Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3221 to 3225 (16 - 20 May 2016)
Random832:
--- Quote from: MrNumbers on 17 May 2016, 20:35 ---Regarding 'normal' and 'average' I'm actually a big fan of the usage of the words 'neurotypical' and 'neuroatypical'.
It sounds far more factual and far less judgemental than most alternatives.
--- End quote ---
I'm not sure how something that literally says "typical" is really less judgemental than "normal". What it does is medicalizes it, which helps some people be non-judgemental about things, but is it really good to be judgy about any difference you can't medicalize?
Calling something normal doesn't inherently entail a value judgement against things that are non-normal, and saying that it does feels like conceding the war to pretend you've won a battle.
Random832:
--- Quote from: Near Lurker on 19 May 2016, 02:54 ---Ä is pronounced like the English "A" (as opposed to the every-other-language "A")
--- End quote ---
English has lots of "A"s. There are two kinds of languages: those with five vowels*, and those with five dozen vowels. Those with only five tend to have the same five (more or less) because they're relatively evenly distributed in "vowel space". I assume that you mean "as in hat" and "as in father" respectively.
*some languages may only have three vowels
oddtail:
--- Quote from: Random832 on 19 May 2016, 07:07 ---
--- Quote from: Near Lurker on 19 May 2016, 02:54 ---Ä is pronounced like the English "A" (as opposed to the every-other-language "A")
--- End quote ---
English has lots of "A"s. (There are two kinds of languages: those with five vowels*, and those with five dozen vowels). I assume that you mean "as in hat" and "as in father" respectively.
*some languages may only have three vowels
--- End quote ---
Five dozen vowels is a "bit" of an exaggeration. English, a language with a notoriously large number of vowel phonemes, has about a dozen vowels and six to eight diphtongs, depending on dialect. Granted, there are thousands of languages in the world, but I am not aware of that many that have significantly more vowels than English and from what I remember about phonetics, there aren't that many *possible* vowel phonemes, and few languages use most of them. French, for instance, has up to 17 vowels according to Wikipedia, and it's not like the language has simple vowel phonology. Apparently, based on a quick research, the most vowel monopthongs in a European language is up to 32 for Danish (and Wikipedia states the number to be at 20), and no other European language goes to even 20. I'm not sure how it works globally, but I know there are a large number of African and Asian languages with a rather small number of vowels.
...unless you were using a deliberate hyperbole, in which case I withdraw my objection.
Gyrre:
--- Quote from: Near Lurker on 19 May 2016, 02:54 ---
--- Quote from: Gyrre on 19 May 2016, 00:43 ---I am very tired, but I'll try to explain it anyways. An umlaut changes the way the vowel is pronounced and changes how much stress/emphasis you put on it. Vowels in German (as with many other languages) only have one sound unless paired with another vowel in a diphthong or given some sort of accent mark (like an umlaut or that backwards apostrophy) . In this case, "Brun" doesn't have a stressed inflection because there's no umlaut.
--- End quote ---
In German, the umlaut doesn't reflect stress, but completely changes pronunciation. Ä is pronounced like the English "A" (as opposed to the every-other-language "A"), Ö is pronounced sort of like "er," and Ü... well... listen to the word "brüder" here.
--- End quote ---
Thank you for explaining it better. Like I said, I was very tired (still am, too).
Gyrre:
--- Quote from: Random832 on 19 May 2016, 07:04 ---
--- Quote from: MrNumbers on 17 May 2016, 20:35 ---Regarding 'normal' and 'average' I'm actually a big fan of the usage of the words 'neurotypical' and 'neuroatypical'.
It sounds far more factual and far less judgemental than most alternatives.
--- End quote ---
I'm not sure how something that literally says "typical" is really less judgemental than "normal". What it does is medicalizes it, which helps some people be non-judgemental about things, but is it really good to be judgy about any difference you can't medicalize?
Calling something normal doesn't inherently entail a value judgement against things that are non-normal, and saying that it does feels like conceding the war to pretend you've won a battle.
--- End quote ---
"Normal is a statistical anomaly."
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Oc9tKkH7WE
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