[the politician] will work to expand and enhance access and opportunities for Americans to hunt, shoot, and protect their families
All chimneys in recent construction must be lined with an inflammable material.
Compliance is an integral part of safety, the partnership and our business
basics--the foundation of our business. We should be proud of our longstanding
commitment to compliance. One of our objectives in 1997 is to stengthen that
longstanding commitment to full compliance. As part of the implementation of
the new CES Policy, I am issuing our T&CS Compliance Plan.
The T&CS Compliance Plan demonstrates our commitment to compliance and the
methods and activities used to ensure compliance. It also outlines everyone's
responsibilities for ensuring our work is performed in compliance with our
commitments. Also, it identifies corrective actions that we must act upon to
develop, implement, and maintain compliance.
Please review the Plan and take the appropriate implementing actions. With
your help, we will fortify our Compliance Program to prevent, detect and
correct noncompliances with CES commitments.
For example, shouldn't "Fallout Shelter" mean a place to keep fallout out of the cold and rain?As a girl, I thought this about bus shelters. Why are they not called passenger shelters?
stingrays is an integral part of safety, the partnership and our business
basics--the foundation of our business. We should be proud of our longstanding
commitment to stingrays. One of our objectives in 1997 is to stengthen that
longstanding commitment to full stingrays. As part of the implementation of
the new CES Policy, I am issuing our T&CS stingrays Plan.
The T&CS stingrays Plan demonstrates our commitment to stingrays and the
methods and activities used to ensure stingrays. It also outlines everyone's
responsibilities for ensuring our work is performed in stingrays with our
commitments. Also, it identifies corrective actions that we must act upon to
develop, implement, and maintain stingrays.
Please review the Plan and take the appropriate implementing actions. With
your help, we will fortify our stingrays Program to prevent, detect and
correct nonstingrayss with CES commitments.
Barry went to bury the single berry.
Face-Stabbing is an integral part of safety, the partnership and our business
basics--the foundation of our business. We should be proud of our longstanding
commitment to face-stabbing. One of our objectives in 1997 is to stengthen that
longstanding commitment to full face-stabbing. As part of the implementation of
the new CES Policy, I am issuing our T&CS Face-stabbing Plan.
The T&CS Face-Stabbing Plan demonstrates our commitment to face-stabbing and the
methods and activities used to ensure face-stabbing. It also outlines everyone's
responsibilities for ensuring our work is performed in face-stabbing with our
commitments. Also, it identifies corrective actions that we must act upon to
develop, implement, and maintain face-stabbing.
Please review the Plan and take the appropriate implementing actions. With
your help, we will fortify our Face-Stabbing Program to prevent, detect and
correct non-face-stabbings with CES commitments.
Barry went to bury the single berry.
I'm intrigued - I pronounce all of those words quite differently.
I pronounce them the same. Is that midwestian? It would be interesting to hear them in their different pronunciations.Barry went to bury the single berry.
I'm intrigued - I pronounce all of those words quite differently.
How many sounds does "ough" represent for you?
<snip>
and I'm aware of at least one other archaic word:
h-ough (pronounced, and now usually spelt, hock)
affect as noun: emotion or desire, mostly used in psychology
The inability of English to handle negative questions logically and unambiguously.
I can hear that difference, but it's strange to me. I'd rhyme him with Harry and airy, and hope he'd not take offense if I rhymed it with fairy.
pl-ough
hicc-ough
t-ough
tr-ough
th-ough
thr-ough
th-ough-t
thor-ough
and I'm aware of at least one other archaic word:
h-ough (pronounced, and now usually spelt, hock)
different spellings and same pronunciation (bonus: this one even has a proper noun):
Barry went to bury the single berry.
I would say that (intellectual) inability with grammar is supremely unimportant. What baby ever learnt grammar before the language?
I would say that (intellectual) inability with grammar is supremely unimportant. What baby ever learnt grammar before the language?
Oh, and how do you pronounce pen, pin, and pan. I say the last one different, but pin and pen would sound exactly the same for me.Ditto for my Tennessee-born spouse. I had to ask her to repeat pin or pen.
Oh, and how do you pronounce pen, pin, and pan. I say the last one different, but pin and pen would sound exactly the same for me.Ditto for my Tennessee-born spouse. I had to ask her to repeat pin or pen.
one
This. Except I pronounce pen and pan differently.Oh, and how do you pronounce pen, pin, and pan. I say the last one different, but pin and pen would sound exactly the same for me.Ditto for my Tennessee-born spouse. I had to ask her to repeat pin or pen.
All different for me. I have no clue how you can pronounce pen and pin as the same, pen and pan might seem the same for me.
St. IvesThere is a suburb of Sydney called St. Ives. The most common local pronunciation is "Snives".
"...it's rather unpleasantly like getting drunk"
"What's so upleasant about getting drunk?"
"Ask a glass of water..."
~~Ford Prefect to Arthur dent, on the jump into hyperspace
RP is received pronunciation - posh English, basically.Received Pronunciation is an odd term. I was taught that "received" meant "accepted (as authoritative)" as in the term "received wisdom", but that usage of the word is not even listed in my dictionary of American English so I don't know if it is current in the USA. RP is still influential in Australia as a standard for educated speech, though much less so than in the past as you can hear by listening to our Prime Minister (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE9FDKxMXTw). When I was going to accent reduction classes, the pronunciation standard at which we were supposed to be aiming was similar to RP (at least in Australian ears... :lol:). Geoffrey Rush (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNT5M5r3FXs) would be an example.
I use both pronunciations, I think. But my mother used to say it like "orphan".I only say "off'n", but I quite often hear "off-ten", and even "orphan" off'n on.
"Hiccup" isn't a change across the pond, it's the standard spelling in the UK. (I have a 1960s British grammar book that unequivocally says '"hiccough" is wrong'). In fact, I've hardly ever seen "hiccough" used outside discussions of the "the many pronunciations of -ough".
I don't add an "r" at the end of "idea". You may be thinking of the use of the tongue rather than a stop to join words like "idea of"; this I do - but it is actively avoided when singing, because it becomes ugly and slovenly-sounding when drawn out. But I would also not voice the "r" at the end of "father", though again one might appear in a phrase like "father of".I think I hear "idea-r" or similar on BBC, but I'll listen again. RP American English: Is there such a thing? American radio/TV announcers have seemed to have the same midwestern voice. It sort of sounds like me. But in a Detroit choir, we were often told to lose our nasal "aaanh" sound (lips drawn back). If we listened for it, it was quite obvious and unpleasant.
As for RP, it's not fixed. I would describe it as the speech of a well-educated person of the home counties (the area around London), and I would have to admit that this is commonly taken to mean more particularly those who went to a public school (i.e. a private one) such as Winchester or Eton (or in my case The King's School, Canterbury); but this does change with time, and so RP now is not the same as the RP that was spoken by King George V, for instance.
The term RP is used specifically to imply "standard British English speech", and is not used for any other speech.I assumed that. I should have put my expression in quotes. As to standard American speech, Wikipedia offers this:
I think it's because singer comes from the verb to sing; but finger and linger do not (there's no "fing" or "ling").
Then why is 'lingerie' spelled like it is? I honestly thought it was pronounced 'ling-er-ee' for years...and here it's pronounced 'laun-jer-ay'.Maybe it started out as the edible kind? Probably not.
I honestly thought it was pronounced 'ling-er-ee' for years...and here it's pronounced 'laun-jer-ay'.Do you go the whole hog and pronounce the J in the French "soft" fashion (IPA: ʒ like the J at the beginning of Jacques in the nursery song "Frère Jacques" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wyKqvCg4gs)? The mapping of sounds onto letters is tricky even in English, and when you add all the foreign words picked up by a magpie language it it gets still messier.
But why do English-speakers insist on using the "French J sound" in Beijing when that pronunciation is foreign to both English and Chinese?! How did that incorrect pronunciation get started? I assume it was around the time English-speakers stopped calling the capital of China Peking, but that was before I was born. Does anyone know how the Beige-ing thing got started?
I'd say Bah-ry (as in bat), buh-ry (not sure how to explain this as I'm aware that my u sounds are very unusual for foreigners or southerners, just a sort of guttural sound) and beh-ry (as in bed).
How do you pronounce China's capital?Correctly... :angel:
How do you pronounce China's capital?"see"
As in "borough"? Because that's a very unusual way to pronounce it... pretty sure it's not considered proper anywhere, and the only place I can remember hearing anything similar is that Scissor Sisters song, "I Can't Decide," where it rhymed with "furry."
I find bay-JING, with bay as in bay, jing as in jingle, bay in lower tone, jing in a neutral tone. I wonder if that latter is sort of the tonal equivalent of a schwa.OK, if you really want to get into it... :wink: Everything beyond this point assumes we're talking about 普通话 or Standard Chinese (Mandarin), and not one of the many regional dialects.
The first character is romanized as běi and as the tone-mark over the e indicates, it is 3rd tone (the dip-rise tone), but for reasons too technical to get into here, the 3rd tone is not fully voiced and simply dips.And it sounds phonetically like...'bay'? 'Bee'? 'Beh' as in 'Beth'?
How do forum readers use the most common words for the human posterior: butt, bottom, bum, ass.
"Pisky, Pisky, bend and boo,
Up and down all service through."
"Presby, Presby, dinna bend;
Sit ye down on man’s chief end."
Pisky, pisky lood "Amen"
Doon on yer knees an' up again.
Presby, presby dinna ben'
Jist sit doon on Man's chief en'.
Someone told me that an ESL speaker has to work hard to determine when to use an "a" versus a "the". My instant reaction was that it was a most trivial matter. But then I began to think about it. How can a distinction that's almost impossible even to describe contribute to an accurate communication?
Someone told me that the ESL speaker has to work hard to determine when to use the "a" versus the "the". My instant reaction was that it was the most trivial matter. But then I began to think about it. How can the distinction that's almost impossible even to describe contribute to the accurate communication?
One is the definite article and the other is the indefinite. A/an refers to a non specific object, a tomato or a flower, but not one in particular. The refers to an actual instance of a tomato or flower, whether hypothetical (referred to earlier by the speaker) or physically (an object known to the speaker and listener) This concept exists in other languages too, unless I am missing what you mean. "el tomate" v "un tomate" (spanish) "eine Blume" v. "die Blume" (german)
"The" refers to a specific instance of the noun that follows, while "a" refers to a general, nonspecific singular. That's how I'd say it. It probably doesn't help that in some languages (Latin-descended, at least, I don't know about others), a noun always has an article, while in English it's sometimes dropped - "I like music" vs. "J'aime la musique" in French. If you're describing a specific in English you add the article, in French you use a different article - "I like this music" vs. "J'aime cette musique"
How do forum readers use the most common words for the human posterior: butt, bottom, bum, ass.To me a butt is part of a rifle, spear etc., not a human being, though I understand the American usage of course. I sit on my bottom, but might worry that my bum looks big in a skirt I'm trying on (not likely... :wink:), and ride an ass along a rocky trail.
Is that saying that British speakers internalize the a/an rule and adapt it to the pronunciation, to whether or not the h is dropped?I certainly do that. I say "a hospital", but "an honour". I say "an egg", but "a euphemism". It's entirely a matter of ease of pronunciation. To me "an hotel" sounds like Agatha Christie or something.
Is that saying that British speakers internalize the a/an rule and adapt it to the pronunciation, to whether or not the h is dropped?I certainly do that. I say "a hospital", but "an honour". I say "an egg", but "a euphemism". It's entirely a matter of ease of pronunciation. To me "an hotel" sounds like Agatha Christie or something.
EDIT:
http://www.superseventies.com/sl_brandy.html
Brandy's braided chain and locket in the song are particular single instances, but are referred to with "a", and replacing "a" with "the" in the lyrics would sound completely foreign to me. Why do we refer to the locket and chain that way? I don't know, especially since I just said "the locket and chain".
Then it goes on with "a man that Brandy loves", even though there's no hint that she's polyamorous.
To me a butt is part of a rifle, spear etc., not a human being
Someone told me that ESL speakers have to work hard to determine when to use "a" versus "the", and my instant reaction was that it was trivial, but then I began to think about it. How can a distinction that's almost impossible even to describe contribute to accurate communication?
Fucking languages, man.How does the meaning change if you drop the u? Is it proper to refer to someone as 'the Patrik' instead of just 'Patrik'? Do you modify name endings for celebrities too?
How does the meaning change if you drop the u? Is it proper to refer to someone as 'the Patrik' instead of just 'Patrik'? Do you modify name endings for celebrities too?
All chimneys in recent construction must be lined with an inflammable material.
Chicagoans support striking teachers
Then what did the English use for the color before discovering India?
Then what did the English use for the color before discovering India?
(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-DepJW4520Lo/UFYMQJjdziI/AAAAAAAAB7A/7X5nUhNtOR8/s605/color.png)Um, only about nine. And that's because of this case of deuteranopia that I have.
How many colors do you see there.
I wonder if your girlfriend has a slight bit of synesthesia!
This has stopped really being about English being weird and is going into color theory, but whatevs. I like color theory. :-D
And that root is communism?
Linds, what I meant was that if you tell a painter to use red, they'll use one version, and if you tell a graphic artist to use red, they'll use another, etc. Red is different depending on what you do. If a client told me to use red, I'd use 0AA0 without hesitation - anything else is not just plain old "red". And your example on the right, which you call magenta, is something totally different to me - magenta to me is 0A00, no yellow whatsoever.
I see a few hundred colors there, could probably tell you the rough CMYK for each (would be better in RGB but I work more in print than screen), and have words for... I dunno, I could probably come up with a word for 25-30 of them maybe? Maybe more? I mean it depends on if you can include stuff like "burnt orange" or "salmon pink" - descriptive, not separate words. Anymore, my "color names" are just CMYK values, really - that's the only way I think of them.
ETA: This is a fun test to determine how accurately you see color. I scored a 4 out of 100, meaning I basically had 4 out of order (switched two in two places). (another edit - that was last time I took it, a long time ago. I just did it again and got a 0/100) Of course it depends on how accurate your monitor is, but that's only for fine detail.
http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77
The two I have just used in this paper I am writing: be able, in front.Put them in sentences.
But do you pronounce it with the k?As in "knight". :-)
No, the k as in "like this." I thought Barmymoo squished like this, forcing out the k.But do you pronounce it with the k?As in "knight". :-)
I catch a bus and have a shower.
No, the k as in "like this." I thought Barmymoo squished like this, forcing out the k.Exactly. Pronouncing the k in "like this" like the k in "knight". :-) It's not uncommon to hear "liethis" in Australia, and even "dooeeliethis". But then we run a lot of words together.
Join Global Campaign to stop violence against women and girls with entertainment, film clips, Champagne, chocolates
I have neither taken a bus (can't drive them)[...]Have you stolen or fucked one, though?
Why does the English language insist on using the plural for objects that are quite clearly one thing? Like scissors, glasses, headphones, trousers, tweezers, things like those.
That's the logic behind it, yes, but what is the reason? My language is happy to say 'a scissor', 'a trouser', and 'a headphone'. The fact that a headphone contains two speakers is irrelevant.Why does the English language insist on using the plural for objects that are quite clearly one thing? Like scissors, glasses, headphones, trousers, tweezers, things like those.I guess the answer is obvious but I'll say it anyway: All of those have two parts. Two scissor knives, two glass lenses, two headphones joined together etc. But I guess it's not completely logical?
I assume scissors comes from cise, as in incision, etc., and that it helps to think of "them" as "cutters." But I don't know about trousers. The only place I've heard of "trouser" is in opera, but as an adjective, where some parts call for a woman dressed as a man and performing a male role, a "trouser" role IIRC.Still no reason to not call it a cutter. :-P
Why does the English language insist on using the plural for objects that are quite clearly one thing?Or the singular for many objects: sheep, deer, salmon, aircraft, species etc. For that matter, why do some languages have plural forms of nouns at all?
Put it all down to the quaint charm of the language; I wouldn't have it any other way - but then, why should I?That's a sly one! But I agree with the quaint charm.
... but even that had only somewhat local effect.
when the scissors break, you have a scis.
And if you say "a couple of glasses" that would be four lenses, right?
... Let's say you get a gash across your pants leg. Do you say "there's a tear in my pant" or there's a tear in my pants leg"? ...
According to several costume historians who have helped me with this reply, the answer to all this conventional plurality is very simple. Before the days of modern tailoring, such garments, whether underwear or outerwear, were indeed made in two parts, one for each leg. The pieces were put on each leg separately and then wrapped and tied or belted at the waist (just like cowboys’ chaps). The plural usage persisted out of habit even after the garments had become physically one piece. However, a shirt was a single piece of cloth, so it was always singular.
But that's called a pants leg. :psyduck: not a pant. Let's say you get a gash across your pants leg. Do you say "there's a tear in my pant" or there's a tear in my pants leg"? The first one just sounds weird, almost forced.
Just like facts and flies, English words have life-spans. Some are thousands of years old, from before English officially existed, others change, or are replaced or get ditched entirely.
Here are 18 uncommon or obsolete words that we think may have died early. We found them in two places: a book called “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk, and on a blog called Obsolete Word of The Day that’s been out of service since 2010. Both are fantastic— you should check them out.
Snoutfair: A person with a handsome countenance — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk
Pussyvan: A flurry, temper — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk
Wonder-wench: A sweetheart — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk
Lunting: Walking while smoking a pipe — John Mactaggart’s “Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia,” 1824
California widow: A married woman whose husband is away from her for any extended period — John Farmer’s “Americanisms Old and New”, 1889
Groak: To silently watch someone while they are eating, hoping to be invited to join them – www.ObsoleteWord.Blogspot.com
Jirble: To pour out (a liquid) with an unsteady hand: as, he jirbles out a dram — www.Wordnik.com
Curglaff: The shock felt in bathing when one first plunges into the cold water — John Jamieson’s Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
Spermologer: A picker-up of trivia, of current news, a gossip monger, what we would today call a columnist — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey
Kacirk
Tyromancy: Divining by the coagulation of cheese — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk
Beef-witted: Having an inactive brain, thought to be from eating too much beef. — John Phin’s “Shakespeare Cyclopaedia and Glossary”, 1902
Queerplungers: Cheats who throw themselves into the water in order that they may be taken up by their accomplices, who carry them to one of the houses appointed by the Humane Society for the recovery of drowned persons, where they are rewarded by the society with a guinea each, and the supposed drowned person, pretending he was driven to that extremity by great necessity, is also frequently sent away with a contribution in his pocket. — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk
Englishable: That which may be rendered into English — John Ogilvie’s “Comprehensive English Dictionary”, 1865
Resistentialism: The seemingly spiteful behavior shown by inanimate objects — www.ObsoleteWord.Blogspot.com
Bookwright: A writer of books; an author; a term of slight contempt — Daniel Lyons’s “Dictionary of the English Language”, 1897
Soda-squirt: One who works at a soda fountain in New Mexico — Elsie Warnock’s “Dialect Speech in California and New Mexico”, 1919
With squirrel: Pregnant — Vance Randolph’s “Down in the Holler: A Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech”, 1953
Zafty: A person very easily imposed upon — Maj. B. Lowsley’s “A Glossary of Berkshire Words and Phrases”, 1888
my guess would be from the 1849 gold rush: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush
That's the logic behind it, yes, but what is the reason? My language is happy to say 'a scissor', 'a trouser', and 'a headphone'. The fact that a headphone contains two speakers is irrelevant.Why does the English language insist on using the plural for objects that are quite clearly one thing? Like scissors, glasses, headphones, trousers, tweezers, things like those.I guess the answer is obvious but I'll say it anyway: All of those have two parts. Two scissor knives, two glass lenses, two headphones joined together etc. But I guess it's not completely logical?I assume scissors comes from cise, as in incision, etc., and that it helps to think of "them" as "cutters." But I don't know about trousers. The only place I've heard of "trouser" is in opera, but as an adjective, where some parts call for a woman dressed as a man and performing a male role, a "trouser" role IIRC.Still no reason to not call it a cutter. :-P
It is possible to make a grammatical English sentence of any length longer than one word consisting only of repetitions of the word "buffalo".I would have posted, but I assumed everyone heard that one before.
But am I allowed to do this? (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DontExplainTheJoke)
I haven't heard it in the "not upper bounded" variation before.
„Darf dat dat?“ - „Dat darf dat.“ - „Dat dat dat darf!“
But you are on the surface of the sea.I would sooner say you are on the surface of a ship when you are at sea.
Why do we say "at sea" but not "at land"?
your reader/listener can't unread/hear the suggestion so it can strengthen your position, but you haven't actually claimed it, so you only have to defend the weaker claim.
If a bread knife is used for cutting bread,Chef's knives do quite often cut chefs, but a sheath-knife is not for cutting sheaths, a boot-knife is not for cutting boots, a jack-knife is not for cutting jacks, a flick-knife is not for cutting flicks, a trench-knife is not for cutting trenches, and a butterfly-knife is not for cutting butterflies.
and a steak knife is used for cutting steak,
and a butter knife is used for cutting butter,
what is a chef knife for?
If a bread knife is used for cutting bread,Chef's knives do quite often cut chefs, but a sheath-knife is not for cutting sheaths, a boot-knife is not for cutting boots, a jack-knife is not for cutting jacks, a flick-knife is not for cutting flicks, a trench-knife is not for cutting trenches, and a butterfly-knife is not for cutting butterflies.
and a steak knife is used for cutting steak,
and a butter knife is used for cutting butter,
what is a chef knife for?
Sunflower oil, olive oil, coconut oil ... baby oil?
Linguists have pointed out that the location of the letters in the constructed word is inconsistent with how those letters would be pronounced in those placements, and that the expected pronunciation in English would be "goaty". For instance, the letters "gh" cannot be pronounced /f/ at the beginning of a syllable, and the letters "ti" cannot be pronounced /ʃ/ at the end of a syllable.
Some try to use ghoti (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti) as an example of how weird the rules of English spelling are.
Maybe this belongs in the pun thread, but...Oh, no. NO. Someone mentions this thread, so I find it and read all 300+ posts...only to see this. Damn you, sir.
Shouldn't "denoting" be the opposite of "noting"?There are so many words with the de- prefix that have no relation to their meaning without the prefix, that de- must have (had) a different meaning than to undo something.
There are so many words with the de- prefix that have no relation to their meaning without the prefix, that de- must have (had) a different meaning than to undo something.Or de- words that are "rootless" in the sense that the word that is prefixed does not exist. For example: "degauss", when "gauss" is not a verb, and nothing is ever "gaussed".
See also:(click to show/hide)
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle[sic] their pockets for new vocabulary.
I think it's less jarring because the word "police" can be both singular and plural, while the word "army" is singular. Moreover, the army is usually seen as a single monolithic institution while in this example it's implied that you have a bunch of police officers diligently investigating a murder.I think you've got it wrong. Why not consider each individual soldier and support staff in the army like you consider the police officers and clerks?
[...]Could you give an example of how that is supposed to work?
Also, in London vernacular, 'allow it' means 'stop it,' which is LITERALLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT 'ALLOW IT' MEANS
Also, even if you don't know Chinese, this is pretty cool (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vExjnn_3ep4).The joys of tonal language. ;)
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo)
Quote
Steel roasting hood, forged from the melted turret of the Soviet T-50 tank that took Berlin during the second World War.
Not a T-50 that took part in the capture of Berlin, the T-50. As in the single tank that overcame the entirety of nazi Germany's last stand on it's own. And the turret of that tank is in this grill!
How any ESL speaker works out the use of definite articles is beyond me.The same way as you get to Carnegie Hall...
Okay, it seems I'm missing at least two cultural references here? :?How any ESL speaker works out the use of definite articles is beyond me.The same way as you get to Carnegie Hall...
I like to think before Google Maps decided to stop being fun, typing in "Carnegie Hall" would've resulted in the first four steps beingHad to check. It does not.
1. Practice
2. Practice
3. Practice
4. Turn onto (road)
Like I said, before they decided to stop being fun. Back in the days where getting directions from New York to London would include "swim across the Atlantic Ocean".I like to think before Google Maps decided to stop being fun, typing in "Carnegie Hall" would've resulted in the first four steps beingHad to check. It does not.
1. Practice
2. Practice
3. Practice
4. Turn onto (road)
I suppose, but surely some effort to be understood is expected?
And a misspelling is different than using the wrong word entirely.
My problem with people who constantly complain about autocorrect is that they're fully admitting to never giving their message even a cursory glance before hitting send. Autocorrect doesn't mean not having to proofread.
Shouldn't "denoting" be the opposite of "noting"?
And oddly enough, most have the first and last sounds intact, it's just the middles that winds up mangled/missing.
Rah-chest-erRaw chest hair?
(being from the one in NY. :) )
Whale oil beef hooked!That's Armchair Emperor clever!
Rah-chest-er
Raw chest hair?
My inner editor is retching right now.Lemme tell you, when though I wrote it over 6 years ago, I was in one of those "MY CLASS IS FULL OF IDIOTS, READ IT AND SHUT UP!" moods. Your response is one of the desirable ones. :3
"The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, "You lied!"
Why is there so much difference between a safety clearance and a security clearance?I'm confused by this...
A music bag? Is that a thing?Certainly. Music bags are generally flattish cases designed to hold sheet-music.
A music bag? Is that a thing?Certainly. Music bags are generally flattish cases designed to hold sheet-music.
Is "music box" standard American English for what I would call a "musical box"?
Joshua Stanton @freekorea_us
Can I get a rewrite on this headline? 'North Koreans Walk Across Frozen River to Kill Chinese for Food'
I'm eating some Italian for dinner.Mmm... But the countability problem raises its head again, doesn't it? If you were actually a cannibal, you'd say "I'm eating some of an Italian", "I'm eating an Italian", or (if you were very hungry) "I am eating Italians. Italian without a definite or indefinite article is normally read as an adjective. "I am eating Italian" simply leaves the word "food" after "Italian" unstated but understood.
There's a lot that can change about what the sentence implies but that does not at all change what it means. :wink:
and if it's one of these? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_S-Cargo)
I think it's closer to the more modern usage of office or industrial workers who serve to endlessly repeat actions or processes with little to no intellectual input into their work.Well that usage is strange too. That is a description much closer to the behaviour of worker bees, not drones whose only function is to mate with a queen.
Though you can make out, or make up, with one.
Woah, doin it and then immediately jumping to marriage? Slow down there, bud.
Woah, doin it and then immediately jumping to marriage? Slow down there, bud.
Oh, did I accidentially insinuate to have sexual intercourse before marriage? I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to be unmoral...
Woah, doin it and then immediately jumping to marriage? Slow down there, bud.
Oh, did I accidentially insinuate to have sexual intercourse before marriage? I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to be unmoral...
That's not what he meant. He was making a joke about the next step immediately after sex being marriage, which is a tad... soon.
Woah, doin it and then immediately jumping to marriage? Slow down there, bud.
Oh, did I accidentially insinuate to have sexual intercourse before marriage? I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to be unmoral...
That's not what he meant. He was making a joke about the next step immediately after sex being marriage, which is a tad... soon.
Unless your are devout in certain belief systems, in which case it may be a tad late. I understand there may even be some cases where it needs to happen all at the same time. One can only imagine what the best man's speech would be like then.
"Hey dude, don't forget to... ah, there you go."Woah, doin it and then immediately jumping to marriage? Slow down there, bud.
Oh, did I accidentially insinuate to have sexual intercourse before marriage? I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to be unmoral...
That's not what he meant. He was making a joke about the next step immediately after sex being marriage, which is a tad... soon.
Unless your are devout in certain belief systems, in which case it may be a tad late. I understand there may even be some cases where it needs to happen all at the same time. One can only imagine what the best man's speech would be like then.
I saw on QI, or somewhere, I forget where, that apparently the kiss in marriages is based on when the couple would actually consummate the marriage in front of their entire village.
We have established a parallel class system by which people are able to engage in recreational copulation.
Abingdon, a slightly disappointing minor orbital town of one of our classic but smaller cities. A fine example of Middle Englandy Englishness. I bet it's fun to get down the local 'spoons and watch the regulars struggle hopelessly not to be one -ist or another while mostly meaning well, especially Monday Dave. At 8am. On a Thursday. While he eats his daily meat pie brekkie. Double fisted with Carlings.
I bet it's fun to get down the local 'spoons
I bet it's fun to get down the local 'spoons
Presuming that means Wetherspoons - they hadn't even been founded when I lived in Abingdon for while (I rented a house on the Poets estate for a while, if you're wondering, Gareth).
That's not even the funniest bit of that film.
Hmm... I always suspected that my undereducation in ancient agricultural military history would make a fowl of me one day.They shot a cow, not a chicken!
That being said, I vastly prefer Life of Brian to Holy Grail.
And on the bright side, LoB doesn't just... fizzle out.
Probably. I don't try not to.That being said, I vastly prefer Life of Brian to Holy Grail.
Am I the only one here who desperately tries not to giggle during the "Biggus Dickus" scene?
And on the bright side, LoB doesn't just... fizzle out.
Fixed.
It may be grammatically correct, but it's devastatingly false (although that's a topic for another thread).
being precise would require names of police officers who have been left notably undisciplined for their actions.It would be a very long list, though in some cases their names are a state-secret... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes) I'm not sure that I buy the idea anyway. Does one have to know the exact properties of each individual atom in a steel bar (impossible anyway according to Quantum Theory), in order to speak precisely of the properties of the metal when it is swung into a man's face?
English is weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.
QuoteEnglish is weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.
Buffalo explained:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Buffalo_sentence_1_parse_tree.svg/320px-Buffalo_sentence_1_parse_tree.svg.png)
PN = proper noun
N = noun
V = verb
NP = noun phrase
RC = relative clause
VP = verb phrase
S = sentence
Edit: why would they .png that? :(
I'm more of a Genestealer, really...
Smith Will Smith will smith...willingly.How many wills will Will Smith smith if Will Smith will smith wills?
Not as spectacular but "tin tin tin" is a completely acceptable and common sentence around here.How?
It conveys that an object that was sought for is not in it's expected metal container."Tin (isn't in the) tin"?
...are we sure that's still English at this point?
My favorite grammatically-correct sentence in English is "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo." Wikipedia only recognizes it as Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo), but I like to make it more violent with added buffaloing.
I'm not saying that to be a dick, I'm genuinely uncertain whether we did that as a group or if it was all in my head.
I tend to make things up
Listening to a video on YouTube, I was surprised to hear Magellan (as in Ferdinand Magellan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan) the explorer and navigator) pronounced "Majellan". I have always heard and pronounced the name with a hard G, and Wikipedia lists the two pronunciations as alternatives. Is this a variation between US English and "Commonwealth" English?I've never heard his name pronounced with a hard G.
I sometimes hear people pronounce Los Angeles with a hard g which is just...what? It's not the city of angles!
*Cringes at TV as people who should know better pronounce Masamune as Massarmane*
It's a Japanese word, and so should be pronounced with four even syllables, with a like ah, u like oo, e like eh, and the s hissy.
*Cringes at TV as people who should know better pronounce Masamune as Massarmane*Or Beijing as Beige-ing.
*Cringes at TV as people who should know better pronounce Masamune as Massarmane*Or Beijing as Beige-ing.
I did once have a conversation with someone who pronounced somewhere around Bay-zcheing but he had a rather nasally, throaty accent so I think that may have had something to do with it.In Chinese, there are two sounds that are roughly like the English hard J, and they are romanised in pinyin as J and ZH respectively. Someone actually learning Chinese needs to know how to pronounce them distinctly, but when speaking English I recommend just saying both like the J at the beginning of "jungle".
What kind of language produces the non-ironic phrase "sanitary sewer"?
Wait, that example confuses me, because the j in "Joe" is the same as the j in "jungle".When speaking English it is perfectly OK to pronounce both J and ZH in Chinese words the same, like the J in jungle. As I said earlier:
In Chinese, there are two sounds that are roughly like the English hard J, and they are romanised in pinyin as J and ZH respectively. Someone actually learning Chinese needs to know how to pronounce them distinctly, but when speaking English I recommend just saying both like the J at the beginning of "jungle".
There are few avenues for misunderstanding that Chinese people and "Westerners" have left unexplored. Just to scratch the surface, there are:Edit: increased the font size a bit.
Romanization problems. Imperfect and changing systems for writing down Chinese in the Roman alphabet. This is how Chou En-lai changed to Zhou Enlai, and Mao Tse-Tung became Mao Zedong. The habitual omission of tone-marks from English-language texts makes correct pronunciation, and therefore meaning, a matter of guesswork. Untutored readers will inevitably pronounce the letters of the romanization in the manner habitual in their own language, producing ear-bleeding solecisms like pronouncing Cáo Cāo (one of the central characters of The Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, and many anime, comics, video-games etc.) as "Cow Cow" (it is "Tsao Tsao"). For English-speakers, correct reading of the old Wade-Giles romanization, or modern Pinyin, requires study. Only the Yale romanization (developed for the US Army) was created with the specific intent of making it relatively easy for native English-speakers to approximate correct Chinese pronunciation, and in many ways it's a pity it went out of style.
Geographic confusion problems. Applying the wrong name to places because the European asking "What is this place?" and the Chinese person answering didn't really understand each other. For example the city now known as Guangzhou (pron: Guang-jo) was called Canton based on the local pronunciation of the name of the province, Guangdong, in which the city is located.
Indirect adoption problems. Some English names for Chinese things are adopted from languages other than Chinese ones. One example is the word "China" itself, which comes from Sanskrit via Persian and Italian. Another is "Mandarin", a Sanskrit word adopted via Malay and Portuguese, meaning something like "counsellor" or "minister". Mandarin Chinese is so called in English, because it was the language spoken by officials, as opposed to the many other regional languages.
"Dialect" problems. The "official" language of China has been based on the North Chinese "Mandarin" family of languages for hundreds of years, but Europeans often entered China from Southern coastal regions where other languages like Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien etc. were, and still are, spoken. Even where the words are the same, and quite often they are not, the pronunciation can be very different.
Language change problems. Like any other languages, Chinese ones have changed over time. The first European scholars to study Chinese language seriously were Jesuit missionaries in the 16th century, and they created the first Romanization systems. We still use many of the names they invented, such as Confucius (Kǒng Fūzǐ), but in some cases Chinese has changed since their time, leaving their romanizations behind like fossils.
The case of Peking is a combination of the last two. The word Peking originated with French Jesuit missionaries and is based on an old pronunciation that altered in a subsequent sound change in Mandarin. The pronunciation "Peking" is also close to that used by speakers of the Fujian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujian) "dialect" around the port city of Xiamen, through which much of China's early contact with European traders, missionaries took place. "Beijing" is closer to the Northern Chinese pronunciation, and is now of course the officially correct one. Bear in mind however that "B" is less "explosive" in Mandarin than English, and can sound quite close to "P" to the untutored ear.
Lunchtime doubly so.
Argh, it's been a long day. I also wish you hadn't quoted my failure.For people who quote Douglas Adams?
Also people who can quite the entire first chapter of Hitchhiker's Guide from memory.
Your line would have been "'Drink up,' Ford said grimly, 'the world's about to end.'"
Argh, it's been a long day. I also wish you hadn't quoted my failure.For people who quote Douglas Adams?
Also people who can quite the entire first chapter of Hitchhiker's Guide from memory.
Your line would have been "'Drink up,' Ford said grimly, 'the world's about to end.'"
Yeah, but now it's too late for me to delete my post and pretend it never happened :P
Just because it's an illusion doesn't mean it never happened.
The French car-maker Citroën has just launched a new model here called the C4 Cactus. In Australia, the word "cactus" is slang for something that is broken, not working and generally useless, as in: "My bloody laptop's cactus, mate." What were they thinking?
The same thing they were thinking when they named their entire line "Lemon"?
This reminds me of the Sierra Mist which had to be renamed to Sierra Silver in Germany.
Mist means dung and is colloquially used in the same way you would use "crap" in English.
This reminds me of the Sierra Mist which had to be renamed to Sierra Silver in Germany.
Mist means dung and is colloquially used in the same way you would use "crap" in English.
This reminds me of the Sierra Mist which had to be renamed to Sierra Silver in Germany.
Mist means dung and is colloquially used in the same way you would use "crap" in English.
OTOH, germans got over Jonny Depp's (http://www.dict.cc/deutsch-englisch/Depp.html) surname somewhere in the early 90s, so YMMV.
If you ever find yourself on the beach in Brazil wanting a drink, make sure to order "água de coco" (coconut water), not "água de cocô" (shit water). :-PThis reminds me of the Sierra Mist which had to be renamed to Sierra Silver in Germany.
Mist means dung and is colloquially used in the same way you would use "crap" in English.
"You want some Sierra Shit? It's so refreshing!'
For me, using "a male/ a female" when refering to a specific person always sounds condescending, as if one wanted to imply they are less than human - my subconcious insists that "This is a very Dr. Strangelove thing to say".IMO, Yes.
Am I overthinking this?
This reminds me of the Sierra Mist which had to be renamed to Sierra Silver in Germany.
Mist means dung and is colloquially used in the same way you would use "crap" in English.
This reminds me of the Sierra Mist which had to be renamed to Sierra Silver in Germany.
Mist means dung and is colloquially used in the same way you would use "crap" in English.
Another car they sell in Australia is the Mitsubishi Pajero. I hope it's not badged as that in Amy Spanish-speaking countries, as Pajero literally means 'wanker'. Admittedly, it's an apt description for the car's target demographic
The same thing they were thinking when they named their entire line "Lemon"?
They have a pattern. This is intriguing. What's next? Kumquat? I hope it's kumquat.
This one should have been kumquat. That's at least another citrus fruit, which fits with the name.
The same thing they were thinking when they named their entire line "Lemon"?
They have a pattern. This is intriguing. What's next? Kumquat? I hope it's kumquat.
This one should have been kumquat. That's at least another citrus fruit, which fits with the name.
Because Nissan beat them to it.....kinda (http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/07/top-gear-jeremy-clarkson-nissan-qashqai-bbc)
"The rat king is mostly, if not entirely, made of rats" = "If the rat king is not made entirely of rats, than it is mostly rats."
I think it is entirely rats, but I am not sure enough to claim it as truth, but even if the absolute is not true, the next step down is.
As far as the shades of meaning/rhetorical reasons one would use this construction, the "if not" construction allows one to push their meaning towards something stronger than they are prepared to defend. This construction suggests that the stronger position is true, but keeps the speaker from having to defend it. "I know many studies are X, and I think it is most of them, but I am not prepared to back that up by having counted." "I think Abbott is moral toxic waste, but I don't want the the burden of the absolute by saying there definitely isn't even one small good part left." your reader/listener can't unread/hear the suggestion so it can strengthen your position, but you haven't actually claimed it, so you only have to defend the weaker claim. It is frequently used with the second statement which is an absolute (all, every, entirely, etc.) Absolutes are easy to disprove, you only need to find one good moral position Abbot has, or one mouse in the rat king... In the case of "many, if not most" it is the same idea. "many" is a vague claim but "most" has a fixed meaning (>50%) and so is easier to disprove. There is no clear way to disprove "many" and so it is a safer position to take.
In the Netherlands he would not be allowed to live.
Another thing: English is so weird, that "it has what it takes" is not a tautology.Why is it weird that this isn't a tautology (and why would it be such?)?
Starting from childhood to this day I have thought that someone who sews should be called a "sewer".Saw a Help Wanted ad posted on a sign here in Boise for "Experienced Sewers."
Spotted online: "Half-naked Mum walks in on her son as he is live streaming in just her bra and knickers". For want of a comma the meaning was LOLed.Either way, that's why you always knock.(click to show/hide)
Last night I discovered that my wife had never noticed that English male and female pronouns are not in fact dual.
I've come across it - and also the singular genderless use of "themselves". Although I find it uncomfortable even now, I force myself to use "themself" (in distinct preference to singular "themselves") in the expectation that it will become natural in due course (which for me might not be before I die ;) ). If I can use it a couple of times in quick succession, the second already feels more natural.How can "themselves" be singular, though? Using "themselves" as singular just seems like not being used to the idea of "they/them" being singular, and reflexively using the word they associate with "they/them," even though it's explicitly plural.
Yes, but it seemed like you were saying singular "themselves" was still valid. I'm claiming it's not, but it's understandable that people still use it until they get used to "themself".
I've come across ... the singular genderless use of "themselves". ... I force myself to use "themself" (in distinct preference to singular "themselves")
In other news, does anybody else think it makes a lot of nonsense to "go take a shit?"
It's like people think it's the formal way of saying "you", "me", or "us".That's exactly what people think it is.
Why is integer a noun, and not an adjective? Why don't we use it to describe a person with integrity?
Why is integer a noun, and not an adjective? Why don't we use it to describe a person with integrity?Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but dn integer is a whole number, which can be positive, negative, or zero. Integrity is a whole different word, meaning high principle, morals, and honesty.
English speakers know that their language is odd. So do people saddled with learning it non-natively. ... Why is our language so eccentric? Just what is this thing we’re speaking, and what happened to make it this way?
You is originally plural; the singular thou etc has fallen out of use and the originally plural you stands in for it.
So, why is English so weird (https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languages)?From the article:QuoteEnglish speakers know that their language is odd. So do people saddled with learning it non-natively. ... Why is our language so eccentric? Just what is this thing we’re speaking, and what happened to make it this way?
According to a fashion that reached its zenith in the 19th century, scientific things had to be given Greek names. Hence our undecipherable words for chemicals: why can’t we call monosodium glutamate ‘one-salt gluten acid’? It’s too late to ask.This isn't unique to English, and there's a reason for it: Scientists often have to communicate across languages. Today, that's done by everyone just using English, but in the 18th and 19th centuries there was no language as dominant as English is today. So instead scientists published stuff in Latin/Greek, since those languages were taught in schools throughout Europe. If you open the Wikipedia page for 'monosodium glutamate' and look at the language links on the left side (hover over to see the URL), then you'll see most other languages have a closely-related name for it (perhaps with a different name for sodium... many languages use the Latin-derived 'natrium').
You is originally plural; the singular thou etc has fallen out of use and the originally plural you stands in for it.
From Middle English cleven, from the Old English strong verb clēofan (“to split, to separate”), from Proto-Germanic *kleubaną, from Proto-Indo-European *glewbʰ- (“to cut, to slice”). Cognate with Dutch klieven, dialectal German klieben, Swedish klyva, and Ancient Greek γλύφω (glúphō, “carve”).
From Old English cleofian, from Proto-Germanic *klibjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *gleybʰ- (“to stick”). Cognates include German kleben, Dutch kleven.
In the sentence "They have come before you," "before" can have opposite meanings. It can mean "in front of", or "earlier". The former refers to a spatial forward direction while the latter refers to a temporal backward direction, assuming we face the future in our imagined orientation in time. Isn't that weird?
Put a comma after 'language.'
Fix the following sentence so it is completely correct:
The most common word in the English language is.
Sent from my NXA8QC116 using Tapatalk
Nope.Fix the following sentence so it is completely correct:
The most common word in the English language is.
Sent from my NXA8QC116 using Tapatalk
"is" - the most common word in the English language.
This is fun to read for those who like words. (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/27/robert-macfarlane-word-hoard-rewilding-landscape)
Why do 'oversee' and 'overlook' have such different meanings? And why is 'an oversight' something that has been overlooked?
Well, that would be because English - via old French - actually borrowed two Latin words, but writes them in the same way:British Commonwealth spelling makes this even more confusing because what Americans would call a vise is spelled vice. So you could correctly write: "Was it a vice for him to squeeze the vice's head in a vice?"
- Vice, n.: moral fault, from vitium: defect, imperfection
- vice-, : deputy, assistant; from vice, abl. of vicis: change, turn
This is working out even better than I had hoped.
This is working out even better than I had hoped.
GETTAE!
(Scots can be quite succinct!)
You're using English to tell English to go home. Mixed message! Maybe you should say "Geh nach Hause, Englisch, du bist betrunken," or something. ;)
Ingles, je si droenke. Goa noar hus.
GETTAE!
(Scots can be quite succinct!)
GETTAE!
(Scots can be quite succinct!)
May I suggest for German: Raus!
GETTAE!
(Scots can be quite succinct!)
May I suggest for German: Raus!
In Polish it's even shorter: Won!
Ingles, je si droenke. Goa noar hus.
Incidentally, don't take this as Dutch; people might not understand you.
GETTAE! (Scots can be quite succinct!)May I suggest for German: Raus!
My brain has problems with Flemish. When I watch cycling videos with Flemish commentary, it tricks the English-language part of my brain into thinking that of it ought to be able to understand it, but of course it can't. It feels like... my needle is skipping on their record? Like the meaning is on "the tip of my tongue" (well, ear really), and just out of reach. I don't have this problem listening to German or Spanish or other languages I do not know.
(*) Those can put the inexperienced German student of Dutch at risk of accidentally swallowing their tongue, or throwing up. It's accepted wisdom that the adult German student of Dutch, regardless of the effort they invest, will never completely get the pronunciation of words like 'Uit' right (can mean 'out(side)' or 'Exit').That reminds me of trying to teach my international student friends the pronunciation of 'uien', 'euro', 'eieren' and other arcane Dutch vowel combinations. The Spanish speakers picked it up with relative ease (meaning I only had to slowly break down the sound a handful of times), it took a lot of effort for English speakers and yes, it was basically impossible for German speakers. Saying "Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis" was considered a tongue-twister of epic proportion.
That reminds me of trying to teach my international student friends the pronunciation of 'uien', 'euro', 'eieren' and other arcane Dutch vowel combinations. The Spanish speakers picked it up with relative ease (meaning I only had to slowly break down the sound a handful of times), it took a lot of effort for English speakers and yes, it was basically impossible for German speakers. Saying "Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis" was considered a tongue-twister of epic proportion.
Weirdest word in the Dutch language: uitnodigen ('to invite (invite smb. in)') - to a German, it sounds like a combination of '(hin)aus' ('out (of)') and 'nötigen' ('to coerce'), so that one always gave me cognitive dissonance .... like 'You invite somebody in, so you can kick them out?'Surprisingly, that's actually the etymological root of the word, being a contamination of 'uitnoden' and 'nodigen', both being derived from 'nood', which means requirement or need - see 'noodgeval', 'noodzaak' - and was probably used in the context of being summoned to the court, which is basically an invitation you can't refuse. Only, we no longer use the verb 'nodigen' so 'uitnodigen' lost its connotation of seriousness and came into general use.
Weirdest word in the Dutch language: uitnodigen ('to invite (invite smb. in)') - to a German, it sounds like a combination of '(hin)aus' ('out (of)') and 'nötigen' ('to coerce'), so that one always gave me cognitive dissonance .... like 'You invite somebody in, so you can kick them out?'Surprisingly, that's actually the etymological root of the word, being a contamination of 'uitnoden' and 'nodigen', both being derived from 'nood', which means requirement or need - see 'noodgeval', 'noodzaak' - and was probably used in the context of being summoned to the court, which is basically an invitation you can't refuse. Only, we no longer use the verb 'nodigen' so 'uitnodigen' lost its connotation of seriousness and came into general use.
My brain has problems with Flemish. When I watch cycling videos with Flemish commentary, it tricks the English-language part of my brain into thinking that of it ought to be able to understand it, but of course it can't. It feels like... my needle is skipping on their record? Like the meaning is on "the tip of my tongue" (well, ear really), and just out of reach. I don't have this problem listening to German or Spanish or other languages I do not know.
(P.S.: Do you mean Flemish (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemish) or Dutch? - Flemish is more of a Dutch dialect really, but ... I've always made the distinction in order to not appear rude to Belgians)
Please do note that in effect Dutch is, in this case meant to mean the language of the entirety of the Low Countries, rather than what is now the Netherlands.
I guess that about makes it clear what side the Moerdijk I'm from. :roll:
Please do note that in effect Dutch is, in this case meant to mean the language of the entirety of the Low Countries, rather than what is now the Netherlands.
Ok, so ... how do you guys want your language(s) to be referred to? I've always thought that referring to Flemish as simply Dutch was rude to Flemish Belgians? (The fact that the Netherlands have already claimed dibs on 'nether lands' doesn't make it less confusing, I guess ... :wink:)
And I guess that the Frisians might have an opinion on Dutch being the language of 'the lower countries' (whelp, they also have an opinion about being German ...). :laugh:I guess that about makes it clear what side the Moerdijk I'm from. :roll:
Apologies for my ignorance, but ... not so much? German wiki about the municipality Moerdijk says that 'boven Moerdijk' means protestant Netherlands, whereas 'beneden Moerdijk' means catholic Netherlands (Brabant, Limburg). But ... both are in the Netherlands, not in Belgium?
You wouldn't guess that "mercy" and "mercenary" are related, but they are.
The link, of course is 'Mercari' or money. (Latin? Italian?) A down-and-out on the corner asks for money (mercy) and an itenerant soldier (mercenary) fights for money.
But one should not expect mercy from a mercenary. That's just not how it works.
But one should not expect mercy from a mercenary. That's just not how it works.
But one should not expect mercy from a mercenary. That's just not how it works.
Depends how much you pay 'em! :)
Not to mention that the Germans claimed dibs on Deutsch - which shares the root for Dutch: theodisc - of the people.
My brain has problems with Flemish. When I watch cycling videos with Flemish commentary, it tricks the English-language part of my brain into thinking that of it ought to be able to understand it, but of course it can't. It feels like... my needle is skipping on their record? Like the meaning is on "the tip of my tongue" (well, ear really), and just out of reach. I don't have this problem listening to German or Spanish or other languages I do not know.
But one should not expect mercy from a mercenary. That's just not how it works.
Depends how much you pay 'em! :)
Whereas you're shit out of luck trying to buy mercy from a soldier because they're already bought & sold ... :-D
(No srsly, that's the meaning of the etymological root soldarius (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier#Etymology) - 'someone having pay')Not to mention that the Germans claimed dibs on Deutsch - which shares the root for Dutch: theodisc - of the people.
:parrot:
It also means 'speaking the language of the people', which is a concept I rather like, because it allows for integration by cultural appropriation (not to mention that it's pretty much a negation of the old 'blood & soil' definition of German ethnicity).
Hey! That's a good argument for our immigration/integration debate "Our ancient ancestors defined 'German' by language proficiency - back to the roots, baby!" :-D
On the whole, we're alright calling it Dutch - we make the difference between Flemish and Hollands, which doesn't sit well with most of the Dutch. There's also the difference between the official, standardised language, and what is popularly spoken. If we take it to extremes, Flemish is only spoken in our two westernmost provinces, the north of France, and the south of Zeeland.
There's even an ('artificial') 'Anglish' version (Germanic English w/o Romance loanwords)
[...] it is wrong for a tone-write {composer} to put his puzzle-wifty {complicated} scores within the reach of know-nothing-y {ignorant} keyed-hammer-string {piano} players. [...] Allowing keyed-hammer-string dish-ups {arrangements} of my tone works {compositions} (which, in their as-first-was {original} forms were always a-chance-for-all-y {democratic}, & always group-minded) has wrecked my whole job-path {career} as a tone-wright. [...] So Roger and mother (for all their well-wishingness to me) did me an ill turn in planning the forth-printment {publication} of my tone-works.
(P.S.: Do you mean Flemish (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemish) or Dutch? - Flemish is more of a Dutch dialect really, but ... I've always made the distinction in order to not appear rude to Belgians)I don't know really. The cycling events I'm watching are being held in Belgium, and I know the commentary is not in French, so I suppose I assumed it was in Flemish (in some cases the video I'm watching says so), but I don't know if I would be able actually to distinguish between Flemish and Dutch.
I've often heard it said that a language is just a dialect with an army. There's some truth in there.Certainly the distinction is often more cultural and political than linguistic. It is common, for example, to refer to Cantonese, Shanghainese, Mandarin, Hakka, Hokkien etc. as "dialects" of Chinese, when they are as mutually incomprehensible as English, French, German etc., which are all accorded the status of "languages". There are two reasons for this, I think. One is that written Chinese is basically the same for all the "dialects", but the other is the deeply-rooted cultural belief that "there is only one China". Ever since the unification of China in 221BCE, and however imperfectly this belief has conformed with reality, Chinese people have believed that China was one nation, and they were all one people, so it followed that they had one language, and that variations were dialects.
Scots - Highlander Dutch
On the whole, we're alright calling it Dutch - we make the difference between Flemish and Hollands, which doesn't sit well with most of the Dutch. There's also the difference between the official, standardised language, and what is popularly spoken. If we take it to extremes, Flemish is only spoken in our two westernmost provinces, the north of France, and the south of Zeeland.
TheWest GermanicDutch Language Family Tree
Dutch - Protestant Dutch
Flemish - Catholic Dutch
Frisian - Middle Eastern Dutch
Low German - Eastern Dutch
German - Office Dutch
English - Romance Dutch/Trader Dutch
Scots - Highlander Dutch
Luxembourgish - Mercantile Dutch
Yiddish - Yidutch
Bavarian Mundart - Alpine Dutch
:mrgreen:
If the speaker is American, and will observe himself when he utters well as a sign of dismissal of some discussion or activity (as in 'Well'-pause-'what do we do next?'), he will often discover that he has used welp, with unfinished p. Like other actions, this gesture of finality may become a mannerism. At a recent graduation one of the officiating deans managed it conspicuously, on turning to go backstage, as from a job dutifully done, after having recited his list of candidates.
'welp'
whelp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Whelp_(R37))
I fecking HATE Welp/Whelp.What is wrong with you? Whelps are adorable:
Why are valiant, radiant and deviant not pronounced like reliant, compliant and giant?
Also I just realised that 'laboratory' is derived from the word 'labor', just like 'oratory' is derived from 'orate'.
I didn't know this, but it makes sense - and it does make that "Annual Mass Killing Training" thing sound weird:
(The argument would be that it would be more appropriate to say "Mass-Killing Annual Training" than anything else, but...)
"Of course not," said Venables. "His name's Temple, and his initials are C.A.T. so naturally we call him Dog.""
"But you didn't call him Dog; you called him Bod."
"Give me a change to get a word in," said Venables. "I haven't finished yet. It's a bit of a sweat calling him Dog, so we call him Dogsbody for short."
"But it isn't short, " protested Jennings. "Dogsbody's much longer than Dog."
"Okay, then, it needs shortening. Bod short for Body, and Dogsbody short for Dog. Really!" Venables shook his head sadly. "You new oiks are dim at picking things up."
Maybe its a regional thing but I see it all the time and it just bothers me. :venonat:I mean, people use "your" when they should say "you're" all the time, wouldn't this just be an example of that?
Maybe its a regional thing but I see it all the time and it just bothers me. :venonat:I mean, people use "your" when they should say "you're" all the time, wouldn't this just be an example of that?
Aren't those weasel words?
I'm not sure, but I think it is simply known as "argument by assertion."
I'm in Kerry at the moment and it's strange to hear people a whole people speaking English with native fluency but in an accent that is clearly suited to another very different language. Its something you never hear elsewhere from someone non-British who's learned English, no matter how fluent.
Kerry, for the unfamiliar is a deeply rural part of southern Ireland.
Another observation, each Irish county seems to have a different punctuative word. Kerry is "so", Dublin is "like", Mayo is "then". Not sure how they get decided on.
I have an irrationality strong dislike for the misuse of reflexive pronouns. "I will send that to yourselves", "please call myself", and the like seem to crop up all over emails and phone calls. It really sets my teeth on edge.
I have an irrationality strong dislike for the misuse of reflexive pronouns. "I will send that to yourselves", "please call myself", and the like seem to crop up all over emails and phone calls. It really sets my teeth on edge.
That is one of my biggest peeves.
"Can you set up a meeting between Joe and myself?"
"NO! I can't!! Because ONLY YOU CAN SET UP A MEETING BETWEEN JOE AND YOURSELF!!!"
Your post about asymmetries reminded me of something I heard once.That is giving me a good chuckle.
"Like the ski resort full of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking for girls, the situation isn't as symmetrical as it first seems."
More ESL speakers share their puzzlements (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/35-confusing-things-about-the-english-language_us_5b39b246e4b08c3a8f6b9a3b)
"Come home" and "go home" mean the same thing. The only difference is where the speaker is.
To be specific, you could rephrase one as "Bring yourself home, where I also am" and the other as just "bring yourself home". It would be understandable for a non-native speaker to miss that.
And 'good', 'food', 'foot' all have different pronunciations, don't they?
One of the things that drives me insane about the Co-Op is that their slogan is 'good with food' which only works if you have a Scot doing the voiceover.
Lets get rid of the apostrophe (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-30/lets-get-rid-of-the-apostrophe/10433990)Did they just apostrophise the apostrophe?
It's kind of funny how the definition of "spooky" has morphed from "strange and frightening" to "fun and halloweeny."
It's also funny that Dutch has always had a word for "fun and halloweeny", griezelig, and English is only now catching up.
The Story of Human Language, John McWhorter on Audible. It has lots of discussion on this kind of shift in meaning and understanding1 over time. It's terrific.2
---
1 How does "to stand under" mean "comprehend" because why, exactly?
2 Not in the older sense of causing terror, of course.
Ephraim is usually located about twelve miles northeast of Jerusalem
"forty third president Thomas Whitmore?" I'm sure that's a joke but I don't get it.Its just the president in the movie Independence Day who gave a grand speech.
Is rambunctious not in the UK as well? Or am I too polluted by American media?
For some reason I started wondering again about the old question of why someone who sews is not called a "sewer".Sewer has an another meaning, but don't let me drain your enthusiasm.
like "chivalry" and "cavalry", which ultimately come from the same word - the French for "horse"The French (cheval), Spanish (caballo), and Italian (cavallo) words for horse all derive from the Latin caballus (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/caballus).
like "chivalry" and "cavalry", which ultimately come from the same word - the French for "horse"The French (cheval), Spanish (caballo), and Italian (cavallo) words for horse all derive from the Latin caballus (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/caballus).
I wonder if going a bit further, it might not come back to the same thing after all. Proto Indo-European is reconstructed as *ensla, wich might easily be construed as the same construction your proto-Germanic has, of combining water and land roots. That's just conjecture, though.
It's not that uncommon, actually. See the wikipedia article on false cognates (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_cognate).
I wonder if going a bit further, it might not come back to the same thing after all. Proto Indo-European is reconstructed as *ensla, wich might easily be construed as the same construction your proto-Germanic has, of combining water and land roots. That's just conjecture, though.
And Frisian is definitely closer to German than either English or Dutch?
One rhyme that is sometimes used to demonstrate the palpable similarity between Frisian and English is "Bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Fries", which sounds not very different from "Brea, bûter en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk".
Oh, purrrty!
And what is that branch with Dutch, Flemish & Afrikaans called? "Low Franconian"? And why isn't it closer to the High German branch? Dutch is closer to German than English, methinks? And Frisian is definitely closer to German than either English or Dutch?
And what does 'year 0' mean?
English really clicked for me, in a way that French never did, and with a good foundation in German & English, Dutch isn't really that hard to learn (though I've heard it's harder the other way round), so for me, Frisian feels more like another color on the spectrum.
I recall that the TV documentary series "The Adventure of English (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_English)" said that Frisian was a closest relative of English.And Frisian is definitely closer to German than either English or Dutch?I thought it was closer to English, as the old rhyme I know (and so does Wikipedia) suggests:Quote from: WikipediaOne rhyme that is sometimes used to demonstrate the palpable similarity between Frisian and English is "Bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Fries", which sounds not very different from "Brea, bûter en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk".
Crossing that line between the language families is quite challenging.
and here's a bit of east-Frisian low Saxon:
<youtube>naa naa naa naa naaaaa naaaaaa</youtube>
It's mostly a pale shadow of the compounding capabilities of German, in that there aren't any formal construction rules or really exact methods of tying a constructed word its meaning. But it's remarkably clear and creates relatively short, easily usable words. And in some ways, I think the very lack of those formal construction rules makes it more flexible.
It's mostly a pale shadow of the compounding capabilities of German, in that there aren't any formal construction rules or really exact methods of tying a constructed word its meaning. But it's remarkably clear and creates relatively short, easily usable words. And in some ways, I think the very lack of those formal construction rules makes it more flexible.
In Europe, it's mostly the romance cultures that are miffed that English has won the European lingua-franca wars.Do the Italians, or Spaniards, get bent out of shape about it, or is it just the French? :mrgreen:
One thing about English that I have appreciated is that English has a great capacity for coining new words that are, even though perhaps made up on the spot, recognizable as proper English words.The fact that verbs have no case in Chinese means that the distinction between nouns and verbs is perhaps a bit weaker than in more strongly inflected languages. Formally a "particle" character is used to tell the reader if the preceding character is to be read as a noun, verb, adjective etc. but it is often dropped if the context makes it clear. So you can pretty freely use nouns as verbs and vice versa. Although English has done this too, for a long time, as displayed by words like "roof", my impression from reading modern English usage, compared to old novels, is that noun-verbing and verb-nouning is becoming more and more common.
In Europe, it's mostly the romance cultures that are miffed that English has won the European lingua-franca wars.Do the Italians, or Spaniards, get bent out of shape about it, or is it just the French? :mrgreen:
I say that too, which I think I got from America. It is a bit redundant but has implications to the sentence, because it implies giving yourself permission.
EDIT 2: also, never underestimate just adding words to a phrase to make it more emphatic and for no other reason. See also constructions like "y'all" (and even "all y'all") or adding "literally" to make a statement seem stronger. That's just something people do when a commonly-used phrase feels like somehow not enough.
There's a little noise people make when they're startled and alarmed and I don't know what it's called. If it were fully voiced, it would be a "Yelp," and a whole lot louder. But it's a sharp exhalation, usually partly voiced, often accompanied with a physical startle response like recoiling or jumping back from something. I'm sure everybody's heard this vocalization at least a few times, even if they personally haven't made it themselves. What the heck is it called? A "reverse gasp", in that someone is exhaling rather than inhaling? A "stifled yelp," in that it's not deliberately or fully voiced?
What is a name for it that I can write down and have people understand what happened without further explaining it?
There's another little noise people make when they're annoyed, and I don't know what it's called either. But at least it has a ready referent. Marge, of the TV show "The Simpsons," habitually makes this noise when she's upset but realizes trying to correct the problem would be useless. It sounds like "Hmmm," but with a passive-aggressive intonation, more air pressure behind it and a constricted throat. It sounds like starting to say something and then mentally grinding gears as you realize there's nothing to say. If it denotes anything, it may be "unwilling but passive acceptance of a bad situation."I call it a groan
What the heck *is* that? Is there a verb for making that noise? Is there a noun that is the name of it? When a character in the theater of my mind makes that sound, what the heck could I write down to describe it?
There's a little noise people make when they're startled and alarmed and I don't know what it's called. If it were fully voiced, it would be a "Yelp," and a whole lot louder. But it's a sharp exhalation, usually partly voiced, often accompanied with a physical startle response like recoiling or jumping back from something. I'm sure everybody's heard this vocalization at least a few times, even if they personally haven't made it themselves. What the heck is it called? A "reverse gasp", in that someone is exhaling rather than inhaling? A "stifled yelp," in that it's not deliberately or fully voiced?
What is a name for it that I can write down and have people understand what happened without further explaining it?
Consider the contrast between the pronunciations of plough ("plow"), cough ("coff"), and dough ("doh")...
...through (oo); hiccough (up); thought (or); thorough (uh/ə).
Special mentions: "Slough" can have three of those sounds, with three different meanings; and the town name "Loughborough" uses two of them in the same word (ˈlʌfb(ə)rə)!
Oh, and "hock" is an acceptable alternative pronunciation of hough according to the OED.
Well, Chambers dictionary also says that - and is, I am led to believe, generally a more reliable source for Scottish usage. And remember, dictionaries are about reported usage, not opinion of what is right or wrong.
Well, if you cease to live, you're deceased. Kind of weird to go from cease to de-cease, which feels like meaning some kind opposite.
Does it bother anyone else when someone says or writes "All of a sudden" instead of "Suddenly" when conveying a story?
Does it bother anyone else when someone says or writes "All of a sudden" instead of "Suddenly" when conveying a story?
Momentarily means for a moment, not in a moment, you barbarians. Try presently.
I'm just going to take a moment here to mourn the loss of the word "elite" - which used to designate those distinguished by their great capability - as opposed to "privileged" which used to designate those distinguished by their position in society.
Now that it has been co-opted as part of a narrative about privileged people abusing their positions, we have a diminished capacity for talking about the great athletes, the geniuses, the autodidacts and original thinkers, the disciplined students, the insightful and enlightened, and those of great spirit, generosity, and character. Or at least for talking about them in a way that doesn't begin with casting them in suspicion of having and abusing undeserved social standing.
The weirdest part about English IMHO is the spelling. AFAIK the spelling didn't undergo the changes the spoken language did, thus weirdness ensued.
Then again, they only picked 21 out of 192 language features to compare against. Pick another 21, and you'll have a completely different image.
IIRC, in another article, the authors acknowledge that their acculturation may skew their choice of features in ways they can neither recognize, nor compensate for. That African linguists e.g. might choose a completely different set of features.
To me, the weirdest thing about English is the word-order - not because it's complicated, but because it's not. It's rigidly Subject-Verb-Object. I just found out that German is alternating between SVO and SOV (with other possible combinations). Now I know why my brain insists on trying out 'perfectly logical' ways of constructing English sentences that end up sounding weirdAF.
To me, the weirdest thing about English is the word-order - not because it's complicated, but because it's not. It's rigidly Subject-Verb-Object. I just found out that German is alternating between SVO and SOV (with other possible combinations). Now I know why my brain insists on trying out 'perfectly logical' ways of constructing English sentences that end up sounding weirdAF.
That would be part of it.
It would be interesting to construct some sort of metric combining how weird a language is with how many speakers it has. English might not win.
Part of this is to say that some of the languages you take for granted as being normal (like English, Spanish, or German) consistently do things differently than most of the other languages in the world.
German even gets weirder - the colloquial term for mobile phone is "Handy" - and that's pronounced English, like in "that comes in handy". I honestly have no idea where the term comes from, and there are a few urban legends - but none I know incorporates English.
(kinda like I've met Americans who think a word sounds more Polish, and is apparently hilarious, if you add a random "-ski" to an English word?)
German-speakers adopting English words, and pronouncing them (to my ears, at least) in a very "English" way. I was intrigued that German didn't have "native" words for whiteboard or whiteboard-marker, but apparently the German translation of blackboard is "Tafel", which doesn't have a colour-word incorporated in it, so I suppose the obvious route of swapping the colour didn't apply.
[...]
Plainly the Germans are confident enough to feel no special need to invent new "native" words for new things. Compare and contrast l'Académie Français and l'aéroglisseur vs. l’hovercraft.
[
'Tafel' simply means 'board' - from the Latin 'tabula'. Same word-root as 'table'.
Sometimes we do 'invent' new words instead of using loanwords - e.g. 'Computer' and 'Rechner' (the German word for 'Computer') are used interchangeably. But nothing like the zeal of l'Académie Français, that's true.
German even gets weirder - the colloquial term for mobile phone is "Handy" - and that's pronounced English, like in "that comes in handy". I honestly have no idea where the term comes from, and there are a few urban legends - but none I know incorporates English.Yep.
TBH, out of context "Rechner" means calculator.No.
Never heard anyone shortening "Taschenrechner" to just "Rechner".
TBH, out of context "Rechner" means calculator.No.
"Rechner" means computer.
Calculator is called "Taschenrechner" (translated word by word: pocket computer).
Never heard anyone shortening "Taschenrechner" to just "Rechner".
it gets weird if foreign words get Germanized and bent to German grammar.
I wonder how often English bastardises words like that.
Afrikaans follows the same logic, and has rekenaar and sakrekenaar for computer and calculator.
Neither have I, but I'd hesitate to lecture a fellow Germanophone (cybersmurf is Austrian) about our shared mother-tongue.
it gets weird if foreign words get Germanized and bent to German grammar.
I wonder how often English bastardises words like that.
According to my former boss, this is actually a thing in English, too - as well as being a bona-fide research-subject in linguistics (His wife is also a professor at the local Uni, and the resident star-linguist). IIRC, he cited an example that originated with American Football-jargon, where a neologism used by football fans became widely used - but strikingly, the usage of the neologism followed grammar-rules that the original root-word did not.
it gets weird if foreign words get Germanized and bent to German grammar.
I wonder how often English bastardises words like that.
According to my former boss, this is actually a thing in English, too - as well as being a bona-fide research-subject in linguistics (His wife is also a professor at the local Uni, and the resident star-linguist). IIRC, he cited an example that originated with American Football-jargon, where a neologism used by football fans became widely used - but strikingly, the usage of the neologism followed grammar-rules that the original root-word did not.Afrikaans follows the same logic, and has rekenaar and sakrekenaar for computer and calculator.
Do you understand spoken Afrikaans? My Dutch is very rusty, but I can usually follow the gist of a Dutch conversation - not so with Afrikaans.
Neither have I, but I'd hesitate to lecture a fellow Germanophone (cybersmurf is Austrian) about our shared mother-tongue.
The biggest difference between Germany and Austria is the common language.
L'Académie Française just doesn't want to admit defeat, in acknowledging French isn't the lingua franca anymore. Unless you want to get technical about the term.Is 'blackboard' more a regional or generational term?
You know, way back when I first started learning English in school, the black in blackboard was surprising. For one, in Dutch, it's just the bord, also without colour, and second, most blackboards are actually green, except some of the very oldest I've seen.
Neither have I, but I'd hesitate to lecture a fellow Germanophone (cybersmurf is Austrian) about our shared mother-tongue.
The biggest difference between Germany and Austria is the common language.
What throws off a lot of people, including Germans, is the difference in intonation.it gets weird if foreign words get Germanized and bent to German grammar.
I wonder how often English bastardises words like that.
According to my former boss, this is actually a thing in English, too - as well as being a bona-fide research-subject in linguistics (His wife is also a professor at the local Uni, and the resident star-linguist). IIRC, he cited an example that originated with American Football-jargon, where a neologism used by football fans became widely used - but strikingly, the usage of the neologism followed grammar-rules that the original root-word did not.
But every now and then, English follows the other language's grammar, like fiancé/e
When I started elementary school (1945) the blackboards at school were actually black, and were called blackboards. When they built a new school (1952) the new blackboards were green, but were still called blackboards, out of habit, probably.Sounds like it's a generational holderover, then.
Is there any rhyme or reason to why we pronounce -on endings in two different ways? Sometimes -on sounds like a short o as in marathon, hexagon, and neutron. But more often, the o sounds like a schwa as in carbon, watermelon, and abandon. Is it just a matter of what language the word was derived from?
I’ve got a weird question. I’m ... uh... I’m gunna go ahead and ask it.
Why are Americans so fond of this little mannerism? “I’m gunna go ahead and do something “ rather than simply “I’m gunna do something.” It seems especially popular on YouTube, but I’ve seen it elsewhere (including here).
There’s nothing wrong with it, but it seems redundant and a little odd to my ear.
How to pronounce -on endings? (https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/408502/how-to-pronounce-on-endings)Maybe mishearing but hexagonal has schwa, but carbonic not has schwa. Terrible fun.QuoteIs there any rhyme or reason to why we pronounce -on endings in two different ways? Sometimes -on sounds like a short o as in marathon, hexagon, and neutron. But more often, the o sounds like a schwa as in carbon, watermelon, and abandon. Is it just a matter of what language the word was derived from?
Only english of my language forgot it's second pronoun to second-person i.e. ``thou'' e.g. french ``vous,'' ``toi;'' german ``Sie,'' ``du;'' &c. It's peevish English can't say to company ``you'' and know I mean company than representer.
I once wondered why calling someone by their first name was such a big deal. Missing said formality, English lacks a certain middle ground. In German I can call someone by first name, but still use the formal "Sie". That has become a rarity, but still is an option.
In German I can call someone by first name, but still use the formal "Sie". That has become a rarity, but still is an option.While some people indeed do that, it sounds REALLY odd, as far as I can tell its not really propper German, and I'm also unaware this was ever common.
In German I can call someone by first name, but still use the formal "Sie". That has become a rarity, but still is an option.While some people indeed do that, it sounds REALLY odd, as far as I can tell its not really propper German, and I'm also unaware this was ever common.
In German I can call someone by first name, but still use the formal "Sie". That has become a rarity, but still is an option.While some people indeed do that, it sounds REALLY odd, as far as I can tell its not really propper German, and I'm also unaware this was ever common.
IIRC, that wasn't uncommon until recently as a way to imply social hierarchy - eg. with bosses addressing their underlings. Look for some movies from the 50s and 60s, where some character tells their secretary "Frau Ursuala, bitte schreiben Sie".
IIRC, that wasn't uncommon until recently as a way to imply social hierarchy - eg. with bosses addressing their underlings. Look for some movies from the 50s and 60s, where some character tells their secretary "Frau Ursuala, bitte schreiben Sie".Hmm. Okay.
Still, "Ursuala" isnt a first name I ever came across. Do you mean "Ursula" ?
I've decided that I prefer the term 'schmaltz' over 'saccharine' to refer to something that is excessively sentimental but that I also have a soft spot for in spite of that, purely because the latter refers to artificial sweetener (which is awful), whereas the former refers to chicken or goose fat (which is awesome*).
* In moderation as part of a balanced diet.
Only the fool would take the trouble to verify that his sentence was composed of ten a's, three b's, four c's, four d's, forty-six e's, sxteen f's, four g's, thirteen h's, fifteen i's, two k's, nine l's, four m's, twenty-five n's, twenty-four o's, five p's, sixteen r's, forty-one s's, thirty-seven t's, ten u's, eight v's, eight w's, four x's, eleven y's, twenty-seven commas, twenty-three apostrophes, seven hyphens, and, last but not least, a single !
echo "Only the fool would take the trouble to verify that his sentence was composed of ten a's, three b's, four c's, four d's, forty-six e's, sxteen f's, four g's, thirteen h's, fifteen i's, two k's, nine l's, four m's, twenty-five n's, twenty-four o's, five p's, sixteen r's, forty-one s's, thirty-seven t's, ten u's, eight v's, eight w's, four x's, eleven y's, twenty-seven commas, twenty-three apostrophes, seven hyphens, and, last but not least, a single !" | fold -sw 1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn
74 You didn't really go through all the trouble, your computer did. The question becomes whether your computer is the fool. According to "$that_sentence", he would be.Only the fool would take the trouble to verify that his sentence was composed of ten a's, three b's, four c's, four d's, forty-six e's, sxteen f's, four g's, thirteen h's, fifteen i's, two k's, nine l's, four m's, twenty-five n's, twenty-four o's, five p's, sixteen r's, forty-one s's, thirty-seven t's, ten u's, eight v's, eight w's, four x's, eleven y's, twenty-seven commas, twenty-three apostrophes, seven hyphens, and, last but not least, a single !
It's really not much trouble:Code: [Select]echo "$that_sentence" | fold -sw 1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn
Why do people call the Republicans the "GOP"? There's not a single "grand" thing about them.I always figured it was meant as a tongue in cheek sort of thing once they got co-opted by rich industrialists and started getting corrupted.
But there is one remarkable characteristic that stands out: We could call them the "OWP" because every last one of their senators are Old White People.
Government Of Putin
Greedy Old Pædophiles
I've decided that I prefer the term 'schmaltz' over 'saccharine' to refer to something that is excessively sentimental but that I also have a soft spot for in spite of that, purely because the latter refers to artificial sweetener (which is awful), whereas the former refers to chicken or goose fat (which is awesome*).
* In moderation as part of a balanced diet.
Sorry for digging this up a month later, but I just stumbled over this again.
In German exists the word "Schmalz". Which literally means ... lard. Pure, unadulterated fat, and (around here) typically pork fat. So, if I twist this a little, you're basically saying "everything is better with bacon", apparently even sentimentalism.
Hmmm. If it was beef instead of pork fat when we were putting out suet for birds, then it's confusing how much they smell alike.
Suet
Suet is an ingredient seldom seen in recipes today. For many people it conjures up images of bird feeders rather than culinary delights. Suet is the fat that surrounds an animal's kidneys, and although all animals have it in varying amounts, in the kitchen the term usually means beef suet, which is the most readily available. Suet is a very hard fat with a high melting point, making it excellent for deep-frying and pastry. Rich, but with no strong beefy flavor, suet is good for both savory and sweet dishes. While it is best known for enriching mincemeat, suet is essential for steamed puddings and make slight, fluffy dumplings. Unlike other animal fats, suet doesn't need to be rendered before use; it can simply be grated, making it a great fat to have on hand. So get that suet out of the birdfeeder and put it back in your kitchen.
So.. his name's not like ``quick's oat?'' I've been saying it wrong for months (reading/discussing it) and no-one's said a peep about it. Some friends I have, letting me labor under that false impression.
On the other hand, transliteration brings its own problems.
So.. his name's not like ``quick's oat?'' I've been saying it wrong for months (reading/discussing it) and no-one's said a peep about it. Some friends I have, letting me labor under that false impression.
So.. his name's not like ``quick's oat?'' I've been saying it wrong for months (reading/discussing it) and no-one's said a peep about it. Some friends I have, letting me labor under that false impression.
Tangentially: You said you resent 'queer' since the orginal meaning was 'strange or crazy'. That's maybe true for the word's English usage history - but it's originally a loanword from Dutch and/or German. In German, 'quer' means 'orthogonal to' or 'not parallel to'. Tellingly, German LGBT+folk have adopted the English spelling & meaning, because 'quer' is both ubiquitous as well as rather innocuous. (Would that be a 're-import word'?)
So taken in its true 'original' meaning, queer would be rather apt - especially as it is often used within compound-nouns to signal 'something that is orthogonal to the dominant paradigm' (e.g 'querdenken' = 'thinking outside the box')
Okay, here's a thing. The word 'Quixotic' - denoting a great deal of effort spent on a cause clearly futile or unnecessary from the outset.
I grind my teeth every time I hear someone saying it "Quick Sot Tick" because long ago I remember that word as "Key Hoe Tick" - and then it occurred to me that I hadn't heard the correct pronunciation in a long time - even from pros, like TV news presenters.
but it's originally a loanword from Dutch and/or German. In German, 'quer' means 'orthogonal to' or 'not parallel to'. [...] So taken in its true 'original' meaning, queer would be rather apt - especially as it is often used within compound-nouns to signal 'something that is orthogonal to the dominant paradigm' (e.g 'querdenken' = 'thinking outside the box')It's not that I'd resent it, but consider it inappropriate for what should be simply accepted as part of the world, rather than something in contrast to what's accepted. Something like `strange' or `weird' might be more emotionally charged, but the essence would be the same with `oblique' or 'orthogonal.' But I'm afraid I'd be underqualified to attempt suggesting alternatives.
Tellingly, German LGBT+folk have adopted the English spelling & meaning, because 'quer' is both ubiquitous as well as rather innocuous. (Would that be a 're-import word'?)If the analogy is `loan' words, that'd be foreclosure.
ESL speakers almost always wind up saying 'tweffs' or something like that.The trick, I found, is to say it like ``twelths.'' Anytime I listen closely, I hear the ``f'' subsumed in the dental friction. Even stressed. Not listening closely, it sounds like it's just there.. It's not. Not that I've heard, at least.
'Weird' is usually said to be from old english, because any other source is uncertain or unknown. But old english, like modern english was a shapeshifting thief. I'm fairly sure we originally got 'Weird' from an *earlier* theft of 'qwer' from German.
Limburgish has actually been recognised as a separate minority language in the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/treaty/148), so there's that. Though it seems that for this language, it's only ratified by the Netherlands. Then again, I don't see Belgium recognising another language anytime soon - it's complicated enough as is.
Rhenish people will say 'Ich bin am Lesen' just like Dutchfolk will say 'Ik ben aan het lezen', whereas Standard German is 'Ich lese gerade')[/size]
Rhenish people will say 'Ich bin am Lesen' just like Dutchfolk will say 'Ik ben aan het lezen', whereas Standard German is 'Ich lese gerade')[/size]
Ehm... Either I'm misremembering, or my German teacher dropped the ball on this in high school. :roll:
As far as "ich bin gerade am Lesen" is concerned: that kind of sentence is something I actively use, at least in spoken language. You made me realise although I might use that quite regularly, I've probably hardly ever used it in written form apart from direct speech.
P.S.: How do Austrians feel about the 'Rechtschreibreform' and their northern cousins endlessly tinkering with it? Is it more "Ohey, good idea!" or "This is SO Piefke!"? (bcs, to be honest, it's totally Piefke ...)
Switching to Cyrillic is a nice idea, but English has the problem of the th-sound, which I don't believe is in there. But it could be more phonetic, like Вустер for Worcester.I thought it'd be ``вустр.'' Russian orthography has some oddities. Whether a consonant is hard or soft depends on whether the following vowel is hard or soft.. except for ш, which is softened by a tail, and always uses soft vowels. It's really stupid, so a few writers are insisting on using only ш, inheriting the hardness or softness from the following vowel, like all other consonant characters do. Fewer writers would do away with the `soft sign,' and give every consonant a tailed version for softening. I think a good compromise would be to do both: add tails to consonants to soften, or the soft sign, or use soft vowels. Sure, it'll add more letters, but it'd simplify it generally: learn the base letters, and two simple ways to soften any letter (no, not a clickbait article title.. yet)
'I' before 'E', except after 'C', unless it sounds like 'A' like in 'neighbor' or 'weigh'.
Or it's weird.
Keith is weird.'I' before 'E', except after 'C', unless it sounds like 'A' like in 'neighbor' or 'weigh'.
Or it's weird.
Any foreign observer, or anyone named "Keith", if caffeinated enough to become feisty would make you receive notification that this rule is unscientific and bad for society. It's just a weird counterfeit of a rule.
If Stephen Fry wasn't shitting me, there are actually more exceptions than examples.
I before e, except after c
Or when sounded as 'a' as in 'neighbor' and 'weigh'
Unless the 'c' is part of a 'sh' sound as in 'glacier'
Or it appears in comparatives and superlatives like 'fancier'
And also except when the vowels are sounded as 'e' as in 'seize'
Or 'i' as in 'height'
Or also in '-ing' inflections ending in '-e' as in 'cueing'
Or in compound words as in 'albeit'
Or occasionally in technical words with strong etymological links to their parent languages as in 'cuneiform'
Or in other numerous and random exceptions such as 'science', 'forfeit', and 'weird'.
Except FebruaryHaving passed algebra, I've never understood this. How can a month have negative days in it?
which has two less thirty one.
'I' before 'E', except after 'C', unless it sounds like 'A' like in 'neighbor' or 'weigh'.
Or it's weird.
Any foreign observer, or anyone named "Keith", if caffeinated enough to become feisty would make you receive notification that this rule is unscientific and bad for society. It's just a weird counterfeit of a rule.
Terpsichore doesn't rhyme with trickery.
Terpsichore doesn't rhyme with trickery.
Turp-sih-core.
Honestly we'd probably have done better adopting the umlaut from German. It gives them a nice way to keep track of some extra vowel sounds, and it doesn't seem like too much trouble.
Turp-sih-core.[snip]
Honestly we'd probably have done better adopting the umlaut from German. It gives them a nice way to keep track of some extra vowel sounds, and it doesn't seem like too much trouble.
Not to be nitpicky or something, what you mean is called Diaeresis (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)).
And yes, it would be quite helpful.
German only uses the Umlaut, but not the diaeresis, so purely from written language we can't say whether "ue" is pronounced separately ("uë"), as "ü". For reference: if you can't write or display Umlauts, German uses the non-umlaut letter with an e behind it.
Honestly we'd probably have done better adopting the umlaut from German. It gives them a nice way to keep track of some extra vowel sounds, and it doesn't seem like too much trouble.
Not to be nitpicky or something, what you mean is called Diaeresis (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)).
And yes, it would be quite helpful.
German only uses the Umlaut, but not the diaeresis, so purely from written language we can't say whether "ue" is pronounced separately ("uë"), as "ü". For reference: if you can't write or display Umlauts, German uses the non-umlaut letter with an e behind it.
Not to be nitpicky or something, what you mean is called Diaeresis (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)).
And yes, it would be quite helpful.
Not to be nitpicky or something, what you mean is called Diaeresis (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)).
And yes, it would be quite helpful.
Actually, I did in fact mean the umlaut. Where spun is the past tense of spin, but the spün goes next to the knïf and fork when you're setting the table.
Because I'd far rather have letters for most of the extra vowels, and save digraphs for diphthongs or vowels pronounced as separate syllables.
There is what is widely considered to be a "neutral" accent in American English, it is generally taught in broadcasting school/training. This could be what people mean when they say they "don't have an accent".
There is what is widely considered to be a "neutral" accent in American English, it is generally taught in broadcasting school/training. This could be what people mean when they say they "don't have an accent".
There is what is widely considered to be a "neutral" accent in American English, it is generally taught in broadcasting school/training. This could be what people mean when they say they "don't have an accent".
The noses of a great many Canadians resemble Porky Pig’s. This comes from spending so much time pressing them against the longest undefended one-way mirror in the world. The Canadians looking through this mirror behave the way people on the hidden side of such mirrors usually do: They observe, analyze, ponder, snoop and wonder what all the activity on the other side means in decipherable human terms.
The Americans, bless their innocent little hearts, are rarely aware that they are even being watched, much less by the Canadians. They just go on doing body language, playing in the sandbox of the world, bashing one another on the head and planning how to blow things up, same as always. If they think about Canada at all, it’s only when things get a bit snowy, or the water goes off, or the Canadians start fussing over some piddly detail, such as fish. Then they regard them as unpatriotic; for Americans don’t really see Canadians as foreigners, not like the Mexicans, unless they do something weird like speak French or beat the New York Yankees at baseball. Really, think the Americans, the Canadians are just like us, or would be if they could.
"Through the one-way mirror", Margaret Atwood, 1984 (https://www.urbandaleschools.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Through-the-One-Way-Mirror.pdf)
P.S.: Come to think of it: You, SnS, are probably the 'worst' example of an American to tell this to -> I have yet to see you write something that even remotely smacks of your assuming yourself to be the default, in any meaning of the word. Just coincidence, hope I didn't overstep my bounds.
I always thought it's really silly whenever someone points out accents. Like, who cares? I'm sure some people do, ...A lot of people do. Accent is used as a first approximation for social class, which anyone from the south eastern portion of the US moving north and/or west-wards rather quickly learns. Simply answering common introduction phrases in a Southern accent can dig one a social hole that may take decades to get out of, and can directly affect pay rates, job opportunities, etc. I'm not saying that's in any way right, but I have observed it.
American English: You can hear all 20 of those vowels here, but not in any one variety. All these people understand each other. Often without even noticing.
Here's about the thickest an American Accent gets. This guy speaks a low-status dialect; everybody understands him, but if he wants to be taken seriously in a large part of the country, he will have to work - and if he grew up speaking it, he will have to work HARD - to learn to speak a different variety.
Warning: This is vaguely political, insofar as he's arguing against stupidity.
As a non-native speaker of English, Americans who say they "don't have an accent" infuriate me. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "not having an accent". In any language.Apparently I have a 'cosmopolitan accent'. Most people can't really tell where I'm from, just that I grew up in a 'big city'. I've had guesses for New York New York [1] and 'California'. Though, I'm told that I have a little bit of a Wisconsin undertone even though I've never been and my grandfather from Kenosha hadn't lived there for 30 years by the time I came around.
There's some kind of metaphor about American culture in there: it's all extremely varied, but for some reason a LOT of people think anyone similar to them is basically the default, and it's other people that differ and stand out.
Apparently I have a 'cosmopolitan accent'. Most people can't really tell where I'm from, just that I grew up in a 'big city'.
According to the New York Times dialect quiz, I'm from Tennessee (my top matches were Knoxville and Nashville). A grad student in my old lab (in Wisconsin, but he was from California) insisted that I sounded like I was from upstate New York. And in Pennsylvania they made fun of my "southern accent". :psyduck:As a non-native speaker of English, Americans who say they "don't have an accent" infuriate me. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "not having an accent". In any language.Apparently I have a 'cosmopolitan accent'. Most people can't really tell where I'm from, just that I grew up in a 'big city'. I've had guesses for New York New York [1] and 'California'. Though, I'm told that I have a little bit of a Wisconsin undertone even though I've never been and my grandfather from Kenosha hadn't lived there for 30 years by the time I came around.
There's some kind of metaphor about American culture in there: it's all extremely varied, but for some reason a LOT of people think anyone similar to them is basically the default, and it's other people that differ and stand out.
[1]Nebraska, one of the hickest of hick states. Sorry, but it's true. And I'm not just saying that as a Kansan.
Truth be told, if the 50 accents in the vid Morituri linked are realistic samples ... I hardly hear the differences, I have to admit. Except for the southern "drawly" (?) ones, that is. They're very noticably not British accents, but that's about it.
A few years back, the "Liberal Redneck" guy (love him, btw) would have been beyond my capacity to parse - but apparently, my English-ears have become better. I have to focus a bit, but it's nowhere near an Australian "Bogan" accent (POIDAAAH! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqFcdz4gGKA)), for example, or some of the British ones.
P.S.: I should point out that as a non-native speaker, I approach English accents as a challenge - I couldn't care less about where the people come from (I'm a foreigner to whatever place they come from), or whatever nitwit thinks about their social class: To me, it matters how much mental resources I have to expend to enable communication (In my experience, conversation in my second language will always tire me out faster than convos in my native one - and accents add to the amount of 'brain-fuel' I have to expend), whether there's a polite way to ask the speaker if they could switch to a more standard pronounciation etc.
Apparently I have a 'cosmopolitan accent'. Most people can't really tell where I'm from, just that I grew up in a 'big city'.
Is that 'most people in the US can't tell which part of the US I'm coming from' or 'most English speakers can't tell which continent I live on'?
Bcs if you sound remotely like the compatriots of yours that I've met, pretty much anyone on the planet knows where you're coming from the second you open your mouth, if you know where I'm coming from? :wink: :-D
And here I always thought that a cygnet was a baby swan.
his is when Hodges met me, the only person who still frequents this forum regularly enough and has met me to be likely to comment. So I would be most interested to know what the fuck he thinks I sound like if anything
Why the hell is the 'l' in 'solder' silent?
Ah, I misunderstood - you were on the "l" not the "i" (I read it as capital i and presumed a typo).You all say 'solder' as "sol-der"?
I have never heard the "l" in solder not pronounced nor had any idea that was a possibility, and so that is a complete surprise to me. British dictionaries don't mention the possibility either.
Thing is, it's ridiculously subtle. You produce the 'f' sound with the lower lip and upper teeth, and you produce the 'ph' sound with both lips and no teeth. The problem with this is that unless I'm actually the one doing it, I cannot *hear* any difference between these sounds. One unvoiced approximant aspiration sounds pretty much the same as another to me.
I believe, without specific evidence that I remember, that the 'f' and 'ph' spellings now pronounced in the same way used to have different pronunciations.(Preliminary: In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the English "f" sound is written as /f/ (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_labiodental_fricative) and the other sound you describe is written as /ɸ/ (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_bilabial_fricative). I'll use those below.)
Thing is, it's ridiculously subtle. You produce the 'f' sound with the lower lip and upper teeth, and you produce the 'ph' sound with both lips and no teeth.
Japanese is the well-known example. The classical word is ao (or aoi) which covers both. But later they added midori for green, which is commonly used; however, ao has not become restricted to blue, and will be used for the colour of a traffic light for go, or even by some for vegetables. Interestingly, this has gone the other way, and the "green" traffic light in Japan (https://www.google.com/search?q=colour+of+japanese+traffic+lights&client=opera&hs=1I7&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjT7JfVxbrtAhUmTRUIHXJABFgQ_AUoAXoECBcQAw&biw=1285&bih=1446) is often distinctly blue!Something that sticks out at me about the horizontally-mounted Japanese traffic lights is that green/blue is on the left. Some areas in the U.S. (in particular, Texas) mount the traffic lights horizontally like that, but red is always on the left.
However, the overlap of these colours has actually occurred in many languages, as Wikipedia will tell you (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_language).
See, I would just translate that word as 'turquoise' which is a color name in English for a shade between blue and green.
Something that sticks out at me about the horizontally-mounted Japanese traffic lights is that green/blue is on the left. Some areas in the U.S. (in particular, Texas) mount the traffic lights horizontally like that, but red is always on the left.It would be tempting to think that this had something to do with the right to left reading that was traditional in Japan, and persists in the reading order of panels in manga, but it is not obvious whether red should be the beginning or end of a "line".
It is tempting to think of the reading direction, or whether people drive on the right or the left - but I was actually thinking of all the people who are red/green color blind and thinking how completely unfair and unforgiving this contrast is for anyone who wants to drive in both places.That’s a very good point. With vertical traffic lights, there’s an international standard that the red should be on top. So if you’re red/green colorblind, you can tell which light is which by their positions. There doesn’t seem to be any such international standard for horizontal traffic lights.
One more thought: it's a noun, too.I wouldn't ordinarily call out a simple spelling error, but.It's a personal affectation I've done for many years, probably predating the usage you refer to.
'Thot' has a meaning, as a noun, so I am not sure that's something we should keep flying around.
It is tempting to think of the reading direction, or whether people drive on the right or the left - but I was actually thinking of all the people who are red/green color blind and thinking how completely unfair and unforgiving this contrast is for anyone who wants to drive in both places.That’s a very good point. With vertical traffic lights, there’s an international standard that the red should be on top. So if you’re red/green colorblind, you can tell which light is which by their positions. There doesn’t seem to be any such international standard for horizontal traffic lights.
Curious: One sees it as a their own affectation, while another considers it (slightly more than) a spelling error---really (according to Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=thot&oldid=59698861)) it's a longstanding (since 16th century) nonstandard form, that's recently (popularized 2012) been made homographic with a slur:One more thought: it's a noun, too.I wouldn't ordinarily call out a simple spelling error, but.It's a personal affectation I've done for many years, probably predating the usage you refer to.
'Thot' has a meaning, as a noun, so I am not sure that's something we should keep flying around.
Believe it or not, I saw a joke about the difference a few weeks ago. I don't recall it well enough to recount it, but it was a marriage joke about when a husband screws up.It is tempting to think of the reading direction, or whether people drive on the right or the left - but I was actually thinking of all the people who are red/green color blind and thinking how completely unfair and unforgiving this contrast is for anyone who wants to drive in both places.That’s a very good point. With vertical traffic lights, there’s an international standard that the red should be on top. So if you’re red/green colorblind, you can tell which light is which by their positions. There doesn’t seem to be any such international standard for horizontal traffic lights.
I can faintly remember someone telling me that the red-yellow-green sequence is either top down or left to right, as per international agreement for both variants (to help colorblind people). But if in Japan the hue of green is going towards blue, it might be better distinguishable for people with red/green colorblindness.Curious: One sees it as a their own affectation, while another considers it (slightly more than) a spelling error---really (according to Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=thot&oldid=59698861)) it's a longstanding (since 16th century) nonstandard form, that's recently (popularized 2012) been made homographic with a slur:One more thought: it's a noun, too.I wouldn't ordinarily call out a simple spelling error, but.It's a personal affectation I've done for many years, probably predating the usage you refer to.
'Thot' has a meaning, as a noun, so I am not sure that's something we should keep flying around.
Begone, spelling error!
Anyway, my brain just wondered what the difference between "error" and "mistake" is, because until now I always thought they were basically synonymous.
Is it possible "error" is more quantifiable? Since it's called "margin of error". Something in the likes of hair vs hairs (not singular vs plural, but the quantifiable amount of single hairs vs. the thing as a whole)
I worked on avionics once and there was a box on a diagram labeled "error amplifier".And for those not versed in analog systems, the error amplifier exists to make the apparent error larger so the remainder of the analog computer 1) knows it exists and 2) can then use the resulting value in the next calculations and movement. The goal is to drive the error value to zero, which will never happen in a physical system, but when the system is relatively stable, zero can be approached pretty closely, which means sensing the error can be difficult and then responding to it properly is similarly difficult. Digital systems avoid this problem but at the expense of having "dead bands", places in between where a particular sensor can take a meaningful reading. If the dead band is small enough, that is designed properly, it's not an issue. Example: if your flight surface can be positioned between +90 and -90 and an analog sensor can read this to within one decimal place (+/- 0.1) and the system commands the surface to move to 5.0, after the movement is complete the surface might be anywhere between 5.2 and 4.8. Let's assume it's at 5.2; the error between the actual and the command is 5.2-5=0.2. That error will then be fed back into the next command to the flight surface to hopefully get smaller. And as the error gets smaller, down to the sensor limit, the more important it is to amplify so the system will be able to compute an appropriate adjusted result. However, if the system is digital and the sensor is accurate to 1.0, then the actual error of 0.2 would be read as an error of 1.0 (the sensor limit) or 0, depending. Now the digital system would feed either 0 or 1 back into the next movement and the cycle repeats. Notice that there is finer control in the analogue system, but that may not be important to the overall stability of the aircraft - it would depend on many other design factors. And that's why you hire top engineers who know their stuff.
It's not as funny as it sounds. "Error" is in that context the technical term for the difference between where a control surface is commanded to be and where it currently is. Every time it has to move, there is an "error" measured.
English - a language with half a grammar and three vocabularies.And at least 4 major, separate, regions where it's actively spoken (and therefore morphing). I find it amazing Aussies, Brits, Indians, and USnians can even understand each other, let alone as well as they do.
What could possibly go wrong?
I have only experience vestibule being used to refer the space between two sets of entry doors, vaguely akin to the airlock in a spaceship. I've never heard anyone use it to refer to a courtyard.
Also, in my area of the country, "lobby" and "foyer" are typically used for different things. Lobby is used for the central public area near the entrance of business, apartment complex, or government building while a foyer is generally the area just inside the front entrance of a house.
Hell, even within those different regions are mutually unintelligible dialects.And at least two of them have regions of snoots who insist anyone who doesn't talk like them must be stupid.
So can Germans, French, Spanish, Italian, ..., Arab, Iranian, Iraqi, ... Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, ... etc etc etcEnglish - a language with half a grammar and three vocabularies.And at least 4 major, separate, regions where it's actively spoken (and therefore morphing). I find it amazing Aussies, Brits, Indians, and USnians can even understand each other, let alone as well as they do.
What could possibly go wrong?
And regions where if you don't talk like them, they think you must be a uppity, snobbish wanker.Hell, even within those different regions are mutually unintelligible dialects.And at least two of them have regions of snoots who insist anyone who doesn't talk like them must be stupid.
Thats why everybody can understand everybody else ... there is no chance of the language drifting without everybody noticing anymore.English drifts constantly, and everyone does notice, but thinks everyone outside their dialect group is doing English wrongly. The price native English-speakers pay for not having to bother to learn anyone else's language is that English does not belong to them any more.
And regions where if you don't talk like them, they think you must be a uppity, snobbish wanker.Hell, even within those different regions are mutually unintelligible dialects.And at least two of them have regions of snoots who insist anyone who doesn't talk like them must be stupid.
Hell, there's parts of the far west that consider us 'Southern' despite having the contiguous center in our state.And regions where if you don't talk like them, they think you must be a uppity, snobbish wanker.Hell, even within those different regions are mutually unintelligible dialects.And at least two of them have regions of snoots who insist anyone who doesn't talk like them must be stupid.
I've been on both ends of both of these.
Part of the fun of being from the central part of the nation, and thusly being northern to the southerners and southern to the northerners.
<snip>
I've been on both ends of both of these.
Part of the fun of being from the central part of the nation, and thusly being northern to the southerners and southern to the northerners.
So, this depends on what you mean by weird...On a global scale, the non-weird thing is to have no articles at all.
<snip>
I've been on both ends of both of these.
Part of the fun of being from the central part of the nation, and thusly being northern to the southerners and southern to the northerners.
Liar. The Midlands don't exist.
Also:
So, this depends on what you mean by weird...On a global scale, the non-weird thing is to have no articles at all.
On global scale, non-weird thing is to have no articles at all, and in Soviet Russia, party finds you.So, this depends on what you mean by weird...On a global scale, the non-weird thing is to have no articles at all.
And yet you used "the" in your sentence. #irony
And so on. Coming from a language like Russian that completely lacks prepositions it must be incredibly difficult to learn all the ways we English speakers use them. None of these are really inherently obvious. They just seem that way because we're used to them.Idiomatic prepositionalities rarely affect otherwise clear writing---any preposition, vaguely, works. By that synthetic language, where all grammar is by affixes, coming by this analytic one, having separate words carrying grammar, they are perceived by space-separated affixes.
I can't think of a better place to put this, though it doesn't really fit.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/25/989765565/tower-of-babble-non-native-speakers-navigate-the-world-of-good-and-bad-english
Summary: expecting or requiring ESL speakers to reach the skill levels of people like Akima is exclusionary and unnecessary since clear communication is possible with far less effort.
Summary: expecting or requiring ESL speakers to reach the skill levels of people like Akima is exclusionary and unnecessary since clear communication is possible with far less effort.Definitely. Whatever level of competence I have achieved in English is mainly the result of being dropped into immersion in an English-speaking environment at a young age, which is not an... opportunity that most ESL students get. And while the general assumption that I must be stupid because my English was poor was a sharp spur to improve, I do my very best not to make that mistake myself.
More than once 'sensitivity training' was required to bop someone over the head and guide them toward making profitable decisions instead of stupid ones. GOD I wish they'd use a better name for it; 'sensitivity training' does not convey that it reduces business stupidity, and it's widely seen as a thing sort of irrelevant to actual business decisions. Instead, people who hear it called by that name think of it as just training them to be 'sensitive people' who offend others less. Which is true, but often they don't value that. Its effect on what you decide is more important than its effect on who you offend.
Saw a sign the other day that read "Do not ride bikes or scooters in the park. Children and the elderly may be injured."
Thought that was a bit daft, no riding your bike but beating up old people and kids is okay?!
Knife attack on German train severely injures 3 people
Didn't that used to be Lancastershire? I remember the name appearing in books with the extra pseudo-syllable.
"Lancastershire" occurs in late 14th century, and Leland was still using it in 1540. "Lancashire" occurs in the Paston Letters in 1464. Lancashire became the preferred designation, as a syncope of Lancastershire.So any not-ancient book that used "Lancastershire" was well out of line.
As a change from different pronunciations of the same letters (see "ough"), I offer widely varied spellings of the same sound.
Eight and ate (in some dialects) sound the same; but here are two less-known spellings with the same sound: ait and eyot - which are in fact also the same word historically, meaning a small, possibly temporary, island in a river, typically but not only the Thames.
Knowing that Thames is said "Tims",
If I'm not retreading here, "hold your [xyz]" as a means of saying 'wait'. I know it's got military uses (i.e. "hold your fire" or simply "hold"), but how did it come about in the first place? Was it orginally a variant of 'halt' and diverged from there?
Knowing that Thames is said "Tims",
Eh? For me the vowel is the same as e in "het up"; unlike the river Thame (vowel is like "same").
But I live in Oxford, where the Thames is called the Isis (the origin's the same - they are both contractions of the Latin name: Thamesis)
But the question is, how many holes in the Blackbourne section? I heard they counted them all once upon a time.
In more English is weird news...
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