Le 2011-07-12 04:34, Warp a écrit :
> 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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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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On 12/07/2011 12:32 PM, Warp wrote:

> (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).

Egg flied lice, anyone?

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On 08/07/2011 07:15 PM, nemesis wrote:

> Oh, and BTW, those verses... yeah, I can now understand why you can't stand
> poetry if such obtuse lines are all you can grasp of it...

As should be obvious, this is not poetry. This is lyrics. ;-)

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Le 2011-07-12 10:52, Invisible a écrit :
> On 08/07/2011 07:15 PM, nemesis wrote:
>
>> Oh, and BTW, those verses... yeah, I can now understand why you can't
>> stand
>> poetry if such obtuse lines are all you can grasp of it...
>
> As should be obvious, this is not poetry. This is lyrics. ;-)

And the difference is?

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On 12/07/2011 04:22 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:
> Le 2011-07-12 10:52, Invisible a écrit :
>> On 08/07/2011 07:15 PM, nemesis wrote:
>>
>>> Oh, and BTW, those verses... yeah, I can now understand why you can't
>>> stand
>>> poetry if such obtuse lines are all you can grasp of it...
>>
>> As should be obvious, this is not poetry. This is lyrics. ;-)
>
> And the difference is?

Lyrics can be in an unintelligible language and still be delightful.

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On 12-7-2011 10:09, Warp wrote:
> 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.)

How about 'leading', is that always pronounced the same? You might think 
that is a leading question, but I always had a suspicion that in 
typography it might be pronounced different because of a different, 
heavy, origin.

... GIYF, yes that seems to confirm my suspicion.

There are brilliant poems and songs about consistent english 
pronunciation, I am sure they have been pointed at before in p.o-t

-- 
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On 12-7-2011 13:32, Warp wrote:
> Francois Labreque<fla### [at] videotronca>  wrote:
>> How does Finnish deal with foreign words?
>
>    How does any language deal with foreign words?

We do it different. We import English (and other) words as is and they 
are pronounced as much as possible like in the original country. That 
becomes fun if it is a verb. Take for instance that you want to say that 
you saved data. Although we now have a Dutch word for it often the word 
'save' is used here too to describe this action. 'save' is in 
pronunciation close to the dutch 'zeef', the present perfect of which is 
'gezeefd', hence we say and write that 'we de data hebben gesaved', so 
we have an english word with Dutch inflections. That means that in the 
middle of a word we switch pronunciation rules from dutch to english and 
back. Even if the english word contains e.g. vowels that would be 
pronounced different in Dutch, like in this case.

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Le 2011-07-12 11:59, Invisible a écrit :
> On 12/07/2011 04:22 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:
>> Le 2011-07-12 10:52, Invisible a écrit :
>>> On 08/07/2011 07:15 PM, nemesis wrote:
>>>
>>>> Oh, and BTW, those verses... yeah, I can now understand why you can't
>>>> stand
>>>> poetry if such obtuse lines are all you can grasp of it...
>>>
>>> As should be obvious, this is not poetry. This is lyrics. ;-)
>>
>> And the difference is?
>
> Lyrics can be in an unintelligible language and still be delightful.

And poetry can't?

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>> Lyrics can be in an unintelligible language and still be delightful.
>
> And poetry can't?

I can only say this: I've yet to find any poetry that evokes anything 
other than boredom. This does not preclude the possibility of good 
poetry existing; it just makes me rather disinclined to search for it.

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

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On 7/12/2011 1:09, Warp wrote:
> 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.

It's also the only language I know where the accent (as in stress) moving 
from syllable to syllable changes the parts of speech of the word.

We will progress, and thereby make progress.

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

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On 7/12/2011 1:34, Warp wrote:
>    Btw, Spanish is another language where you know how to pronounce written
> words unambiguously, even without context or previous knowledge.

That's because in the 1600's (1670? 1640?) one of the bishops basically said 
"Screw this - here's how people will now spell stuff in spanish..."

> between letters and how they are pronounced.

Technically, there isn't a 1-to-1 correspondence between letters and 
characters, either.  "ll" is one character, yes?

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

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On 7/12/2011 4:32, Warp wrote:
>    How does any language deal with foreign words?

You haven't looked into Chinese a lot, have you? :-)

>    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).

In Chinese, they pick characters that are pronounced similarly but have a 
particular meaning. For example, "coca cola" in Chinese might be spelled in 
a way that sounds like "coca cola" and means "tasty sweet water" or some 
such. Something that always amuses me.

They do this with famous people, too.

> (Britons would have a fun time watching a Finn trying to pronounce
> "Worcestershire".)

Everyone has fun watching people say that one. ;-)

There's a saying in the USA:
In Texas, "yep" is three syllables. In Boston, "Worcestershire" is one.

>    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.

The only time I've heard the "h" pronounced there is when it's a Latino 
person making fun of a non-Latino. Sort of like a black man distinguishing 
"nigger" from "nigga" or something.

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

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Le 2011/07/12 11:59, Invisible a écrit :
> On 12/07/2011 04:22 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:
>> Le 2011-07-12 10:52, Invisible a écrit :
>>> On 08/07/2011 07:15 PM, nemesis wrote:
>>>
>>>> Oh, and BTW, those verses... yeah, I can now understand why you can't
>>>> stand
>>>> poetry if such obtuse lines are all you can grasp of it...
>>>
>>> As should be obvious, this is not poetry. This is lyrics. ;-)
>>
>> And the difference is?
>
> Lyrics can be in an unintelligible language and still be delightful.

Poetry can also be in a totaly unknown language, even an imaginary one, 
and be delightful.

In this case, for both lyrics and poetry, it's the rythm and sound 
aesthetic that count, not the meaning.

Anyway, lyrics ARE poetry! If you add music to any poem, it becomes a song.
Pure poetry is recited, lyrics are sung on a melody, with or without 
instrumental music.

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Le 2011/07/12 17:32, Orchid XP v8 a écrit :
>>> Lyrics can be in an unintelligible language and still be delightful.
>>
>> And poetry can't?
>
> I can only say this: I've yet to find any poetry that evokes anything
> other than boredom. This does not preclude the possibility of good
> poetry existing; it just makes me rather disinclined to search for it.
>

Take the lyrics of almost any song, remove the music and you get a poem.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Technically, there isn't a 1-to-1 correspondence between letters and 
> characters, either.  "ll" is one character, yes?

  In my experience the practice varied. *Technically* speaking, at least
according to archaic Spanish grammar, "ch" and "ll" were their own
independent letters of the alphabet. In practice, however, you nowadays
seldom see them written separately in alphabets. In my experience this is
happened first to "ll", and then to "ch" (sometimes in some alphabets you
could see "ch" as its own letter but not "ll"). I don't know how official
this is, but in practice they have lost their status as separate independent
letters. (Possibly the popularization of keyboards has helped this, although
I think this trend started earlier.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> The most logical aspect of English is the pronounciation.
>
> It's also the only language I know where the accent (as in stress)
> moving from syllable to syllable changes the parts of speech of the word.

There's an urban myth that in Chinese, the pitch of the word dictates 
which word it is...

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> Take the lyrics of almost any song, remove the music and you get a poem.

Yes. And typically not a very good one.

(If you actually sit down and think about it, it's surprising how many 
songs have lyrics which don't actually /make sense/ either.)

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On 13/07/2011 01:33 AM, Alain wrote:

> Anyway, lyrics ARE poetry! If you add music to any poem, it becomes a song.

Interesting fact: Take Growltiger's Last Stand, by T. S. Elliot. It's 
fairly boring. Get Andrew Lloyd Webber to set it to music, and suddenly 
it's an epic masterpiece.

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> The most logical aspect of English is the pronounciation.
> >
> > It's also the only language I know where the accent (as in stress)
> > moving from syllable to syllable changes the parts of speech of the word.

> There's an urban myth that in Chinese, the pitch of the word dictates 
> which word it is...

  I'm not sure you have go the meaning of "urban myth" right.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 7/13/2011 0:57, Invisible wrote:
>> Take the lyrics of almost any song, remove the music and you get a poem.
>
> Yes. And typically not a very good one.
>
> (If you actually sit down and think about it, it's surprising how many songs
> have lyrics which don't actually /make sense/ either.)

My favorite: Yes' "Roundabout"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQKqrC9cT_s

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

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On 7/12/2011 17:33, Alain wrote:
> Anyway, lyrics ARE poetry! If you add music to any poem, it becomes a song.
> Pure poetry is recited, lyrics are sung on a melody, with or without
> instrumental music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZyNKrYo9I4

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

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On 7/12/2011 23:57, Warp wrote:
> but in practice they have lost their status as separate independent
> letters.

I'm not surprised. I learned this in high school back in the early 70's. :-)

 > (Possibly the popularization of keyboards has helped this, although
> I think this trend started earlier.)

I don't think it's keyboards as much as it is collation by computers.

For example, it used to be that you'd sort Orwell's 1984 under the O's, 
because it starts with "One". Nowadays, libraries have a separate section 
for books that start with digits, because nobody wants to support 
traditional collation in a computer.

I suspect the same is true of Spanish. Who really wants to sort "ll" after 
"lz"?  Words starting with "ch" should come between "cg" and "ci", right?

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

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On 7/13/2011 0:54, Invisible wrote:
>>> The most logical aspect of English is the pronounciation.
>>
>> It's also the only language I know where the accent (as in stress)
>> moving from syllable to syllable changes the parts of speech of the word.
>
> There's an urban myth that in Chinese, the pitch of the word dictates which
> word it is...

The same sound has up to four different tones possible. That doesn't make it 
unambiguous, tho. For each sound+tone, there's still dozens of meanings you 
need to disambiguate, even if it's written.

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

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On 7/13/2011 9:31, Darren New wrote:
> I don't think it's keyboards as much as it is collation by computers.

Kind of related, but think about how Chinese dictionaries get sorted, given 
that each word is one character and there are tens of thousands of 
characters in the language, since Andrew brought up chinese to start with.

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

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Invisible escreveu:
>> Take the lyrics of almost any song, remove the music and you get a poem.
> 
> Yes. And typically not a very good one.

precisely, yes.  Lyrics is typically a bad poem relying on bad music and 
sugared chorus to try to make any impact at all.

That sad, the very name lyrics reminds of the old musical instrument -- 
the lyra, with which poets sang their muse-induced poetry.

-- 
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Orchid XP v8 escreveu:
>>> Lyrics can be in an unintelligible language and still be delightful.
>>
>> And poetry can't?
> 
> I can only say this: I've yet to find any poetry that evokes anything 
> other than boredom. This does not preclude the possibility of good 
> poetry existing; it just makes me rather disinclined to search for it.

lucky you that I've done it already:

http://news.povray.org/povray.off-topic/thread/%3C4e0cf0cb%241%40news.povray.org%3E/?mtop=363745&moff=10

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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On 13-7-2011 18:26, Darren New wrote:
> On 7/13/2011 0:57, Invisible wrote:
>>> Take the lyrics of almost any song, remove the music and you get a poem.
>>
>> Yes. And typically not a very good one.
>>
>> (If you actually sit down and think about it, it's surprising how many
>> songs
>> have lyrics which don't actually /make sense/ either.)
>
> My favorite: Yes' "Roundabout"
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQKqrC9cT_s

What about Leonard Cohen? I often find it very hard to make sense of his 
lyrics. He started out as a poet and it shows. Although often a single 
sentence does not make sense in it's context, the whole still conveys a 
feeling. That and that he had no choice but to be born with a golden 
voice makes it interesting to listen to him.

On a related topic, I am sort of glad his manager ran away with the money.


-- 
Apparently you can afford your own dictator for less than 10 cents per 
citizen per day.

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Invisible escreveu:
> On 13/07/2011 01:33 AM, Alain wrote:
> 
>> Anyway, lyrics ARE poetry! If you add music to any poem, it becomes a 
>> song.
> 
> Interesting fact: Take Growltiger's Last Stand, by T. S. Elliot. It's 
> fairly boring. Get Andrew Lloyd Webber to set it to music, and suddenly 
> it's an epic masterpiece.

funny poetry not really my thing, much worse travestite in bad music.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 15:02:46 -0300, nemesis wrote:

> Invisible escreveu:
>> On 13/07/2011 01:33 AM, Alain wrote:
>> 
>>> Anyway, lyrics ARE poetry! If you add music to any poem, it becomes a
>>> song.
>> 
>> Interesting fact: Take Growltiger's Last Stand, by T. S. Elliot. It's
>> fairly boring. Get Andrew Lloyd Webber to set it to music, and suddenly
>> it's an epic masterpiece.
> 
> funny poetry not really my thing, much worse travestite in bad music.

I was going to say, "Andrew Lloyd Webber" and "epic masterpiece" create a 
fair amount of cognitive dissonance for me - those two things don't 
really belong in the same sentence, IMNSHO.

Jim

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On 13/07/2011 07:54 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:

> I was going to say, "Andrew Lloyd Webber" and "epic masterpiece" create a
> fair amount of cognitive dissonance for me - those two things don't
> really belong in the same sentence, IMNSHO.

Yeah, weirdly a couple of people have voiced this incomprehensible 
opinion...

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

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>> There's an urban myth that in Chinese, the pitch of the word dictates
>> which word it is...
>
> The same sound has up to four different tones possible. That doesn't
> make it unambiguous, tho. For each sound+tone, there's still dozens of
> meanings you need to disambiguate, even if it's written.

The writing system has over eight million characters, and it's *still* 
ambiguous?

What the hell do Chinese people *say* to each other?! o_O

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

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On 7/13/2011 13:57, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> The writing system has over eight million characters, and it's *still*
> ambiguous?

It's still ambiguous without the context of a surrounding sentence.

Is "use" a verb or a noun?  Is "read" present or past tense?  Same thing.

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

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On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:56:34 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> On 13/07/2011 07:54 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
>> I was going to say, "Andrew Lloyd Webber" and "epic masterpiece" create
>> a fair amount of cognitive dissonance for me - those two things don't
>> really belong in the same sentence, IMNSHO.
> 
> Yeah, weirdly a couple of people have voiced this incomprehensible
> opinion...

What's so incomprehensible about it?  ALW's music has no redeeming 
musical qualities that I've ever heard, basically a sort of feel-good-pop-
crap musical style.

Even hearing the name triggers my gag reflex.

Jim

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On 7/13/2011 16:13, Jim Henderson wrote:
> feel-good-pop-crap musical style.

Phantom of the Opera? Feel good pop crap?

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

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On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:57:41 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 7/13/2011 16:13, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> feel-good-pop-crap musical style.
> 
> Phantom of the Opera? Feel good pop crap?

OK, one possible exception (I don't know that one very well).

Jim

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On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:27:42 -0400, Jim Henderson wrote:

> On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:57:41 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> 
>> On 7/13/2011 16:13, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> feel-good-pop-crap musical style.
>> 
>> Phantom of the Opera? Feel good pop crap?
> 
> OK, one possible exception (I don't know that one very well).

OK, and some of the stuff from Evita.

My perception is a bit colored, though, because I was required to play 
"Memory" from _Cats_ in orchestra several years, and the simplified 
version grated on me (and made me dislike the song and the composer .  
Then to hear bits of things like "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Joseph and 
the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" - *those* definitely are puke-inducing 
for me and fit my earlier description.

Jim

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On 13/07/2011 1:22 AM, Darren New wrote:
>> (Britons would have a fun time watching a Finn trying to pronounce
>> "Worcestershire".)
>
> Everyone has fun watching people say that one. ;-)
>
> There's a saying in the USA:
> In Texas, "yep" is three syllables. In Boston, "Worcestershire" is one.

Having been working in NM near the Texas border. I can confirm that 
"yep" has three syllables.

How would you pronounce Milngavie, a town in Scotland?
Wikipedia makes a good stab at it.
-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 11/07/2011 3:29 PM, 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.

In the UK it is "Bounty Bar"

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On Mon, 11 Jul 2011 08:29:19 -0600, 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 hadn't heard that - but I have heard it as a proposed "combined" name 
for the cities of Orem and Provo here in Utah.  (The two towns are 
neighbors and there's no really straightforward demarcation at the 
boundary between them, like so many neighboring cities/towns these days).

Jim

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On 13/07/2011 06:41 PM, nemesis wrote:
> Invisible escreveu:
>>> Take the lyrics of almost any song, remove the music and you get a poem.
>>
>> Yes. And typically not a very good one.
>
> precisely, yes. Lyrics is typically a bad poem relying on bad music and
> sugared chorus to try to make any impact at all.

We're not bitter here. :-P

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On 14/07/2011 04:06 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:

> My perception is a bit colored, though, because I was required to play
> "Memory" from _Cats_ in orchestra several years, and the simplified
> version grated on me (and made me dislike the song and the composer .
> Then to hear bits of things like "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Joseph and
> the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" - *those* definitely are puke-inducing
> for me and fit my earlier description.

Memory is one of my least favourite songs from Cats. There are many 
others in there which are much more enjoyable. Now if only I could 
somehow obtain the score from somewhere...

I disliked Jesus Christ Superstar, but I really like Joseph and the 
Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I've never seen an official production, 
but my sister's school put on a performance. I'm really impressed with 
how well the student orchestra managed to perform it. (With the possible 
exception of the drummer, who didn't put out an especially steady beat.) 
There was one girl in the school who honestly sang like a pro.

(I'm also impressed that a mere school would have a hall this huge, and 
such professional facilities. Then again, maybe that's just because I 
went to a tiny under-funded school myself where everything was always 
crappy...)

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On 14/07/2011 12:13 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:

> What's so incomprehensible about it?  ALW's music has no redeeming
> musical qualities that I've ever heard, basically a sort of feel-good-pop-
> crap musical style.
>
> Even hearing the name triggers my gag reflex.

Some people actually *like* feel-good music. Shockingly enough.

I will freely admit though, Starlight Express was surprisingly lame. 
(And I don't mean just the music.)

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> On 7/13/2011 9:31, Darren New wrote:
> > I don't think it's keyboards as much as it is collation by computers.

> Kind of related, but think about how Chinese dictionaries get sorted, given 
> that each word is one character and there are tens of thousands of 
> characters in the language, since Andrew brought up chinese to start with.

  After seeing a (Japanese) phone directory in an anime, which was full of
kanji, I wondered how the names get sorted. (I think, although I can't
remember for sure now, that they get sorted by their transliteration to
hiragana, which has a unique and unambiguous ordering.) Then I wondered
how phone directories are sorted in China, given that they don't even have
an alternative script like Japanese has (namely hiragana/katakana). Someone
explained it to me, but I can't remember it now.

  Another interesting question is how they support writing kanji in
cellphones (which have only the classical 0-9 numpad). Yes, they do
support it. It's a bit complicated.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> The same sound has up to four different tones possible. That doesn't make it 
> unambiguous, tho. For each sound+tone, there's still dozens of meanings you 
> need to disambiguate, even if it's written.

  I have always wondered why in Japanese, and probably also in Chinese,
there's no strict one-to-one-to-one correspondence between a kanji symbol,
its meaning and its pronounciation. The whole writing system seems to be
designed precisely for that: One symbol has (exactly) one meaning and one
pronounciation, making it completely unambiguous.

  But no, the same kanji can have a half dozen meanings, typically at least
two or three different pronounciations depending on context (at least in
Japanese), and moreover, the same word can sometimes be written with
different kanji symbols (again depending on context, meaning and/or the
phase of the Moon). So the whole idea with the kanji writing system seems
to be completely wasted, making it overly complicated for no good reason.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:56:34 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>
> > On 13/07/2011 07:54 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> >
> >> I was going to say, "Andrew Lloyd Webber" and "epic masterpiece" create
> >> a fair amount of cognitive dissonance for me - those two things don't
> >> really belong in the same sentence, IMNSHO.
> >
> > Yeah, weirdly a couple of people have voiced this incomprehensible
> > opinion...
>
> What's so incomprehensible about it?  ALW's music has no redeeming
> musical qualities that I've ever heard, basically a sort of feel-good-pop-
> crap musical style.
>
> Even hearing the name triggers my gag reflex.

We're talking about Andrew here, same guy who doesn't dig Mozart, GEB and
poetry... :p

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > Take the lyrics of almost any song, remove the music and you get a poem.
>
> Yes. And typically not a very good one.
>
> (If you actually sit down and think about it, it's surprising how many
> songs have lyrics which don't actually /make sense/ either.)


OK, now for some nice entirley comprehensible lyrics...
Brian Eno's "Kurt's Rejoinder":

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJNl7NjtbEU

Enjoy!


Best Regards,
Mike C.

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On 14/07/2011 12:35 PM, nemesis wrote:

> We're talking about Andrew here, same guy who doesn't dig Mozart, GEB and
> poetry... :p

On the other hand, there are people who like hip-hop and rap. :-P

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On 7/14/2011 4:47, Mike the Elder wrote:
> OK, now for some nice entirley comprehensible lyrics...

In China, they teach english with The Carpenters. "Because you can 
understand what they're saying. That's why they call it easy listening."

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

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On 7/14/2011 2:34, Warp wrote:
> Someone explained it to me, but I can't remember it now.

It is essentially sorted by how you write the character. Not the final 
shape, but how you write it.

So first come all characters with a single stroke, vertical strokes before 
horizontal strokes. Then all characters with two strokes, again vertical 
sorting before horizontal. Etc.  (Uh, approximately like that. Don't go 
taking this post as authoritative, as I'm doing it from memory.)

If you know how to read Chinese but not write it, you have a very hard time 
looking something up.

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

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