THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)

  • 02 Dec 2024, 08:35
  • Welcome, Guest
Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Poll

The Next Goal for Hannelore:

Letting the dishes sit in the sink overnight
- 13 (14.1%)
Kissing a boy without wanting to boil her lips off
- 11 (12%)
Hugging without Hyperventilating
- 56 (60.9%)
Being "Normal."
- 2 (2.2%)
Sex, of course.
- 10 (10.9%)

Total Members Voted: 80


Pages: 1 ... 4 5 [6]   Go Down

Author Topic: WCT May 3-7, 2010 (1656-1660)  (Read 88705 times)

Carl-E

  • Awakened
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 10,346
  • The distilled essence of Mr. James Beam himself.
Re: WCT May 3-7, 2010
« Reply #250 on: 10 May 2010, 09:22 »

Other than foreign, they DO follow the "sounding like A" part of the rule.  In fact, neighbor and weigh are in the little rhyme...
Here are a few other exceptions to the rule: either, eider, ageing, protein, and absenteeism.  I'm sure there are a lot more!

Absenteeism and ageing don't count, they're root words ending in E that have a suffix beginning with I added on. 

But the others, yeah - interesting...

So now's when we throw our hands up in the air and agree that English is a fucked up language, right? 

Right? 
Logged
When people try to speak a gut reaction, they end up talking out their ass.

Dliessmgg

  • Scrabble hacker
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1,291
  • Here's looking at you, kid.
Re: WCT May 3-7, 2010
« Reply #251 on: 10 May 2010, 13:07 »

Only the details are fucked up. There's worse, like German or French.
Logged
Quote from: KharBevNor
Please keep your opinions in your opinion-hole.
twittr // bloggr // tumblr

Binary

  • Curry sauce
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 271
Re: WCT May 3-7, 2010
« Reply #252 on: 10 May 2010, 14:20 »

Worse still, Russian. Three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter (what possible logic is there to 'passport', 'document' and 'bread' being masculine, 'newspaper' and 'Russia' being feminine, and 'building', 'radio' and 'letter' being  neuter?)

Oh, but it gets better. Six, count 'em, six 'cases' for nouns - nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, prepositional and instrumental. The case of a noun indicates the role that it plays in a sentence. In English this is done using word order, in Russian by altering the ending of the noun. So you don't just learn a noun, you have to learn all the possible additional endings it can take (and of course these also depend on the gender or whether it's plural). There are four types of regular declension, but also a whole set of irregular exceptions.

God, I hated Russian. Barely scraped a pass at school, never used it again.
Logged
"We are the weirdos, Mister!" -Fairuza Balk, The Craft

Penquin47

  • Psychopath in a hockey mask
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 628
Re: WCT May 3-7, 2010
« Reply #253 on: 10 May 2010, 15:04 »

German has the same three genders.  While I only got as far as four cases of nouns, that doesn't mean the other two don't exist in German.

Latin has three genders and six cases of nouns.

Greek has three genders.  Dunno about cases, haven't got that far in Rosetta Stone yet.

Why I study languages: because it's FUN!  (This is not sarcasm.  I studied German, French, and Spanish in school, and am studying Greek and Latin on my own and thinking about either picking Spanish back up because it's useful or starting Irish this summer.)
Logged

Binary

  • Curry sauce
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 271
Re: WCT May 3-7, 2010
« Reply #254 on: 10 May 2010, 16:51 »

Irish is easy. Memorise the simple phrase below and you'll be able to cope in a surprising number of situations.

WHALE OIL BEEF HOOKED
Logged
"We are the weirdos, Mister!" -Fairuza Balk, The Craft

Lyrical

  • Plantmonster
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 35
Re: WCT May 3-7, 2010
« Reply #255 on: 10 May 2010, 21:00 »

Absenteeism and ageing don't count, they're root words ending in E that have a suffix beginning with I added on.  But the others, yeah - interesting...  So now's when we throw our hands up in the air and agree that English is a fucked up language, right?
Hey, the "I before E" quote doesn't say anything about root words, but there are plenty more exceptions within the root word as well.  Anyway, English is consistently inconsistent.  From what I understand, the tonal languages, such as Japanese and Chinese, tend to be the most difficult to learn to speak correctly.  I know a smattering of different languages, but I'm not really fluent in any but English.  I admire the people who manage to learn another language as an adult!

IsItCold, I remember something about that, too, but not the exact wording.  He's not as in-your-face as Pintsize about it for sure, but he did seem sexual/romantic in that story arc. 
« Last Edit: 10 May 2010, 21:02 by Lyrical »
Logged

daryljfontaine

  • Larger than most fish
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 104
Re: WCT May 3-7, 2010
« Reply #256 on: 10 May 2010, 21:14 »

EDIT: NVM apparently cannot read thread titles.

D
« Last Edit: 10 May 2010, 22:05 by daryljfontaine »
Logged
It takes a village to raise a child.  It takes a Viking to raze a village.

Dliessmgg

  • Scrabble hacker
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1,291
  • Here's looking at you, kid.
Re: WCT May 3-7, 2010
« Reply #257 on: 11 May 2010, 00:50 »

German has the same three genders.  While I only got as far as four cases of nouns, that doesn't mean the other two don't exist in German.

German has four cases, but nobody knows how to use them correctly or when you can use two with slightly different sentence structure or when there's a special old word that needs an exception. It got worse with the reform around 2000 where nobody knew what was correct afterwards and now you can use what was correct before and after, but the new stuff is advised. That leads to some mixing both. Bleh.
Logged
Quote from: KharBevNor
Please keep your opinions in your opinion-hole.
twittr // bloggr // tumblr

ecstaticjoy

  • Bizarre cantaloupe phobia
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 237
    • I like math
Re: WCT May 3-7, 2010
« Reply #258 on: 11 May 2010, 00:58 »

Looks like she's gonna spill that coffee!!

ndperfesser

  • Plantmonster
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 45
Re: WCT May 3-7, 2010
« Reply #259 on: 11 May 2010, 20:45 »

Dental records. Fillings are not genetically predestined. Also, this is last week's thread.
Logged

Tuitsuro

  • FIGHT YOU
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 379
Re: WCT May 3-7, 2010
« Reply #260 on: 11 May 2010, 20:46 »

WHALE OIL BEEF HOOKED

Ah, that took me a minute. :lol:
Logged

Kugai

  • CIA Handler of Miss Melody Powers
  • Awakened
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 11,493
  • Crazy Kiwi Shoujo-Ai Fan
    • My Homepage
Re: WCT May 3-7, 2010
« Reply #261 on: 11 May 2010, 23:06 »

WHALE OIL BEEF HOOKED

Ah, that took me a minute. :lol:

Me too.  :laugh:

And as the Upper Class English say,  AIR HAIR LAIR
Logged
James The Kugai 

You can never have too much Coffee.

ecstaticjoy

  • Bizarre cantaloupe phobia
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 237
    • I like math
Re: WCT May 3-7, 2010
« Reply #262 on: 12 May 2010, 01:14 »

yes, yes, yes <33333333333

Akima

  • WoW gold miner on break
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 6,523
  • ** 妇女能顶半边天 **
Re: WCT May 3-7, 2010
« Reply #263 on: 12 May 2010, 03:47 »

From what I understand, the tonal languages, such as Japanese and Chinese, tend to be the most difficult to learn to speak correctly.
Technically Japanese is not a tonal language, unlike Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai etc.

Obviously I'm not the best person to ask about the difficulty of learning Chinese (usually Standard Mandarin) as a second language. It is classed as one of the most difficult for English-speakers to learn, but I'm not sure that it is the tones that give most trouble. The CSL people I've talked to found the tones simply came with practice, and Mandarin grammar is in many ways far simpler than English. It is the writing system that seemed to be the big hurdle... as it is to Chinese people too! I sometimes wonder if the fearsome reputation of Chinese is partly an artifact of a general foreign-language teaching tradition that over-emphasises written language because it is easy to test.
Logged
"I would rather have questions that can't be answered, than answers that can't be questioned." Richard Feynman
Pages: 1 ... 4 5 [6]   Go Up