http://www.weirdasianews.com/2009/08/10/engrish-signs-fiv
LOL
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
idiom - clear and not
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0805/p18s01-hfgn.html
But then, the background for "pulling someone's leg" isn't exactly clear as day either. By idioms that make sense, I mean those rooted in an observable phenomenon. "He's barking up the wrong tree." In other words, he's looking in the wrong place for what he wants. The phrase is rooted in the observable (or at least imaginable) phenomenon of a dog confused about where that pesky cat or squirrel escaped to.
Presumably all idioms start out this way, but some have become disconnected. An idiom, or idiomatic expression, cannot be puzzled out by breaking it down into parts and defining them individually. An idiom works as a whole: to kick the bucket meaning "to die," for instance.
"Idiom" comes from the Greek word idios, meaning "one's own." An idiomatic expression is one that "we understand among ourselves," even if it baffles foreigners, such as Miguel, a student of translation in Spain, who a few months ago posted a query online, "[W]hat is in the bucket and why would anyone kick a bucket in the first place[?]"
D: the punctuation fail is from page A2 of this weekend's Globe and Mail.
"Pranknet used untraceable Skype accounts to route calls creating a shield of anonymity."
D: to route calls COMMA! Gah.
Page A3 last weekend, then A2 this weekend.
I wonder if they'll drop the ball on the front page next weekend...
All for lack of a proof-reader.
I'm for hire for a 100 bucks, by the way. <:
Monday, August 3, 2009
study of kipf's law
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090730073915.htm
" The law of brevity, proposed by the American philologist George K. Zipf, along with others, shows that the most frequently-used words are the shortest ones.
...when dolphins move on the surface of the water they tend to perform the most simple movements, in the same way that humans tend to use words made up of less letters when they are speaking or writing, in so-called "linguistic economy".
The research study includes the case of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The most-used word is the three-letter article "the", while other larger ones, such as "responsibilities" are hardly found at all."
----------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_common_words_in_English
D: "A" and "I" are in the top 10 most common words and are only one letter.
We do not see a two-syllable word until #61 for "people".
This pressure for brevity is problematic for Decimese.
My approach to core vocabulary closed-class function words is pretty wordy - at least until certain consonant cluster data-compression approaches are used.
Take, for example, the pronoun "I".
Single, first person, pronoun.
There are 3 pieces of information there.
When we contrast he, she and it, we also find masculine/feminine and human/not categories.
Essentially, we now have FIVE discrete facts.
Add a pair-plural category, and we now have SIX.
Being able to include human/not and masc./fem. aspects to all the pronouns might be nice - particularly if we ever see sentient AIs, LOL.
How to compress such a complex approach into one syllable?
Easy.
Basic word form: CV (consonant then vowel) + ending.
Consonant clusters L/R, W/Y. Plus limited vowel diphthongs.
e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthong#English
Initially, I had hoped to have ten vowel sounds.
Then I realized that was hopeless for an international language.
I was forced to reduce this to five - pretty much as per Esperanto.
I still like the idea that 'long vowels' may be optional for advanced speakers, while word particles or additional syllables can stand in within the same role.
Here is a proposed basic design for a Decimese pronoun.
1) single/ plural (math concept) - plus 'pair' dual plural concept.
2) masc./fem. (one can use this with animals, or even objects if desired)
3) in/out (space concept, or math object manifold concept)
4) near/far (space concept)
5) human/not (one can humanize something if desired)
Some interesting options result from this approach.
One could say I BUT
a) not human
b) masculine (I, man! <:)
Core syllable: CV (plus ending consonant or 'cap syllable')
C plus LRWY plus V plus vowel diphthong plus ending.
There would be pressure to minimize detail, once the subject has been described.
You / plural, or they, would likely become you.
She becomes it.
We becomes I.
The H-sound serves all manner of special functions, creating special-duty syllbles in the form H plus vowel.
This was borrowed from Ygyde.
Closed class function words could use reserved syllable and word forms.
CV is the most common word form.
For vocabulary needs, I stick to CV plus (nasal consonant ending).
This means that any CV word is by defintion a function word.
The objection would initially seem to be a loss of clear word boundaries.
I meant.
Me meant.
Memeant
Meme...
But in Decimese this is not true.
Nasal consonants always imply a word-final consonant position.
Yes, this is a shameless attempt to cater to the Chinese.
The word-initial consonant is clearly differentiated from word-middle position by the voiced/voiceless distinction.
(Chinese could use heavy aspiration in lieu of this.)
E.g. P/B pair. Bam. Not pam. Bapam. But not pabam.
Note: this IS culturally biased.
English, I think, tend to devoice word-middle-position consonants.
Whereas the French do the opposite.
So yup, once again we have a cultural bias.
I know.
English is king, and Chinese is the rising star.
French was fighting a losing battle against Esperanto to maintain its pre-eminence in diplomacy a century ago.
Back to pronoun construction.
CV.
5 possible word-initial consonants. 5 vowels.
25 possible permutations.
4 possible consonant clusters.
??? possibly 5 possible vowel diphthongs.
OK, let's narrow this down.
Only ONE word-initial consonant designated for pronouns.
1 x 5 x 5... 25.
Because LRWY consonant clusters are mutually exclusive without additional syllables, we would want various mutually exclusive states described.
At first blush, I think single/plural, plural/dual and collective noun might be a good default.
With about 5 additional vowel diphthongs, once again, we want mutually exclusive.
Something we *could* do, though it sounds complex, is allows some vowel diphthongs and/or consonant clusters to denote compound conditions.
E.g. single AND masculine. Plural and feminine.
HE. And THEY (plural of she).
Ceqli is willing to sacrifice some brevity for clarity.
Go. I.
Zi. You.
Gozi. ... We.
Some languages have we-but-not-you or we-but-not-he designations.
Again, a variant prime number system could work.
(see much earlier entry).
If I just wanted to map English pronouns then my job becomes much easier.
The he/she/it difference does a sloppy job of identifying the subject.
Some dogs get called she.
Some cars get called she.
Only third-person gets a gender identifier.
It makes this optional.
And plural hides it again.
Sticking to spatial/math concepts, we then have strictly optional gender and human indicators.
Suddenly, calling a bitch (female dog) 'she' or 'it' ceases to be sloppy.
A category for living/not and adult/not is also useful.
Dog. Bitch. Curr. Puppy/ dog. Plural/not.
At public speeches, the speaker will often use the term 'ladies and gentlemen'.
Analyze.
Plural-human-adult-honorific, males same.
Six syllables.
Plural-human-adult-honorific, second-person (out, near).
Note the implications for vocabulary building of this word-particle approach.
Dog, bitch, curr. One word, plus some endlessly recycled core concepts.
A pair of jeans. A whole bunch jeans. Dual plural, plural.
A murder of crows, a heard of cattle (which is not clearly derived from cow).
Plural crow. Plural cow.
Steer, stallion, et al.
Just masculine, adult.
Hmm. Adult / not denotes living inherently.
Dog, puppy. Cat, kitten.
Person, people. Human indicator.
She/ dog. A bitch, living indicator.
She/ car. Female, no living or human indicator.
Well that's enough for now.
" The law of brevity, proposed by the American philologist George K. Zipf, along with others, shows that the most frequently-used words are the shortest ones.
...when dolphins move on the surface of the water they tend to perform the most simple movements, in the same way that humans tend to use words made up of less letters when they are speaking or writing, in so-called "linguistic economy".
The research study includes the case of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The most-used word is the three-letter article "the", while other larger ones, such as "responsibilities" are hardly found at all."
----------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_common_words_in_English
D: "A" and "I" are in the top 10 most common words and are only one letter.
We do not see a two-syllable word until #61 for "people".
This pressure for brevity is problematic for Decimese.
My approach to core vocabulary closed-class function words is pretty wordy - at least until certain consonant cluster data-compression approaches are used.
Take, for example, the pronoun "I".
Single, first person, pronoun.
There are 3 pieces of information there.
When we contrast he, she and it, we also find masculine/feminine and human/not categories.
Essentially, we now have FIVE discrete facts.
Add a pair-plural category, and we now have SIX.
Being able to include human/not and masc./fem. aspects to all the pronouns might be nice - particularly if we ever see sentient AIs, LOL.
How to compress such a complex approach into one syllable?
Easy.
Basic word form: CV (consonant then vowel) + ending.
Consonant clusters L/R, W/Y. Plus limited vowel diphthongs.
e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthong#English
Initially, I had hoped to have ten vowel sounds.
Then I realized that was hopeless for an international language.
I was forced to reduce this to five - pretty much as per Esperanto.
I still like the idea that 'long vowels' may be optional for advanced speakers, while word particles or additional syllables can stand in within the same role.
Here is a proposed basic design for a Decimese pronoun.
1) single/ plural (math concept) - plus 'pair' dual plural concept.
2) masc./fem. (one can use this with animals, or even objects if desired)
3) in/out (space concept, or math object manifold concept)
4) near/far (space concept)
5) human/not (one can humanize something if desired)
Some interesting options result from this approach.
One could say I BUT
a) not human
b) masculine (I, man! <:)
Core syllable: CV (plus ending consonant or 'cap syllable')
C plus LRWY plus V plus vowel diphthong plus ending.
There would be pressure to minimize detail, once the subject has been described.
You / plural, or they, would likely become you.
She becomes it.
We becomes I.
The H-sound serves all manner of special functions, creating special-duty syllbles in the form H plus vowel.
This was borrowed from Ygyde.
Closed class function words could use reserved syllable and word forms.
CV is the most common word form.
For vocabulary needs, I stick to CV plus (nasal consonant ending).
This means that any CV word is by defintion a function word.
The objection would initially seem to be a loss of clear word boundaries.
I meant.
Me meant.
Memeant
Meme...
But in Decimese this is not true.
Nasal consonants always imply a word-final consonant position.
Yes, this is a shameless attempt to cater to the Chinese.
The word-initial consonant is clearly differentiated from word-middle position by the voiced/voiceless distinction.
(Chinese could use heavy aspiration in lieu of this.)
E.g. P/B pair. Bam. Not pam. Bapam. But not pabam.
Note: this IS culturally biased.
English, I think, tend to devoice word-middle-position consonants.
Whereas the French do the opposite.
So yup, once again we have a cultural bias.
I know.
English is king, and Chinese is the rising star.
French was fighting a losing battle against Esperanto to maintain its pre-eminence in diplomacy a century ago.
Back to pronoun construction.
CV.
5 possible word-initial consonants. 5 vowels.
25 possible permutations.
4 possible consonant clusters.
??? possibly 5 possible vowel diphthongs.
OK, let's narrow this down.
Only ONE word-initial consonant designated for pronouns.
1 x 5 x 5... 25.
Because LRWY consonant clusters are mutually exclusive without additional syllables, we would want various mutually exclusive states described.
At first blush, I think single/plural, plural/dual and collective noun might be a good default.
With about 5 additional vowel diphthongs, once again, we want mutually exclusive.
Something we *could* do, though it sounds complex, is allows some vowel diphthongs and/or consonant clusters to denote compound conditions.
E.g. single AND masculine. Plural and feminine.
HE. And THEY (plural of she).
Ceqli is willing to sacrifice some brevity for clarity.
Go. I.
Zi. You.
Gozi. ... We.
Some languages have we-but-not-you or we-but-not-he designations.
Again, a variant prime number system could work.
(see much earlier entry).
If I just wanted to map English pronouns then my job becomes much easier.
The he/she/it difference does a sloppy job of identifying the subject.
Some dogs get called she.
Some cars get called she.
Only third-person gets a gender identifier.
It makes this optional.
And plural hides it again.
Sticking to spatial/math concepts, we then have strictly optional gender and human indicators.
Suddenly, calling a bitch (female dog) 'she' or 'it' ceases to be sloppy.
A category for living/not and adult/not is also useful.
Dog. Bitch. Curr. Puppy/ dog. Plural/not.
At public speeches, the speaker will often use the term 'ladies and gentlemen'.
Analyze.
Plural-human-adult-honorific, males same.
Six syllables.
Plural-human-adult-honorific, second-person (out, near).
Note the implications for vocabulary building of this word-particle approach.
Dog, bitch, curr. One word, plus some endlessly recycled core concepts.
A pair of jeans. A whole bunch jeans. Dual plural, plural.
A murder of crows, a heard of cattle (which is not clearly derived from cow).
Plural crow. Plural cow.
Steer, stallion, et al.
Just masculine, adult.
Hmm. Adult / not denotes living inherently.
Dog, puppy. Cat, kitten.
Person, people. Human indicator.
She/ dog. A bitch, living indicator.
She/ car. Female, no living or human indicator.
Well that's enough for now.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
insight, incorporating English punctuation into Decimese. Globe and Mail punctuation Fail!
My pal Roberto is back from Europe.
In the course of conversation, he mentioned Portuguese has two verbs for temporary and permanent states.
His name IS Roberto.
His job *is (for now)* data entry.
Nice.
Anyway, the French/ Esperanto method to express possession is informative.
My French sux ass.
Le gateau de la femme.
Le gateus du (le le) homme.
Esperanto uses a similar mechanism without the masculine condensed approach.
What if... you used a consonant cluster in a designated part of the word to denote this invisible punctuation trick in English?
The cake of the woman.
The cake of the man.
The cake of the women/men.
The woman's cake.
Hmm.
Globe and Mail this Saturday, page A3.
Can YOU find the punctuation fail?
That spoiled my morning.
Yup, you guessed it - comma retardation.
Second only to apostrophe retardation.
So what happpened here?
Confusion.
One does need 2 commas IF one is indicating a description that delineates only a sole subject.
The dog, which lived in the doghouse on the hill, ...
THIS is not an example of this.
Please please please, somebody fire this journalist.
Then find the editors that let it slip through.
Along with the largely lackluster writing.
The Focus section made up for it, I guess.
Here's a hint.
If there should be a pause in spoken English, then there should likely be some punctuation there in written form.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Ontario U students failing language test more. how 'n why
http://news.therecord.com/News/Local/article/576218
But Barrett can't explain some of the problems.
"Students say, 'How could I have failed? I got 93 in Grade 12 English!' "It's extremely puzzling to me," Barrett said.
High schools all have different standards, she said. Unlike the United States or the United Kingdom, Canada doesn’t have standardized university entrance exams for high-school students.
In addition, the university level doesn't have a formal relationship with high school teachers in Canada, so there's no simple way to communicate the skills that are necessary for success in university.
The most common mistakes made by English-speaking students are punctuation errors, she said. Students often don't know how to use a colon, or an apostrophe.
"Possessives are a nightmare," said Barrett.
Ironically, these problems are less of an issue for students learning English as a second language. Their grammar is not so bad, but they don't always have a "feel" for everyday quirks of the language.
For example, they might not understand why you can say, "I flew to London on a plane," but you wouldn't say, "I drove to Toronto on a car," Barrett said.
One of the biggest problems for foreign students is lack of practice in speaking English.
---
D: 5% worse than 5 years ago.
I could not have entered university today with my high school marks.
Articles like this vindicate my suspicion that high school marks are being inflated.
I have advice for U students.
When you get an essay back, read over the marking.
See what grammar and syntax errors you made.
I could have improved faster if I had done so...
But Barrett can't explain some of the problems.
"Students say, 'How could I have failed? I got 93 in Grade 12 English!' "It's extremely puzzling to me," Barrett said.
High schools all have different standards, she said. Unlike the United States or the United Kingdom, Canada doesn’t have standardized university entrance exams for high-school students.
In addition, the university level doesn't have a formal relationship with high school teachers in Canada, so there's no simple way to communicate the skills that are necessary for success in university.
The most common mistakes made by English-speaking students are punctuation errors, she said. Students often don't know how to use a colon, or an apostrophe.
"Possessives are a nightmare," said Barrett.
Ironically, these problems are less of an issue for students learning English as a second language. Their grammar is not so bad, but they don't always have a "feel" for everyday quirks of the language.
For example, they might not understand why you can say, "I flew to London on a plane," but you wouldn't say, "I drove to Toronto on a car," Barrett said.
One of the biggest problems for foreign students is lack of practice in speaking English.
---
D: 5% worse than 5 years ago.
I could not have entered university today with my high school marks.
Articles like this vindicate my suspicion that high school marks are being inflated.
I have advice for U students.
When you get an essay back, read over the marking.
See what grammar and syntax errors you made.
I could have improved faster if I had done so...
Friday, July 24, 2009
creepy xray of speech, animated
http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/3334/bothred1.gif
D: it looks terribly complex, doesn't it?
Consider that nerve signals arrive at different times to various speech parts.
The parts have different musculature and inertia.
It boggles the mind that we can speak!
D: it looks terribly complex, doesn't it?
Consider that nerve signals arrive at different times to various speech parts.
The parts have different musculature and inertia.
It boggles the mind that we can speak!
Friday, July 17, 2009
on how to categorize african click-sounds. IPA
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090715131551.htm
"We wanted to classify clicks in the same way we classify other consonants," said Miller, who was a visiting faculty member at the University of British Columbia during the 2008-2009 academic year. "We think we've been pretty successful in doing that."
N|uu is severely endangered with fewer than 10 remaining speakers, all of whom are more than 60 years of age. Linguists are working diligently to document the unique aspects of this language before it disappears.
-----------
D: see the related article list.
Science Daily is excellent for related articles.
I can spend hours just clicking related links - and have.
-------
http://www.ipasource.com/
D: here is opera translations in IPA.
This demonstrates how precise a phoneme system can be.
http://www.ipasource.com/extras/free/fr1.pdf
D: a sample.
Now if I can just finish HIOXian, LOL!
Darn prepaid credit card still won't work after 2 months of hassle.
(For the font editor software textbook.)
I should have just bought a prepaid from 7/11.
BMO is driving me NUTS.
As of 2008, there are 107 distinct letters, 52 diacritics, and four prosody marks in the IPA proper.
D: So about 150 'letters'.
HIOXian should manage that, but much more methodically.
And more clearly on a computer monitor, or for scanning and copying.
"We wanted to classify clicks in the same way we classify other consonants," said Miller, who was a visiting faculty member at the University of British Columbia during the 2008-2009 academic year. "We think we've been pretty successful in doing that."
N|uu is severely endangered with fewer than 10 remaining speakers, all of whom are more than 60 years of age. Linguists are working diligently to document the unique aspects of this language before it disappears.
-----------
D: see the related article list.
Science Daily is excellent for related articles.
I can spend hours just clicking related links - and have.
-------
http://www.ipasource.com/
D: here is opera translations in IPA.
This demonstrates how precise a phoneme system can be.
http://www.ipasource.com/extras/free/fr1.pdf
D: a sample.
Now if I can just finish HIOXian, LOL!
Darn prepaid credit card still won't work after 2 months of hassle.
(For the font editor software textbook.)
I should have just bought a prepaid from 7/11.
BMO is driving me NUTS.
As of 2008, there are 107 distinct letters, 52 diacritics, and four prosody marks in the IPA proper.
D: So about 150 'letters'.
HIOXian should manage that, but much more methodically.
And more clearly on a computer monitor, or for scanning and copying.
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