Author Topic: Dear Expert (Read 161817 times)

Annie Subjunctive · « **Reply #575 on:** October 17, 2012, 08:27:43 PM »

Yeah, that's actually what I was doing yesterday - I'm still trying to figure out the best approach. My husband's Chinese tutor is a student here studying International Relations and he never learned IPA so he asked me if I could teach him. So I spent the day trying to put together a simplified worksheet version and then had to decide how broad/narrow to be (I looked at an English-Chinese dictionary and followed their example for most of it). It was actually a really tricky endeavor. I ended up giving him two versions - one for American English and one for Australian. American because that's what all his classmates here are and he can ask them for pronunciation examples, and Australian because he's filling out a grant to go study there. The most refreshing part of the whole project was finally understanding what on earth Aussies are actually saying when they pronounce "no." (It's /nəʉ/, if you were wondering.)

Jonathon · « **Reply #576 on:** October 17, 2012, 09:15:29 PM »

Quote from: Annie Subjunctive on October 17, 2012, 08:27:43 PM

The most refreshing part of the whole project was finally understanding what on earth Aussies are actually saying when they pronounce "no." (It's /nəʉ/, if you were wondering.)

I learned that a while back. It's quite enlightening to see it phonetically.

pooka · « **Reply #577 on:** October 19, 2012, 02:24:56 PM »

Well, the trouble is whether the phonemic structure of English is being reflected, as opposed to phonetic description.

Jonathon · « **Reply #578 on:** October 19, 2012, 04:11:56 PM »

I'm not really sure what you mean, but that's a phonetic description.

pooka · « **Reply #579 on:** October 26, 2012, 12:53:26 PM »

There are phonemic structures that are tranformed through dialect rules to produce phonetic products. So IPA should be used on that level, not to produce a precise description of the instructors accent. Most literate people do this somewhat automatically. There's a scene in "driving miss daisy" where a southern person is trying to explain the concept of reading using a headstone that has the name Bauer on it. And they're saying BAHWAH. And somehow, amazingly, the illiterate person knows it's an "Ahra" on the end of the word.

BlackBlade · « **Reply #580 on:** December 11, 2012, 09:42:04 AM »

So how is it that the word "second" came to mean a measure of time, but when counting rank order, as in "first, second" it also denotes position number two?

Jonathon · « **Reply #581 on:** December 11, 2012, 10:41:56 AM »

I answered a few years ago when Porter asked the same thing. It comes from a Latin and French word meaning following, making it related to words like sequel, sequence, and segue. In Latin it came to mean the one that followed the first. In Medieval Latin, pars minuta prima was used to mean the first small division of an hour (the modern-day minute), and pars minuta secunda was used to mean the second small division (the modern-day second). The first was shortened to minute and the second to second. So it's really just a historical accident that a word meaning 'small' came to mean 1/60th of an hour while a word meaning 'second' came to mean 1/3600th of an hour.

BlackBlade · « **Reply #582 on:** December 11, 2012, 01:02:02 PM »

Ah, I see. That is interesting.

rivka · « **Reply #583 on:** December 11, 2012, 01:09:40 PM »

1/3600.

Jonathon · « **Reply #584 on:** December 11, 2012, 01:17:22 PM »

Whoops! That's what I meant.

rivka · « **Reply #585 on:** December 11, 2012, 01:20:16 PM »

Yeah it took me a minute to figure out why it looked wrong to me.

Annie Subjunctive · « **Reply #586 on:** December 13, 2012, 01:07:01 AM »

Does the word "potential" automatically equate to future possibility? Does the phrase "future possibility" sound dumb? I'm using both in this paragraph and can't seem to make it sound right:

Quote

The present study seeks to thoroughly explicate the principles comprised in these Mastery Learning approaches and to trace them through their trial by research, their successes and failures according to meta-analytic reviews, and their persistence into modern instructional practice, whether or not they are presently recognized as formal implementations of Mastery Learning theory. Furthermore, we hope to project these principles into future possibilities and determine what their potential to improve teaching and learning might be.

Jonathon · « **Reply #587 on:** December 13, 2012, 09:51:47 AM »

I don't think it automatically means future possibility. Something potential could also be something that could be but isn't. Personally, I think it sounds fine.

rivka · « **Reply #588 on:** December 13, 2012, 10:16:52 AM »

Quote from: Jonathon on December 13, 2012, 09:51:47 AM

Personally, I think it sounds fine.

I agree.

Annie Subjunctive · « **Reply #589 on:** December 16, 2012, 06:45:47 PM »

Ok, another question but this one is just because I can't make sense of the principle in my own mind. I am editing an academic paper for a lady here (a non-native English speaker), and am trying to make a couple helpful notes for her future writing.

She kept using the wording "content of lycopene" and "content of beta-carotene" and I repeatedly changed them to "lycopene content" and "beta-carotene content." I was going to try to write up an explanation of how we can easily do that with anything - oxygen content, water content, etc. But then in a future sentence, she wrote about the "low oxygen amount" and I changed it to "low amount of oxygen."

Can you think of a clear reason why "oxygen content" sounds good but "oxygen amount" sounds awkward?

pooka · « **Reply #590 on:** December 17, 2012, 08:08:43 AM »

Content means the quantity of a substance within another measure. Amount can mean a freestanding quantity. And some things sound less awkward because they just are. That is why you want a native speaker to go over something.

Jonathon · « **Reply #591 on:** December 17, 2012, 08:39:01 AM »

Quote from: pooka on December 17, 2012, 08:08:43 AM

And some things sound less awkward because they just are.

I can't come up with an explanation better than this. Sometimes things sound awkward just because they don't occur, and they don't occur because they sound awkward. Maybe there's some sort of semantic motivation here, but I can't see what it is. Maybe I'm just too tired to see it.

dkw · « **Reply #592 on:** January 15, 2013, 11:54:42 AM »

Dear expert, please help settle a disagreement.

Is the punctuation better in "Hey honey, how are you?" or "Hey, honey, how are you?"

Likewise, would "Hey, hon," or "Hey hon," be better ways to start an email?

Rationale would be appreciated.

Jonathon · « **Reply #593 on:** January 15, 2013, 12:53:04 PM »

There are two applicable rules here: names or terms of direct address are set off with commas (as in "You know, Dana, that's a good question."). Interjections like "hey" are also typically set off with commas. The first would require a comma before "honey" or "hon", and the second would require one after "hey". If you left out "honey", you'd still write "Hey, how are you?" If you left out "hey" (and moved "honey" somewhere else so that you could have a comma before it), you'd have "How are you, honey?" Either way, you end up with a comma after "hey" and before "honey".

Tante Shvester · « **Reply #594 on:** January 15, 2013, 01:29:28 PM »

From a word I keep hearing in the news: why is "magazine", that thing you read in the waiting room, the same word as "magazine", that thing that holds the gun bullets?

Jonathon · « **Reply #595 on:** January 15, 2013, 01:46:28 PM »

Etymonline.com has a pretty good explanation.

BlackBlade · « **Reply #596 on:** January 15, 2013, 06:59:18 PM »

Quote from: Tante Shvester on January 15, 2013, 01:29:28 PM

From a word I keep hearing in the news: why is "magazine", that thing you read in the waiting room, the same word as "magazine", that thing that holds the gun bullets?

It's also sometimes used to describe a place where things are stored. Such as powder magazines during the Civil War and earlier. Which of course Jon Boy's link mentions.

dkw · « **Reply #597 on:** January 16, 2013, 05:01:04 AM »

Thanks.

Jonathon · « **Reply #598 on:** January 16, 2013, 10:03:50 AM »

So out of curiosity, which side of the argument were you on?

dkw · « **Reply #599 on:** January 16, 2013, 07:32:32 PM »

I was actually an innocent bystander who was asked to give an opinion and wasn't sure. If it were only the second example I'd have been confident (and right) but the "Hey, hon," as a way of starting an email threw me. I think if I ever were to start an email that way I probably would have omitted the first comma.