argument for the existence of God was set out. == Faith seeking understanding == His original title for the discourse, in fact, was Faith Seeking Understanding. The Proslogion is the source for Anselm's...

Anonymous

11:26

At some point much more recently, it was translated into Modern English, it seems.

Damkerng T.

I wonder who first translated it into English, and more interestingly, when.

nods

Anonymous

Must have been the last few hundred years at the earliest, at least for the relevant version.

Anonymous

I don't know who first translated it into English.

Anonymous

logicmuseum.com/authors/anselm/proslogion/…

Anonymous

> Et quidem credimus te esse aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit.

Anonymous

11:28

> And indeed, we believe that thou art a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.

Anonymous

But it could've been a long time ago, for all I know.

Anonymous

I don't really have a good working knowledge of the interplay between Latin and English in that period.

Anonymous

For all I know, it was regularly discussed in English at the time it was written :-)

Damkerng T.

I think maybe the string "than which nothing greater" on Google Books will return the same sentence. :-)

Anonymous

Maybe so!

Anonymous

11:33

books.google.com/ngrams/…

Anonymous

The translation with that string is modern, anyway.

Anonymous

I think that it's probably been expressed in all sorts of similar ways over the centuries.

Damkerng T.

Quite likely!

Anonymous

Like, not that exact sentence.

Damkerng T.

Ah, Google Books can't bring us back further than 1800!

Anonymous

11:36

I was just looking at Google Books results from the 1600s.

Damkerng T.

Oh! I only found one in 1824.

Anonymous

But they didn't contain that exact string.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

I should turn on browser history. I already closed that tab!

Anonymous

And now it's gone forever.

Damkerng T.

11:38

sad :D

Perhaps it was translated by Google Translate. :P

Hmm... it looks like quo can be used as a relative pronoun in Latin.

Damkerng T.

11:55

Hmm... interesting...

I don't know when stomach ache is countable!

1

Q: Phone or phones

I have some difficulties when I want to talk with a group of people in using nouns. Should I use all nouns in plural form? For example, when I am talking to a group of students and want to teach them how to answer the phone when they are at their homes which one is correct to say "When you...

nouns grammatical-number

My gut says, it should be uncountable in the example sentence: Do you have stomach ache?

CopperKettle

12:15

A nice book from 1731

"No Hero looks so fierce in Fight,
As does the Man who strains to sh-te."

(0:

Damkerng T.

Hmm... the website's domain name is interesting!

Thanks for the sharing!

2

Q: Meaning of "deliver the report"

I want to say that someone had prepared the report and ,afterwards, spoke at the discussion based on their report. X spoke and delivered their report at the discussion. Is it correct usage of this phrase?

meaning meaning-in-context phrase-usage

I think it'd come out awkwardly whichever way.

Damkerng T.

12:35

0

Q: Non deictic past or present

1) If she beats him he'll claim she cheated. [non-deictic past] 2) If you eat any more you'll say you don't want any tea. [non deictic present].... in these sentences how can we say that these are in non-deictic past or present ?

tense

The examples are straight from CGEL. So, they don't understand CGEL, I suppose.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Do you have a stomachache?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Ah, countable?

Anonymous

I had two stomachaches last week.

Anonymous

I should have put those sentences in italics :-)

Anonymous

I do think it's usually count.

Damkerng T.

12:39

These aches give me a headache. :P

A quick question.

Do you think a native speaker said this: Stop making issues where they already are resting.

Anonymous

Well, if I had to guess, I'd say no...

Anonymous

It sounds kind of like word salad.

Damkerng T.

nods -- I guessed the same.

(which is why I don't want to answer this question: ell.stackexchange.com/q/70193/3281)

Perhaps VB had the same feeling.

(To me, the issues are resting is just weird.)

Anonymous

Ooh, here's a fancy word: borborygmi

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yeah, I think it must mean something like "when things are already settled"

Damkerng T.

12:46

@snailboat Eew! How should I pronounce it!?

/ˌbôrbəˈriɡmi/

Anonymous

/ˌbɔrbəˈrɪɡmaɪ/

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. That's not IPA!

jimsug

did someone mention pale ale?

Is it APA?

Damkerng T.

APA as in a style guide?

Anonymous

Snails on sailing whales' tails like pale kale

StoneyB

12:53

@DamkerngT. Getting a lot of questions about the CGEL tense/time model; looks like I need to rework the tense tag-wiki to incorporate that.

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure, but all of them may be the same user.

Damkerng T.

13:08

0

A: "... in Introduction" vs "... in the introduction"

If you are working on thesis or any sort of academic work, you are very likely to have 'Index' that lists different chapters with their numbers, name and page numbers. This is common. Now, when you want to name the Chapter 1 as Introduction, I think in most of the books, it comes without any art...

Answer smell alert!

CopperKettle

13:46

This looks like an ungrammatical statement to me:

"If our service has been in any way unsatisfactory, we should be obliged if you would inform us. "

Shouldn't it be

"If our service has been in any way unsatisfactory, we would be obliged if you (could) inform us. "

However, a similar construction is quoted in a Russian-written textbook of English:

books.google.ru/…

Damkerng T.

@CopperKettle I think should may work because it sounds like a contract (which is somewhat legalese like).

I'm guessing that EU may recommend using shall in the place of should, even!

CopperKettle

@DamkerngT. Really? Interesting.

Fantasier

I think should works. It makes the statement sound much more formal than would.

Damkerng T.

But I think the last part would be if you inform us.

Fantasier

Not sure about the rest of the sentence, though. :-)

Damkerng T.

13:50

Oh, we have 4 featured questions now!

CopperKettle

"But I should be obliged if you would drop my title now." (from Conan Doyle)

Damkerng T.

Hypothetical use of shall, I think.

CopperKettle

so it must be grammatical, although I need to read up on why exactly..

BBL

Damkerng T.

Real: But I shall be obliged if you drop my title now.

Hypothetical: But I should be obliged if you would drop my title now.

When did Conan Doyle write it?

Ahh... 1891.

A Tinglish a Day: Tomorrow help bring her go look that look this buy rice buy thing, and don't forget to back home quick quick.

:P

Fantasier

พรุ่งนี้ช่วยพาเธอไปดูนั่นดูนี่ซื้อข้าวซื้อของ แล้วอย่าลืมกลับบ้านเร็ว ๆ ?

Damkerng T.

14:03

Yes!

Communication success!

^Try to read "Communication success!" the way a Japanese MC in a TV show would say

Fantasier

Not only did the communication succeed, it was perfectly (or almost, anyway) translated back into L1!

How amazing is that!

Damkerng T.

Indeed!

0

Q: Hurry up!The programme will start/is about to start

Hurry up!The programme will start/is about to start. My Approach: Here also I think both can be used in reference that the programme will start in future and they will miss Or The programme is about to start indicating very recent action. But the Ans given (is about to start) Am I right i...

present-tense future-tense

Hmm... I think fixing the basics would be better than using a Q&A site.

Judging from the approaches in several questions they posted, it's obvious that they don't get the basic ideas.

agent5566

15:20

Hi folks

Damkerng T.

Hi!

agent5566

Present Perfect Continious is really cofusing me :(

Damkerng T.

Ahh... maybe the other room is better. See you in the other room! chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/22937/ells-cabin

agent5566

i've got it!

Damkerng T.

15:51

List of selfie-related injuries and deaths

This is a list of serious injuries and deaths that occurred during, or in immediate connection with, the taking of a selfie. The Telegraph notes that, in the year 2015, more people have been killed taking selfies than by shark attacks. == 2014Edit == === MarchEdit === A 21-year-old Spanish man died from electrocution after climbing on top of a train to take a selfie with friends and touching a wire that (contrary to the assumptions of the group) turned out to be live. One of the friends was taken to hospital and reported to subsequently be "in serious condition." === AprilEdit === A 1...

People, be careful when taking selfies!

Damkerng T.

16:02

> Telegraph notes that, in the year 2015, more people have been killed taking selfies than by shark attacks.

Sharks are safer than phones. :P

Fantasier

Well, sharks are safer than most of possibly dangerous things.

Damkerng T.

I wouldn't go too near to sharks anyway. :D

Damkerng T.

18:09

0

Q: "Would have thought" in context

The following snippets are taken from Google Books: 1.1 Lindsay Roy: I would have thought the status quo is the position that they retain. Is that not a reasonable assumption? Professor Scott: I do not think so, but you are welcome to hold it. I do not hold it. 1.2 Chair...

tense modal-verbs conditional-constructions tense-agreement

Note to self: Besides some learners being stuck in a false belief that TMA dictates the reality, some learners are also getting stuck in the so-called sequence of tenses.

StoneyB

21:39

@DamkerngT. Exactly. At that time it was customary in "educated" British speech to use shall rather than will (and should rather than would) in the first person. I am at a loss to account for this bizarre prescription, but it was very widely observed.

Damkerng T.

I wonder how many of BrE speakers still use shall and should that way. I guess there are still some.

Anonymous

22:03

When I was a child, I was taught that that was the difference between shall and will. So were other children, but it didn't seem to have much effect on any of us :-)

Anonymous

You can try to teach children to use language incorrectly, but it's difficult to overcome the constant influences from their environment. They're sponges, and they absorb everything around them!

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I think that's why pronouncing /r/ as /l/ is very hard to cure among Thai younger generations.

I remember that it happened before my generation. It got worse in mine. It became even worse in later generations. :-)

Anonymous

A few centuries ago, British English was predominantly rhotic.

Damkerng T.

Because (almost) everyone does that, except for the teachers, so why would any kid fix their pronunciation? :D

Anonymous

But in London, a lot of folks didn't pronounce their /r/s, at least in certain phonetic contexts, and there was no "curing" that.

Anonymous

22:09

And it spread across Britain!

Anonymous

These days, most BrE is non-rhotic.

Damkerng T.

Because everyone does the same! :D

Anonymous

My favorite example of English spelling is knight. I use it over and over again.

Anonymous

Centuries ago, we pronounced the ‹k› and ‹gh› in knight.

Anonymous

These days, we don't. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Anonymous

22:11

Pronunciation just changes over time :-)

Damkerng T.

Hmm... what is <gh> supposed to sound like?

Anonymous

Oh, that's a good question!

Anonymous

I think it was a voiceless velar fricative.

Damkerng T.

I'm sure it must sound sorta like a funny "k" to me. :-)

Anonymous

Or a voiceless fricative of some sort.

Anonymous

22:15

You'll note that we still pronounce ‹gh› in some words like tough, where it now represents [f]

Anonymous

But I think it was originally [x]

StoneyB

@snailboat Ayup. Still is in German: Knecht (servant, 'man')

Anonymous

Ah, thanks! I'm glad someone here knows stuff about Germanic languages :-)

StoneyB

And the OE spelling was cniht

Damkerng T.

Hmm... the spelling "ch" makes me think of German ich.

Anonymous

22:19

I love reading about the history of English, but I only know a little bit.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... maybe that was why they laughed every time when I tried to pronounce Offenbach. (in a friendly manner, btw. :-)

StoneyB

@DamkerngT. Same sound, but a palatal allophone. Some dialects pronounce it /iʃ/.

Austrians just say /i/.

Bach is way way back. Or bach.

Rache is almost uvular, which is very impressive with a word that means "revenge"!

Anonymous

We have [ç] in English, here and there.

Anonymous

When a word has the phonemic sequence /hj/, as in huge, one possible phonetic realization is [ç].

StoneyB

And we have /x/ on the bonnie bonie banks of Loch Lomond.

Damkerng T.

22:25

Rache sounds like it's a two-syllable word. (I had Google pronounce it for me.)

Loch Ness too?

StoneyB

It is. In stage German it's /ʀɑ:::xɛ/ !

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. There's a prestige pronunciation in Japanese, using [ŋ] as word-internal allophone of /g/, and it's considered "beautiful Japanese" to use [ŋ] when possible. But although some speakers do have this allophone naturally, it's been vanishing over the last century, and now if you hear it, there's a good chance you're hearing someone on television who's been trained to produce it! A hundred years from now, it'll likely be gone.

StoneyB

@DamkerngT. Everywhere you loch.

3

Anonymous

@StoneyB That's a lot of /:/!

Damkerng T.

Oh, loch is a word, too!

(I though it was just a name.)

Anonymous

22:29

Sometimes prestigious pronunciations disappear.

StoneyB

corrected .. ɑ::

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I have a feeling that Thai /r/ will go after Japanese [ŋ] soon.

Oh, but!

Thai /r/ started to appear in places where it shouldn't about 10 years ago, because of the Internet!

StoneyB

I think just about the only people who still use a tip-flap ‹r› in English are actors.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Darn Intenert!

Damkerng T.

Some websites censored some words, and people started to work around it by adding /r/ in the middle of these words. :D

Anonymous

22:34

Oh! Because the r is silent, so adding it doesn't change the pronunciation of the word, but gets past the filter? :-)

Damkerng T.

Come to think of it, the workaround works exactly the same way as frak!

@snailboat I'm not sure about the reason, but once it started, it became widespread.

Anonymous

Oh! Although people do say frak sometimes.

Damkerng T.

Yes, and people started to say these words with the "r" in real speech too!

Anonymous

I think it might have been a species of wrongswear on some TV show or another.

Anonymous

Wrongswears divide and multiply!

Damkerng T.

22:36

Hehe!

StoneyB

Freakin started showing up as a euphemism in the 60s

Anonymous

→ minced oath on Wikipedia

Damkerng T.

Word of the Day: bowdlerization

StoneyB

As I remember it, my very first answer on SE was about a minced oath

Anonymous

Yay!

StoneyB

22:50

@DamkerngT. No-Fear Shakespeare for a generation with very different anxieties.

Damkerng T.

It could be interesting to know what words were changed.

StoneyB

"Out, crimson spot" for "Out, out damn'd spot"

Anonymous

It wasn't that long ago that TV stations still censored taboo vocabulary in movies by dubbing over it.

Anonymous

I don't know if there's still a list of words that are Not Allowed.

Anonymous

I wonder how many people still watch over-the-air broadcast TV.

StoneyB

22:59

When I watch TV at all, I do. But it's only election returns and maybe two baseball games a year.

Transcript for