Result = ę. Umm, no. That's my custom keyboard layout. Sorry.
Result = €.
To type é, hit the dead key containing ` and ´ symbols (next to the backspace), and then hit e. This produces é.
This on Finnish (and Swedish) keyboards. Also, off-topic.
Unfortunately, not all of us have European keyboards; American keyboards have neither an AltGr key nor any "dead keys" because English has no diacriticals, and even the loanwords like role (formerly rôle) and coordinate (coördinate) lose their diacriticals over time.
Kuwaga wrote:
Forms like 'sitted' and spellings like 'dieing' are disallowed to keep well educated people in power.
Fun Fact: The King James Version of the Bible uses "builded" in Genesis.
Kuwaga wrote:
The silent e can't be dropped because it shows that a word is pronounced differently. Actually we simulate a vowel shift to arrive at the correct pronunciation while reading new words with a silent e at the end.
<at> - f.e. [æt]
<ate> - f.e. [æit]
So if you dropped the e you'd need to add something like an i in front. (in this case)
We need to bring back diacritical marks, like perhaps the first example could remain "at" while the other would be "ét" (BTW, your IPA example would in fact look like [ejt] unless you really pronounce that word like "a-eet"). One potential scheme might go like this:
a [æ] (cat)
ä [a] (car)
e [ε] (pen)
ë [e] (they)
i [ι] (it)
ï (liter)
o [ɔ] (solitude)
ö [o] (home)
u [ʊ] (put)
ü (rude)
û [ʌ] (up)
ô [ə] (of)
ê [ɹ] (her)
To indicate stress, you could for example use è instead of e and é instead of ë, but there's no easy way to stress the other three vowels listed even though û and ê do occur in stressed syllables.
By the way, that anti-German joke failed to mention that English already has two symbols for "th": þ (thorn) for voiceless, and ð (edh) for voiced, though they have fallen by the wayside by now, and as another note a stylized rendering of ð is the likely reason for signs like "Ye Olde Inne" because the ð resembles a fancy Y to modern eyes.
For that matter, we should bring back the long s (ʃ) for "sh" and tailed z (ʒ) for "zh" (even though these symbold did not historically represent those sounds).
P.S.: I realized I abused the diacriticals up there, and the umlaut and circumflex mean nothing like what I used them for.
nfq wrote:
Finnish is the language that makes most sense.
I heard that this language and Spanish have the closest correspondence between orthography and pronunciation of all natural languages, and that may be why it makes so much sense.
By the way, most of these complaints are about orthography or diction, not grammar; this misuse of the word "grammar" is similar to the use of the term "fiscal" to mean "economic" or "techno" to refer to all electronic music or even just all electronic dance music.
One potential scheme might go like this:
a [æ] (cat)
ä [a] (car)
e [ε] (pen)
ë [e] (they)
i [ι] (it)
ï (liter)
o [ɔ] (solitude)
ö [o] (home)
u [ʊ] (put)
ü (rude)
û [ʌ] (up)
ô [ə] (of)
ê [ɹ] (her)
Further problem is that in "they" and "home" there's a dipthong (i.e. a flow from one vowel to another) instead of just one vowel…
About dipthongs. In past I used to think that they are just two vowels in a succession, but I have come to realize that it's actually different from how dipthongs work in Finnish.
If you pronounce the word "take" veeeery slowly in English, you will produce a very smooth, gradual shift from the /e/ phoneme into the /ɪ/ phoneme. It's so natural to natively English-speaking people that they don't actually realize that it's a dipthong.
However, a Finnish person would consider first pronouncing a long /e/ phoneme (without change of the vowel's type), and then change it into the /ɪ/ phoneme and pronouncing that as a long one (without change of the vowel's type) as well.
Similarly for word "find", there's a shift from the /a/ phoneme to the /ɪ/ phoneme. A Finnish person would spell those out as two different vowels, i.e. "faind". "Fate" would not be "fet" or "fete", but "feit".
Just some things that make Finns very bad at pronouncing English :)
(But as for grammar, more on-topic, it's a piece of cake. Mostly. We do get confusion on when an "a" or "the" is required, and where "on", "in" or "at" is applicable. Such as are you on town, in town, or at town, when the emphasis is on being out on the streets as opposed to being in a house?)
One potential scheme might go like this:
a [æ] (cat)
ä [a] (car)
e [ε] (pen)
ë [e] (they)
i [ι] (it)
ï (liter)
o [ɔ] (solitude)
ö [o] (home)
u [ʊ] (put)
ü (rude)
û [ʌ] (up)
ô [ə] (of)
ê [ɹ] (her)
Further problem is that in "they" and "home" there's a dipthong (i.e. a flow from one vowel to another) instead of just one vowel…
I always thought there was just one vowel followed by a semivocalic consonant (respectively "y" and "w"), except that I don't pronounce "home" like that but "row" is a better example.
Also, the term is "diphthong" ['dιf: ðɔŋ] from a Greek word basically meaning "two-toned": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthong
There have been serveal stdiues that come to the colisuncon that pepole can unsatdsrend words farily eaisly if they are julbmed eexcpt for the first two and last two letetrs.
Oh yes, and it's probably correct. However, that just means that the spelling doesn't matter too much, as long as the amount of letters remain roughly constant.
If we take the same sentencen and then AOL-ify it...
der hav ben severl studis dat cum 2 de concluson dat peple cn undrstnd words farly ezy if dey r jambed xcept teh 1st 2 nd te last 2 leters.
(I'm horribly at AOL-speak, so excuse me if the example doesn't come across as realistic)
I'd say it's harder to read, but of course, that could just be me.
Kuwaga wrote:
English spelling will have to change somewhen. Spoken language will continue to develop further and if spelling stays the same we'd maybe arrive at a point where you really have to learn the spelling and pronunciation of each word by heart. There'd be no point to using letters then.
Of course, but suggestions like allowing "sitted" (and similar words) will definitely not make barriers between written and spoken words smaller, since no one would rather say "sitted" then "sat". Forcefully changing all irregular verbs would only make speech more stale, with next to no real benefits when writing (it would also mean that kids don't get to suffer hours of remembering those damn verbs, and if I had to, they damn well should to).
It's 'pokemon', or more accurately ポケモン. The é is there to let the normal English speaker know that it should be pronounce 'ay', like café. However, the original japanese word would be 'pokemon' in romaji, so the accent is unnecessary.
Besides, most people I know pronounce it 'pokimon', so their attempt at instruction seems to have failed. :)
It's 'pokemon', or more accurately ポケモン. The é is there to let the normal English speaker know that it should be pronounce 'ay', like café. However, the original japanese word would be 'pokemon' in romaji, so the accent is unnecessary.
Besides, most people I know pronounce it 'pokimon', so their attempt at instruction seems to have failed. :)
Technically, shouldn't a direct adaption from Japanese be Pōkémon?
I pronounce it Pokémon with the accent and it always annoys other people. When I try to ecplain why it's actually pronounced like that, their brains seem to turn to mush. Doesn't anyone know what accents are anymore?
I fail to see how the length of words is a downside.
Takes longer to read and write. I think there was a book in English that had about 300 pages, but the Finnish translation had like 360.
LagDotCom wrote:
I was under the impression that Chinese had shorter words than a lot of languages. Especially if you consider each character a 'letter' of sorts, then they are very short indeed.
Two lines of English text might only be one and a half line in Chinese, but Chinese characters are more complex than these latin letters and words.
I fail to see how the length of words is a downside.
Takes longer to read and write.
People don't read individual characters. They read (or, more precisely, see) whole words at a time. Whether the word is 4 or 10 characters long is of little matter.
English might have shorter words in average, but on the other hand you need more of them to express the same thing, so that often compensates. In other words, Finnish can sometimes be more *compact* than English.
The classical example is the finnish sentence: "Juoksentelisinkohan?" This is a rather normal sentence, ie. not at all far-fetched. A more or less accurate translation to English would be: "I wonder if I should be running around" (although it's difficult to express the original notion of the type of running, which means running here and there, randomly and without really a goal).
And btw, most words in regular Finnish sentences are not nearly that long. (Compound words can get pretty long, but it's a matter of definition whether they are single words, or if the composing words are counted separately.)
A more mundane example would be, for example "auton ovi", which means "the door of the car". Two vs. five words, and the expression is shorter.
Joined: 4/30/2006
Posts: 480
Location: the secret cow level
adzicents wrote:
LagDotCom wrote:
It's 'pokemon', or more accurately ポケモン. The é is there to let the normal English speaker know that it should be pronounce 'ay', like café. However, the original japanese word would be 'pokemon' in romaji, so the accent is unnecessary.
Besides, most people I know pronounce it 'pokimon', so their attempt at instruction seems to have failed. :)
Technically, shouldn't a direct adaption from Japanese be Pōkémon?
I pronounce it Pokémon with the accent and it always annoys other people. When I try to ecplain why it's actually pronounced like that, their brains seem to turn to mush. Doesn't anyone know what accents are anymore?
It's supposed to be a contraction of "Pocket Monsters," anyway...
Let's play find the errors of a college grad's writing!
I spend about 15 minutes correcting everything on my work's janitor checklist... it is bad. I have no idea why my scanner would not scan the whole page, either, so sorry to disappoint!
Here is hoping I don't fail at english, too, and get picked apart in this post!
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
A more or less accurate translation to English would be: "I wonder if I should be running around"
it's shorter to write: "should i run?"
That has a different meaning.
Warp didn't type those extra words just for dramatics.
More examples:
-- "siksi" = "into that (which was mentioned)" (a more common homonym means "because" though)
-- "epäilemättä" = "without a doubt" (you could say "doubtlessly" in English, but that's not normal language, and not an expression you can use as a reply)
-- "keskusteltuaan" = "after (they) had discussed / having discussed (it)"
-- "kirja" = "book", "kirjasto" = "library", "kirjailija" = "author", "kirjoittaa" = "to write", "kirje" = "letter", "kirjasin" = "font"
-- "kirjoitettava" = "to be written" (e.g. "kirje on kirjoitettava huomiseen mennessä" = "the letter must be written before tomorrow")
-- "kirjoitettavaksi" = "(left) to be written" (e.g. "jätin kirjeen allekirjoitettavaksi johtajalle" = "I left the letter to be signed (lit. underwritten) by the boss")
(ObContext: This is about Finnish... The thread is about English though.)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
This is something I used to have a problem with when writing the author's comments for submissions:
Correct: "This is an improvement over the published run."
Incorrect: "This is an improvement to the published run."
While we're at it, which one of the following two sentences is preferred (if it matters at all)?
1. "This is a 600 frames, 10 seconds, improvement over the published run."
2. "This is a 600 frames (10 seconds) improvement over the published run."
Joined: 3/25/2006
Posts: 850
Location: stuck in Pandora's box HELLPP!!!
"This is a 600 frame (10 second) improvement over the published run."
Reading the first one made me think that it was 600 frames plus 10 seconds at first glance
Another thing which I think is "annoying" is when people say: "i should of done that" instead of "i should have". but it's because those two may sound pretty similar. though i shouldn't complain, since i'm sure i also say lots of "annoying" things.
Randil wrote:
Correct: "This is an improvement over the published run."
Incorrect: "This is an improvement to the published run."
both of them are incorrect, this is the correct one: "This is an improvement of the published run."
Bisqwit wrote:
That has a different meaning.
that's true, but i had to try defend my point somehow :P
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Bringing up an issue that wasn't resolved on page 1/2 of this thread:
Dammit, not damnit. (I gleaned this gem of knowledge from FFVII)
Also, canoeing. Even though the word filter thing is telling me I'm spelling it wrong right now, I think that's how it's spelled.
Ah, I also have a problem with people using phrases they don't understand such as "made do" (incorrectly used: "made due") or "bear left" (incorrectly used: "bare left"). I had more examples in mind, but they escape me at the moment.
