The Sphinx's Lair

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Jafe

02:01

"asl" is a question from someone trying to be friendly, in a chatroom circa 1999

3 hours later…

msh210

04:32

C4 hint: The last letter is Y.

Jafe

04:47

UR absorbed by HRY (both brief) for HURRY?

oAlt

ahh

msh210

@Jafe aye

Jafe

05:05

nice, wasn't expecting "they" to mean that

1 hour later…

Jafe

06:33

CCCC: Likelihood of sign in swinging? (4)

Bubbler

@Jafe ODDS = likelihood, and also an extraction indicator to clue "sign" from "swinging" as in S_I_G_N_

Jafe

yup!

Bubbler

nice

Jafe

thanks

Bubbler

07:16

CCCC: (heightened sound) Powerful theory (6)

2 hours later…

msh210

09:34

@Bubbler Can this possibly be STRING (a powerful theory: string theory), obtaining by heightening (and fronting and unrounding) the vowel in STRONG (sound)?

Jafe

alternatively "heightened sound" is the indicator and strong = powerful?

msh210

ah, that makes sense too

Jafe

speaking of vowels, does anyone actually pronounce all the vowels in this xkcd as /ə/? i keep trying to sound it out and it sounds extremely comical

Nov 23, 2022 at 2:37, by Jafe

hmm apparently merriam-webster uses ə for both the schwa and the "jump" vowel... e.g. jəmp

msh210

@Jafe I do — except the syllabic consonants (tunnEL, oniONS, obstructiON)

@Jafe … yeah, shouldn't it?

(Actually, I'm not sure those 3 are syllabic consonants. Maybe they're also schwa or ɨ or something.)

Jafe

09:50

interesting

no back vowel in words like "doug"?

msh210

@Jafe maybe when it's stressed, but certainly not in rapid speech

Jafe

to me the "doug" vowel sounds closer to finnish "a" and schwa closer to the finnish ö

msh210

that means nothing to me, I'm afraid…

Jafe

i see

(ʌ closer to my /ɑ/, ə closer to my /ø/)

i clearly have a lot to learn hehe

msh210

I've seen Doug and fun transcribed with ʌ but I really don't think I pronounce them that way (at least not normally)

Jafe

09:59

learning english is fun because you can be 30 years in and still be finding out new things about pronouncing a word like "jump"

another thing that took me way too long was finding out that english has a different /t/ than finnish (ours is dental)

a pakistani coworker pointed it out... apparently urdu has 2 different t sounds (it might be more?) and the finnish and english t's sound distinctly different to him

to this day i still hear no difference

oAlt

10:33

@Jafe not me. i pronounce the o's in obstruction, ton and onion as more rounded

and maybe a bit more to the back??

@Jafe I still remember my surprise many years ago when I heard how vastly different the American English accent was from the Philippine English one

And yeah it reminds me of how I'll never truly be a "native" English speaker... met an Australian guy a year ago and as he was talking to me I felt I couldn't tap into the conversation very well because we grew up in different ethnolinguistic spheres, even though we can speak the same language

Anyway, to satisfy curiosity, I'm not an expert but I think the main difference between the US and Phil accents is the consonants. The aspirated consonants in the US become unaspirated in ours, and the voiced ones become devoiced. (e.g. false ~ falls and ghee's ~ geese in two previous clues)

msh210

10:55

@Jafe of course my above self-report may be wrong… I'm no linguist

@oAlt do you pronounce the words bat and pat the same?

oAlt

Nope, the consonants differ

msh210

The first ones, b and p?

msh210

11:19

@Jafe my recording of the xkcd text (fwiw)

I'd be curious to hear yours. (plural)

Jafe

mine for comparison

oAlt

11:37

hopefully this link works

@msh210 ye

Jafe

cool

@oAlt fwiw i've had the exact same issue with indian guys at work, they speak fluent english but it's very different from what i'm used to so i have to listen really carefully

msh210

@Jafe Interesting. Thanks. To these very inexpert ears, most of your vowels sound like schwa, but some sound higher and further back, like maybe an unrounded ʊ or something

@oAlt it does; thanks. You do de-aspirate the t in "tunnel" (and maybe voice it, I can't tell). In fact, I think you voice the "st" in "obstruction", though I'm really not sure.

(I tried to speak fast in my recording. At the expense of clarity, I know, but in an effort to reduce conscious pronunciation.)

Jafe

makes sense

msh210

11:53

Oh, yeah, I also hear the devoicing of the s in "was", oAlt.

I love blathering on about a topic I know next to nothing about.

Jafe

here's mine if you told me to read all as schwa

it might be that my idea of "central" is actually way out in front

oAlt

@msh210 interesting

@Jafe also interesting

yeah i think the st may be a bit voiced; that might have been half-conscious

msh210

I'm always half-conscious

@Jafe maybe mine is far back… I think we should all go get our formants analyzed

oAlt

12:16

@msh210 :)

juicifer

12:40

I pronounce them all as either ə or ʌ but this also comes with the caveat that I grew up (and still live) about 20-30 minutes from where randall munroe currently lives and works

Jafe

in fact we have no guarantee that you're not, in fact, randall munroe

juicifer

this is true

@Jafe also, fwiw, this sounds pretty normal to me

Bubbler