On 09/07/2011 05:16 AM, Slime wrote:
>  > Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I can determine, an
> "oreo" is an obscure brand of biscuit.
>
> Between this and "die," I'm thinking we must have grown up on different
> planets.

Or maybe just different regions of the same planet where local dialect 
and vocabulary varies? :-P

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On 7/8/2011 3:08 AM, Invisible wrote:

>
> Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I can determine, an "oreo"
> is an obscure brand of biscuit. So... WTF?

Oreo is also derogatory American slang.

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On 7/11/2011 7:29, Tom Galvin wrote:
> On 7/8/2011 3:08 AM, Invisible wrote:
>
>>
>> Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I can determine, an "oreo"
>> is an obscure brand of biscuit. So... WTF?
>
> Oreo is also derogatory American slang.

I had an entire explanation of that typed out, until someone said "No, 
oriole."  :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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Slime <pov### [at] slimelandcom> wrote:
> Between this and "die," I'm thinking we must have grown up on different 
> planets.

  If the plural of "die" is "dice", then is the plural of "lie" "lice"?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 12/07/2011 07:18 AM, Warp wrote:

>    If the plural of "die" is "dice", then is the plural of "lie" "lice"?

No, see, you're thinking that the English language follows some kind of 
*logic*.

It doesn't. It's purely a random historical accident. :-(

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> No, see, you're thinking that the English language follows some kind of 
> *logic*.

  The most logical aspect of English is the pronounciation.

  For example, how do you pronounce the word "read"? Impossible to say all
by itself. It depends on the context. (Or, more precisely, it depends on the
tense of said verb, both present and past tenses being written identically
but pronounced differently.)

  In Finnish, at least, you know how a word is pronounced, regardless of
context. This even in the case that you have never heard or seen that word
before in your life, nor know what it means.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 12/07/2011 09:09 AM, Warp wrote:

>    For example, how do you pronounce the word "read"? Impossible to say all
> by itself.

As well as "read" being pronounced either like "red" or like "reed", I 
also love how "reading" and "Reading" are also completely different.

>    In Finnish, at least, you know how a word is pronounced, regardless of
> context. This even in the case that you have never heard or seen that word
> before in your life, nor know what it means.

Now, see, this is how an alphabetic script is supposed to work. That's 
the whole idea. The fact that English is a random mixture of a dozen 
incompatible languages with no rhyme or reason such that it fails this 
basic definition is another matter...

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >    In Finnish, at least, you know how a word is pronounced, regardless of
> > context. This even in the case that you have never heard or seen that word
> > before in your life, nor know what it means.

> Now, see, this is how an alphabetic script is supposed to work. That's 
> the whole idea. The fact that English is a random mixture of a dozen 
> incompatible languages with no rhyme or reason such that it fails this 
> basic definition is another matter...

  Btw, Spanish is another language where you know how to pronounce written
words unambiguously, even without context or previous knowledge.

  OTOH it's slightly "inferior" to Finnish written language in that some
letters have different pronounciations depending on the surrounding letters
(which is something almost completely inexistent in Finnish; AFAIK there's
only one such case). The pronounciation of complete words is still completely
unambiguous, though. It just means that there's no full 1-to-1 correspondence
between letters and how they are pronounced.

  (Written Spanish is also slightly "wasteful" in that the letter H is
completely silent, making it kind of obsolete. It's also a common source
of grammatical mistakes because the pronounciation of the word does not
indicate the presence of the letter. Also, there are words which differ
from each other only in whether they have an additional H or not, which is
confusing and a source of even more grammatical mistakes.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>>>     In Finnish, at least, you know how a word is pronounced, regardless of
>>> context. This even in the case that you have never heard or seen that word
>>> before in your life, nor know what it means.
>
>> Now, see, this is how an alphabetic script is supposed to work. That's
>> the whole idea. The fact that English is a random mixture of a dozen
>> incompatible languages with no rhyme or reason such that it fails this
>> basic definition is another matter...
>
>    Btw, Spanish is another language where you know how to pronounce written
> words unambiguously, even without context or previous knowledge.
>
>    OTOH it's slightly "inferior" to Finnish written language in that some
> letters have different pronounciations depending on the surrounding letters
> (which is something almost completely inexistent in Finnish; AFAIK there's
> only one such case). The pronounciation of complete words is still completely
> unambiguous, though. It just means that there's no full 1-to-1 correspondence
> between letters and how they are pronounced.
>

How does Finnish deal with foreign words?  For example, the "ch" in many 
words of greek origin (psychology, chaos, stochiometry, chemistry, 
etc...), are they rewritten or taken as is?

>    (Written Spanish is also slightly "wasteful" in that the letter H is
> completely silent, making it kind of obsolete. It's also a common source
> of grammatical mistakes because the pronounciation of the word does not
> indicate the presence of the letter. Also, there are words which differ
> from each other only in whether they have an additional H or not, which is
> confusing and a source of even more grammatical mistakes.)
>

While it is not as hard as in English or German, the h in spanish is 
still not completely silent.  For example, the s sound of "los" in "Los 
Angeles" carries into the second word, whereas in "Los haciendas", it 
doesn't, and in some words, such as "hombre", it is indeed pronounced.

DISCLAIMER: My knowledge of spanish is limited to having a 
Latin-American neighbor and having been to Mexico a few times.  I may be 
totally wrong.
-- 
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/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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Francois Labreque <fla### [at] videotronca> wrote:
> How does Finnish deal with foreign words?

  How does any language deal with foreign words?

  Most loanwords are "finnishized", in both pronounciation and writing
(spoken Finnish doesn't have nearly as many phonemes as many other languages,
including English, which means that most finns can't even pronounce many
English words correctly because of lack of practice).

  If a foreign name cannot be changed (eg. because it's a proper name, eg.
the name of a person or a company), then it's just written as it is (if the
name happens to have some letter not in the Finnish alphabet, then how it's
dealt with varies from medium to medium and person to person).

  Country names are usually "finnishized", with rare exceptions. Other
foreign place names are usually not, but writte as-is, with the exception
of some very known very old place names, like some ancient cities. (Eg. the
city of Rome is written in Finnish as "Rooma". If the city had been founded
last year, it would probably be written and pronounced as-is, ie. "Roma".
Another example is London, which is "Lontoo" in Finnish. If it were founded
today, it would be just "London" in Finnish too.)

  This actually causes some awkward things. For example, to a Finn,
"New York" is not pronounced as it is written. And if you tried to
pronounce as it is written, it would be very awkward and unnatural. It's
known enough that most people get the English pronounciation at least
approximately correctly. It's much harder with lesser known place names.
(Britons would have a fun time watching a Finn trying to pronounce
"Worcestershire".)

>  For example, the "ch" in many 
> words of greek origin (psychology, chaos, stochiometry, chemistry, 
> etc...), are they rewritten or taken as is?

  Common terms are rewritten and the pronounciation made more Finnish.
(Psykologia, kaaos, stokiometria, kemia.)

> While it is not as hard as in English or German, the h in spanish is 
> still not completely silent.  For example, the s sound of "los" in "Los 
> Angeles" carries into the second word, whereas in "Los haciendas", it 
> doesn't, and in some words, such as "hombre", it is indeed pronounced.

  Ok, the H can cause a slight change in rythm in some situations, which
makes it distinguishable from a similar situation without an H. Still feels
a bit "wasteful", though.

  I have never heard "hombre" pronounced any differently from (the
fictitious word) "ombre". (I have lived in Spain for 12 years.) I don't
know if it's different in Latin America.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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