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nemesis wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
>> volume be?
>
> dunno. Ask Wolfram.
Duh. Like I didn't already try that. ;-)
WA is great, but it doesn't understand modestly complex queries.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
> Since it _is_ Friday and all...
>
>
>
> volume be?
Slightly smaller.
> Where the heck do silent letters come from?
They represent sounds that existed in the spoken language at some point
in the past, but which have since been lost. I blame the French.
Regards,
John
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John VanSickle wrote:
> I blame the French.
Sure. Everybody does.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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4c3a2cc1$1@news.povray.org...
> John VanSickle wrote:
>
>> I blame the French.
>
> Sure. Everybody does.
>
I don't ;-)
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On 11/07/2010 11:03 PM, M_a_r_c wrote:
> 4c3a2cc1$1@news.povray.org...
>> John VanSickle wrote:
>>
>>> I blame the French.
>>
>> Sure. Everybody does.
>>
> I don't ;-)
>
>
We Scots don't.
--
Best Regards,
Stephen
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And lo On Sun, 11 Jul 2010 17:27:07 +0100, John VanSickle
<evi### [at] hotmailcom> did spake thusly:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Since it _is_ Friday and all...
>> If I take 3L of water at 30°C and cool it to 4°C, what would its new
>> volume be?
>
> Slightly smaller.
>
>> Where the heck do silent letters come from?
>
> They represent sounds that existed in the spoken language at some point
> in the past, but which have since been lost. I blame the French.
or the Germans, or the Romans, or the... anybody else who's had an
influence on the current version of English. For example "ghost" was
originally spelt as "gost" but possinly under the influence of the Dutch
their version "gheest" was used in a printing and it stuck.
>> As I understand it, before the invention of the printing press, words
>> didn't have standard spellings. You just spell the word approximately
>> how it sounds. The first printers fixed the spelling of several words.
>> (E.g., "put" is spelt with a "U" because that's the letter that could
>> be printed most clearly. Nothing to do with phonetics.) This utterly
>> fails to explain why words like "knife" have a "K" in them. (
As an aside this has helped to show regional pronunciations and shifts.
Take the simple word "Blessed" and it can be seen written as "Blessid" or
"Blessud" and note we even have the current variant "Blest" thanks to the
-ed/-t sound similarity.
All good fun.
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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>>> Where the heck do silent letters come from?
>>
>> They represent sounds that existed in the spoken language at some
>> point in the past, but which have since been lost. I blame the French.
>
> or the Germans, or the Romans, or the... anybody else who's had an
> influence on the current version of English. For example "ghost" was
> originally spelt as "gost" but possinly under the influence of the Dutch
> their version "gheest" was used in a printing and it stuck.
Sure. But the Romans didn't have printing presses. And, as I say, back
then words didn't have a set spelling; that only came in after printing.
So that doesn't explain how a long-dead language can influence the
spelling of a modern one.
> All good fun.
I wonder how long it will be before the OED starts listing words like
"pr0n" as actual spellings.
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> Sure. But the Romans didn't have printing presses. And, as I say, back
> then words didn't have a set spelling; that only came in after printing.
> So that doesn't explain how a long-dead language can influence the
> spelling of a modern one.
Of course it does! When you invade a country you pick up some of the local
lingo too (and maybe pronounce it slightly differently), which leads to
English being a mix of various languages. I don't see what the printing
press has to do with anything, people still spoke and wrote before that!
I'm sure you can research where various words came from, but I suspect "kn-"
type words (eg knot) came from the Saxons as there are similar words in
German where the "k" is voiced. "Psy-" type words are Greek, if you
investigated the Greek language you'd probably find out why they are
spelt/pronounced like that.
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scott wrote:
> I don't see what the
> printing press has to do with anything, people still spoke and wrote
> before that!
To reiterate: Apparently before the invention of the printing press,
words didn't have standard spellings. People just wrote them down
however seemed right at the time, making up the spellings as they went
along. It's only when printing started the mass dissemination of written
material that words acquired fixed spellings. So it's only after this
point in time that silent letters could have survived.
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> To reiterate: Apparently before the invention of the printing press, words
> didn't have standard spellings. People just wrote them down however seemed
> right at the time, making up the spellings as they went along. It's only
> when printing started the mass dissemination of written material that
> words acquired fixed spellings. So it's only after this point in time that
> silent letters could have survived.
Why couldn't words have been spelt before printing presses with silent
letters? It's probably precisely the fact that words were spelt in many
ways that led to some unusual spellings becoming "standard".
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