Barbaric, backwards ancestor worship

boing
121

Which helps not only with accents but also to learn other languages.

1 Like
122

Is it wise to confuse vocabulary and syntax?

For instance, it should be trivial to program an html parser that uses non standard tags in place of the usual tokens.

And when I as an English speaker learn a few words in a foreign language, it’s equally trivial for me to use those terms as if they were English words-- and for other English speakers to figure out the meaning of those novel words. But if I attempt to import grammatical constructions from other languages, my speech patterns will be recognized by other English speakers as somewhat “off”-- perhaps even as “non fluent”.

As for keywords-- yes, proper spelling is useful, as well as “controlled vocabularies.” But that’s a lot of work-- it’s easier for the archive provider to just OCR the page images, and allow searching on the full text.

Showing 1-20 of 4321 results.

2 Likes
123

Unless the words end in an ‘r’. Try differentiating the diminutive of Beatrice from beer using RP, for example 
 :laughing:

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t entirely dislike RP and have learnt to speak it. I’ll even use it if I have to, but I naturally speak with a fairly strong rhotic accent. Plus an exaggerated RP is a signifier of extreme privilege in the UK and I have an instinctive bias against it 


2 Likes
124

Thinking on it further, wouldn’t it be more useful (and fun) to teach IPA and extensions and then how to emulate a variety of accents?

1 Like
125

Bee and bee-yuh? Very different.

Non-rhoticism can increase ambiguities in some places, I’d agree, but some speakers do make an effort to distinguish pawn from porn, for example.

126

Ah. The Beatrice I knew was a bee-a and not an RP speaker, so fair enough.

On a side note, the Kiwi accent fails to differentiate bare, beer and bear as they’re all rendered bee-yur (a little more rhotic than RP). So the answer to “What do you do if you come across a bear, a jaguar and a lion in the woods?” is “Drink the beer and escape in the Jag.” :smile:

1 Like
127

Mate, you’re the one who dragged this ‘white guilt’ nonsense into a thread about language use. Not so much moving the goalposts as trying to turn the soccer pitch into an ice-hockey rink.

128

Roite!

129

Resort to foreign syntax you will not.

130

I looked in Chinar and Indiar but couldn’t find my missing lettahw.

1 Like
131

Yeah, but if you pronounce it boy and you tell somebody, “There’s a small boy out deep in the water,” they don’t know whether it’s something to be concerned about.

132

I think you mean “cot/caught,” but at least here in northern Illinois the two are pronounced differently. On the other hand, the “Chicago” accent of the Saturday Night Live “Super Fans” skits is exaggerated to a ludicrous extreme - nobody I know speaks even vaguely like that.

One thing I’ve noticed is that it is easier for me to imitate other accents when singing but not when speaking. I can sing in a reasonably good facsimile of Received Pronunciation, but if I tried to talk that way I’d sound ridiculous.

133

It is cot/caught, but Americans also voice terminal Ts, so “I caught a cod” becomes “Ah cahd a cahd”. I like slipping that twofer in.

134

Which ancestors? The English language has never been a stable thing. The rules that make sense to us are different from the rules that made sense to our ancestors.

That said, it is tough when I read rhyming slang and have no idea what is being communicated. One author I read is Ben Aaaronovitch, who when asked to explain London slang to his world wide audience, responded that he would - if he knew which terms we are unfamiliar with. Communication is a major goal of language, and going back to a common understanding is useful.

Jargon seems to be intentionally designed to exclude outsiders.

1 Like
135

Depends on the American. For me that would sound more like “I caught a cod.” Then again, I have a very flat accent under normal conditions. Get a couple pints in me, though, and I sound rather Canadian. Thanks, Minnesota!

1 Like
136

I remember a time in Texas when I could not order any water. The waitress had no idea what I was talking about. Eventually I had to give up and ask for warder.

1 Like
137

Er
you might want to scroll up, “mate”.

138

I kinda like the flexibility of using auxiliary verbs for an open-ended tense system.

It can lead to confusion, though.

(A) old/wider use of “will,” vs. hyperformalist use of “shall,” to mark the first person futures. This causes confusion because the old/wider meaning of “shall” is “have an obligation to” or “must” and the hyperformalist meaning isn’t.

(B) overlap of “have” and “get,” where AmE uses “got” and “gotten” to distinguish auxiliary and main verbs, and BrE doesn’t.

© wider use of “be” and “do” vs. Gullah and Aave regular use of “be” and “do” to precisely distinguish additional tenses and aspects.

139

Can you throw in the “initial so” as well?

2 Likes
140

What’s wrong with it?

I suppose we could replace initial And, But, So, etc. with initial And, Ac, Swa, Gea, etc.