Random Thought of the Day
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@remi said in Random Thought of the Day:
why should spelling match the etymology rather than the pronunciation
: :why_not_neither:
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@HardwareGeek said in Random Thought of the Day:
@Arantor said in Random Thought of the Day:
I'm not an AI as far as I know
That's what they want you to think.
You're not a solipsist. It's all just in your head.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Random Thought of the Day:
@da-Doctah said in Random Thought of the Day:
Actually (1) there is no such thread
YMBNH
You May Be New Hampshire?
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@kazitor said in Random Thought of the Day:
@remi said in Random Thought of the Day:
why should spelling match the etymology rather than the pronunciation
: :why_not_neither:
And even if there's no problem with either etymology or pronunciation, it still manages to be inconsistent! Compare passerby with flyby. Specifically, compare their plurals.
In fact, compare the plural of passerby with any other noun. As far as I can tell, that's the only noun in the entire fucking language across all its dialects worldwide where the plural is made by inserting "s" in the middle rather than at the end. Why. Just why.
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@Gąska Runners up. Daughters-in-law. Rights-of-way.
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@loopback0 said in Random Thought of the Day:
@Gąska Runners up. Daughters-in-law. Rights-of-way.
Neither of those are single words.
(I assume there was a time when "passerby" wasn't either.)
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@loopback0 said in Random Thought of the Day:
@Gąska Runners up. Daughters-in-law. Rights-of-way.
You seem to have the same issue as Stack Exchange posters in that you don't seem to quite comprehend what a word is.
inb4 2 bytes
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@topspin technically passers-by isn’t a single word either at least according to the OED.
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@topspin said in Random Thought of the Day:
@loopback0 said in Random Thought of the Day:
@Gąska Runners up. Daughters-in-law. Rights-of-way.
Neither of those are single words.
(I assume there was a time when "passerby" wasn't either.)Passer-by is still correct even if less common these days.
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@Gąska said in Random Thought of the Day:
@loopback0 said in Random Thought of the Day:
@Gąska Runners up. Daughters-in-law. Rights-of-way.
You seem to have the same issue as Stack Exchange posters in that you don't seem to quite comprehend what a word is.
You didn't say word, you said noun.
@Gąska said in Random Thought of the Day:
As far as I can tell, that's the only noun in the entire fucking language across all its dialects worldwide where the plural is made by inserting "s" in the middle rather than at the end.
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@loopback0 compound nouns aren't nouns, much like <here you could read a reference to one of the past Garage discussions if we were in Garage>.
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@Arantor said in Random Thought of the Day:
@topspin technically passers-by isn’t a single word either at least according to the OED.
I was just going with what was said before, but it looks like you’re right:
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@Gąska said in Random Thought of the Day:
compound nouns aren't nouns
OK fair point.
Then it's the only noun in the entire fucking language across all the dialects that spell it passerby and not, as noted, passer-by.
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@Gąska said in Random Thought of the Day:
@loopback0 compound nouns aren't nouns
Yes, they are, it says so in the name.
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@loopback0 fine, I can agree to that.
I went to Google Ngram Viewer to see how common those "dialects" are compared to each other. And... I have no idea what to think of it, but I definitely find it very interesting.
The hyphenated spelling was definitely the "correct" one, until the word was mostly abandoned, until the non-hyphenated spelling became more accepted, which... made the hyphenated spelling return from obscurity, but the non-hyphenated spelling was overall slightly more popular until literally just now.
I think it's my favorite Ngram graph. And I do a lot of Ngram graphs.
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@Gąska said in Random Thought of the Day:
And I do a lot of Ngram graphs
must ... not ... kink ... shame ...
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@Zerosquare said in Random Thought of the Day:
For French, recognizing the phonemes is only half the job of converting speech to text. It may even be the easiest half.
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@hungrier my favorite from the series:
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Random Thought of the Day:
@remi I've heard, apocryphally, that the changes from early Latin to classical Latin were similar. They had Greek envy and wanted to make the language more complex to show the superiority of those who could master it. Dunno if true though.
There are a smattering of English words that were invented by mangling Latin, in an attempt to make English more respectable. These "inkhorn" words were named after the academics, who commonly carried around ink in a horn. "Incorporate" is one of those words which survived to today; others, like "adnichilate" (annihilate) did not.
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@PotatoEngineer There are zombie grammar rules in English, such as "don't split an infinitive" or "don't end a sentence with a preposition" that were never rules but were enforced by teachers and writers with Latin envy.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Random Thought of the Day:
@PotatoEngineer There are zombie grammar rules in English, such as "don't split an infinitive" or "don't end a sentence with a preposition" that were never rules but were enforced by teachers and writers with Latin envy.
That is something up with which I shall not put!
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@PotatoEngineer said in Random Thought of the Day:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Random Thought of the Day:
@remi I've heard, apocryphally, that the changes from early Latin to classical Latin were similar. They had Greek envy and wanted to make the language more complex to show the superiority of those who could master it. Dunno if true though.
There are a smattering of English words that were invented by mangling Latin, in an attempt to make English more respectable. These "inkhorn" words were named after the academics, who commonly carried around ink in a horn. "Incorporate" is one of those words which survived to today; others, like "adnichilate" (annihilate) did not.
Slavic languages had the reverse - an inexplicable need to invent their own words for absolutely everything. The sentiment died down in the 90s, so everything invented since then is the same in English and Polish, as well as 99% of corporate jargon. But the damage was already done.
Take me for example. Between 15 years of language education at school and a lifetime of nerdy hobbies where English is a must, my English was excellent for an immigrant. But I had absolutely no fucking clue whatsoever about English math words, as they're completely different. You don't have four-wall-thingy, you have tetrahedron. You don't have counter-rectangular, you have hypotenuse. And so on and so on. I scored 100% all the time on my high school math tests but was unable to help my US-educated sister with anything because of the language barrier (I'm talking about just a couple years ago).
And medicine is even worse. I can name 250 different illnesses but only like 5 in English. Because English uses Latin words for everything in medicine while Polish has its own word for everything. Which works great for explaining things ("release-ness" is arguably more intuitive than "diarrhea" the first time you hear it) but totally incapacitates you when you move abroad.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Random Thought of the Day:
@PotatoEngineer There are zombie grammar rules in English, such as "don't split an infinitive" or "don't end a sentence with a preposition" that were never rules but were enforced by teachers and writers with Latin envy.
I hate both of these.
The kind of nonsense up with which I will not put.E: god damnit.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Random Thought of the Day:
@PotatoEngineer There are zombie grammar rules in English, such as "don't split an infinitive" or "don't end a sentence with a preposition"
ITYM "take care to never split infinitives" and "a preposition should not be used to end a sentence with".
(The passive voice is to be avoided.)
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@da-Doctah said in Random Thought of the Day:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Random Thought of the Day:
@PotatoEngineer There are zombie grammar rules in English, such as "don't split an infinitive" or "don't end a sentence with a preposition"
ITYM "take care to never split infinitives" and "a preposition should not be used to end a sentence with".
(The passive voice is to be avoided.)
Especially since most of what people call the "passive voice" isn't.
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"The passive voice is to be avoided by zombies."
Yeah, I don't know. Their sentences tend to use only nouns, anyways.
Filed under: Braaaiiiins....
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Random Thought of the Day:
@da-Doctah said in Random Thought of the Day:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Random Thought of the Day:
@PotatoEngineer There are zombie grammar rules in English, such as "don't split an infinitive" or "don't end a sentence with a preposition"
ITYM "take care to never split infinitives" and "a preposition should not be used to end a sentence with".
(The passive voice is to be avoided.)
Especially since most of what people call the "passive voice" isn't.
I much prefer the passive aggressive voice.
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@izzion said in Random Thought of the Day:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Random Thought of the Day:
@da-Doctah said in Random Thought of the Day:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Random Thought of the Day:
@PotatoEngineer There are zombie grammar rules in English, such as "don't split an infinitive" or "don't end a sentence with a preposition"
ITYM "take care to never split infinitives" and "a preposition should not be used to end a sentence with".
(The passive voice is to be avoided.)
Especially since most of what people call the "passive voice" isn't.
I much prefer the passive aggressive voice.
Do you now?
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@Zerosquare said in Random Thought of the Day:
"The passive voice is to be avoided by zombies."
Yeah, I don't know. Their sentences tend to use only nouns, anyways.
Filed under: Braaaiiiins....
That rule has problems:
1. "Don't use fire"
1. "You should avoid casting mass heal"
1. "Zombies will eat you if you build a house"...
Also the OP was d like a month ago
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@Gąska said in Random Thought of the Day:
And medicine is even worse. I can name 250 different illnesses but only like 5 in English. Because English uses Latin words for everything in medicine while Polish has its own word for everything. Which works great for explaining things ("release-ness" is arguably more intuitive than "diarrhea" the first time you hear it) but totally incapacitates you when you move abroad.
My sister-in-law is a doctor (trained in France) and for a few years lived in South Africa. She's quite fluent in English, and obviously knows all the medical terms in French, and quite a few in English. She initially wanted to work as a doctor there, but (regulatory barriers aside) she had to give up on the idea after a trial period with another doctor.
Getting patients for whom English isn't their native language (where she was, they'd speak either Xhosa or Afrikaans) to explain their problem to a doctor for whom English also isn't a native language doesn't work. At all.
Filed under: ça vous chatouille ou ça vous grattouille?
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@remi Where exactly in South Africa did she work?
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@Vault_Dweller are regions in South Africa named like Kanye West's children?
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@Gąska There is a North West Province if that's what you're asking
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"Where are you from?"
"North West South Africa."
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@Gąska said in Random Thought of the Day:
"Where are you from?"
"North West South Africa."
East side
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@Vault_Dweller said in Random Thought of the Day:
@remi Where exactly in South Africa did she work?
Close to Capetown.
I'm pushing it a bit saying that no-one had English as their native language, but it's still an area with a large Afrikaner population (enough that my brother, a university lecturer, had some students who struggled a bit with lectures entirely in English).
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@remi said in Random Thought of the Day:
Filed under: ça vous chatouille ou ça vous grattouille?
There you go again, you and your obscure French references!
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@Zerosquare I had a weird brainfart while reading your post (and thus recalling mine) and though "oh yeah, that was the one about Glock... uh... Spock... uh... what's his name again?"
But hey, Knock on wood, I'm not losing my mind!
Filed under: the Bad Puns thread is
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@remi said in Random Thought of the Day:
I'm not losing my mind!
Can't lose something you didn't have.
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a helpful process,
- Take any speaker from New York
- Acquire a transcript
- Read what Estelle Costanza wrote
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Of berry names ending in
berry
, the prefix is either a color name or makes no actual sense, without apparent exception.Ex,
- blueberry
- mulberry
- blackberry
- raspberry
- strawberry
Let me know if I'm just missing the mul, maybe it's like ECGC.
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@Gribnit said in Random Thought of the Day:
Of berry names ending in
berry
, the prefix is either a color name or makes no actual sense, without apparent exception.Ex,
- blueberry
- mulberry
- blackberry
- raspberry
- strawberry
Let me know if I'm just missing the mul, maybe it's like ECGC.
The boysenberry was named after its originator Rudolph Boysen, a neighbor of Walter Knott of Knott's Berry Farm renown. Loganberries are likewise named after their creator.
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That’s before we talk about gooseberries. Or “cape gooseberries” also known as goldenberries (which sort of fits the pattern?)
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@da-Doctah said in Random Thought of the Day:
Loganberries are likewise named after their creator.
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@da-Doctah said in Random Thought of the Day:
@Gribnit said in Random Thought of the Day:
Of berry names ending in
berry
, the prefix is either a color name or makes no actual sense, without apparent exception.Ex,
- blueberry
- mulberry
- blackberry
- raspberry
- strawberry
Let me know if I'm just missing the mul, maybe it's like ECGC.
The boysenberry was named after its originator Rudolph Boysen, a neighbor of Walter Knott of Knott's Berry Farm renown. Loganberries are likewise named after their creator.
And how boysensome they indeed are? The lingonality is lost on me. I do not perceive any concrete sensation of cran.
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@da-Doctah
Mulberries are named after the variety of tree they grow on. Which gets its name from the berries it produces.
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@Gribnit said in Random Thought of the Day:
@da-Doctah said in Random Thought of the Day:
The boysenberry was named after its originator Rudolph Boysen, a neighbor of Walter Knott of Knott's Berry Farm renown. Loganberries are likewise named after their creator.
And how boysensome they indeed are? The lingonality is lost on me. I do not perceive any concrete sensation of cran.
Cranberry is properly "craneberry", a calque from Dutch; the name comes from the perceived resemblance of the plant on which they grow (not just the berry) to the head, neck and bill of a crane.
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@da-Doctah words come from somewhere? Good God, I must inform anyone who hasn't found this out yet.