English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2018-11-29

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1:51 AM

@RegDwigнt What's The Cure for "not available in your country"?

2:31 AM

BTW, I just learned that Stravinsky trained as a lawyer before becoming a composer.

5 hours later…

7:36 AM

Hi Guys

A query:
Given a sentence : BP corporation drilled deep sea, destroying coral reefs
What's the intended meaning you can infer from this sentence:
1 -> After destroying the coral reefs, BP did drilling.
2 -> Coral reefs were destroyed as a result of BP drilling (unintentional action)

Which one do you think is correct?
(1) or (2)

?

2 hours later…

10:06 AM

> A happy life means prudent compromise;
The tare runs through the farmer's garnered sheaves;
But though the gleaner's apron holds pure wheat,
We count her poorer. Tare with wheat, we cry,
And good with drawbacks.

Word of the day: tare

10:48 AM

@Robusto try this one on for size:

The Black Crowes - Remedy

Matt E. Эллен

11:41 AM

@cbinder 2

12:38 PM

happy but beats 2 and 4 are swapped [CC]

YMCA But Every Other Beat Is Missing (Why, EA?)

These are weirdly fascinating.

Toto - Africa (Vocals 1 Step Out of Key & Off Beat)

Wait for the fucking chorus.

1 hour later…

2:04 PM

Letters never get pronounced. It's sounds that get written down. But the spelling encodes way more than just pronunciation. Such as etymology, like in this case. Do you really want access the verb and access the noun to be spelled completely differently? Why? To what end? — RegDwigнt ♦ 4 mins ago

@RegDwigнt Huh?

Also, naturally spelling reform efforts try to make spelling more consistent to make learning how to spell and read easier. However, Samuel Johnson correctly predicted that these efforts to align pronunciation and speech are doomed to failure, much to many an American's consternation.

@CowperKettle I think everyone here knows that one. ^_^

2:48 PM

@Tonepoet Huh what?

Are you whimsically pointing out to me how this one dictionary is hilariously wrong, or have you genuinely never heard the English language being spoken?

At any rate, you are welcome to pick literally any other pair of words if that somehow helps you accept my rather trite and obvious point.

@Robusto how tare you.

@RegDwigнt If those are the only two options, then my thoughts are closer to the latter.

BTW, I do not believe that trying to make learning easier is somehow a goal worth striving for.

If your child is too stupid to learn maths, you don't change the rules of maths to be easier on your child. You make your child be less stupid.

Same for orthography really.

Don't change the language to cater to the lowest common denominator. It already does, ferchrissakes, and very much by design.

@Tonepoet well just open a different dictionary, then. Or listen to a couple videos on YouTube. It's a common word that comes up often.

And at any rate which two words I pick is completely beside the point. Like it does not matter one bit. I don't have to pick any words to begin with. The point stands on its own.

@RegDwigнt Yes, yes. Some homoglyphs lack the same pronunciation. There's a reason I expressed my confusion in chat, rather than expressing the sentiment in the comments. XP

Well yes, but I don't even mean homoglyphs.

Like I remember making that same comment a million times before and I use different words each time. I remember using history and historian as an example.

Or really just the same word. You can't make your pronunciation of pen be reflected in its spelling.

Or marry or women or your own legal name for that matter. Any word really.

When you write things down, your primary concern is the meaning. Not the pronunciation.

If I wrote down that last sentence the way I personally pronounce it, nobody could possibly understand what the fuck I am on about.

3:18 PM

@RegDwigнt I think you underestimate the ability of A.O.L.-speak to be just recognizable enough to be a constant source of frustration. XP

3:50 PM

@Tonepoet I still don't know what 'XP' means. Nobody's eyes look like an X.

@Cerberus Do you have anything to say about 'phone' and 'Phoenician'. It's not likely they have connected etymologies (starting from Ancient Greek and from there looking back), but I'm wondering about vowels changes in Ancient Greek, if maybe those could have been cognate (I think all the consonants are the same).

4:06 PM

@Tonepoet [Spelling reform in general is not a doomed enterprise. ](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_reform). Hanzi reform in PRC was a great success. Spanish was reformed greatly in between the periods of Johnson and Webster (turn of the century 17-1800s). Of course, the extremely minor reform measures in the past twenty years in France and Germany have been slow to catch on. But there's progress.

All that said, as much as the entire world recognizes the great need for it, I also don't expect spelling reform to be successful for English.

But 'Americans consternation'? Does nobody else notice a problem with English spelling and want reform?

@RegDwigнt That is extremely wrong. The easier you make it for people to learn, the more time they have to learn the next thing. Yes, there's something to be said for learning how to try really hard, but there will always be the frontier of difficult to access knowledge to work at. Getting people closer to that faster is a good thing.

4:53 PM

@Mitch I think the point still stands. Efforts to make spelling reflect pronunciation are doomed, precisely because people speaking a common language often pronounce the same word differently. That's why a pronunciation-based system like IPA would never serve. For example, in IPA a person from Connecticut pronounces as pɛn what someone from backwoods Alabama pronounces as pɪn. The simple current spelling, pen, is seen by both and translated into their respective accents seamlessly.

5:30 PM

@Robusto There's spelling reform and there's spelling reform. 'silent e' is silent in all the varieties. 'gh' is either silent or pronounced closely everywhere. No one is suggesting incorporating the bath-trap split into spelling, or having 'laboratory' respelled one way in the US and another in the UK (luborutoaree' vs 'labratree'). Just things like 'tow' and 'how should be spelled differently and 'laugh' and 'carafe' more closely.

But I agree that IPA is too radical a change... for now. The problem is that every variety of English pronunciation is far from the spelling. Fix the shit problem first, then worry about the smell later.

On Google Street View in Germany

@RegDwigнt ^^^

@Mitch Yes, and I think we have to admit at some point that spelling in English is an abstraction, and a leaky one. But it's kinda like TCP/IP: it just sorta kinda works, if you know what it does and even if you don't. But it will never win any "elegant code" prizes.

1 hour later…

6:54 PM

@Mitch Most of the notable spelling reform efforts since Johnson seem to have been American in origin.

The Brits. kind of scoff at the idea and think of the reformed spellings of Webster and his ilk as Americanisms.

Now that isn't to say that they haven't adopted some reformed spellings, such as tacking the k out of ick, as Webster suggested but they seem more resistant to it.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, potentially bad ns for domain in body, potentially bad ns for domain in title (98): herowcgolf.de/heroworldchallenge/ by golfpga6v on english.SE

7:10 PM

@Mitch There are indeed cases of o and oi as allophones.

But, if there is any conexion, it is between Phoenician and phonos "murder", not phône "voice". Note that the latter is written with an omega, which makes any relation to the former exceedingly unlikely.

conexion???

@Robusto As the proper formation should be!

@Cerberus With but a single n?

Yes.

Well, maybe in Dutch. Not in English.

7:15 PM

In Dutch it is the same as in English.

And the double n is possible in Latin, but it isn't standard.

archimedes.fas.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/…

You will notice that none of the quotations have double n.

@Cerberus Except we're talking about English, not Latin. QED

7:34 PM

It isn't a proper formation according to the rules which English uses to adopt Latin words.

@Cerberus Too late for such niceties.

8:00 PM

0

A: Are "phonics" and "Phoenician" related?

Etymology is much, much more complicated than most people think! Just because words sound similar, that doesn't mean they are related. In this case, chances are negligible that they should be. Greek φωνή "voice" is spelled with an omega, whereas φοῖνιξ "Phoenician" is spelled with an omicron and...

Matt E. Эллен

8:52 PM

@Cerberus Finix! So the Phoenicians will rise from their ashes?

@MattE.Эллен The origin of the bird is uncertain.

Might be from Phoenician.

Matt E. Эллен

:D

9:48 PM

@Cerberus thank you

It is very frustrating to get answers from people who don't know anything. Very high rep people.

10:48 PM

@Mitch I think that one answer was generally correct, despite its various errors.

@Mitch I see your point, but how about this. The more we force people to learn complex things right away, the more likely they are to be skilled at and willing to learn complex things in the future.

And also, you are giving people way, way too much credit. We've already made it extremely easy for people to learn basic math, or basic music theory, or the difference between there and their. And yet most people just don't give a fuck how easy it is. They just don't want to learn, period.

@RegDwigнt There never going to learn their, so they're.

Ducks a tomato

The learning process itself should be made as easy as possible. But the actual thing you are learning should not be dumbed down. It is very hard to understand the relativity theory. It is very hard to learn to play the violin. So what. The harder something is, the more satistying it is to get there.

You don't get a sense of achievement just for watching the Teletubbies all day.

Even though watching the Teletubbies all day is extremely easy.

And for the record, the English spelling is fucking trivial. People only complain about it because that's the only thing they know. The only thing they can possibly complain about. If everybody wrote in ten different languages, they'd fucking laugh English out of town for how ridiculously easy its orthography is.

@Robusto right. I forgot all about that Wi-Fi bullshit.

Was quite a thing back in the day.

But the article pretty much ends there. I'm curious in what happened after that. Why is Street View now just gone altogether.

11:05 PM

@RegDwigнt Easy, but quite arbitrary.

Unreformed.

Well it's not really arbitrary. Every word has a history. Every spelling exists for a reason.

It might be a bullshit reason, but it's there.

Besides, who cares.

Yes.

You have to learn the difference between cat and car. So why not learn the difference between their and there while you're at it. These words differ much more than cat and car!

Arbitrary from the perspective of a ten-year-old child.

I was a ten-year-old child. Ten-year-old children don't really care what they have to learn. They just go to school and learn.

11:08 PM

The spellings of cat and car would be much easier to guess for the child based on pronunciation and a couple of rules.

I'm not pretending my example is stellar, so don't get hung up on it.-

Use pen and pin if you must. Or Mary and merry.

gets hung up on your example

alas, dog is hung up

Languages that have reformed their spelling more recently generally have spelling that's easier to praedict based on pronunciation.

Germany reformed its spelling recently. Nobody in Germany can spell anymore.

11:10 PM

@Cerberus Of course. But that is driving a stake into a moving target.

at least I'm not hanged

Not just the greengrocers, now even fucking professors cannot spell.

@RegDwigнt Yes, we have recurring reforms that don't always make it better. But it's still easier than in English.

Just as soon as you reform the spelling to be more like words sound, people start pronouncing things differently.

You can go to Spiegel Online right now and find any number of mistakes in an article picked at random.

And it's fucking Der Spiegel, you know.

11:11 PM

Sure.

Same for the NRC.

Wait, somone is fucking Der Spiegel?

I knew you would say that.

I knew you would know.

But, for children, I bet German and Dutch spelling is easier.

@Robusto yeah by the time politicians get anything done, they should be doing the opposite thing.

11:12 PM

German spelling is mostly trivial and easy, except for Messerschmitt.

But I'll grant you that English spelling is still not terribly difficult for adults, who have invested the time to learn spelling in their childhood.

@Cerberus for children, it's easier to say "twenty-four" than "four-and-twenty". And yet German children are perfectly fine.

It's not about speech.

And how about four-twenty-ten-nine?

That's what they say in French.

How can you possibly do math with that? Think of the children!

I know French.

But that's not about spelling.

11:13 PM

@RegDwigнt Well, that's a good point. These same politicians wanted to get Microsoft declared a monopoly, and by the time things were over with they were forcing MS to fuck up Internet Explorer even beyond the dogshit awful level it was already at.

Yeah, I have big problems with quatre-vingt myself.

French has weird spelling rules, but, once a child knows them, it is at least fairly easy to pronounce an unknown word correctly.

@Cerberus it's about the children though.

I am not talking about the spelling.

Kill them all!

I am specifically talking about the point that you raised.

You don'T want me to talk about it, don't raise it.

If I can't raise it, how will I be hung?

11:15 PM

@Cerberus exactly.

English and the Germanic languages have embedded in their number systems a much better system than decimal. The number systems were originally duodecimal.

Well it's embedded in PIE, really.

Romance languages have that too.

So why go to fucking decimal then? It's ridiculous and, may I add, ridiculous.

In speech, we've been using mainly decimal for all of history.

I blame the French revolution.

11:16 PM

If we'd all grown up using a 12-based system, everything would make sense now.

@RegDwigнt And Napoleon.

@Cerberus I blame the French revolution for all of history.

And I suspect it goes far back into praehistory.

@Robusto I blame the French revolution for Napoleon.

@Cerberus Really? Praehistory? You couldn't come up with an appropriate ligature? That's like going outside in the streets wearing sweatpants, I hope you realize.

Homer may count in talents and drachmae, but the words he used for the numbers are decimal.

11:17 PM

@Robusto it's curious how music doesn't think in either ten or twelve but in eight really.

Well, Western music, of course.

@Robusto I just don't happen to have those readily available.

Just as I normally spell Greek in Latin letters...

@Cerberus Is that your excuse for the sweatpants, too? That your other pants are "not readily available"?

Yes.

makes notes

We should simplify the spelling of sweatpants. Think of the children!

11:19 PM

@RegDwigнt Except for your 3/4 waltzes, schmaltz-boy.

@Robusto ah no, I'm talking about phrases.

Except that I would only wear 'sweatpants' outside if I were running or something.

By Jove, what an ugly word!

I am not talking about metre or the number of notes.

Not to be confused with sweetpants, which no one here has.

But the number of measures.

11:20 PM

What measure are your twisted panties?

Waltzes first and foremost like to stick to multiples of eight.

Well, of course. Semicadence and cadence.

Right on.

By the way, I've ordered the parts for my new computer, first time in ten years. And I will be using my friend's old panty-hose for dust filters!

So why are these not six, or five? Why four.

It's neither decimal nor duodecimal.

11:22 PM

Related to physical limits?

You can't take more than four steps in a note while dancing?

I dunno. More like rhymes. Poetry.

@RegDwigнt Well, actually a lot of songs are five, although the fifth lasts as long as the previous four. Look at blues, for example.

You get a pair, then a pair of pairs, then a pair of a pair of pairs.

Hmm.

Many songs naturally mimic common verse.

11:23 PM

@Robusto again, I'm not talking about harmony. Just the number of measures. Blues is as bound to eight as waltzes are.

@Robusto yeah that's what I'm thinking.

There's something innately satisfying about multiples of two.

There's a symmetry to it of sorts.

@RegDwigнt And I'm talking more about periods and statements (no jokes, please). The first four measures of a blues line comprise four beats, and the fifth beat endures for the next four beats.

One Two Three Four Five / / /

That is a single statement in blues.

That's frickin' iambic pentameter as well, baby.

Oh that.

Well yes.

I will not be afraid of death or bane
Till Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane

kore wa dare da

This is who?

11:26 PM

I no know no Till.

Do you know an Eulenspiegel?

No, they can't spell.

@Cerberus My doggy monitor keeps chirping, telling me you have been strangely quiet for a number of lines.

BTW, wtf is an Eulenspiegel? Is that even a thing?

Also for the record there's a Till Schweiger whom even you know because he played in Inglourious Basterds.

Tilman Valentin "Til" Schweiger (German pronunciation: [ˈtɪlman ˈvaləntiːn ˈʃvaɪɡɐ]; born 19 December 1963) is a German actor, voice actor, film director, film producer, and film editor. He runs his own production company, Barefoot Films, in Berlin. == Early life == Schweiger was born in Freiburg, West Germany, to two teachers. He grew up in Heuchelheim near Giessen in Hesse, where he went to school. Later he took acting lessons at Der Keller in Cologne and graduated in 1989. == Career == Schweiger's debut as a producer and (uncredited) director came in 1997 with Knockin' on Heaven's Door. He...

Yours till the soil.

11:28 PM

Soil death do us part.

Hmm, survey says "Til"—not Till.

What did I just say about Germans and ability to spell?

And by the way, everything you ever knew about time expressions is probably wrong.

Time and tide waits for no woman.

Russians don't get to complain about other languages, what with your tvyordyznaks, yerihs, and myakyznaks.

This Russian woman, a co-worker, tried to demonstrate the difference between L sound and "soft" L sound. Epic fail.

11:30 PM

Just take the word "salt" in German and Dutch. Easy.

Or "milk".

Kind of a swallowed L then?

German is always soft. Dutch is always hard.

I don't hear a difference. I really don't.

@Robusto In Dutch, we say Uilenspiegel.

You could have larks and hummingbirds softening their Ls all over the Forest of Arden and I would be oblivious.

@Cerberus An owl-mirror there too?

11:32 PM

Yes.

See, this is what I want to know. Where can I get an owl mirror?

The "'L" in "milk" is hard. Dark. Swallowed, yes, if you will. The "L" in "milch" is light. Tongue much further in the front.

L is actually the easiest sound to demonstrate that on, because of that difference in Germanic languages to this day.

Tijl Uilenspiegel

Tijl Uilenspiegel is een personage uit onder meer de Nederlands-Duitse folklore. Volgens de sage was Uilenspiegel een deugniet die vrij als een vogel in de veertiende eeuw door de Nederlanden en Duitsland (in het Duits bekend als Till Eulenspiegel) trok en iedereen voor de gek hield met zijn streken. De sage wil voorts dat hij in 1350 in het Duitse Mölln is gestorven. Hier kan zelfs een graf worden bezocht dat wordt toegeschreven aan Tijl. De roman waarin Charles De Coster hem in 1867 herschiep, La légende et les aventures héroiques, joyeuses et glorieuses d'Ulenspiegel et de Lamme Goedzak au pays...

She would struggle much more to demonstrate the difference between the soft and hard M, or S, or F.

Tom Brokaw speech impediment?

11:33 PM

@RegDwigнt I would call the L in Milch fat.

You would call the kettle black.

And didn't you quote this source that called the L in Slavic and Portuguese dark?

The Youtube video.

Yes, the unpalatalized one. Precisely right.

And then there's the palatalized one which is the exact opposite.

@Robusto think of all those stupid names like Tanya and Katya and Tonya and Sonya. This is how you approximate the soft N in English. Because you don't have it. In the original name, there is no "y". It's just Tana, Kata, Tona, Sona, but the N is palatalized.

Why I don't speak Russian, btw. Too much fucking trouble.

Yeah I don't speak Katakana for much the same reason.

11:37 PM

See, in Japanese there are no pronunciation problems. None. Anybody can prounce Japanese.

But Japanese can't pronounce anything else, curiously.

They are in a pronunciation tide pool, where they live or die.

Of course that's an exaggeration, but not by much.

BTW, this is a good place to prod @Cerberus about the pronunciation stuff again. Japanese does have a version of the written language that is entirely phonetic and entirely accurate within a decimal place or two, yet it hasn't supplanted their kanji at all. It's used alongside that.

Well it's entirely phonetic until you arrive at the su. Then all hell breaks loose.

Spelling reform in Japan...

Remove all Kanji

Done

42

Q: Does the quirky spelling in English actually make it easier to read?

I just finished reading the question asked by Bobnix, in which RegDwight referred to another question with an interesting answer by Kosmonaut. Kosmonaut refers to the great number of pictograms (Kanji or Hanzi) available in Japanese and Chinese, and mentions that the task of memorizing our weirdo...

orthography pronunciation-vs-spelling

See? Dumping the kanji just doesn't work for them.

Chinese spelling reform: remove all characters, use pinyin

Nov 11 '12 at 14:02, by Robusto

What makes it more complicated is that the su syllable usually has an unvoiced, or muted, vowel, but takes the same duration as other syllables. Beginning learners say desu as dess but that's not right. We pronounce sumo as soo-mo but Japanese pronounce it s'MO.

11:42 PM

@Robusto Is that the one also used for foreign words?

Feb 18 '11 at 20:13, by Robusto

The trick to saying the su syllable is to actually start to say it, but drop it just as the u begins to fill the mouth.

@Cerberus You're thinking of katakana.

@RegDwigнt Yes. This is all true.

But you can do that. It's not hard.

> I just finished reading the question asked by Bobnix, in which RegDwight referred to another question with an interesting answer by Kosmonaut.

@Robusto Dump the Kanji

This reminds me of how Debussy poked fun at Wagner by saying that Wagner didn't write music, but rather phone books.

11:44 PM

Let that be my epitaph

@Cerberus But katakana and hiragana are pronounced the same. They just have different characters. Otherwise they are identical, one-for-one syllabaries.

@RegDwigнt Burn

@Robusto Well they basically originate from the same place really. Most the characters do anyway.

@Robusto Oh. Yeah. Burn hiragana to the ground

@Mitch Meaning you're going to fall on your sword for that? Can we watch?

And you can see resemblances between individual katakana and hiragana characters.

11:46 PM

@Robusto Well... uh... no. When I die by purely medical reasons hopefully far off into the future, I want it to be the last thing I get to repeat to everyone who stops by over and over and over.

Falling on swords is for unuseful character sets

like kanji

Oh...

So complicated!

@Robusto god for hiragana. it can pat itself on the back on its way to the hiragana shredder

Also, South Asia has gotta choose one character set. Every single language has its own alphabet, a morphed version of a morphed version of its neighbor all the way back to devanagari

just pick one

I'll do it for you.

Singhalese

lots of curlicues

cute

that's it. all the other characters sets into the dustbin of history.

I'm making business for sign makers. they should support my initiative.

But they're so cute.

Fun fact: Kanji also means feeling.

何度も同じメール
見ちゃってる　この感じ
Oh！Wow Wow Wow
会いたくなった

@RegDwigнt Was it important?

11:52 PM

Nothing ever is.

Today I got Stravinski's piano reduction of the Rite. Played the first three bars, then gave up.

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