Messages

1

English & Linguistics / If I were king of the world,

« on: May 16, 2009, 08:21:48 AM »

semispehre instead of hemisphere

I'm confused. What does this one have to do with naturalizing borrowed words?

Huh.  My understanding was that we use the words half of a sphere is a hemisphere and half of a circle is a semicircle because one of the words comes from Greek and the other comes from Latin, so one uses a Greek prefix and the other a Latin one.  But looking in the dictionary, they both seem to come from Latin.

edit:  Oops.  This is Porter.

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English & Linguistics / Grammar Gripe

« on: March 24, 2007, 10:38:13 AM »

Filipino languages are truly gender-neutral.  I loved it!  It was very liberating.  They do not have separate words for "brother" and "sister," "husband" and "wife," "daughter" and "son."  We sound awkward when we say "sibling," though less so when we say "spouse."  But in Tagalog you actually have to specify "female sibling."  There is no "gender baggage" in the language and I actually think it does have an effect on the mindset of the people who speak the language.  

I noticed also that there was a very high percentage of what one might call "gender confusion" there.  While there were less expectations of what "male" and "female" ought to be, there also seemed to be a much higher percentage of people who favored being more like the opposite sex than what we typically think of as being their own.  Seemed to be a higher percentage of bi-sexual and homosexual attraction as well.  (I often joke that while there, I had more women fall in love with me than men.)

I am a believer that our language structure does influence the way we think and view the world.  I think that the way the Spanish language is set up probably adds ot the tendancy of "machismo" that we find in those cultures.  Not just pronouns have gender, everything has gender (not unique to Spanish) and if one male is present, it is sufficient to change the nature of a group.  Add a female to a group, nothing happens.  (Dunno if that is unique to Spanish.)   Feel free to correct me on this.

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English & Linguistics / Grammar Gripe

« on: March 24, 2007, 10:24:37 AM »

I can vouch for this going on in my brain.  "He" will never feel gender neutral to me.  Whenever something tries to be gender neutral, my brain automatically generates "male."  Female must be specified.  I imagine this is largely a product of the influences I was raised with, society and culture and alll that.  Basically, I am incapable at my core of being unbiased about gender.  I try to overcome that bias with my conscious mind, but the tendancy will probably always be there.

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English & Linguistics / Essentialist explanations

« on: July 12, 2006, 02:53:09 PM »

  I like the last one.

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English & Linguistics / Glottal plosives?

« on: July 12, 2006, 02:51:51 PM »

You got your degree in speech pathology, right? It's weird that they wouldn't teach you that terminology.

Yup.  It could be my bad memory.  

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English & Linguistics / Glottal plosives?

« on: July 11, 2006, 03:24:00 PM »

Does anyone else find it odd that the word "aspirate" can refer to air escaping in speech as well as sucking something solid or liquid into the lungs?

I thought the word plosive refered to the expulsion of air, reminiscent of the word "explosion."  I don't remember using the word "aspirate" at all in my linguistic classes.  

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English & Linguistics / Glottal plosives?

« on: July 11, 2006, 01:09:07 PM »

I thought "plosive" and "stop" referred to slightly different things, the difference being that the plosive has a small burst, or release, of air after it.  A stop can, but doesn't have to.

I assume that glottal stops have to come after something.

Don't you mean before something?

No.  I figured glottal plosives have to come before something while stops have to come after something.  Am I remembering correctly?  After all, most people don't end words with plosives, but plosives are found at the beginning and middle of words.  Compare the "p" in "plosives" with the "p" in "stop."  You can say the second as a plosive, but you don't have to, and I'd say in running conversation most people don't.  The first example must be a plosive.

 

8

English & Linguistics / Glottal plosives?

« on: July 11, 2006, 12:39:22 PM »

Porter and I were listening to Wichita Rutherford the other day, a man who speaks a rather amusing version of "hick."  We were noticing how when he said "I" it sounded like "Hai."  Porter and I often quote a passage in one of OSC's Alvin Maker books where someone says, "You left off the 'h' in 'hain't.'"  We talked about it a bit, and observed that we start out saying "I" with a glottal plosive.  Without it, "I" sounds like "Hai" unless you are being very deliberate.

Now, this brings me to my question.  We both kinda coined the phrase "glottal plosive" because neither of us had heard the term before.  I assume that glottal stops have to come after something.  Is "glottal plosive" actually a term that is used?  It seems an appropriate term for what we are thinking of here.

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English & Linguistics / Help me learn Danish!

« on: October 24, 2005, 01:25:19 PM »

Well, I've started some work on "translating" this for myself.  (I am writing in a code that *I* can understand.)  

I just think it would be more work than I am willing to put in to get to the point where I look at the Danish and just "know" how to say it.  Heck, this may just turn out to be too much work, period.  

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English & Linguistics / Help me learn Danish!

« on: October 23, 2005, 10:17:22 AM »

I just bought some sheet music to a lovely Danish Medley.  I have the audio version as well.  You'd think that between what is written on the page and what I can hear, I would pick up the Danish pronunciation.  

Alas, 'tis not the case.  I am not sure what sound to give many of these consonants.  Does anyone know where I can go to educate myself on Danish pronunciation?

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English & Linguistics / Word Usage Pet peeve

« on: October 16, 2005, 05:08:00 PM »

Oh, I *know* I'm guilty.  And I don't feel bad in the least.  

O'course, I'm done writing any form of the word for now.

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English & Linguistics / Master Linguist

« on: October 15, 2005, 09:11:50 PM »

You're such a nerd.

And that's a good thing!  Remember, this is Jon Boy's passion.  I bet I know more than he does about the best guinea pig websites.  

Cool site, Jon Boy!

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English & Linguistics / Master Linguist

« on: October 15, 2005, 08:43:24 AM »

How closely related are Native American languages as well as tribal African languages?  Could one select one from each continent and consider it from that "family"?

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English & Linguistics / The joys of corporate writing

« on: September 19, 2005, 01:54:55 PM »

Cool!  I was aware that Tagalog did that sort of thing a lot, but I haven't seen examples of it in english.

Intensely cool.

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English & Linguistics / If you could speak any language fluently . . .

« on: September 18, 2005, 12:05:43 PM »

That's from Emperor's New Groove right?

Yes.  

Icky:  OK, I wasn't sure.  

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English & Linguistics / If you could speak any language fluently . . .

« on: September 18, 2005, 11:19:19 AM »

Let me translate for my husband who is being ultra-literal again.

His point is that it is a fact that some people in the world, even if it is always mistakenly, that call that the "Old Testament".  Therefore, it is indeed called the Old Testament (by some, and wrongly.)  If *no* one called it the Old Testament, rivka wouldn't have to have the argument at all.  

But that is neither here nor there.  That is why he called it a nitpik.  

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English & Linguistics / If you could speak any language fluently . . .

« on: September 18, 2005, 11:13:44 AM »

Pig Latin, Squirrel, and baby

"Did you take my acorn?"

(Class repeats)

"Squeak squeaker squeak squeaken?"

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English & Linguistics / I should consider it a great honour...

« on: August 08, 2005, 08:57:44 PM »

I should think it's a great use of the English language.

There, fixed that for ya.  

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English & Linguistics / I should consider it a great honour...

« on: August 08, 2005, 08:57:02 PM »

It allows people to be indirect and distant in an ultra-polite sort of way.

Reminds me of some of the sentance constructs used in various Asian languages to denote great respect.  Nothing specific comes to mind, and I don't know for a fact that they do this, but it seems like I have heard a lot of that sort of showing-respect-by-being-amazingly-indirect-and-distant sort of thing.

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English & Linguistics / Linguistically Complete

« on: January 08, 2005, 10:26:28 AM »

In Tagalog, there is a word that means "to become", but I don't think there is a word that means "to exist".  At least, if there is, I don't know what it is.  

In the scriptures the phrase "I AM" used by or to describe Jehovah is translated, "Ako Nga" which literally means "I" (emphasized).   But my understanding of Tagalog is far from complete, and there aren't a lot of good resources to learn more from.

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English & Linguistics / Linguistically Complete

« on: January 05, 2005, 08:01:57 AM »

Um, yeah. Sign being a complete language is one of the tenets you must swear to for acceptance into the secret brotherhood of linguists.

   :devil:

I find that far more funny than I ought to.  Probably has something to do with also having an education in language.

Trisha, everything you've said there agrees with what they taught me in college.

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English & Linguistics / Linguistically Complete

« on: January 04, 2005, 07:16:29 PM »

Tagalog also doesn't have a "to be" verb.  Just FYI

Of course, Porter mocks it as not being a "real language" either....

Edit:  I think it is "linguistically complete" in the sense that it has complex enough grammer to effectively communicate as does any other true human language.  ASL being guesture-based has many advantages over spoken language.  For instance, nearly all verbs can be given direction.  You can tell by the direction of the movement who is doing what to whom.

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English & Linguistics / Soda vs. Pop map

« on: December 23, 2004, 10:37:42 PM »

I grew up with "soda" and then moved way on over to "pop".  Then one more relocation landed me right in the middle of "coke".  I thought that was the most retarded thing ever.