http://blog.plover.com/lang/finnpar.html

I've never actually seen any text written in Finnish, so... does this 
look even remotely plausible?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> http://blog.plover.com/lang/finnpar.html

> I've never actually seen any text written in Finnish, so... does this 
> look even remotely plausible?

  Any random text will pass as any random language if, as the article says,
"if the reader wasn't paying much attention".

  If you know even the least bit of Finnish, you'll start noticing oddities.
For example, in Finnish no word starts with two consonants (except for some
loan words, which usually tend to be fairly lengthy, such as for example
"traktori" or "professori", but certainly nothing like "tk?").

  Also no word will ever end in a "j" nor in a double consonant (I really
can't think of any exception to this, except maybe some obscure literal
loan words).

  Even if you knew nothing about Finnish, from a linguistic point of view
it could be a bit suspicious that there's absolutely no repeated words in
that piece of text. This is very rare in any language.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:4846ff28$1@news.povray.org...
> http://blog.plover.com/lang/finnpar.html
>
> I've never actually seen any text written in Finnish, so... does this look 
> even remotely plausible?

Looks reasonable to me, producing some random words
from a phoneme distribution is one of the first programming
things I ever did, only got as far as guessing at the bigraph
distributions, but there were real english words coming up
in the lists. The trigraph statistics can be reduced in storage
size by not covering the impossible combinations...

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Warp wrote:

>   Any random text will pass as any random language if, as the article says,
> "if the reader wasn't paying much attention".
> 
>   If you know even the least bit of Finnish, you'll start noticing oddities.
> 
>   Even if you knew nothing about Finnish, from a linguistic point of view
> it could be a bit suspicious that there's absolutely no repeated words in
> that piece of text. This is very rare in any language.

Just for amusement... does the text even vaguely look "Finnish"? As in, 
are most of the words remotely pronouncible?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Just for amusement... does the text even vaguely look "Finnish"? As in, 
> are most of the words remotely pronouncible?

  Perhaps I'm not the best one to judge because Finnish is my native
language and thus I can tell in a microsecond that it's not Finnish.

  Actually my very first intuition (before examining it too closely) is
that it might be Estonian because it "looks a bit like Finnish but isn't",
exactly like Estonian. So maybe that's a sign that it might pass as
Finnish (or Estonian) to someone who is only vaguely familiar with the
language.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> http://blog.plover.com/lang/finnpar.html
> 
> I've never actually seen any text written in Finnish, so... does this 
> look even remotely plausible?
> 
Scientific American had an article on this in the late 1980's.  The 
author first tried making random text by selecting letters, based on 
their frequency in the English language.  The longest English word found 
in the entire result set was the word "rare".

The author then tried to generate text based on letter pairs; the 
algorithm, having one letter, searched for that letter and randomly 
selected the letter to follow based on the frequency of letters that 
followed in the source text.  This produced results that looked a lot 
like English.

He then tried using longer strings of letters, by matching pairs of 
letters and choosing the next letter based on the letters following the 
pair to be matched.  The results were much better this time; many of the 
resulting words were actual English words, and the ones that weren't 
could be taken for words with which the reader was not unfamiliar.

Setting the match string to a longer length made it more likely that the 
  random text would consists of lengthy passages from the source text.

He then tried a different tack; instead of matching letters, he decided 
to match whole words.  A word to follow the current word was randomly 
chosen from all of the words that follow the current word.  This 
produced interesting results as well.

I had fun using AmigaBASIC to test out these ideas.

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message

> The longest English word found 
> in the entire result set was the word "rare".

Ooohhhh the irony! ;-)

> The author then tried to generate text based on letter pairs; the 
> algorithm, having one letter, searched for that letter and randomly 
> selected the letter to follow based on the frequency of letters that 
> followed in the source text.  This produced results that looked a lot 
> like English.
> 
> He then tried using longer strings of letters, by matching pairs of 
> letters and choosing the next letter based on the letters following the 
> pair to be matched.  The results were much better this time; many of the 
> resulting words were actual English words, and the ones that weren't 
> could be taken for words with which the reader was not unfamiliar.
> 
> Setting the match string to a longer length made it more likely that the 
>  random text would consists of lengthy passages from the source text.
> 
> He then tried a different tack; instead of matching letters, he decided 
> to match whole words.  A word to follow the current word was randomly 
> chosen from all of the words that follow the current word.  This 
> produced interesting results as well.
> 
> I had fun using AmigaBASIC to test out these ideas.

I'm probably going to have fun trying this with Haskell a bit later. 
[But first I'd need to obtain some English text from somewhere...]

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > The longest English word found 
> > in the entire result set was the word "rare".

> Ooohhhh the irony! ;-)

  I have sometimes noticed that people use the word "irony" in situations
where it doesn't match the definition of the word. I think this is one
such case.

  The definition of "irony" is always related to opposites: Something is
implied, but the exact opposite is meant, for example. Two definitions
given by a dictionary, which would mostly apply to this situation, are:

  "An outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected."

  "An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between
apparent and intended meaning."

  I'm not sure that a randomly generated word by chance being a real word
and describing the very nature of the event itself could be called "irony"
because there are no opposites.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> The longest English word found 
>>> in the entire result set was the word "rare".
> 
>> Ooohhhh the irony! ;-)
> 
>   I have sometimes noticed that people use the word "irony" in situations
> where it doesn't match the definition of the word. I think this is one
> such case.
Could that be because many of us are native English speakers and
therefore understand the subtleties of the Eng. Lang. more intuitively?
BTW Not meant offensively

John

-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:42:36 +0100, Doctor John <doc### [at] gmailcom>
wrote:

>Warp wrote:
>> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>>> The longest English word found 
>>>> in the entire result set was the word "rare".
>> 
>>> Ooohhhh the irony! ;-)
>> 
>>   I have sometimes noticed that people use the word "irony" in situations
>> where it doesn't match the definition of the word. I think this is one
>> such case.
>Could that be because many of us are native English speakers and
>therefore understand the subtleties of the Eng. Lang. more intuitively?
>BTW Not meant offensively
>

Was that rionic? :p

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:23:47 +0100, Stephen <mcavoysAT@aolDOTcom>
wrote:

>
>Was that rionic? :p

I must learn to spell check before posting. 
I must learn to spell check before posting. 
I must learn to spell check before posting. 
I must learn to spell check before posting. 
I must learn to spell check before posting. 
I must learn to spell check before posting. 
I must learn to spell check before posting. 
I must learn to spell check before posting. 
I must learn to spell check before posting. 
I must learn to spell check before posting. 
I must learn to spell check before posting. 
…

:)
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Stephen wrote:
> On Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:23:47 +0100, Stephen <mcavoysAT@aolDOTcom>
> wrote:
> 
>> Was that rionic? :p

Another Gentleman's measure, Stephen?
> 
> I must learn to spell check before posting. 
> I must learn to spell check before posting. 
> I must learn to spell check before posting. 
> I must learn to spell check before posting. 
> I must learn to spell check before posting. 
> I must learn to spell check before posting. 
> I must learn to spell check before posting. 
> I must learn to spell check before posting. 
> I must learn to spell check before posting. 
> I must learn to spell check before posting. 
> I must learn to spell check before posting. 
> …
> 
> :)
Why? Most of us wouldn't even notice :-)

John

-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

Post a reply to this message

Doctor John <doc### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >>> The longest English word found 
> >>> in the entire result set was the word "rare".
> > 
> >> Ooohhhh the irony! ;-)
> > 
> >   I have sometimes noticed that people use the word "irony" in situations
> > where it doesn't match the definition of the word. I think this is one
> > such case.
> Could that be because many of us are native English speakers and
> therefore understand the subtleties of the Eng. Lang. more intuitively?
> BTW Not meant offensively

  I'm not the only one who thinks that the word "irony" is misused.
For example, see entry number 3 here:
http://www.cracked.com/article_15664_9-words-that-dont-mean-what-you-think.html

  A good example of irony is something like this: The boy who appeared in
the infamous "star wars kid" video got so upset by all the unflattering
media publicity, that his family pressed charges against the people who
posted the video on the internet. The irony is that the lawsuit attracted
even *more* media attention than the video itself.

  The example in this thread is more akin to the bad example of "irony"
given at that webpage: "She always said she wanted to marry a dentist!
And then she married Bob, who is a dentist! Isn't that ironic?"

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Doctor John <doc### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>>>> The longest English word found 
>>>>> in the entire result set was the word "rare".
>>>> Ooohhhh the irony! ;-)
>>>   I have sometimes noticed that people use the word "irony" in situations
>>> where it doesn't match the definition of the word. I think this is one
>>> such case.
>> Could that be because many of us are native English speakers and
>> therefore understand the subtleties of the Eng. Lang. more intuitively?
>> BTW Not meant offensively
> 
>   I'm not the only one who thinks that the word "irony" is misused.
> For example, see entry number 3 here:
> http://www.cracked.com/article_15664_9-words-that-dont-mean-what-you-think.html

I've just reread Andrew's post and I think that it is perfectly possible
that he might have meant the remark 'Ooohhh the irony!' in an ironical
fashion :-)

John

-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:38:28 +0100, Doctor John <doc### [at] gmailcom>
wrote:

>Stephen wrote:
>> On Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:23:47 +0100, Stephen <mcavoysAT@aolDOTcom>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Was that rionic? :p
>
>Another Gentleman's measure, Stephen?

Mock not ye the afflicted 


>> I must learn to spell check before posting. 
>> …
>> 
>> :)
>Why? Most of us wouldn't even notice :-)
>
True but it might send some running to 
http://dictionary.reference.com/
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

John VanSickle wrote:
[snip]
> Setting the match string to a longer length made it more likely that the 
>  random text would consists of lengthy passages from the source text.
> 
> He then tried a different tack; instead of matching letters, he decided 
> to match whole words.  A word to follow the current word was randomly 
> chosen from all of the words that follow the current word.  This 
> produced interesting results as well.
> 
Sounds a lot like 'dissociated press' or perhaps that was what meant.

Post a reply to this message

Doctor John wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>>> The longest English word found 
>>>> in the entire result set was the word "rare".
>>> Ooohhhh the irony! ;-)
>>   I have sometimes noticed that people use the word "irony" in situations
>> where it doesn't match the definition of the word. I think this is one
>> such case.
> Could that be because many of us are native English speakers and
> therefore understand the subtleties of the Eng. Lang. more intuitively?
> BTW Not meant offensively

What it more likely means is that native speakers, being exposed to more 
usages of the word, are consequently more exposed to incorrect uses.

A foreign speaker is more likely to know only the dictionary definition.

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message

>> Could that be because many of us are native English speakers and
>> therefore understand the subtleties of the Eng. Lang. more intuitively?
>> BTW Not meant offensively
> 
> What it more likely means is that native speakers, being exposed to more 
> usages of the word, are consequently more exposed to incorrect uses.
> 
> A foreign speaker is more likely to know only the dictionary definition.

Define "correct" and we'll continue. ;-)

Seriously - do you have any idea how many "English" words are actually 
misused or misheard words from other languages? The same probably goes 
for most languages of the world - except those belonging to remote tribes.

So just who exactly defines what is the "correct" meaning of a word? And 
if it isn't the native speakers of the language that word belongs to, 
then who the hell is it??

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> So just who exactly defines what is the "correct" meaning of a word?

  Dictionaries at least. And that's not just being pedantic. If you want
to write official text which is unambiguous and understandable by everyone
who speaks the language, you'll have to stick to dictionary definitions
and avoid use parlances which only a small segment of the population might
understand (especially if the rest may understand it wrongly).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

> What it more likely means is that native speakers, being exposed to more 
> usages of the word, are consequently more exposed to incorrect uses.

You can tell that my girlfriend is not a native English speaker only by the 
fact that she points out incorrect usage of English that no native would 
ever realise :-)

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> You can tell that my girlfriend is not a native English speaker only by 
> the fact that she points out incorrect usage of English that no native 
> would ever realise :-)

Seconded!  Usually followed by me explaining that while she's right 
logically, that isn't how English works.  Usually followed by her 
muttering "fucking English" under her breath.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
  Helpful housekeeping hints:
   Check your feather pillows for holes
    before putting them in the washing machine.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> So just who exactly defines what is the "correct" meaning of a word?
> 
>   Dictionaries at least. 

Especially since dictionaries, in general, *do* track normal popular 
usage over time. So it's not like by sticking to the dictionary you're 
going to be "out of date".

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
  Helpful housekeeping hints:
   Check your feather pillows for holes
    before putting them in the washing machine.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> You can tell that my girlfriend is not a native English speaker only by
> the fact that she points out incorrect usage of English that no native
> would ever realise :-)
> 
> 
Snap!

John

-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> You can tell that my girlfriend is not a native English speaker only by 
> the fact that she points out incorrect usage of English that no native 
> would ever realise :-)

Damn. My girlfriend just smiles and tells me how fascinating I am...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:48:44 +0100, Doctor John <doc### [at] gmailcom>
wrote:

>scott wrote:
>> You can tell that my girlfriend is not a native English speaker only by
>> the fact that she points out incorrect usage of English that no native
>> would ever realise :-)
>> 
>> 
>Snap!

Double de snap!

She's Scots :)
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Stephen wrote:

> She's Scots :)

I misparesed that as "she's Scott's" - which would have a whole *other* 
set of implications!

OOC, does anybody here have a girlfriend who *isn't* foreign??

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:02:30 +0100, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull>
wrote:

>
>Damn. My girlfriend just smiles and tells me how fascinating I am...

And you're a liar too :P

Sorry could not resist that (before anyone else jumps in)

Fancy a drink soon?
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:18:08 +0100, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull>
wrote:

>
>I misparesed that as "she's Scott's" - which would have a whole *other* 
>set of implications!

ROTFL
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

>> Damn. My girlfriend just smiles and tells me how fascinating I am...
> 
> And you're a liar too :P

Hey, I have *lots* of girlfriends! :-P

True, they are all figments of my imagination - but you could just say 
that they're "invisible", like me. [But for real.]

> Fancy a drink soon?

Uh... now that you mention it, *right now* I'm actually feeling kinda 
ill, for no defined reason... :-/

But yeah, sure, the idea is sound in principle.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:20:46 +0100, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull>
wrote:

>
>Uh... now that you mention it, *right now* I'm actually feeling kinda 
>ill, for no defined reason... :-/
>
>But yeah, sure, the idea is sound in principle.

When you're feeling better let us know.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
> 
>> She's Scots :)
> 
> I misparesed that as "she's Scott's" - which would have a whole *other*
> set of implications!
> 
> OOC, does anybody here have a girlfriend who *isn't* foreign??
> 
According to the gf it's me that's the foreigner ;-)

John

-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
> 
>> She's Scots :)
> 
> I misparesed that as "she's Scott's" - which would have a whole *other* 
> set of implications!
> 
> OOC, does anybody here have a girlfriend who *isn't* foreign??
> 
My wife is Dutch too. Does that count?

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> Stephen wrote:
>>
>>> She's Scots :)
>>
>> I misparesed that as "she's Scott's" - which would have a whole
>> *other* set of implications!
>>
>> OOC, does anybody here have a girlfriend who *isn't* foreign??
>>
> My wife is Dutch too. Does that count?

omg, you're both foreign! How do you communicate? :-)

John

-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:50:24 +0100, Doctor John <doc### [at] gmailcom>
wrote:

>> My wife is Dutch too. Does that count?
>
>omg, you're both foreign! How do you communicate? :-)

They are Dutch. The Dutch are born speaking three languages then learn
at least another two at school. :)

Seriously I've heard people switching between Dutch, English and
French in one sentence.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:18:08 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> OOC, does anybody here have a girlfriend who *isn't* foreign??

How do you define "foreign"?

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> So just who exactly defines what is the "correct" meaning of a word?
> 
>   Dictionaries at least. And that's not just being pedantic. If you want
> to write official text which is unambiguous and understandable by everyone
> who speaks the language, you'll have to stick to dictionary definitions
> and avoid use parlances which only a small segment of the population might
> understand (especially if the rest may understand it wrongly).

And you avoid the appearance of poor education, because sticking to 
dictionary definitions makes it easy to avoid usages to which those who 
don't know what they are talking about are prone.

There is the caveat that the dictionary writers are not familiar with 
the terminology of some fields (philosophy, I am told, is one such 
field), and consequently for the correct definitions of such terminology 
one should turn to a glossary written by experts in that field.

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:18:08 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> 
>> OOC, does anybody here have a girlfriend who *isn't* foreign??
> 
> How do you define "foreign"?
> 
> Jim

With a dictionary?

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:24:04 -0400, Sabrina Kilian wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:18:08 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> 
>>> OOC, does anybody here have a girlfriend who *isn't* foreign??
>> 
>> How do you define "foreign"?
>> 
>> Jim
> 
> With a dictionary?

Ba dum-dum.  Ching.

:-)

Jim

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