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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Word usage in English dialects // was Slang, curses and vulgarities
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook)
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Help: Arabic fonts for Turklangs
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Help: Arabic fonts for Turklangs
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Dynamic vs. Stative Verbs
From: Simon Clarkstone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: OT: Re: Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: OT: Re: Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook
From: René Uittenbogaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Future English
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
From: Doug Dee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. The primary colours (was Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y"
ain't arbitrary (was: Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook)))
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: CHAT: Speed cameras
From: Stephen Mulraney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 21:20:51 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Word usage in English dialects // was Slang, curses and vulgarities
Quoting "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> > > No, Tristan and Andreas are rather exaggerating the death of "shall".
> >
> > Excuse me? When have I exaggerated the death of 'shall'?
>
> Well, what you did say was that you don't use "shall", and that you
> thought it was only used in the KJV Bible, which uses an archaic
> version of modern English. Doing a quick search with an online
> Bible using the New International Version (ca. 1970-80s?), I found
> 409 instances of "shall", in most books of the Bible, New and Old
> Testament, and including instances not used in questions or in the
> first person. E.g. Revelation 1:7 reads: "So shall it be! Amen".
This must be some sort of misunderstanding. The only thing I've said about my
own use of 'shall' is that I do *not* use it quite so sparingly as I was taught
to in school (we were taught only to use it in questions of the "Shall I ... ?"
type and in Biblical quotes). A sufficiently thorough search of the CONLANG
archives would, little doubt, unearth instances of me using the word in
non-quotation indicative sentences, altho I shan't pretend I use it often.
I believe it was Tristan who said he thought that KJV was the only Bible
translation to use it. I do not know enough of English Bible translations to
dare any claim as to with which frequency they use any given grammatical
construction or word.
Andreas
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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 20:14:33 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook)
On Sunday, February 6, 2005, at 02:10 , Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 05, 2005 at 05:42:45PM -0800, Gary Shannon wrote:
>> As to whether "y" in that context is a vowel or a
>> consonant, the choice seem pretty arbitrary to my
>> untrained ear.
It is not arbitrary at all. Phonologically it is a consonant.
>> I classify the sound as a vowel. If
>> that does not agree with convention then so be it.
>> I'm not an expert, and that classification works for
>> me.
Maybe - but if you do not want to be misunderstood and, indeed, do not
want to misunderstand other people, it is preferable IMO to use words in
ways that others do.
>> I do pronounce "R" quite distinctly, not in the
>> East Coast, or Bostonian style at all.
>
> It's not a vowel because it does not constitute a syllable nucleus.
> The word "year" has only one syllable.
Yes, indeed. From the phonological point of view, vowels are units which
function at the center of syllables or, as Mark say, the nucleus of a
syllable. Unless Gary pronounces _year_ as _two_ syllables, which I doubt,
the |y| cannot be a vowel.
> The particular type of
> quasi-vowel consonant sound represented by "y" in the word "year" is
> called a
> "glide"; /w/ is another one.
From a phonological point of view, the units units that function at the
margins of syllables are consonants. More formally these "glides" `are
approximants: [j] is a palatal approximant ans [w[ labio-velar approximant.
Gary is probably thinking in terms of _phonetic_ and not phonological
definitions of vowel and consonant. The phonetic definitions are omewhat
different and in order to avoid confusion, the phonetician Kenneth Pike
coined the terms vocoid and contoid:
VOCOID - a sound, lacking in closure or narrowing sufficient to produced
audible friction.
CONTOID - a sound produced either by closure in the vocal tract or by
sufficient narrowing to cause audible friction.
It will thus be seen that approximants - e.g. [l], [r], [j], [w] - are
vocoids (i.e. 'phonetic' vowels). Indeed, in some languages, e.g. [l] and/
or [r] can act as syllabic nuclei (phonological vowels).
So, in short, the |y| in _you_ and _year_ is [j], which is a vocoid and in
those two words function phonologically as a consonant.
BTW I changed the subject line as this has little to do with Intergermansk.
It seems to me that how "Thank you" is expressed in that language is up
to Pascal. If anyone who does not like Pascal's version can always compose
their own 'inter-Germanic'. Tho not so popular as 'inter-Romance' conlangs,
'inter-Germanic' conlangs have been devised in the past and, I have no
doubt, will continue to be in the future.
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason." [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]
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Message: 3
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 22:39:25 +0200
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Help: Arabic fonts for Turklangs
Philip Newton wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 03:02:21 -0500, Geoff Horswood
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Does anyone know where I can lay my hands on any of the modified Arabic
> > (modified Farsi??) fonts that are used for writing Turkic languages like
> > Kazakh, Kyrghyz and Uighur in NW China?
>
> I suggest you get a well-stocked Unicode-encoded font. For example,
> Code2000 (shareware, $5) or Arial Unicode MS both contain quite a
> number of such characters.
Indeed those fonts include necessary characters, but their open tables are
not smart enough to make ligatures: the additional characters just remain in
isolated forms. Arial Unicode MS ignores *ALL* additional characters but
Farsi; Code2000 does not deel well with some of them. At least that is what
happens on my comp (under Win98).
----------
Tim May wrote:
> If it's simply a matter of being able to display Arabic script with
> the extended characters used in those languages, that's easily done.
> You just need a Unicode font that supports those characters in the
> Arabic range.
As you see, it's not so easy. One needs fonts that would make ligatures
correctly.
> If you actually want a font in an appropriate style for
> e.g. Ottoman Turkish, that might take a little more searching (and I
> don't know enough about Arabic calligraphy to help you).
I would suggest to limit yourself with Farsi extensions for now, till the
software becomes more sofisticated. At least that was my decision wrt Ajami.
A good set of Farsi fonts (including calligraphic) helps a lot.
Unfortunately I don't remember where I got mine, but googling for "B
Ferdosi" and/or "B Esfehan" may help.
-- Yitzik
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Message: 4
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 21:52:06 +0000
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Help: Arabic fonts for Turklangs
Isaac Penzev wrote at 2005-02-06 22:39:25 (+0200)
> Philip Newton wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 03:02:21 -0500, Geoff Horswood
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > Does anyone know where I can lay my hands on any of the modified Arabic
> > > (modified Farsi??) fonts that are used for writing Turkic languages like
> > > Kazakh, Kyrghyz and Uighur in NW China?
> >
> > I suggest you get a well-stocked Unicode-encoded font. For example,
> > Code2000 (shareware, $5) or Arial Unicode MS both contain quite a
> > number of such characters.
>
> Indeed those fonts include necessary characters, but their open tables are
> not smart enough to make ligatures: the additional characters just remain in
> isolated forms. Arial Unicode MS ignores *ALL* additional characters but
> Farsi; Code2000 does not deel well with some of them. At least that is what
> happens on my comp (under Win98).
What version of Code2000 do you have? It's under continual
development, later versions may do better (I don't have it myself, so
I couldn't say).
Or it may indeed just be your platform. Win98 isn't the most
sophisticated OS with regard to Unicode.
Could you give specific examples where Code2000 has problems? I'm
using the font PakType Tehreer under Linux, and it seems to be able to
handle anything I can think of (at least in Pango apps) but my
knowledge of what _should_ happen is limited.
> ----------
> Tim May wrote:
>
>
> > If it's simply a matter of being able to display Arabic script with
> > the extended characters used in those languages, that's easily done.
> > You just need a Unicode font that supports those characters in the
> > Arabic range.
>
> As you see, it's not so easy. One needs fonts that would make ligatures
> correctly.
A good point. I should make it clear that by "supports" I include
having the necessary OpenType tables for the rendering of ligatures*.
And even given that, a successful outcome is contingent upon the
presence of suitable complex text rendering architecture on your
platform.
* Or equivalent - I forget what the Apple technology is called, for
example.
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Message: 5
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 22:08:47 +0000
From: Simon Clarkstone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Dynamic vs. Stative Verbs
On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 21:28:56 -0800, Kris Kowal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hey, here's a thought for a conlang in respect to static and dynamic.
> Seems to me that the static vs dynamic relationship simply rests on
> the very linguistic edge of calculus. Like, what we're calling
> statics here is a description of state; dynamicism is the first
> derivitve of some given state with respect to time. A clever conlang
> might extend the concept to deeper or even arbitrary derivatives.
> This might lead to some interesting inflection in conjunction with
> numeric affixes as were suggested on another thread.
...
> 'phudous' might refer to the phenomenon that occurs when a rocket's
> acceleration increases as it loses mass to fuel consumption.
I believe that the phenomenon (dddx/dttt) is known as "jerk". The
fourth derivative and above are not consistently named.
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Message: 6
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 17:43:58 -0500
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Re: Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook
On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 14:04:55 -0600, Thomas R. Wier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>On 6 Feb 2005, at 7.03 am, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
...
>> > So, are all Germanophones as gratuitously rude and uncouth as you,
>> > or are you unique? You're not the first I've had unpleasant
>> > experiences with, I must say...
>>
>> I can very well understand that Thomas R. Wier is annoyed about the
>> repeated gratuitous rudeness of Pascal Kramm. However, it's unfair
>> to say that this is because he'd speak German. He's the only German
>> speaker on this list who uses an insulting language.
>
>Yes, that was unfair of me. I wrote in haste, for which I wish to
>convey sincere apologies.
Oh, that's no problem! I already assumed you didn't really mean it, and I
apologize that I didn't write that... :)
>I have mentioned my own
>own experience with a German in Frankfurt who suggested that
>I personally was somehow involved in the fire-bombing of Dresden
>and other German cities during the War.
:( That's really bad! I feel very sorry for you. Such accusations hurt, I
think I know that.
These bombings were discussed for the very first time some years ago (in
Sebald, you can see that in the early nineties, they were still silenced).
All the mass media reported extensively about them. This has lead
thoughtless people to accusations like the one you've suffered.
...
>But I still feel Pascal should make
>a special effort to avoid even the appearance of offense, given that
>he has now richly earned such a reputation.
I second that.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
j. 'mach' wust
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Message: 7
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 18:12:41 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
Because I simply cannot resist YAEPT, even though it's really not the
thread for one...
On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 20:14:33 +0000, Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Unless Gary pronounces _year_ as _two_ syllables, which I doubt,
The pronunciation /ji.r\=/ (or even /ji.jr\=/) is not unheard of around
here. I don't actually fully ken Gary's location and lect, though.
Paul
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Message: 8
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 18:27:35 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
On Sun, Feb 06, 2005 at 06:12:41PM -0500, Paul Bennett wrote:
> Because I simply cannot resist YAEPT, even though it's really not the
> thread for one...
>
> On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 20:14:33 +0000, Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >Unless Gary pronounces _year_ as _two_ syllables, which I doubt,
>
> The pronunciation /ji.r\=/ (or even /ji.jr\=/) is not unheard of around
> here. I don't actually fully ken Gary's location and lect, though.
Yes, but syllabifying the /r/ doesn't really have any bearing on the
discussion over whether the /j/ is a vowel. :)
-Marcos
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Message: 9
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 18:29:25 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
The Wiggles seem to consistently refer to football as "soccer"; is this
normal? I thought that was strictly an Americanism. Does "football"
there refer to Aussie rules?
-Marcos
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Message: 10
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:10:57 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
On 7 Feb 2005, at 10.29 am, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> The Wiggles seem to consistently refer to football as "soccer"; is this
> normal? I thought that was strictly an Americanism.
Absolutely not. The word was coined in a non-rhotic dialect, after all
(it apparently derives from the repetition of 'assoc', as it used to be
called 'Association Football'*). We do call it 'soccer' and as far as
I'm concerned, calling it 'football' is the deviant name. (I hold that
calling *anything* 'football' is deviant, because it always refers to
the dominant football code in your area: a linguistic variable.) It
seems to me that the Brits who tell Americans that 'football' means
'soccer' & any other form name or definition is wrong are lamenting the
fact that American English is the defacto dialect nowadays, and I've
always read it in the same way I've read British criticism of American
spellings like 'behavior' and 'bastardize'.
* Which is neither here nor there. Aussie rules is just a contration of
'Australian rules football', and I guess 'rugby' is probably based on
something like 'Rugby rules football' too. It wouldn't surprise me if
gridiron was properly 'Gridiron Football'.
> Does "football"
> there refer to Aussie rules?
In Queensland and some parts of New South Wales and, perhaps, the ACT,
(as well as New Zealand) 'football' apparently refers to one particular
form of rugby (i.e. either league or union, but not the other), but as
a Melburnian I know nothing about rugby so I don't know which it is.
In the rest of Australia, football does indeed refer to Aussie rules,
being the dominant code.
Sometimes Aussie rules is called 'AFL', which stands for 'Australian
Football League', I think usually by New South Welshpeople and
Queenslanders: When they do this, they aren't talking about the AFL,
but the sport. The organisation usually has a definite article, but
AFL='Aussie rules' usually doesn't (to my knowledge---this isn't a
usage I'm used to).
Of course, Aussie rules is the obvious sport for a cricket-playing
nation to play. It saves significantly on stadiums and so forth, given
that they're both played on the same oval.
In colloquial speech, 'football' is often contracted to 'footy' (both
the sport and the ball), all over the country.
--
Tristan.
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Message: 11
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 01:13:54 +0100
From: René Uittenbogaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Re: Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook
Thomas R. Wier wrote:
> As for Germans in general, I think there are cultural differences that
> can lead to misunderstandings easily. I and many of my friends
> who've here at the university can attest that continentals that we've
> met have a tendency to be more forthright about their opinions
> in some social situations than Americans tend to be; this is
> interpreted by them as honesty and a truer sign of friendship,
> while for us it can be seen as boorishness.
Yes - Dutch people tend to be very frank/rude as well; and I've got
colleagues at work who realize this and use careful wording when
addressing foreigners, and also colleagues who don't realize this -
sometimes leading to hair-raising dialogues on the phone.
> Anyways, we've actually recently seen an example of this kind of
> misunderstanding on the list, when one of the Francophones a while
> back pointed out Anglophones' habit of saying "How are you?" at
> every greeting, even when the latter don't actually want to carry
> on a drawn-out conversation about the other person's current
> welfare. The former interpreted this as insincerity, whereas
> to the latter it is politeness.
Let me lift the blame from any francophone by saying that it was me,
actually, who brought up this subject.
René
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Message: 12
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:25:23 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Future English
On 7 Feb 2005, at 6.21 am, Pascal A. Kramm wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 00:37:22 +1100, Tristan McLeay
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> It also has absolutely
>> no change to the grammar, but the changes in grammar will be the most
>> interesting aspect. How will the clitics develop? Will we see some
>> reanalysed into case markers? Will they become verbal prefixes?
>
> I know... I left that out yet to try out the sound changes.
> You'll find that also in the next version.
>
>> I propose, distant enough in the future, that:
>>
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] will be reanalysed as, ironically, a singular subject
>> marker
>> (from 'is', 'has')
>
> This far, the singular isn't marked - I have no idea why that should
> change?
Well, from that we should conclude nothing changes, and it defeats the
whole purpose of a discussion on future englishes, doesn't it?
>> if retained, the plural would be [EMAIL PROTECTED]@~@
>> the distinction between him ('im) and them ('em) will finally
>> collapse, perhaps taking with it the entire pronominal gender system
>> (a
>> regular plural is easily created with the current [EMAIL PROTECTED], as in
>> 'youse').
>
> Sounds likely... the entire plural forms may get shafted, replaced by
> singular+s.
Well, I was thinking the opposite---the singular forms would get
'shafted', as with 'thou'.
>> the derivative of 'us' or 'to us' will develop into a 1sg dative,
>> perhaps eventually objective---with 'me' replacing 'I' in the
>> subjective.
>
> Somewhat like in "me thinks..."
No. 'Methinks' comes from the dative of 'me' plus the third person
singular of 'think' with nothing in the nominative. Dates back to an
old germanic habit where words like 'thinks', 'seems' were described as
happening to someone, rather than by them.
It'd be more like 'Me and John went to the moon'.
>> perhaps a distinction between active and stative verbs deriving from
>> the simple present and the present progressive.
>
> Not very probably, I'd say...
>
>> But I mean to be radical and I'm looking far into the future, so we'll
>> all be dead before my predictions can come true---so I can always live
>> safe in the knowledge that I'm not wrong yet :)
>
> It could also be that the many current dialects of English develop into
> separate languages... not unlikely at all I'd say.
Indeed not, but for it to happen any time soon the pesky issue of an
American English--dominated media will need to be dealt with.
Otherwise, Australian English might be in a similar position to Swiss
German, I imagine (except orthographically there'll be different
issues, and Aussie English will be perfectly acceptable in schools, but
what I mean is that we'll all need to understand another dialect to
watch the TV or something).
--
Tristan.
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Message: 13
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 16:45:37 -0800
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
--- Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Because I simply cannot resist YAEPT, even though
> it's really not the
> thread for one...
>
> On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 20:14:33 +0000, Ray Brown
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Unless Gary pronounces _year_ as _two_ syllables,
> which I doubt,
>
> The pronunciation /ji.r\=/ (or even /ji.jr\=/) is
> not unheard of around
> here. I don't actually fully ken Gary's location and
> lect, though.
Since, as I've pointed out before, I have no formal
training I am forced to to listen to what my ear hears
and not what I've been told to hear. Clearly I have
not understood the meaning of "consonant". Lacking
the aforementioned formal training I thought of a
consonant as something with a stop-like or
semi-stop-like quality. Saying "ear ear ear" in rapid
succession and saying "year year year" in rapid
succession each occurance of "ear" begins with a stop
where the occurances of "year" have no intervening
stop. Thus, I concluded in my uninformed way, "y" has
no stop-like qualitites and cannot be a "consonant" by
_that_ definition of the word.
As to how I pronounce "year"; it sounds the same as
"ear" with the onset stop removed. As to whether it is
one syllable or two depends on exactly how you define
syllable. I could make a case for it being one
syllable with a gliding vowel sound or I could make a
case for it being two syallables "YEE-IRR" with no
stop (i.e. no consonant-type sound) between.
These sounds exist in a continuum and drawing the
boundries that separate one type from another within
that continuum is, regardless of what anyone believes,
arbitrary. Thus, it is not that I am "wrong" in my
system of classification, but rather that, having
drawn the boundries differently. I have choosen a
different system of classification for the sounds, one
for which the terms "vowel" and "consonant" are
apparently not appropriate.
Granted, that is not the "conventional" system of
classification. However, "unconventional" is not
synonymous with "wrong", and "conventional" is not
synonymous with "correct". In a sense, "ear" should
be spelled "'ear" where the tick represents a glottal
stop, because without that stop it sounds like "year",
and so the implied, but unwritten stop is the
"consonant" that begins "ear" while the gradual onset
of the voice in "year" tells me that the whole word is
one long, gliding vowel sound with no consonant at
all.
As for 'y' itself, well it acts like a vowel in "sky",
and I can't think of a single case where it couldn't
be replaced by some combination of pure vowels, so I
don't even begin to understand why 'y' would be
classed as anything but a vowel. And yes, I was also
TOLD to believe that 'Y' is not a vowel, but, hey, as
a non-academic I have the luxury of being free to
listen with my own ears and look at the physical
waveforms with the eye of a physicist, and ignore the
"experts".
yesterday -> ee-esterdae-ee
sky -> ska-ee
sympathy -> simpathee
How is "y" not a vowel? It's wave forms are, in all
cases, including for attack, sustain, release and
decay, purely vowel-like wave forms.
Anyway, artists call the three primary colors red,
yellow, and blue while physicists (and computers) use
the primary colors red, green and blue and printers
will tell you that the primary colors are cyan,
magenta, and yellow. So what ARE the primary colors?
Linguists, like artists, can call the sounds (colors)
anything they like, but I'm an engineer with training
is physics and I'll just call them the way I see them.
;-)
--gary
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Message: 14
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 20:09:39 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
On Sun, Feb 06, 2005 at 04:45:37PM -0800, Gary Shannon wrote:
> yesterday -> ee-esterdae-ee
> sky -> ska-ee
> sympathy -> simpathee
The *letter* Y is *neither* a consontant nor a vowel. It is an element of
the Roman alphabet and can be made to stand for anything. In English, it
sometimes stands for the consonant /j/ (as at the beginning of
"yesterday"), sometimes for the diphthong /ai_^/ as in "sky", and
sometimes for the vowel /e/ as in "sympathy" (and arguably at the end of
"yesterday", although that's really a case of the digraph |ay| standing
for the sound /ei_^/ and it's not really possible to say the A stands
for this part of the sound and the Y for that.).
So you can't say that the letter Y is either a consonant or a vowel.
You can only talk about whether particular sounds represented by the letter
are consonants or vowels.
And the sound at the beginning of "yesterday", "year", etc. is NOT a
vowel. If it were, it'd be a strange vowel one; if you extend it out to
take up a whole syllable you don't get /i/, but /j=/, which is a very
strained sound, like you're struggling against bonds or something.
And please stop going on about your lack of formal training. Many of us
don't have any formal linguistic training either; that's no excuse for
not learning and using proper terminology.
-Marcos
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Message: 15
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 20:17:14 -0500
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 16:45:37 -0800, Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>As to how I pronounce "year"; it sounds the same as
>"ear" with the onset stop removed.
So according to your description, they'd be (this is not a phonetic
transcription!) /ir/ vs. /?ir/?
>These sounds exist in a continuum and drawing the
>boundries that separate one type from another within
>that continuum is, regardless of what anyone believes,
>arbitrary.
This is only true when you're examining the acoustic waves. Another way to
analyze speech sounds is the way of looking for phonemes, which are defined
as the minimal distinctive unit. That criterion still requires
interpretation, but it's not arbitrary.
>I have choosen a
>different system of classification for the sounds, one
>for which the terms "vowel" and "consonant" are
>apparently not appropriate.
They're often used in the way you've used them. As Ray has pointed out, the
terms _vocoid_ and _contoid_ coined by Kenneth Pike are less ambiguous terms
for that use.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
j. 'mach' wust
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Message: 16
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 20:12:09 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 11:10:57AM +1100, Tristan McLeay wrote:
> (I hold that calling *anything* 'football' is deviant, because it
> always refers to the dominant football code in your area: a linguistic
> variable.)
The only problem with that idea is that the game played by the USA's
National Football League HAS no other name but "football". The term
"Gridiron" properly refers only to the field on which the game is
played; it was applied to the game itself only recently (and fairly
briefly) as part of its introduction in Europe. I don't think even the name
is still used by NFL Europe.
-Marcos
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Message: 17
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 20:26:51 EST
From: Doug Dee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
In a message dated 2/6/2005 7:46:11 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>I don't even begin to understand why 'y' would be
>classed as anything but a vowel.
Which do you say:
"a year" or "an year"?
"a ear" or "an ear"?
If, like every English-speaker I've ever met, you say "a year", not "an
year", then that is evidence that in your phonological system the "y" sound at
the
start of "year" is a consonant. (Because the general rule is "an" before
vowels and "a" before consonants.)
(If you say "a ear", then I suppose your 'lect works differently, and I'd ask
whether you have "an" at all.")
Doug
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Message: 18
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 12:38:28 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
On 7 Feb 2005, at 11.45 am, Gary Shannon wrote:
> --- Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> Because I simply cannot resist YAEPT, even though
>> it's really not the
>> thread for one...
>>
>> On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 20:14:33 +0000, Ray Brown
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>> Unless Gary pronounces _year_ as _two_ syllables,
>> which I doubt,
>>
>> The pronunciation /ji.r\=/ (or even /ji.jr\=/) is
>> not unheard of around
>> here. I don't actually fully ken Gary's location and
>> lect, though.
>
> Since, as I've pointed out before, I have no formal
> training I am forced to to listen to what my ear hears
> and not what I've been told to hear. Clearly I have
> not understood the meaning of "consonant".
Phonologically (i.e. within the domain of a specific given language)
there are often some pretty obvious ways to tell whether something's a
consonant or a vowel.
- In English, words in isolation that begin with vowels are pronounced
with phonetic glottal stops. Hence, when you say 'ear', there's a stop
before it, but when you say 'year' there is none. (This sounds
counter-intuitive, but stops and fricatives aren't the only
consonants.)
- In English, words that begin with vowels take the indefinite article
'an'. Words that begin with consonants take the indefinite article 'a'.
When I say 'an ear', I could almost as easily be saying 'a near',
except that one has an unstressed [n] and the other has an stressed
['n]. Do you put the stop before 'ear', here, too? (This is usually a
brilliant guide for native speakers: you say 'an hour' and 'a one',
even though H is called a consonant and O a vowel (the H is silent and
there's an unwritten consonant /w/ before the O.) It's very reliable,
but different people sometimes pronounce words differently (for
instance, I, like many other Australians, pronounce the name of the
letter H 'haich', so I say 'a HTML document'. Most of the rest of the
English-speaking world, and even a significant portion of Australians,
pronounce the name of the letter H 'aich', so they say 'an HTML
document').
- In English, words that begin with vowels take a definite article
'the' pronounced 'thee', but other words take a definite article 'the'
pronounced 'thuh', so you say 'thee ear' but 'thuh year'. What you've
said seems to contradict this though. Maybe you're thinking too hard
about it and saying something other than what you normally do, or
perhaps your idiolect diverges from most on this count.
- In some Englishes (but probably not yours, as you say you pronounce
your Rs strongly), whether the next sound is a vowel or not determines
whether an R gets pronounced (even between words): By this rule, when I
say 'these are ears' and pronounce the R in 'are', 'ear' must begin
with a vowel, and when I say 'these are years' and don't pronounce
(either) R, 'year' must begin with a consonant.
Cross-linguistically, these rules appear somewhat arbitrary, but
they're not. They're well defined in a particular language. Italian has
some similar ways of telling if a word begins with a vowel or a
consonant, and whereas the English rules tell us [w] is definitely a
consonant in English, the Italian rules tell us that [w] is definitely
a vowel in Italian. So because, as you've observed, [w] has many
properties of vowels, we can say it's a vocoid, but vocoids and vowels
are different.
...
> Granted, that is not the "conventional" system of
> classification. However, "unconventional" is not
> synonymous with "wrong", and "conventional" is not
> synonymous with "correct".
True, but often a system is conventional because it's right. Unless you
can show that the system *is* different for you, your system *is*
wrong, because it doesn't map with the observations. But maybe it's the
words your using as labels, and not how you're labelling, that's wrong.
> In a sense, "ear" should
> be spelled "'ear" where the tick represents a glottal
> stop, because without that stop it sounds like "year",
> and so the implied, but unwritten stop is the
> "consonant" that begins "ear" while the gradual onset
> of the voice in "year" tells me that the whole word is
> one long, gliding vowel sound with no consonant at
> all.
I'll agree with you that the unwritten stop at the start of 'ear' is a
contoid, but you'll probably find it's not always there, though it
might remain as long as you're thinking about it (our brains are really
annoying like that). In any case, the gradual onset of the voice in
'year' *is* actually a consonant, just not a stop.
(A good way to test would be to record yourself having a conversation
with someone... Forget about the fact you're recording yourself and
just get engaged in the conversation. Then listen the recording: If you
find yourself saying "'an 'ear" with a glottal stop before the vowels,
well, perhaps you have an argument. But I reckon you'll probably find
the glottal stop disappears.
> As for 'y' itself, well it acts like a vowel in "sky",
> and I can't think of a single case where it couldn't
> be replaced by some combination of pure vowels, so I
> don't even begin to understand why 'y' would be
> classed as anything but a vowel. And yes, I was also
> TOLD to believe that 'Y' is not a vowel, but, hey, as
> a non-academic I have the luxury of being free to
> listen with my own ears and look at the physical
> waveforms with the eye of a physicist, and ignore the
> "experts".
> yesterday -> ee-esterdae-ee
> sky -> ska-ee
> sympathy -> simpathee
>
> How is "y" not a vowel?
Well, in words like 'sky' or 'sympathy', it *is* a vowel (or rather, it
represents a vowel), but it's clearly different from the sound
represented by the 'y' in 'you'. In one case, it acts as the nucleus to
a syllable; in the other case, it doesn't. This may seem irrelevant and
arbitrary, but as we've seen it's the criterion by which various word
forms are chosen in English, so it's obviously pretty important in
English.
> Linguists, like artists, can call the sounds (colors)
> anything they like, but I'm an engineer with training
> is physics and I'll just call them the way I see them.
> ;-)
If you're going to do that, you might want to use 'contoid' and
'vocoid'. You aren't the first person to notice the difference, and the
distinction between 'consonant' and 'contoid', 'vowel' and 'vocoid',
is, as we've seen, pretty important.
--
Tristan.
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Message: 19
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 12:57:42 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
On 7 Feb 2005, at 12.12 pm, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 11:10:57AM +1100, Tristan McLeay wrote:
>> (I hold that calling *anything* 'football' is deviant, because it
>> always refers to the dominant football code in your area: a linguistic
>> variable.)
>
> The only problem with that idea is that the game played by the USA's
> National Football League HAS no other name but "football". The term
> "Gridiron" properly refers only to the field on which the game is
> played; it was applied to the game itself only recently (and fairly
> briefly) as part of its introduction in Europe. I don't think even
> the name
> is still used by NFL Europe.
Well, maybe the NFL says so, but Australians say otherwise. Australians
say it's either American football or gridiron. The 'Australian rules'
bit is just a description; over its history, it's also been called
'Melbourne rules' and 'Victorian rules' as the code spread. I got by
perfectly well for most of my (still short) not knowing any other name
for 'footy' but 'football', but calling soccer soccer, rugby rugby,
American football gridiron (or American football). (I don't think I
knew about the Irish or International rules football codes till I knew
Aussie rules by its alternative name. Int'l rules is a merger of Aussie
rules and Irish rules played between Australia and Ireland.)
--
Tristan.
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Message: 20
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 03:26:36 +0000
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
Tristan McLeay wrote:
> On 7 Feb 2005, at 12.12 pm, Mark J. Reed wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 11:10:57AM +1100, Tristan McLeay wrote:
>>
>>> (I hold that calling *anything* 'football' is deviant, because it
>>> always refers to the dominant football code in your area: a linguistic
>>> variable.)
>>
>> The only problem with that idea is that the game played by the USA's
>> National Football League HAS no other name but "football". The term
>> "Gridiron" properly refers only to the field on which the game is
>> played; it was applied to the game itself only recently (and fairly
>> briefly) as part of its introduction in Europe. I don't think even
>> the name is still used by NFL Europe.
>
> Well, maybe the NFL says so, but Australians say otherwise. Australians
> say it's either American football or gridiron. The 'Australian rules'
> bit is just a description; over its history, it's also been called
> 'Melbourne rules' and 'Victorian rules' as the code spread. I got by
> perfectly well for most of my (still short) not knowing any other name
> for 'footy' but 'football', but calling soccer soccer, rugby rugby,
> American football gridiron (or American football). (I don't think I
> knew about the Irish or International rules football codes till I knew
> Aussie rules by its alternative name. Int'l rules is a merger of Aussie
> rules and Irish rules played between Australia and Ireland.)
Which was itself previously known as "Compromise rules Football".
We here in Ireland call "Irish rules Football" either "Gaelic Football",
"Gaelic", "GAA" (after the Gaelic Athletic Association, the governing
body of various sports such as Gaelic Football, Hurling, (Irish)
Handball, &c., and is pronounced /dZi: e: e:/ or /ga:/), or "football"
when it's unambiguous. Soccer is called either "soccer" or "football"
when it's unambiguous.
So it's not just an American or Aussie thing. Your neighbours do it too!
:-)
K.
P.S. Is there *really* any interest in American Football over this side
of the pond? I've never seen any evidence.
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Message: 21
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 22:32:14 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: The primary colours (was Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y"
ain't arbitrary (was: Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook)))
On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 16:45:37 -0800, Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Anyway, artists call the three primary colors red,
> yellow, and blue while physicists (and computers) use
> the primary colors red, green and blue and printers
> will tell you that the primary colors are cyan,
> magenta, and yellow. So what ARE the primary colors?
The three additive primary colours are red, green and blue -- that is,
these are the primary colors of light, they correspond notionally to three
specific wavelengths of light. The three subtractive primary colours are
cyan, magenta, and yellow -- these are the primary colours of pigment,
they correspond notionally to the absence of reflectivity at those same
three frequencies.
Cyan and magenta are easiest to explain to persons without a background in
colour technology as blue and red respectively, and indeed subtractive
cyan and magenta do look quite blue and red absent context -- have you
ever looked at any amount of pure inkjet printer ink? This is where the
common confusion begins. It's not a case of the physicists' and the
artists' primary colors having two elements the same, and one different,
but rather of their having confusingly identical names for two pairs of
actually quite different colours.
Paul
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Message: 22
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 04:07:41 +0000
From: Stephen Mulraney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHAT: Speed cameras
Muke Tever wrote:
> Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> On the subject of speed cameras---the other day I was watching a bit of
>> documentary on pay tv about the German autobahns apparently meant for
>> an American audience. They were talking about all the high tech
>> involved. At one point, they mentioned these awesome cameras that can
>> actually automatically take a photo of the numberplate of speeders and
>> send a fine to the owner of the car after the fact when they thought
>> they'd got away with it (I assume because they weren't pulled over by
>> cops). Don't Americans have speed cameras? (Or are they relatively
>> new?) They're everywhere here.
The first time I came across such technology was in and around Toronto
in 1996; they had a toll road there that used cameras to photograph
your registration plate, and send you a bill; alternatively, you could
buy some kind of transponder that allowed unpaid passage for a certain
period of time. I wish they'd introduce something like that here; the
idea of sitting in a queue for the toll booth on the M50(*) is mind-
boggling. You wouldn't have entered a toll motorway if you wanted to
wait around...
* Ring road around Dublin
s.
--
Stephen Mulraney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://livejournal.com/~ataltane
I remember that I tried several times to use a slide rule, and that, several
times also, I began modern maths textbooks, saying to myself that if I were
going slowly, if I read all the lessons all in order, doing the exercises
and all, there was no reason why I should stall -- Georges Perec
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Message: 23
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 20:47:37 -0800
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
--- Doug Dee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> In a message dated 2/6/2005 7:46:11 PM Eastern
> Standard Time,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> >I don't even begin to understand why 'y' would be
> >classed as anything but a vowel.
>
> Which do you say:
>
> "a year" or "an year"?
> "a ear" or "an ear"?
>
> If, like every English-speaker I've ever met, you
> say "a year", not "an
> year", then that is evidence that in your
> phonological system the "y" sound at the
> start of "year" is a consonant. (Because the
> general rule is "an" before
> vowels and "a" before consonants.)
>
That was an historic event.
Aha! 'H' is a vowel! I always wondered about that.
;-)
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Message: 24
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 06:48:47 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:10:57 +1100, Tristan McLeay
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> (I hold that
> calling *anything* 'football' is deviant, because it always refers to
> the dominant football code in your area: a linguistic variable.)
Like "corn", which can mean "wheat", "barley", or "maize" depending on
the region? (And probably other things in other places, too. Perhaps
it means "rice" in India?)
> British criticism of American
> spellings like 'behavior' and 'bastardize'.
Heh. -ize is used in the UK, too, AFAIK. And it's the original
spelling, etymologically -- just as "aluminum" is the original form of
the word.
...I still prefer -ise and "aluminium" because it's what I grew up
with. I was just pointing out that criticising people for retaining
the original spellings and claiming they corrupted them is...
interesting :)
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 25
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 06:52:36 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 20:47:37 -0800, Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That was an historic event.
>
> Aha! 'H' is a vowel! I always wondered about that.
> ;-)
No. 'H' is a letter; it's neither a consonant or a vowel.
Saying that "the vowels are 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u' [and sometimes
'y']", referring to letters as vowels or consonants is a
simplification that may be appropriate in grade school, but vowels and
consonants refer to *sounds*, not *letters*.
Often, vowels are represented by "grade school vowels" and consonants
by "grade school consonants", but not always -- for example, silent
letters such as "h" in "hour" (and, for some people, "historical") and
the initial glide in "long u" words such as "university" mess things
up.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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