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Is there a dictionary with phonemic transcription for different dialects? Sometimes I am not sure how a Northerner says "Winter is coming". I searched on the Internet but nothing showed up. I wonder if you know there is a dictionary (online or offline) that simply contains phonemic transcription for different English dialects. | Website giving pronunciations of English words recorded in different dialects? I'm aware that there are certain websites around that provide recorded examples of English words pronounced in different accents/dialects. Could anybody list some of them? | What do you call the frequent conjunction {juxtaposition} of two words? The statement that I want to make is: "Impostor syndrome" ... why does this (conjunction of words) sneak into every text I read these days? What is the right or best expression for "conjunction of words"? In the statement I don't want to refer to the syndrome itself, but rather to the expression. If it was one word instead of two I would want to say ... why does this word sneak into every text I read these days. However, writing ________ why do these two words sneak into every text I read these days. would miss the point, because it's not these two words that sneak into every text at various location but rather their conjunction. | eng_Latn | 28,600 |
How to sort alphabet in TreeMap by descending Value in Java Let's say that I have a TreeMap Alphabet in Java: Map<String, Integer> alphabet = new TreeMap<String, Integer>(); and we put the letter as a key and its number as a value in the map without sorting them at all: alphabet.put("a", 1); alphabet.put("c", 3); alphabet.put("b", 2); alphabet.put("u", 21); alphabet.put("l", 12); . . . alphabet.put("y", 25); alphabet.put("z", 26); And I want to order them by descending value (from 26 to 1). I want to print something like this: z 26 y 25 x 24 . . . d 4 c 3 b 2 a 1 Could not find anything simple enough without overcomplicating the code for this specific example. I will use this for just understanding the logic behind sorting Maps, so I can continue solving another task for homework. Thanks | Sort a Map by values I am relatively new to Java, and often find that I need to sort a Map<Key, Value> on the values. Since the values are not unique, I find myself converting the keySet into an array, and sorting that array through array sort with a custom comparator that sorts on the value associated with the key. Is there an easier way? | Is there a reason behind the ordering of letters in the English alphabet? Is there a reason behind the ordering of letters in the English alphabet? i.e. why are we taught “A,B,C,D,E,F,...,Z”? Why not “L,A,S,U,I,Z,...,C”? I am asking this because, in some of the languages I know, I am told that the ordering of the letters in the alphabet is based on the ease with which they can be pronounced or the frequency with which they are used or depending on the part of the vocal cord that needs to be stressed to pronounce the letter. Is there a similar rationale? EDIT You can see a couple of references for arrangement of letters in Sanskrit and . | eng_Latn | 28,601 |
West Flemings pronounce the Dutch "g" as a voiced glottal frivative, which would be represented by what letter in standard Dutch? | The different dialects show many sound shifts in different vowels (even shifting between diphthongs and monophthongs), and in some cases consonants also shift pronunciation. For example, an oddity of West Flemings (and to a lesser extent, East Flemings) is that, the voiced velar fricative (written as "g" in Dutch) shifts to a voiced glottal fricative (written as "h" in Dutch), while the letter "h" in West Flemish becomes mute (just like in French). As a result, when West Flemish try to talk Standard Dutch, they're often unable to pronounce the g-sound, and pronounce it similar to the h-sound. This leaves f.e. no difference between "held" (hero) and "geld" (money). Or in some cases, they are aware of the problem, and hyper-correct the "h" into a voiced velar fricative or g-sound, again leaving no difference. | Czech contains ten basic vowel phonemes, and three more found only in loanwords. They are /a/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /o/, and /u/, their long counterparts /aː/, /ɛː/, /iː/, /oː/ and /uː/, and three diphthongs, /ou̯/, /au̯/ and /ɛu̯/. The latter two diphthongs and the long /oː/ are exclusive to loanwords. Vowels are never reduced to schwa sounds when unstressed. Each word usually has primary stress on its first syllable, except for enclitics (minor, monosyllabic, unstressed syllables). In all words of more than two syllables, every odd-numbered syllable receives secondary stress. Stress is unrelated to vowel length, and the possibility of stressed short vowels and unstressed long vowels can be confusing to students whose native language combines the features (such as English). | eng_Latn | 28,602 |
Since vowel quality changes might be very slight between dialects, what's the main vowel feature used to differentiate them? | Vowel length is not always considered a distinctive feature in Dutch phonology, because it normally co-occurs with changes in vowel quality. One feature or the other may be considered redundant, and some phonemic analyses prefer to treat it as an opposition of tenseness. However, even if not considered part of the phonemic opposition, the long/tense vowels are still realised as phonetically longer than their short counterparts. The changes in vowel quality are also not always the same in all dialects, and in some there may be little difference at all, with length remaining the primary distinguishing feature. And while it is true that older words always pair vowel length with a change in vowel quality, new loanwords have reintroduced phonemic oppositions of length. Compare zonne(n) [ˈzɔnə] ("suns") versus zone [ˈzɔːnə] ("zone") versus zonen [ˈzoːnə(n)] ("sons"), or kroes [krus] ("mug") versus cruise [kruːs] ("cruise"). | The proper recitation of the Quran is the subject of a separate discipline named tajwid which determines in detail how the Quran should be recited, how each individual syllable is to be pronounced, the need to pay attention to the places where there should be a pause, to elisions, where the pronunciation should be long or short, where letters should be sounded together and where they should be kept separate, etc. It may be said that this discipline studies the laws and methods of the proper recitation of the Quran and covers three main areas: the proper pronunciation of consonants and vowels (the articulation of the Quranic phonemes), the rules of pause in recitation and of resumption of recitation, and the musical and melodious features of recitation. | eng_Latn | 28,603 |
What specifies the correspondence between codons and amino acids during protein translation? | The expression of genes encoded in DNA begins by transcribing the gene into RNA, a second type of nucleic acid that is very similar to DNA, but whose monomers contain the sugar ribose rather than deoxyribose. RNA also contains the base uracil in place of thymine. RNA molecules are less stable than DNA and are typically single-stranded. Genes that encode proteins are composed of a series of three-nucleotide sequences called codons, which serve as the "words" in the genetic "language". The genetic code specifies the correspondence during protein translation between codons and amino acids. The genetic code is nearly the same for all known organisms.:4.1 | Thai alphabet support has been criticized for its ordering of Thai characters. The vowels เ, แ, โ, ใ, ไ that are written to the left of the preceding consonant are in visual order instead of phonetic order, unlike the Unicode representations of other Indic scripts. This complication is due to Unicode inheriting the Thai Industrial Standard 620, which worked in the same way, and was the way in which Thai had always been written on keyboards. This ordering problem complicates the Unicode collation process slightly, requiring table lookups to reorder Thai characters for collation. Even if Unicode had adopted encoding according to spoken order, it would still be problematic to collate words in dictionary order. E.g., the word แสดง [sa dɛːŋ] "perform" starts with a consonant cluster "สด" (with an inherent vowel for the consonant "ส"), the vowel แ-, in spoken order would come after the ด, but in a dictionary, the word is collated as it is written, with the vowel following the ส. | eng_Latn | 28,604 |
What is the origin of the word "orange"? | "Green" in modern European languages corresponds to about 520–570 nm, but many historical and non-European languages make other choices, e.g. using a term for the range of ca. 450–530 nm ("blue/green") and another for ca. 530–590 nm ("green/yellow").[citation needed] In the comparative study of color terms in the world's languages, green is only found as a separate category in languages with the fully developed range of six colors (white, black, red, green, yellow, and blue), or more rarely in systems with five colors (white, red, yellow, green, and black/blue). (See distinction of green from blue) These languages have introduced supplementary vocabulary to denote "green", but these terms are recognizable as recent adoptions that are not in origin color terms (much like the English adjective orange being in origin not a color term but the name of a fruit). Thus, the Thai word เขียว besides meaning "green" also means "rank" and "smelly" and holds other unpleasant associations. | Modern editions of Old English manuscripts generally introduce some additional conventions. The modern forms of Latin letters are used, including ⟨g⟩ in place of the insular G, ⟨s⟩ for long S, and others which may differ considerably from the insular script, notably ⟨e⟩, ⟨f⟩ and ⟨r⟩. Macrons are used to indicate long vowels, where usually no distinction was made between long and short vowels in the originals. (In some older editions an acute accent mark was used for consistency with Old Norse conventions.) Additionally, modern editions often distinguish between velar and palatal ⟨c⟩ and ⟨g⟩ by placing dots above the palatals: ⟨ċ⟩, ⟨ġ⟩. The letter wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ is usually replaced with ⟨w⟩, but æsc, eth and thorn are normally retained (except when eth is replaced by thorn). | eng_Latn | 28,605 |
What kind of voice are muddy consonants pronounced with? | Wu Chinese has a three-way distinction in stops and affricates: /p pʰ b/. In addition to aspirated and unaspirated consonants, there is a series of muddy consonants, like /b/. These are pronounced with slack or breathy voice: that is, they are weakly voiced. Muddy consonants as initial cause a syllable to be pronounced with low pitch or light (陽 yáng) tone. | Due to the centralisation of power and the Viking invasions, there is relatively little written record of the non-Wessex dialects after Alfred's unification. Some Mercian texts continued to be written, however, and the influence of Mercian is apparent in some of the translations produced under Alfred's programme, many of which were produced by Mercian scholars. Other dialects certainly continued to be spoken, as is evidenced by the continued variation between their successors in Middle and Modern English. In fact, what would become the standard forms of Middle English and of Modern English are descended from Mercian rather than West Saxon, while Scots developed from the Northumbrian dialect. It was once claimed that, owing to its position at the heart of the Kingdom of Wessex, the relics of Anglo-Saxon accent, idiom and vocabulary were best preserved in the dialect of Somerset. | eng_Latn | 28,606 |
The Western Armenian voiced /d/ compares to the Eastern Armenian voiceless what? | Western Armenian has a two-way distinction between aspirated and voiced: /tʰ d/. Western Armenian aspirated /tʰ/ corresponds to Eastern Armenian aspirated /tʰ/ and voiced /d/, and Western voiced /d/ corresponds to Eastern voiceless /t/. | There were aspirated stops at three places of articulation: labial, coronal, and velar /pʰ tʰ kʰ/. Earlier Greek, represented by Mycenaean Greek, likely had a labialized velar aspirated stop /kʷʰ/, which later became labial, coronal, or velar depending on dialect and phonetic environment. | eng_Latn | 28,607 |
Word for "words whose origin is another, misheard word"? Consider the example of the etymology of the phrase "10 gallon hat": Cattle drivers and ranchers in Texas and the Southwest often crossed paths with Mexican vaqueros who sported braided hatbands—called “galóns” in Spanish—on their sombreros. A “10 galón” sombrero was a hat with a large enough crown that it could hold 10 hatbands, but American cowboys may have anglicized the word to “gallon” and started referring to their own sombrero-inspired headgear as “10-gallon hats.” -- From The veracity of this particular etymology aside, there are words and phrases whose origin is a misunderstanding or mishearing of some original word or phrase -- foreign or otherwise. This mistake then sticks, and the misheard word becomes the dominant, standard word in daily usage. Is there a linguistic term for words that originate this way, or for this specific process of word transformation? | What's the term for using the wrong word because it sounds the same? I was reading about various terms for incorrect words, but they didn't seem to fit. I saw a post where someone said "what do you like to do when you're board?". That kind of thing. Also, would that be considered a mistake in grammar? I didn't think so, but my friend insists it is. I'm not sure if there even is a word for that kind of mistake, but was just curious about it. Thanks! | When is it appropriate to use the original pronunciation of a foreign word versus the English pronunciation? When reading to an audience, or speaking in conversation, when is it appropriate to use the original pronunciation of a foreign word versus the English pronunciation (assuming you know the appropriate pronunciation for it)? Is it considered rude, or condescending? Or is it considered a mark of being knowledgeable? One of the things to consider are place names. When referring to Paris, France, should it be pronounced with the silent 'S' as the French would say it, or with the 'S'? Should Hiroshima be pronounced as a Japanese speaker would pronounce it slightly more emphasis on RO, rather than the SHI? Should Mount Pinatubo be pronounced as a Filipino speaker would pronounce it with shorter stronger vowels, or the longer vowels? (e.g. Pi as is 'pick' rather than 'pea'.) Should Wichita be pronounces as the original "shi" rather than the modern "chi"? Pronounce pesos or sombrero as a Spanish speaker 'eh' or the English 'ay'? (I can't think of other common words right now that aren't words taken from other languages like hurricane, boondocks, tornado, etc. which I think have (correctly) changed to English pronunciations.) | eng_Latn | 28,608 |
How to sort the names in sqlite when special characters are present I have a sqlite Database in my project which i use to store the names of persons with phonebook and address. So currently whenever we get the names inserted into DB, we do the sorting in alphabetic order and hence we could see these names as expected on the display. Now recently customer has come up with names which starts with special character like ō(Umlaut),ù etc. The expectation is that we need to display in such a way that names starting with ō should come right after 'o'(English alphabet) but before the letter 'p'(English alphabet). Similarly names starting with ù should come after the letter 'u' but before the letter 'v'. I need help to write a query for this as i have no idea as to how we need to sort the sql query. The query which we use currently is as shown below: ****SELECT *FROM MyTable1 ORDER BY lower(Name)**** For eg;If i have names such as Omni,ōuter,Picaso,Zebra The DB after sorting in alphabetic order should come as Name Num0 Num1 Num2 Num3 Num4 Num5 Num6 Num7 Omni 1243 ōuter 1111 Picaso 2222 Zebra 3333 As mentioned above it seems that this would work out with ICU libraries. But can anyone help me out with this please? Thanks in advance | How to sort text in sqlite3 with specified locale? Sqlite3 by default sorts only by ascii letters. I tried to look in google, but the only thing I found were informations about collations. Sqlite3 has only NOCASE, RTRIM and BIARY collations. How to add support for a specific locale? (I'm using it in Rails application) | Is there a reason behind the ordering of letters in the English alphabet? Is there a reason behind the ordering of letters in the English alphabet? i.e. why are we taught “A,B,C,D,E,F,...,Z”? Why not “L,A,S,U,I,Z,...,C”? I am asking this because, in some of the languages I know, I am told that the ordering of the letters in the alphabet is based on the ease with which they can be pronounced or the frequency with which they are used or depending on the part of the vocal cord that needs to be stressed to pronounce the letter. Is there a similar rationale? EDIT You can see a couple of references for arrangement of letters in Sanskrit and . | eng_Latn | 28,609 |
Why pronunciation of "Crooked" is "Crook-ked"? I've noticed that the pronunciations of "picked" gives its sound like "pick" with final sound "d" but for "Crooked" and "Naked" Why do they pronounce them like "Crook-ked" and "Nake-ked"? How can I know when i must pronounce the word like "picked" and when I must pronounce the word like "Crooked"? | Where does "wicked" get its /ɪd/ from? There are three ways I know to pronounce the -ed at the end of an adjective: /t/ as in cracked. /d/ as in lined. /ɪd/ as in naked I realise naked is a special case because, as , it comes for Old English nacod, so the suffix isn't added. shows the pattern of pronunciation of -ed in all other cases. However it doesn't explain why ends with /ɪd/ (or /id/ or /əd/ depending on the dialect). that wicked comes from OE wicca, so the d wasn't already there. Why do we pronounce wicked as /ˈwɪkɪd/ and not /ˈwɪkt/? | How do you refer to a hyponym that is the same word as the hypernym? What word (or how do you phrase things) do you use when the ostensible word for the class is the same as the word for a subset of the class? For example, in the United States, there are many brands of sugared, carbonated soft drink that one can buy: Coca-Cola (or Coke), Pepsi, RC Cola, Sprite, 7-Up, A&W or Mug Root Beer, etc). The first two are kinds of 'coke' or 'cola' (but no one says 'cola'). , one asks for any type of such drink as 'coke'. How does one then ask for the particular kind of 'coke' that is 'Coke' (pronounced the same)? Does one reduplicate and say a 'Coke coke', does one repeat with emphasis (or without), does one use a different word like 'coca-cola' (co-cola), or what? The (perceived) difficulty (surely those in the South are able to get the drink they want somehow) isn't limited to there. Where the drink is called 'soda', if you ask for a 'coke', you'll still sometimes have the choice among Coca-Cola, Pepsi, etc. "Can I have a Coke?" the response might be "Is Pepsi OK?". "Sure, Pepsi, Coke, whatever." You don't use 'cola', you just ask for the particular kind and hope the listener will help differentiate. Given these multiple strategies for disambiguating, what do you do say to get a 'Coke' in the southern US? are there any other examples of a hypernym being the same as the hyponym, and so creating a disambiguation problem? | eng_Latn | 28,610 |
Fantasy trilogy: Gill saves world, "in God we Trust" -> "in Gill we Trust" Back in 1992 my friend Richard recommended a fantasy trilogy with a young man called Gill as the main character. Modern day boy gets transported to another fantasy world etc.. The ending of the book where he triumphs over evil, results in the real world (his world, where he is an unknown hero ) having the text on the U.S. Dollar bill changing from "in God we Trust" to "in Gill we Trust". I borrowed the 2/3 books from the local library, however cannot recall the name. | Need help identifying the fantasy book about a portal to a fantasy land in the basement of a house I can't remember any names of characters or locations where the story took place but I do remember the basic plot of this early 90's novel; a human man inherits his father's house. In the basement there is a doorway to a fantastic land where adventure ensues. He fights elves and wins their deadly elf swords which he buries under concrete at the end of the novel (because if you don't get rid of them they will come back and get you). At the end of the novel he must remake the world in his own imagination, turning the tough Elf King into a cobbler and making Jesse Jackson President. I have been looking high and low and have drawn a blank. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! | New Zealand pronunciation of "women" vs "woman" I have read in a number of places that the NZ pronunciation of "women" must be rather peculiar. Quoting from : For some years I've noted the tendency of Kiwis to pronounce "woman" and "women" identically (as "woman"). To which an Australian replies: It appears there is a vowel shift going on in New Zealand (NZ) English [...] [T]he vowel in "women" which in Australian English is the same as the vowel in "hit", is often, in NZ, reduced to a schwa [...]. It makes the plural sound like our singular. I don't think the NZ pronunciation of the singular is the same as the NZ plural A New Zealander begs to differ: I've noticed this trend over the last few years also. To me as a kiwi it doesn't sound anything like a mispronounced plural -- it just sounds as if the speaker is using the one word for both singular and plural. [...] I see it as part of a much larger tendency to confuse singular and plurals. [Several examples follow.] Who's right? Who's wrong? Wikipedia has : In New Zealand English the short i of KIT is a central vowel not phonologically distinct from schwa /ə/, the vowel in unstressed "the". It thus contrasts sharply with the [i] vowel heard in Australia. Recent acoustic studies featuring both Australian and New Zealand voices show that the accents were more similar before the Second World War and that the KIT vowel has undergone rapid centralisation in New Zealand English. Because of this difference in pronunciation, some New Zealanders claim that Australians say "feesh and cheeps" for fish and chips while some Australians counter that New Zealanders say "fush and chups". So, there appears to be a vowel shift going on; but I'm not sure if there might be some truth to the people-just-stop-caring-about-certain-plurals argument as well. I hope we have enough New Zealanders on board to shed some light on this. Can you provide a guide to how to pronounce "women" and "woman" in NZ English? (I've done some searching for audio files or YouTube videos, but haven't found anything yet.) Would you say that it's just the vowel shift, "a much larger tendency to confuse singular and plurals", or both? How recent is this trend? (E.g., if you are a native speaker of NZ English, is your pronunciation of "women" different from that of your parents/grandparents?) | eng_Latn | 28,611 |
How did "September" shift from 7th month to 9th month of a year? (and same for October, November, December) If I understand correctly, the words September, October, November and December all come from French counterpart Septembre, Octobre, Novembre and Decembre, and ultimately from Latin septem, octo, novem and decem with a suffix -bre. Therefore I suppose their original meaning were from "7th month of a year" to "10th month of a year". Apparently those words stand for "9th month" to "12th month" nowadays, so why and how did this happen? | Names of some months don't make sense I'm not a native English speaker but I'm always trying to do my best. Unfortunately I have a real problem with dates for some odd reason, I couldn't learn when was my birthday until I was 12 years old. Anyway, as I was learning names of the months on English, and since I know some Latin from high school I noticed that English months don't match up with their Latin numeral counterparts. For example: September - 9. month October - 10. month November - 11. month December - 12. month While on latin septem, octo, novem and decem are words for 7, 8, 9 and 10. So, does anyone know why is that. At first I thought it had something to do with switch from Julian to Gregorian calendar but I figured it's too small of a difference. Anyone? :) | Etymology of "dong" and "dongle" Dong as in ding-dong is clearly onomatopoetic as confirmed by : ding dong imitative of the sound of a bell, c.1560. and similarly for : ding (v.) 1819, "to sound as metal when struck," possibly abstracted from ding-dong, of imitative origin. The meaning "to deal heavy blows" is c.1300, probably from Old Norse dengja "to hammer," perhaps also imitative. Meaning "dent" is 1960s. Related: Dinged; dinging. What, then, is the origin of dong to mean penis? Etymonline.com is here: dong (n.) "penis," 1891, of unknown origin. We also have a much more recent word, dongle, which has no entry at etymonline.com but claims it is: Apparently from dangle. This leads me to the theory that the anatomical and onomatopoetic dongs are not related and that the former usage, like dongle, derives from dangle. So, my questions are: Is that so? Does dong (penis) derive from dangle? Sounds reasonable enough but I have found no definitive sources for it. Does dongle derive from dangle? It makes perfect descriptive sense for dong but the USB devices called dongles do not dangle but instead protrude quite rigidly, so I feel that dongle being derived from the cruder meaning of dong makes more sense. | eng_Latn | 28,612 |
I have heard normally people speaking the in two different ways. First the, th-uh Second the, thee I think there is something with vowel sound. Is there is really a difference or just accent. | The is sometimes pronounced "tha" (/ðə/) or "thi" (/ðiː/). Which is the correct pronunciation of this word? Are both correct and used interchangeably at specific places? If the second question is correct, please provide the rule of pronouncing at different places. | I have realized that to pronounce the plural form of words ending in -th, we have to drop the letter "h". e.g. Months is pronounced /mʌnts/. But I have never seen this point mentioned in any context. I just want to make sure that this rule is correct and can be always applied. | eng_Latn | 28,613 |
What English dialect adds an 'r' after a 'w' in certain cases? While watching videos online I've heard multiple brits pronounce "drawing" as "drawring". What dialect does that? Please contribute more examples of this as well, as that is the only one I can currently think of. | When do I pronounce a non-existent “r” between adjacent vowel sounds? If I say two words consecutively, with the first ending in a vowel sound and the second starting with one, when is it correct to include a non-existent r between those two words? Examples from phrases I've heard: I saw (r)a movie They saw (r)us Law (r)and order That's the idea, (r)anyway. I heard the last one in the movie Edge of Tomorrow yesterday. Is this grammatically correct? If so, is the omission of the r grammatically incorrect? Are there any rules regarding this? | A positive alternative to "smelling" to describe something with a pleasant odor When one hears that something smells, one would generally assume that it smells bad. Isn't there a word which wouldn't bring to mind the idea of a bad odor? For example, how would you describe pot-pourri (assuming you like the smell of pot-pourri)? If possible, I would like an adjective, or a word that could takes the place of an adjective. | eng_Latn | 28,614 |
What's the methodology for naming groups of animals? Don't you find the words to name various groups of animals strange? Here are just some examples: Group of cats (wild): Destruction Group of crows: Murder Group of ravens: Unkindness Group of rhinos: Crash Group of seabirds: Wreck Group of trout: Hover Group of wombats: Wisdom What the heck?! | Terms for collections of animals As I watched the murder of crows sitting on the line above my house this evening, I got wondering where all of the collective nouns for animals (pod of whales, gaggle of geese, pride of lions) came from and why we need so many. If sheep can be a flock, why can't whales, geese, lions, and crows? | New Zealand pronunciation of "women" vs "woman" I have read in a number of places that the NZ pronunciation of "women" must be rather peculiar. Quoting from : For some years I've noted the tendency of Kiwis to pronounce "woman" and "women" identically (as "woman"). To which an Australian replies: It appears there is a vowel shift going on in New Zealand (NZ) English [...] [T]he vowel in "women" which in Australian English is the same as the vowel in "hit", is often, in NZ, reduced to a schwa [...]. It makes the plural sound like our singular. I don't think the NZ pronunciation of the singular is the same as the NZ plural A New Zealander begs to differ: I've noticed this trend over the last few years also. To me as a kiwi it doesn't sound anything like a mispronounced plural -- it just sounds as if the speaker is using the one word for both singular and plural. [...] I see it as part of a much larger tendency to confuse singular and plurals. [Several examples follow.] Who's right? Who's wrong? Wikipedia has : In New Zealand English the short i of KIT is a central vowel not phonologically distinct from schwa /ə/, the vowel in unstressed "the". It thus contrasts sharply with the [i] vowel heard in Australia. Recent acoustic studies featuring both Australian and New Zealand voices show that the accents were more similar before the Second World War and that the KIT vowel has undergone rapid centralisation in New Zealand English. Because of this difference in pronunciation, some New Zealanders claim that Australians say "feesh and cheeps" for fish and chips while some Australians counter that New Zealanders say "fush and chups". So, there appears to be a vowel shift going on; but I'm not sure if there might be some truth to the people-just-stop-caring-about-certain-plurals argument as well. I hope we have enough New Zealanders on board to shed some light on this. Can you provide a guide to how to pronounce "women" and "woman" in NZ English? (I've done some searching for audio files or YouTube videos, but haven't found anything yet.) Would you say that it's just the vowel shift, "a much larger tendency to confuse singular and plurals", or both? How recent is this trend? (E.g., if you are a native speaker of NZ English, is your pronunciation of "women" different from that of your parents/grandparents?) | eng_Latn | 28,615 |
Rebel pronunciation What do you call a word with the same spelling and the same meaning, but different pronunciation if it is a verb or a noun? It doesn’t fit the definition of homonym, homophone, or homograph. Take “rebel” as an example. As a noun it’s pronounced one way and differently as a verb, but it has the same spelling and same root meaning. Also, are there any other examples of this occurrence? | A term for words that change pronunciation with part of speech I'm talking about words like: construct: CON-struct(n.), cun-STRUCT(v.) present: PRE-sent(n.), pre-SENT(v.) record: RE-cord(n.), ri-CORD(v.) They are pronounced differently based on whether they are a noun or a verb. Here are the terms I DON'T think would apply: Homograph: same spelling, different meanings: for example, bark (the sound of a dog) and bark (the skin of a tree). Homophone: same pronunciation, different meaning: for example, to and two Homonym: same pronunciation and spelling, different meanings: for example: bank (river bank or savings bank) Heteronym: same spelling, different pronunciations and meanings: for example bow (the front of a ship) and bow (a ranged weapon) Bow is particularly interesting. It is a heteronym based on the two nouns I described. But in the sense of the body movement, the noun and the verb are pronounced alike (rhyming with wow), thus, not belonging to the category I've explained. In fact none of the terms explained satisfy my requirement. I'm looking for the term for words that have same (or related at best, NOT different) meanings, same spelling and different pronunciation. Specifically, different pronunciation depending on the part of speech. As against the words which have the same pronunciation in different parts of speech like bill, turn, case (or bigger ones like manoeuvre) TL;DR: Fill in the blank: The noun and verb forms of construct are pronounced differently because the word construct is a _____ or The noun and verb forms of construct are pronounced differently because they are _____s. | "Cancellation", "Canceled", "Canceling" — US usage I'm trying to figure out if there is a specific rule behind the word "cancel" that would cause "cancellation" to have two L's, but "canceled" and "canceling" to have only one (in the US). I understand the rules are very loose when it comes to double L's in English, and I have read several posts on here talking about "canceled" and "canceling" (vs "cancelled" and "cancelling"), but my specific question is more about the spelling of "cancellation". - they do NOT mention cancelation with one "L" - they do seem to have cancelation listed with one "L" Microsoft Word marks "cancelation" as an invalid word Same with the spell checker in Firefox So my question is: is there a reason or rule why in US English, "cancellation" seems to have two L's (to most dictionaries), while "canceled" and "canceling" does not? | eng_Latn | 28,616 |
How to pronounce LaTeX correctly? I have heard the following 4 pronunciations for this word LaTeX. Which is the correct one? Laatec Letec Laatecs Letecs | What is the correct pronunciation of TeX and LaTeX? Is it tex(tech)? Or Is it tex(like touch)? Lay-TeX? or La-TeX? Should I use TeX pronunciation in LaTeX? | How can I enable shell-escape? I need to enable shell escape for a package that I want to use. What is shell escape exactly, and how do I enable it in my editor or compiling toolchain? Links to answers for different editors/toolchains, in alphabetical order: AUCTeX (Emacs) , Note: this is a FAQ post. Related Meta question: . Please add an answer for your own editor/toolchain if it is missing. Thank you! When adding an answer, please indicate if the setting is permanent or per-document, and/or describe how you can add a button, shortcut, menu item, etc. to make it easy to switch between shell-escape and regular compilation. | eng_Latn | 28,617 |
English Word Hunting My question: Is there any word in English (generically speaking) that have something like this: In our language (Filipino), there's some words that if you subtracted or added a character to it will give you different meaning for example: PAKANANG = Right part of 'PAKANAN' = Turn right PAKANA = Command / Mastermind PAKAN = Healt / Interest PAKA = Mollusk PAK = Wonderful PA = Father | Matryoshka words Since it's Friday and others are playing games, here's another one to take us into the weekend. Everyone knows about those Russian nesting dolls (called matryoshka dolls, I believe). A small doll nests inside a larger, which itself is inside a larger doll, and so on. This game does the same with words. You start with a three-letter word, add a letter to make another word, and so on. Longest word wins. The catch? Each additional letter has to form a legitimate word. Here's one to start you off: bur burr burro burrow burrows Good luck. | How does langid field in biblatex differ from language field? Could someone summarise the differences in the use of the langid field from language field in biblatex? Documentation to Gost package for bibtex says that langid is a synonym of language but has priority over it. | eng_Latn | 28,618 |
What is the correct/popular pronunciation of Probably? I heard people pronouncing "Probably" as "Praw-b-lee", is this limited to particular area or it is correct pronunciation every should follow. | How old is the word "prolly"? Prolly is given this definition at : Clipped pronunciation of probably. I was reading an interesting article today that from 1947 and that surprised me. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a listed source for the claim. So how old is prolly? | "By" vs "Per". Which one should I use on expressions like "P&L/Geography" or "VaR/Asset"? In the finance field, it is quite common to express some measures in relation to some grouping criteria. Some groupings can be temporal (year, month, etc.) and others like greography, asset class (e.g. a financial product), strategy (used in trading), and others. Which one is the most appropriate preposition to apply in this kind of expression ? "VaR per asset" or "VaR by asset" "P&L per strategy" or "P&L by strategy". Is there any well defined rule behind the most appropriate use ? | eng_Latn | 28,619 |
Can the stress pattern of "uroboros/ouroboros" be explained by any principle, or is it random? The word "uroboros," coming ultimately from Greek, has a couple of spellings and also pronunciations (see ). As explained by Nohat in the linked page, the are the following: /ɔːˈrɒbɔrəs/ /jʊərɵˈbɒrəs/ lists only /ˌjʊərə(ʊ)ˈbɒrəs/ for "uroboros," and states that the word was first used in English around the 1940s. , for "ouroboros," lists yet another set of pronunciations, oddly enough: /ˌuːrəˈbɒrəs/ /uːˈrɒbəˌrɒs/ So in one sense, it almost seems a free-for-all. However, there's one pronunciation that seemed natural to me but that I never see listed: /jʊəˈrɒbɔrəs/, with antepenultimate stress. Here's why I'd expect this pronunciation. . The stress in Greek is on the penult, but there's a short /o/ in the penultimate syllable, so I'd expect a Latinized pronunciation of /uˈroboros/ according to the , and I'd also expect for the Latin stress position to carry over to the English word, especially when the initial vowel uses the value /jʊə/ associated with the . Compare to "automaton," another example of a Greek word with a short vowel in the penult that is stressed on the antepenult in English. But, I've never seen this pronunciation listed. Dictionaries do list pronunciations with antepenult accent, and pronunciations with initial /j/, but none I can find list a pronunciation with both of these features combined. So, if I use it, am I just adding my own idiosyncratic pronunciation to the mix, no better and no worse than the other variants? Or is there some flaw in the analogy I made above that makes /jʊəˈrɒbɔrəs/ a solecism, but that justifies /jʊərɵˈbɒrəs/ (or /ɔːˈrɒbɔrəs/, etc.) ? : In words of three or more syllables, stress falls either on the penult or the antepenult (third from the end), according to these criteria: If the penult contains a short vowel in an open syllable, the stress falls on the antepenult: e.g. stá.mi.na, hy.pó.the.sis. If the penult contains a long vowel; a diphthong; a closed syllable (with any length of vowel); or is followed by z, the stress falls on the penult. [...] The fact that decorum is stressed on the penult, and exodus on the antepenult, is a fact about each of these words that must be memorized separately (unless one is already familiar with the Classical quantities, and in the former case, additionally with the fact that decus -ŏris n. with short -o- syllable became in late Latin decus/decor -ōris m. with long -o- syllable: 'Dómine, diléxi decórem domus tuæ'). Does anyone know if the pronunciation of "uroboros" might be explained in the same way as that of "decorum," where the vowel length/stress shifted at some point in Latin? Was "uroboros" or "ouroboros" even used in Latin? I've already searched out attested English pronunciations, so I don't want an answer that just repeats these (although I would appreciate learning about any additional pronunciations listed by reputable dictionaries). What I'm concerned with now is the pattern behind them, possible etymological bases for the English pronunciation, and orthoëpic advice, in particular about the hypothetical pronunciation /jʊəˈrɒbɔrəs/. | Why does "stigmata" [often] have penult stress? I have been studying the pronunciation of Greek-derived words in English, and I've found an odd anomaly. There are (at least) two possible pronunciation patterns for plural word-forms that end in -⁠mata (which correspond to singular word-forms that end in -⁠ma). Antepenult stress (expected) It appears that it is always possible to place the stress on the antepenult (third-to-last) syllable, such as: /ˈlɛmə/, /ˈlɛmətə/ /ˈskiːmə/, /ˈskiːmətə/ /ˌtɛrəˈtoʊmə/, /ˌtɛrəˈtoʊmətə/~/ˌtɛrəˈtɒmətə/ /ˈstɪɡmə/, /ˈstɪɡmətə/ This is what would be expected from (I believe most or all of these words came through Latin before entering English), since the penultimate "a" in the original Greek words is short. Maybe Latin vowel quality and stress rules are not very relevant; certainly, few English speakers know about them nowadays. And even with antepenult stress, some of these pronunciations do not seem to follow all of the traditional rules for pronouncing Latin-derived terms in English. I was reminded by some comments in this that in antepenult stressed syllables, we would expect tense ("long") vowels to be shortened due to (TSL), yielding pronunciations like /ˌtɛrəˈtɒmətə/ (which I just noticed is in fact listed in the Oxford English dictionary) and ?/ˈskɛmətə/ (which is not). (Compare to genus~genera /dʒiːnəs/~/dʒɛnərə/, and perhaps opus~opera /oʊpəs/~/ɒpərə/). However, there are other Latinate plural forms that typically don't have trisyllabic laxing (matrices, also I think helices), or where both the lax- and tense-voweled pronunciations coexist (codices, apices), so I guess the apparent lack of it in schemata should not be surprising. (There are even some exceptions to TSL in singular nouns like obesity.) Penult stress (unexpected) The other pronunciation seems to exist only for a couple of words, in which the penultimate "a" is commonly stressed and broadened: stigma ~ stigmáta (listed by both the Merriam-Webster dictionary and the ), and also sometimes schéma ~ schemáta /skiːˈmɑːtə/ (listed only by the ). (Neither the Merriam-Webster dictionary nor the Oxford Learner's Dictionaries list *"lemmáta"). I'm wondering why this pronunciation exists. It's an irregular plural either way, and putting the stress on the penultimate syllable creates a stress change between the singular and the plural forms. (It's true that all of these words are rare, and some people might pronounce some of their plurals differently. The pronunciations I give here are simply the ones listed in dictionaries.) The plural form "stigmata" is probably most common in religious or theological contexts (where it refers to the wounds of Christ), so at first I wondered if the penultimate stress was supposed to be closer to the original Greek pronunciation, but according to , the stress is on the antepenult in Greek as well. So, what's up with this? Did the stress perhaps change in Latin over time, is this a tradition of Greek accentuation that I'm not familiar with, is this a simple matter of ignorance of the original position of the stress that has now become entrenched with time and usage, or is this somehow explainable by established English stress patterns? (For example, do English speakers have some natural preference for a penultimate stress on polysyllabic words?) If nobody knows of a reason, I suppose I can just put it down to people encountering the word mainly in text, not knowing which syllable to stress, and choosing the penult because it sounds better to them. (I asked this question a while back on , but nobody knew of any reason.) | de morgan law $A\setminus (B \cap C) = (A\setminus B) \cup (A\setminus C) $ First part : I want to prove the following De Morgan's law : ref.(dfeuer) $A\setminus (B \cap C) = (A\setminus B) \cup (A\setminus C) $ Second part: Prove that $(A\setminus B) \cup (A\setminus C) = A\setminus (B \cap C) $ Proof: Let $y\in (A\setminus B) \cup (A\setminus C)$ $(A\setminus B) \cup (A\setminus C) = (y \in A\; \land y \not\in B\;) \vee (y \in A\; \land y \not\in C\;)$ $\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;= y \in A\ \land ( y \not\in B\; \vee \; y \not\in C ) $ $\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;= y \in A \land (\lnot ( y\in B) \lor \lnot( y\in C) )$ According to De-Morgan's theorem : $\lnot( B \land C) \Longleftrightarrow (\lnot B \lor \lnot C)$ thus $y \in A \land (\lnot ( y\in B) \lor \lnot( y\in C) ) = y \in A \land y \not\in (B \land C)$ We can conclude that $(A\setminus B) \cup (A\setminus C) = A\setminus (B \cap C)$ | eng_Latn | 28,620 |
Learn Uyghur | Uyghur or Uighur (ئۇيغۇرچە, Uyghurche, Уйғурчә, 维吾尔语) is the mother tongue of roughly 8 to 11 million Uyghur Turks in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China (also referred to as East Turkestan) as well as in pockets of neighbouring Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and Russia. | This wikiHow teaches you how to get Siri to pronounce your name properly. | eng_Latn | 28,621 |
Write Ka in Katakana | The "ka" in Japanese is pronounced as "kah". It has the same sound as the "ca" in "caught". | This wikiHow teaches you how to change your iPhone's Calendar from the standard Gregorian format to a Japanese format. | eng_Latn | 28,622 |
How do native speakers 'guess' the pronunciation of the letters in a word they see for the first time? | How can native English speakers read an unknown word correctly? | The title word filter is one of the worst ideas ever implemented on SO | eng_Latn | 28,623 |
Why isn't the ‘P’ in psychology pronounced? | Why does English spelling use silent letters? | Intersection of all $p$-Sylow subgroups is normal | eng_Latn | 28,624 |
Do native speakers ever make pronunciation mistakes? | What words are commonly mispronounced by literate people who read them before they heard them? | Not including stdlib.h does not produce any compiler error! | eng_Latn | 28,625 |
When reading an English sentence containing a word with foreign origin, should one try to read it with pronunciation from the original language? Say I am reading the following sentence: Tokyo has served as the Japanese capital since 1869. For the word Tokyo, if I happen to know how to pronounce it in Japanese (the pronunciation is similar to, but different from, the pronunciation in English), should I pronounce it in the Japanese way or the English way? | When is it appropriate to use the original pronunciation of a foreign word versus the English pronunciation? When reading to an audience, or speaking in conversation, when is it appropriate to use the original pronunciation of a foreign word versus the English pronunciation (assuming you know the appropriate pronunciation for it)? Is it considered rude, or condescending? Or is it considered a mark of being knowledgeable? One of the things to consider are place names. When referring to Paris, France, should it be pronounced with the silent 'S' as the French would say it, or with the 'S'? Should Hiroshima be pronounced as a Japanese speaker would pronounce it slightly more emphasis on RO, rather than the SHI? Should Mount Pinatubo be pronounced as a Filipino speaker would pronounce it with shorter stronger vowels, or the longer vowels? (e.g. Pi as is 'pick' rather than 'pea'.) Should Wichita be pronounces as the original "shi" rather than the modern "chi"? Pronounce pesos or sombrero as a Spanish speaker 'eh' or the English 'ay'? (I can't think of other common words right now that aren't words taken from other languages like hurricane, boondocks, tornado, etc. which I think have (correctly) changed to English pronunciations.) | Is "po-TAH-to" an acceptable pronunciation for "potato"? Immortalized in the George and Ira Gershwin song "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" is the nitpicking of pronunciation differences: You like potato and I like potahto, You like tomato and I like tomahto, Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto! According to and other sources, the English do pronounce tomato as tə-MAH-toh rather than tə-MAY-toh. But this doesn't seem to be the case when it comes to potato. (From the O.E.D.) – Pronunciation: /təˈmɑːtəʊ/ – Pronunciation: /pəˈteɪtəʊ/ Is "potahto" actually an acceptable way to pronounce potato? Or is the song just wrong? | eng_Latn | 28,626 |
The inconsistent long i sound in English As a phonics teacher, I have long had a problem with finding the right explanation to my students about an inconsistent sound. Hope someone has the explanation to it here. The long i sound in English represented by the IPA: aɪ exists in a lot of words including lie, by, tie, night, rice, lice, etc. Here comes the problem. Not even talking about accents of different regions, but even within the same person, there seems to be an inconsistency. For example, when one says lice, he/she doesn' say lie-s, but with the vowel being something different. It also applies to tie vs tight, bye vs bite, fly vs flight, and many more. I wonder whether other phonics teachers point this out to their students and, if they do, how they explain it? Is there a rule to when the long i is one way and when the other? Or is it really the same but it's my ears that's playing tricks on me? Appreciate any help and discussions. | Whence came the different varieties of the "long i" diphthong? What is the origin of “long long i” before voiced consonants (the [ai] of wide, while, & tribe) versus “short long i” before unvoiced consonants (the [ʌi] of white, wife, & wipe)? When did this difference appear? Is it just a secondary distinction, or are there minimal pairs for these two diphthongs? Obviously the distinction is not present in all accents—though its presence in most leads me to believe it's not a late arrival—and yet I've never found a dictionary that distinguishes them. | How do you refer to a hyponym that is the same word as the hypernym? What word (or how do you phrase things) do you use when the ostensible word for the class is the same as the word for a subset of the class? For example, in the United States, there are many brands of sugared, carbonated soft drink that one can buy: Coca-Cola (or Coke), Pepsi, RC Cola, Sprite, 7-Up, A&W or Mug Root Beer, etc). The first two are kinds of 'coke' or 'cola' (but no one says 'cola'). , one asks for any type of such drink as 'coke'. How does one then ask for the particular kind of 'coke' that is 'Coke' (pronounced the same)? Does one reduplicate and say a 'Coke coke', does one repeat with emphasis (or without), does one use a different word like 'coca-cola' (co-cola), or what? The (perceived) difficulty (surely those in the South are able to get the drink they want somehow) isn't limited to there. Where the drink is called 'soda', if you ask for a 'coke', you'll still sometimes have the choice among Coca-Cola, Pepsi, etc. "Can I have a Coke?" the response might be "Is Pepsi OK?". "Sure, Pepsi, Coke, whatever." You don't use 'cola', you just ask for the particular kind and hope the listener will help differentiate. Given these multiple strategies for disambiguating, what do you do say to get a 'Coke' in the southern US? are there any other examples of a hypernym being the same as the hyponym, and so creating a disambiguation problem? | eng_Latn | 28,627 |
Is "church" one syllable or two? I read like twenty years ago that the word "church" (clutch, hatch, match) is undoubtedly one syllable when written but that an argument can be made that it's two syllables -- CHUR-ch -- when spoken. Actually I don't think the book put it in such ambiguous terms as much as I've yet to find anyone who would so much as entertain the notion. Does anyone know what book I'm talking about (perhaps a Norton's Guide to... type book) or have any insight into this phenomenon? Like maybe a name for such a word? Other examples? | How many syllables are in the word 'hour'? Does the word 'hour' have 1 or 2 syllables? | How do you refer to a hyponym that is the same word as the hypernym? What word (or how do you phrase things) do you use when the ostensible word for the class is the same as the word for a subset of the class? For example, in the United States, there are many brands of sugared, carbonated soft drink that one can buy: Coca-Cola (or Coke), Pepsi, RC Cola, Sprite, 7-Up, A&W or Mug Root Beer, etc). The first two are kinds of 'coke' or 'cola' (but no one says 'cola'). , one asks for any type of such drink as 'coke'. How does one then ask for the particular kind of 'coke' that is 'Coke' (pronounced the same)? Does one reduplicate and say a 'Coke coke', does one repeat with emphasis (or without), does one use a different word like 'coca-cola' (co-cola), or what? The (perceived) difficulty (surely those in the South are able to get the drink they want somehow) isn't limited to there. Where the drink is called 'soda', if you ask for a 'coke', you'll still sometimes have the choice among Coca-Cola, Pepsi, etc. "Can I have a Coke?" the response might be "Is Pepsi OK?". "Sure, Pepsi, Coke, whatever." You don't use 'cola', you just ask for the particular kind and hope the listener will help differentiate. Given these multiple strategies for disambiguating, what do you do say to get a 'Coke' in the southern US? are there any other examples of a hypernym being the same as the hyponym, and so creating a disambiguation problem? | eng_Latn | 28,628 |
Why do we pronounce "the university" as "thuh university" rather than "thee university"? says that usually, we pronounce "the" as "thuh", but when it happens to be in front of a vowel sound, then we pronounce it as "thee". Why is "the university" pronounced as "thuh" university rather than "thee university"? Isn't "u" a vowel, and shouldn't it therefore be pronounced "thee university"? The page I linked to gives as explanation that "university" is pronounced "youniversity" and this y in there is a consonant sound? But why should y be a consonat sound? For me it's more a vowel sound … | What is the correct pronunciation of "the"? The is sometimes pronounced "tha" (/ðə/) or "thi" (/ðiː/). Which is the correct pronunciation of this word? Are both correct and used interchangeably at specific places? If the second question is correct, please provide the rule of pronouncing at different places. | New Zealand pronunciation of "women" vs "woman" I have read in a number of places that the NZ pronunciation of "women" must be rather peculiar. Quoting from : For some years I've noted the tendency of Kiwis to pronounce "woman" and "women" identically (as "woman"). To which an Australian replies: It appears there is a vowel shift going on in New Zealand (NZ) English [...] [T]he vowel in "women" which in Australian English is the same as the vowel in "hit", is often, in NZ, reduced to a schwa [...]. It makes the plural sound like our singular. I don't think the NZ pronunciation of the singular is the same as the NZ plural A New Zealander begs to differ: I've noticed this trend over the last few years also. To me as a kiwi it doesn't sound anything like a mispronounced plural -- it just sounds as if the speaker is using the one word for both singular and plural. [...] I see it as part of a much larger tendency to confuse singular and plurals. [Several examples follow.] Who's right? Who's wrong? Wikipedia has : In New Zealand English the short i of KIT is a central vowel not phonologically distinct from schwa /ə/, the vowel in unstressed "the". It thus contrasts sharply with the [i] vowel heard in Australia. Recent acoustic studies featuring both Australian and New Zealand voices show that the accents were more similar before the Second World War and that the KIT vowel has undergone rapid centralisation in New Zealand English. Because of this difference in pronunciation, some New Zealanders claim that Australians say "feesh and cheeps" for fish and chips while some Australians counter that New Zealanders say "fush and chups". So, there appears to be a vowel shift going on; but I'm not sure if there might be some truth to the people-just-stop-caring-about-certain-plurals argument as well. I hope we have enough New Zealanders on board to shed some light on this. Can you provide a guide to how to pronounce "women" and "woman" in NZ English? (I've done some searching for audio files or YouTube videos, but haven't found anything yet.) Would you say that it's just the vowel shift, "a much larger tendency to confuse singular and plurals", or both? How recent is this trend? (E.g., if you are a native speaker of NZ English, is your pronunciation of "women" different from that of your parents/grandparents?) | eng_Latn | 28,629 |
Doobly Doo origins Can someone please explain Doobly Doo (a Youtube slang for descriprion box below the video) origins in terms of its linguistic origin and author's motive adress a description box that way? I've seen a lot of sources which explain its meaning and first usage. But since it's an original phrase (is it?) I'd really like to know its language roots: does it root to a phrase with similar phonetics (doodle-doo)? I'm trying to figure out if it needs/can be adopted for other languages. Would really appreciate your help. Thank you! Best regards, Anthony UPDATE: Thank you Josh for providing a link to a previous thread on the pharase. It has a point: "doobly doo" sounds like a familiar idiom that's much older than that, used to name something you don't know the name of.' If it's possible we'll wait for more opinions. Once again only its linguistic roots/possible cultural references etc. Not who and when it first used. The latter is clear. | Who invented "dooblidoo"? The word is used by several different youtube channels as a different word for the youtube description bar. I've seen it used by the and by . Who was first to use and invent the term? | Why is "cupboard" pronounced with a silent "p"? According to Google at least, the word "cupboard" originated in late Middle English as denoting a board that held cups. Since then, the word has evolved to mean a kind of cabinet. My question is, given its origin and spelling, why do we pronounce "cupboard" with a silent "p"? Has the pronunciation simply evolved because "cup-board" is too awkward to say, or is there a deeper pronunciation rule that I'm not aware of? | eng_Latn | 28,630 |
Type Vietnamese | There are two common ways to type Vietnamese: VNI and Telex. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Experiment with both and choose your favorite method. | Are you timid but you wish you could speak out more ? Do you often feel overlooked in groups and want to make your voice heard? Is your participation grade in class suffering because of your shyness? | eng_Latn | 28,631 |
Who discovered the Engineer's language (and how it sounded)? On the trip to the Engineer's world, David was learning to speak their language. But where did the lessons come from? On the star maps that were left, they showed a few symbols, but there don't seem to be enough for an entire language, and how would they know the pronunciation of the symbols? | What is the ancestral form of language used in the fable that David was studying during the flight? David studies linguistics during the flight to LV-223. We get to listen and read a fable. Is it written in a real language? What is the name of the language? Can the fable be translated? Approximate quotation: hjewis jasma hwaelna nahast akwunsez dad'kta, tam ghermha vagam ugenthe | Is there a place on the internet where I could find actual Star Trek episode scripts? Through the years I have purchased a few Star Trek scripts. I even have a DS9 script a buddy of mine mistakenly took off set and dazzled me with at Christmas years ago. As neat as those are to own, they are impossible to search. Is there a place on the internet where the Star Trek show or movie scripts can be obtained in digital format? (Sometimes I remember a quote and would love to find it. From time to time the internet delivers. Occasionally it does not. I want to have a resource to find quotes as I think of them.) | eng_Latn | 28,632 |
Pronunciation Rules for Ch words Are there any rules for the pronunciation of Ch words. In words like, for example, chess, chemistry, school, etc. I want to know when should we pronounce 'ch' as "K' and when this has to be pronounced as "tʃ" as in chess. | Character vs Charm - Pronunciation Is there a rule to understand how the group "Cha" has to be pronounced? "Character" sounds with a hard first syllable, while "Charm" sound softer, but I don't find how to tell which sound to use before earing someone saying the word. It could be because of the double consonant "rm" vs "ra"? Or is it just a matter of knowing the rule for every single word? EDIT: More specifically, let's talk about UK English pronunciation. | How to forbid keyboard shortcut stealing by websites in Firefox Many websites, especially everything involving rich text editing (this site is guilty as well), steal keyboard shortcuts normally used to control Firefox and make them do something else instead. It is totally infuriating when I press something like Cmd-number, Cmd-L, Cmd-T, or Cmd-K and it doesn't do what I want it to. Can I make it stop? Actually, it would probably be for the best if I could forbid stealing of all Cmd-* shortcuts. I've never seen them used for anything useful. Is it possible? | eng_Latn | 28,633 |
Is it 'an hotel' or 'a hotel' In a book I saw this statement. Before words beginning with h and not accented on the first syllable, an is often used ; as, An historical , an hotel. I want to know whether h in hotel is pronounced or not. I would be really grateful if someone can explain this more. | Use of Indefinite Articles(a,an) Consider the following sentences: I am staying in a hotel nearby. I am staying in an hotel nearby. I know that both are correct. But I would like to know why? I do not see any proper reason for the second one as the 'h' is not silent as in French. So, what could be the reason? | Are there any universal rules in appropriating “_an,” “_sh,” “_es,” “_ch” for the demonyms of countries? Suffixes indicating people and language of country vary by country: _an: American, German, Italian, Belgian, Australian, Russian, Ukrainian, Korean, Mexican, Brazilian, Chilean, Argentinean, Indonesian, Malaysian, Iranian, Egyptian, Somalian, Palestinian _sh: English, British, Polish, Danish, Swedish, Turkish, _ch: French, Dutch _ese: Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Portuguese _no: Filipino, Latino _i: Israeli _: Thai Among the above, _an seems to outnumber other suffixes. Are there any simple rule to govern appropriation of suffix turning a country name into adjective, indicating people and language of countries in the world in terms of say, region, race, or cultural background? Or is it just discretional? | eng_Latn | 28,634 |
What is a good word to mean "nostalgia for the future"? Especially when "nostalgia" is presented in terms of "a longing for the past" and "evoking fond memories." For example, a word which would mean "a fondness for the present or future." A contextual sentence might be: He never seemed to dwell on past times—good or bad—and had countdown calendars around his house for nearly every holiday imaginable. When making conversation with him, you could always sense an excited anticipation in his words. He claimed that it was an intense feeling of ___ which drove him to look forward so enthusiastically. | Is there a word for the sadness over "What might have been"? Context: You made the decision not to see a person any more. The relationship was good, you were both happy with one another but the one main stumbling block (for you) in the relationship was never dealt with. It remained, a permanent fixture, that forced you to make that sad, and final decision. Is there a word, an idiom, or a famous line that expresses the sadness for something that might have been; e.g. a rich and fulfilling relationship. It's not nostalgia, because that expresses a wistfulness for the past. Instead, you are wistful for the future. | A term for words that change pronunciation with part of speech I'm talking about words like: construct: CON-struct(n.), cun-STRUCT(v.) present: PRE-sent(n.), pre-SENT(v.) record: RE-cord(n.), ri-CORD(v.) They are pronounced differently based on whether they are a noun or a verb. Here are the terms I DON'T think would apply: Homograph: same spelling, different meanings: for example, bark (the sound of a dog) and bark (the skin of a tree). Homophone: same pronunciation, different meaning: for example, to and two Homonym: same pronunciation and spelling, different meanings: for example: bank (river bank or savings bank) Heteronym: same spelling, different pronunciations and meanings: for example bow (the front of a ship) and bow (a ranged weapon) Bow is particularly interesting. It is a heteronym based on the two nouns I described. But in the sense of the body movement, the noun and the verb are pronounced alike (rhyming with wow), thus, not belonging to the category I've explained. In fact none of the terms explained satisfy my requirement. I'm looking for the term for words that have same (or related at best, NOT different) meanings, same spelling and different pronunciation. Specifically, different pronunciation depending on the part of speech. As against the words which have the same pronunciation in different parts of speech like bill, turn, case (or bigger ones like manoeuvre) TL;DR: Fill in the blank: The noun and verb forms of construct are pronounced differently because the word construct is a _____ or The noun and verb forms of construct are pronounced differently because they are _____s. | eng_Latn | 28,635 |
Did the Ent-Wives become trolls? In LOTR, is the disappearance of the Ent-Wives during or before the War of the Last Alliance connected with the appearance of the Trolls? Since Orcs were corrupted Elves, did Sauron enslave the Ent-Wives and thus make trolls in an analogous process? | Do we ever get more information about the Entwives? During my recent re-reading of The Two Towers I was struck again by a question that has bothered me since I was a youngling: What on earth is up with the Entwives? Treebeard says they went away in the distant past and just... got lost? Did Tolkien ever make mention of them again, or is this one of those unsolved mysteries of Middle Earth? | New Zealand pronunciation of "women" vs "woman" I have read in a number of places that the NZ pronunciation of "women" must be rather peculiar. Quoting from : For some years I've noted the tendency of Kiwis to pronounce "woman" and "women" identically (as "woman"). To which an Australian replies: It appears there is a vowel shift going on in New Zealand (NZ) English [...] [T]he vowel in "women" which in Australian English is the same as the vowel in "hit", is often, in NZ, reduced to a schwa [...]. It makes the plural sound like our singular. I don't think the NZ pronunciation of the singular is the same as the NZ plural A New Zealander begs to differ: I've noticed this trend over the last few years also. To me as a kiwi it doesn't sound anything like a mispronounced plural -- it just sounds as if the speaker is using the one word for both singular and plural. [...] I see it as part of a much larger tendency to confuse singular and plurals. [Several examples follow.] Who's right? Who's wrong? Wikipedia has : In New Zealand English the short i of KIT is a central vowel not phonologically distinct from schwa /ə/, the vowel in unstressed "the". It thus contrasts sharply with the [i] vowel heard in Australia. Recent acoustic studies featuring both Australian and New Zealand voices show that the accents were more similar before the Second World War and that the KIT vowel has undergone rapid centralisation in New Zealand English. Because of this difference in pronunciation, some New Zealanders claim that Australians say "feesh and cheeps" for fish and chips while some Australians counter that New Zealanders say "fush and chups". So, there appears to be a vowel shift going on; but I'm not sure if there might be some truth to the people-just-stop-caring-about-certain-plurals argument as well. I hope we have enough New Zealanders on board to shed some light on this. Can you provide a guide to how to pronounce "women" and "woman" in NZ English? (I've done some searching for audio files or YouTube videos, but haven't found anything yet.) Would you say that it's just the vowel shift, "a much larger tendency to confuse singular and plurals", or both? How recent is this trend? (E.g., if you are a native speaker of NZ English, is your pronunciation of "women" different from that of your parents/grandparents?) | eng_Latn | 28,636 |
What do you call a sung syllable without any meaning? Example of this are: "Nanana na na nana... I am happy, nana na na" "Lala la la la la. We are the gnomes. lala la la la" Is there a word for this? I thought it was a onomatopoeia, but I don't think they are, or at least they belong to a different subclass. | What's the term in music, where the singer uses words without meaning? I've been searching for the word, which is used for describing parts of lyrics, where the singer sings for example the whole refrain only using words of syllables without any meaning. Maybe you could help? (here's one song with that type of refrain: ) | When to use a hyphen to coin a new word and when to omit a hyphen? Someone has asked for answer to these topics. However, I still want someone to provide me with simple and universal answers. I recently read a sentence from the English-speaking person. It is in an article. It is, ' The available options for mitigating pad cratering are not universally effective (see link below), but they may be helpful on a case by case basis until more crack resistant laminates are developed and become available. ' If I am to write this, I will use 'a case-by-case basis until more crack-resistant laminates' Can anyone tell me when to use a hyphen to coin a new word? | eng_Latn | 28,637 |
Words ending in -ht, words ending in -th Look at the endings of the following words: blight, bought, breadth, brought, caught, delight, depth, fifth, fought, fourth, fright, freight, height, light, plight, taught, thought, width, ... As you may have already noticed, some of the words in that list end in ht, whereas the rest of them end in th. I have some questions regarding those endings: I. Do all words of the English language that end with ht end, actually, with ght? II. Is there any rule of thumb out there that helps one to recall (or determine) when the ending of a given word is th and not ht (or the other way around)? Thanks in advance for your insightful replies! | Is there any rule for differentiating between the endings "th" and "ht"? Some words end in th (length, width), and others end in ht (height, fight, tonight, caught). I sometimes have difficulties in spelling such words because I don't know which ending to choose. Is there any rule or pattern (even localized) in choosing one or the other? | "Taste" is to "flavor" as "touch" and "sight" are to what? For the senses, we have: flavor for taste aroma/odor/scent for smell sound for hearing ____? for touch/feel ____? for sight/see So one tastes a flavor, smells an aroma, hears a sound, feels a(n) _____, and sees a(n) _____. For the former, part of me wants to say texture, but I feel that is too specific; for the latter, I want to use visual or sight, but but does that make sense, seeing a visual or a sight? | eng_Latn | 28,638 |
What is this verb noun association called in linguistics? Not all verbs work with all nouns. It is better to say "fix errors" than "solve errors", for example. In linguistics, is there a name for semantic compatibilities between nouns and verbs that go before them like this? | Is there a specific term for the association of certain verb(s) with certain nouns (as direct objects)? Or vice versa. Or perhaps a name for the pair itself? For example: hold an opinion make a complaint offer an apology Also, where might I find a list of such pairs? EDIT: I chose my title wording randomly. I have no idea whether 'cognate verb' is the correct term for these things. However, I've just found out that 'cognate objects' are a defined class in linguistics, so perhaps my choice of words was inappropriate. I'm going to leave the title as it is, anyway. | Is there a standard pronunciation for gender-neutral -@ or -x More and more I see, especially in activist communities, Spanish-derived words ending in x or @ in order to neuter the gendering inherent in the original language. For example: latinx (or latin@) as opposed to latina and latino. How, though, are these endings pronounced? Please provide evidence of how this orthography is most commonly pronounced. Note 1: I recognize this is in an English Language site, rather than a Spanish language site, but this phenomenon is very much happening in English, albeit with Spanish loan words. Therefore the question is relevant to non-Spanish-speaking English speakers. Note 2: A question like this can lead to politically charged or, at least, sarcastic comments. Please refrain from bringing in your biases for or against. Note 3: This question is not seeking opinions as to how some people pronounce the suffixes. Answers should address evidence of a developing orthodoxy in pronunciation. | eng_Latn | 28,639 |
In New Zealand English, is it usual to pronounce the words "women" and "woman" the same? For example, in video from 2:00 onwards, the Prime Minister of New Zealand says "woman/women" several times. The context shows clearly that she means the word to be plural, but she says "woman" every time - or to look at it another way, she pronounces the plural the same way that "woman" would usually be pronounced. My question is, is it usual for the two words to sound indistinguishable in NZ English, or is this perhaps just a particular local dialect? Also, do New Zealanders sometimes write "woman" when they're referring to the plural (in the same way that "sheep" and "deer" are the written plurals), or is this just a pronunciation characteristic that doesn't show up in writing? | New Zealand pronunciation of "women" vs "woman" I have read in a number of places that the NZ pronunciation of "women" must be rather peculiar. Quoting from : For some years I've noted the tendency of Kiwis to pronounce "woman" and "women" identically (as "woman"). To which an Australian replies: It appears there is a vowel shift going on in New Zealand (NZ) English [...] [T]he vowel in "women" which in Australian English is the same as the vowel in "hit", is often, in NZ, reduced to a schwa [...]. It makes the plural sound like our singular. I don't think the NZ pronunciation of the singular is the same as the NZ plural A New Zealander begs to differ: I've noticed this trend over the last few years also. To me as a kiwi it doesn't sound anything like a mispronounced plural -- it just sounds as if the speaker is using the one word for both singular and plural. [...] I see it as part of a much larger tendency to confuse singular and plurals. [Several examples follow.] Who's right? Who's wrong? Wikipedia has : In New Zealand English the short i of KIT is a central vowel not phonologically distinct from schwa /ə/, the vowel in unstressed "the". It thus contrasts sharply with the [i] vowel heard in Australia. Recent acoustic studies featuring both Australian and New Zealand voices show that the accents were more similar before the Second World War and that the KIT vowel has undergone rapid centralisation in New Zealand English. Because of this difference in pronunciation, some New Zealanders claim that Australians say "feesh and cheeps" for fish and chips while some Australians counter that New Zealanders say "fush and chups". So, there appears to be a vowel shift going on; but I'm not sure if there might be some truth to the people-just-stop-caring-about-certain-plurals argument as well. I hope we have enough New Zealanders on board to shed some light on this. Can you provide a guide to how to pronounce "women" and "woman" in NZ English? (I've done some searching for audio files or YouTube videos, but haven't found anything yet.) Would you say that it's just the vowel shift, "a much larger tendency to confuse singular and plurals", or both? How recent is this trend? (E.g., if you are a native speaker of NZ English, is your pronunciation of "women" different from that of your parents/grandparents?) | When is it appropriate to use the original pronunciation of a foreign word versus the English pronunciation? When reading to an audience, or speaking in conversation, when is it appropriate to use the original pronunciation of a foreign word versus the English pronunciation (assuming you know the appropriate pronunciation for it)? Is it considered rude, or condescending? Or is it considered a mark of being knowledgeable? One of the things to consider are place names. When referring to Paris, France, should it be pronounced with the silent 'S' as the French would say it, or with the 'S'? Should Hiroshima be pronounced as a Japanese speaker would pronounce it slightly more emphasis on RO, rather than the SHI? Should Mount Pinatubo be pronounced as a Filipino speaker would pronounce it with shorter stronger vowels, or the longer vowels? (e.g. Pi as is 'pick' rather than 'pea'.) Should Wichita be pronounces as the original "shi" rather than the modern "chi"? Pronounce pesos or sombrero as a Spanish speaker 'eh' or the English 'ay'? (I can't think of other common words right now that aren't words taken from other languages like hurricane, boondocks, tornado, etc. which I think have (correctly) changed to English pronunciations.) | eng_Latn | 28,640 |
I've noticed that the pronunciations of "picked" gives its sound like "pick" with final sound "d" but for "Crooked" and "Naked" Why do they pronounce them like "Crook-ked" and "Nake-ked"? How can I know when i must pronounce the word like "picked" and when I must pronounce the word like "Crooked"? | There are three ways I know to pronounce the -ed at the end of an adjective: /t/ as in cracked. /d/ as in lined. /ɪd/ as in naked I realise naked is a special case because, as , it comes for Old English nacod, so the suffix isn't added. shows the pattern of pronunciation of -ed in all other cases. However it doesn't explain why ends with /ɪd/ (or /id/ or /əd/ depending on the dialect). that wicked comes from OE wicca, so the d wasn't already there. Why do we pronounce wicked as /ˈwɪkɪd/ and not /ˈwɪkt/? | There are three ways I know to pronounce the -ed at the end of an adjective: /t/ as in cracked. /d/ as in lined. /ɪd/ as in naked I realise naked is a special case because, as , it comes for Old English nacod, so the suffix isn't added. shows the pattern of pronunciation of -ed in all other cases. However it doesn't explain why ends with /ɪd/ (or /id/ or /əd/ depending on the dialect). that wicked comes from OE wicca, so the d wasn't already there. Why do we pronounce wicked as /ˈwɪkɪd/ and not /ˈwɪkt/? | eng_Latn | 28,641 |
Why is "duh" the word chosen to represent ignorance? Merriam Webster defines "duh" as "used derisively to indicate that something just stated is all too obvious or self-evident." But a derivation isn't given. Why "duh"? I've checked out the answers to the previous duh question, and I get no satisfaction. The Wikipedia entry on the universality of "mama" and "papa" provides an analogy. Why do babies first say "mama" and "papa?" "These terms are built up from speech sounds that are easiest to produce (bilabials like m, p, and b and the open vowel a." The babies, of course, initially have no idea that these sounds mean mother and father, but the reaction of the mother and father will attach the meaning to those sounds. Is "duh" a variation on "uh?" Is "uh" a sound that a human might first utter when in need? Open-mouthed. Simply formed. A grunt really. Food! Food! But someone who has to beg for food may be flawed. Too stupid to find their own food. | What is the origin of the word as in the interjection: — It's hot in the desert. — Well, duh! If it is of onomatopoeic origin and only appears in modern English as some sites suggest, I would be interested to know when it started appearing in English writing. | I am curious as to why "nay" replaces the simple unequivocal "no" in the context of voting. My research in Merriam-Webster tells me that "nay" means "no" (not the other way around) and the first known use of "nay" appeared in 1400s. Since the use of "no" existed before 1400 and the word remains to be used afterward, why would "nay" become the preferred choice of word when it comes to voting. Any idea? | eng_Latn | 28,642 |
I'm from a place where there is no "L" in the language, and it's always been tricky to say. Well, I did some research and, at least for American-English, there are two types: A "light L" and a "dark L". Individually, I don't have a problem, but putting the dark L together with another word is sometimes a challenge. For example, I'm uncertain about "all of". Out of habit I use a light L to say it similar to "olive", but from what I read (and correct me if I'm wrong), I think I'm supposed to use a dark L for "all". This is very uncomfortable to say. What's the proper way to pronounce "all" and "all of"? Is there a difference when put together? EDIT: I did some more research, and some sources say that the dark L also uses the tip of the tongue as well as raising the back of the tongue. It's possible that "all of" is used in this manner. "All of" and "olive" may be different after all. The linked post does have some information, but it doesn't fully answer this question. Tom says in the question that Dark "L": is "L" at the end of the word or after a vowel sound. Example: ball, pull. Light "L:: is "L" at the beginning or before a vowel sound. Example: light, love. Araucaria says in an answer that The rule for dark /l/ is that we always use dark /l/ when /l/ isn't followed by a vowel. So in the word falafel the first /l/ is clear, the second is dark. But neither of these posts seem to say if the rule applies when a word ending in "l," such as "all," is followed by a word starting with a vowel sound, such as "of." | "Dark L" is "L" at the end of the word or after a vowel sound. Example: ball, pull. "Light L" is "L" at the beginning or before a vowel sound. Example: light, love. There are 4 explanations of how to pronounce "dark L": 1st explanation: the tongue tip must contact the ridge right behind the upper teeth. 2nd explanation: before the tongue tip must contact the ridge right behind the upper teeth, you must curl the tongue and make sound like /r/ before make the /l/ as in the 1st explanation. 3rd explanation: just put the tongue between upper and lower teeth is enough to make the dark L 4th explanation: the tongue tip must contact the ridge right behind the upper teeth & the back of the tongue raises up (a British teacher teaches that). see this vid: and for more info So what is the correct way to make the "dark L"? | "Dark L" is "L" at the end of the word or after a vowel sound. Example: ball, pull. "Light L" is "L" at the beginning or before a vowel sound. Example: light, love. There are 4 explanations of how to pronounce "dark L": 1st explanation: the tongue tip must contact the ridge right behind the upper teeth. 2nd explanation: before the tongue tip must contact the ridge right behind the upper teeth, you must curl the tongue and make sound like /r/ before make the /l/ as in the 1st explanation. 3rd explanation: just put the tongue between upper and lower teeth is enough to make the dark L 4th explanation: the tongue tip must contact the ridge right behind the upper teeth & the back of the tongue raises up (a British teacher teaches that). see this vid: and for more info So what is the correct way to make the "dark L"? | eng_Latn | 28,643 |
The word "uroboros," coming ultimately from Greek, has a couple of spellings and also pronunciations (see ). As explained by Nohat in the linked page, the are the following: /ɔːˈrɒbɔrəs/ /jʊərɵˈbɒrəs/ lists only /ˌjʊərə(ʊ)ˈbɒrəs/ for "uroboros," and states that the word was first used in English around the 1940s. , for "ouroboros," lists yet another set of pronunciations, oddly enough: /ˌuːrəˈbɒrəs/ /uːˈrɒbəˌrɒs/ So in one sense, it almost seems a free-for-all. However, there's one pronunciation that seemed natural to me but that I never see listed: /jʊəˈrɒbɔrəs/, with antepenultimate stress. Here's why I'd expect this pronunciation. . The stress in Greek is on the penult, but there's a short /o/ in the penultimate syllable, so I'd expect a Latinized pronunciation of /uˈroboros/ according to the , and I'd also expect for the Latin stress position to carry over to the English word, especially when the initial vowel uses the value /jʊə/ associated with the . Compare to "automaton," another example of a Greek word with a short vowel in the penult that is stressed on the antepenult in English. But, I've never seen this pronunciation listed. Dictionaries do list pronunciations with antepenult accent, and pronunciations with initial /j/, but none I can find list a pronunciation with both of these features combined. So, if I use it, am I just adding my own idiosyncratic pronunciation to the mix, no better and no worse than the other variants? Or is there some flaw in the analogy I made above that makes /jʊəˈrɒbɔrəs/ a solecism, but that justifies /jʊərɵˈbɒrəs/ (or /ɔːˈrɒbɔrəs/, etc.) ? : In words of three or more syllables, stress falls either on the penult or the antepenult (third from the end), according to these criteria: If the penult contains a short vowel in an open syllable, the stress falls on the antepenult: e.g. stá.mi.na, hy.pó.the.sis. If the penult contains a long vowel; a diphthong; a closed syllable (with any length of vowel); or is followed by z, the stress falls on the penult. [...] The fact that decorum is stressed on the penult, and exodus on the antepenult, is a fact about each of these words that must be memorized separately (unless one is already familiar with the Classical quantities, and in the former case, additionally with the fact that decus -ŏris n. with short -o- syllable became in late Latin decus/decor -ōris m. with long -o- syllable: 'Dómine, diléxi decórem domus tuæ'). Does anyone know if the pronunciation of "uroboros" might be explained in the same way as that of "decorum," where the vowel length/stress shifted at some point in Latin? Was "uroboros" or "ouroboros" even used in Latin? I've already searched out attested English pronunciations, so I don't want an answer that just repeats these (although I would appreciate learning about any additional pronunciations listed by reputable dictionaries). What I'm concerned with now is the pattern behind them, possible etymological bases for the English pronunciation, and orthoëpic advice, in particular about the hypothetical pronunciation /jʊəˈrɒbɔrəs/. | I have been studying the pronunciation of Greek-derived words in English, and I've found an odd anomaly. There are (at least) two possible pronunciation patterns for plural word-forms that end in -⁠mata (which correspond to singular word-forms that end in -⁠ma). Antepenult stress (expected) It appears that it is always possible to place the stress on the antepenult (third-to-last) syllable, such as: /ˈlɛmə/, /ˈlɛmətə/ /ˈskiːmə/, /ˈskiːmətə/ /ˌtɛrəˈtoʊmə/, /ˌtɛrəˈtoʊmətə/~/ˌtɛrəˈtɒmətə/ /ˈstɪɡmə/, /ˈstɪɡmətə/ This is what would be expected from (I believe most or all of these words came through Latin before entering English), since the penultimate "a" in the original Greek words is short. Maybe Latin vowel quality and stress rules are not very relevant; certainly, few English speakers know about them nowadays. And even with antepenult stress, some of these pronunciations do not seem to follow all of the traditional rules for pronouncing Latin-derived terms in English. I was reminded by some comments in this that in antepenult stressed syllables, we would expect tense ("long") vowels to be shortened due to (TSL), yielding pronunciations like /ˌtɛrəˈtɒmətə/ (which I just noticed is in fact listed in the Oxford English dictionary) and ?/ˈskɛmətə/ (which is not). (Compare to genus~genera /dʒiːnəs/~/dʒɛnərə/, and perhaps opus~opera /oʊpəs/~/ɒpərə/). However, there are other Latinate plural forms that typically don't have trisyllabic laxing (matrices, also I think helices), or where both the lax- and tense-voweled pronunciations coexist (codices, apices), so I guess the apparent lack of it in schemata should not be surprising. (There are even some exceptions to TSL in singular nouns like obesity.) Penult stress (unexpected) The other pronunciation seems to exist only for a couple of words, in which the penultimate "a" is commonly stressed and broadened: stigma ~ stigmáta (listed by both the Merriam-Webster dictionary and the ), and also sometimes schéma ~ schemáta /skiːˈmɑːtə/ (listed only by the ). (Neither the Merriam-Webster dictionary nor the Oxford Learner's Dictionaries list *"lemmáta"). I'm wondering why this pronunciation exists. It's an irregular plural either way, and putting the stress on the penultimate syllable creates a stress change between the singular and the plural forms. (It's true that all of these words are rare, and some people might pronounce some of their plurals differently. The pronunciations I give here are simply the ones listed in dictionaries.) The plural form "stigmata" is probably most common in religious or theological contexts (where it refers to the wounds of Christ), so at first I wondered if the penultimate stress was supposed to be closer to the original Greek pronunciation, but according to , the stress is on the antepenult in Greek as well. So, what's up with this? Did the stress perhaps change in Latin over time, is this a tradition of Greek accentuation that I'm not familiar with, is this a simple matter of ignorance of the original position of the stress that has now become entrenched with time and usage, or is this somehow explainable by established English stress patterns? (For example, do English speakers have some natural preference for a penultimate stress on polysyllabic words?) If nobody knows of a reason, I suppose I can just put it down to people encountering the word mainly in text, not knowing which syllable to stress, and choosing the penult because it sounds better to them. (I asked this question a while back on , but nobody knew of any reason.) | Please use UK pre-uni methods only (at least at first). Thank you. | eng_Latn | 28,644 |
The following words which end with an ean are pronounced as /*i:n/ whereas Sean is pronounced as /ʃɒn/: bean, dean, lean, mean... Why is Sean not pronounced as /si:n/ but as /ʃɒn/? Where does this irregularity come from? Are there known rules in English for such cases? | I've always had this question about the pronunciation of Sean. Is Sean a word from another language? Is it actually not pronounced Shawn and instead it's some sound between Shawn and Seen? Also, why isn't it pronounced as Sawn instead of Shawn, when the word Sean doesn't even have the letter 'h' in it to get that -sh sound? Bottom line is, why is Sean pronounced Shawn instead of Seen? | I've always had this question about the pronunciation of Sean. Is Sean a word from another language? Is it actually not pronounced Shawn and instead it's some sound between Shawn and Seen? Also, why isn't it pronounced as Sawn instead of Shawn, when the word Sean doesn't even have the letter 'h' in it to get that -sh sound? Bottom line is, why is Sean pronounced Shawn instead of Seen? | eng_Latn | 28,645 |
Example: Tell her and teller Or cellar and sell her | When two phrases are pronounced alike but have different spelling and meaning, can we call them homophones? e.g. "ice-cream" and "I scream", "nitrate" and "night rate", "that's tough" and "that stuff". Or is there another term for them? What linguistic phenomenon distiguishes these near homophones? I've checked the putative duplicate at but it isn't exactly what I'm asking here. | Today I came across an ad on this question on SO: (I don't expect it to stay very long). There was a community promotion ad on the right hand side of the site, I think for one of our English sites. It had a sentence that I only partially remember: Idiom ... poor or even poorer I found it interesting, so I clicked that ad. Which caused a new instance of SO to open within the ad space. Unfortunately I failed to take a screenshot. I've been refreshing the page like crazy, but can't get the ad to appear again. Edit: I managed to get a new community add, for the photography site, and captured a screenshot: Edit2: This bug still persists, I saw it today with an OOP add from CodeReview, and an area 51 add. | eng_Latn | 28,646 |
What's a word that rhymes with princess? | Several of the answers you have received seem to have been generated from a little "thyming dictionary" software (or perhaps online). Unfortunately, these (and I've tried them) typically ignore where the ACCENT of the word falls, and that is critical to rhyming.\n\nOrdinarily the rhyme must begin with the vowel of the last accented syllable, so in this case it must include '-in-'. So most of the words you are getting will not work at all. True, in some circumstances you might be able to use "mattress" as a sort of rhyme for "princess", but it would not even be considered a very bood 'near rhyme'.\n\nNow, so far I assume (and I guess others do to) that you are using the common American pronunciation of the word. In fact, if you were pronoucing it with the final syllable accented (prinCESS) there COUNTLESS words that would rhyme iwith it (though not 'countless'! or the other words that have been suggested that accent the preceding syllable). That might still be of use to you IF you are using a type of verse that allows more flexibiliity with which syllablle you accent. You might, for instance, find it pefectly suitable for a limierick beginning "There once was a pretty princess' (whose accent pattern practically forces you to accent the last syllable).\n\nBut it you're not free to do that, you'll have to look at using the closest 'near rhyme' you can managie. Rather than just list words, I'll try to describe a way of going about this, as set of things you may try, in decreasing order (roughly) of preference, with some examples:\n\n1) Try a word that INCLUDES all the sounds you would need for a perfect rhyme (-incess), but has additional sounds that don't match, and preferably aren't 'highlighted' (don't 'draw attention to themselves'). In this case, one of the best rhymes (though likely not very suitable for what you want to say!) has already been mentioned: "incest" whose additional 't' doesn't do much harm. Along the same line, but a bit better (if not that handy) would be "insets" or "incense". Adding more sounds (and getting a bit further away): insects, inspects, interest(s), instance\n\n2) Look for words that match all the sounds but one, or (slightly less desriable) match all but one sound AND add as few and unobtrusive extra sounds as possible (as with #1):\na) first preference is to drop or change the medial/transtional sound (the "c') -- in other words, the sounds that most stand out in this word (for rhyming purposes) are -in- and -ess. (If you make a substitution, the closer the soun is to the "c" the better -- cf. #3)\nthis might lead to things like: thinness, slimness, skinless, winless, sinless (or don't forget two word phrases like "sin less")\nb)the same thing, with added sounds: 'pinkness', 'interest, ''inference, 'tin fence' ?! 'interest', 'inlets'\n[note tha /f/ is a pretty close substitute for /s/, as would the /th/ sound in words like 'thick', but I can't think of any words that would use that here!]\n\n3) For the 'most important' sounds (the 'in' and 'ess' mentioned above) -- look for words that substitute a sound very CLOSE to ONE of these sounds (occasionally for more): for the vowels, short e and short i are almost interchangeagle so 'en' for 'in' and 'iss' for 'ess' could work); /m/ will work in place of /n/, for the final -ess, you might use -eth or /ez/ (though spelled "es" the final sound is voiced, that is it becomes the /z/ sound). Do note that the /e/ in this /ez/ is a short e, and NOT the totally unaccentd, back of your throat sound (called the schwa sound) that you find not in "princess" but in "princes" . Since when that happens the syllable is almost swallowed, it do | A - alpha \nB - bravo \nC - charlie \nD - delta \nE - echo \nF - foxtrot \nG - golf \nH - hotel \nI - india \nJ - juliet \nK - kilo \nL - lima \nM - mike \nN - november \nO - oscar \nP - papa \nQ - quebec \nR - romeo \nS - sierra \nT - tango \nU - uniform \nV - victor \nW - whisky \nX - x-ray \nY - yankee \nZ - zulu | eng_Latn | 28,647 |
why english is sometimes considered to be a stupid language? | I also think that way...\n\nWell have u ever wondered why there is not a single alphabet for the "sh" as in shine, or "ph" in Philadalphia, \n\nwhy there is need of the silent alphabets in different words ... like t in listen...?\n\nWhy there are 2 words for single meaning, or why there are so many meanings for one word?\n\nwhy the spelling for Psychology is not sykology???\nOr for Physics, it is "fiziks"\netc...\nLikewise there are thousands of things that are ununderstand able....\n\nSo isn't it a stupid language???\n\nBy the way it is the language that GAYS speak.\nAs in all England.... | We have a saying over here about the kettle calling the frying pan black arse, just kidding too. | eng_Latn | 28,648 |
If it's write, wrote, written, why isn't it bite bote, bitten? | Because the gods of grammar conjugation say so.\n\nIt is an irregular verb. You just have to memorize it. | i dunno great question\n\nmaybe we should change the names! I was doing 80 on the driveway and got pulled over..\n\nI just repaved my parkway, does it look ok?\n\n\n\n\nnah, doesnt sound right | eng_Latn | 28,649 |
Why 'b' is not pronounced in "subtle"? | Rationale behind pronunciation of "subtle" | Rationale behind pronunciation of "subtle" | eng_Latn | 28,650 |
Are there pronunciation patterns in English? | How can native English speakers read an unknown word correctly? | Regex: match everything but specific pattern | eng_Latn | 28,651 |
Is "cupboard" pronounced as /ˈkʌbərd/? | Why is "cupboard" pronounced with a silent "p"? | Why is "cupboard" pronounced with a silent "p"? | eng_Latn | 28,652 |
Silent letters in English words | Why does English spelling use silent letters? | Why does English spelling use silent letters? | eng_Latn | 28,653 |
Remove / convert French accents in PHP How do I replace french accents like "é" with their latin equivalents like "e" when pulling information from the database or when displaying strings on the page? Update: Can the moderator that is linking to the question "UTF-8 all the way through" marking this one as duplicate please explain how that topic answers the question of "how do I CONVERT a french accented character to an English equivalent"? That question explains how to properly store french characters in your DB and then display them which is great, but it does not explain how you can take a french accent like "é" or "à" and convert to "e" and "a". You would want this for example to convert image file names since Safari can't display images with French characters, remove them from usernames or for any other number of reasons. | UTF-8 all the way through I'm setting up a new server and want to support UTF-8 fully in my web application. I have tried this in the past on existing servers and always seem to end up having to fall back to ISO-8859-1. Where exactly do I need to set the encoding/charsets? I'm aware that I need to configure Apache, MySQL, and PHP to do this — is there some standard checklist I can follow, or perhaps troubleshoot where the mismatches occur? This is for a new Linux server, running MySQL 5, PHP, 5 and Apache 2. | When is it appropriate to use the original pronunciation of a foreign word versus the English pronunciation? When reading to an audience, or speaking in conversation, when is it appropriate to use the original pronunciation of a foreign word versus the English pronunciation (assuming you know the appropriate pronunciation for it)? Is it considered rude, or condescending? Or is it considered a mark of being knowledgeable? One of the things to consider are place names. When referring to Paris, France, should it be pronounced with the silent 'S' as the French would say it, or with the 'S'? Should Hiroshima be pronounced as a Japanese speaker would pronounce it slightly more emphasis on RO, rather than the SHI? Should Mount Pinatubo be pronounced as a Filipino speaker would pronounce it with shorter stronger vowels, or the longer vowels? (e.g. Pi as is 'pick' rather than 'pea'.) Should Wichita be pronounces as the original "shi" rather than the modern "chi"? Pronounce pesos or sombrero as a Spanish speaker 'eh' or the English 'ay'? (I can't think of other common words right now that aren't words taken from other languages like hurricane, boondocks, tornado, etc. which I think have (correctly) changed to English pronunciations.) | eng_Latn | 28,654 |
What is the pronunciation of "the" before the vowel "e"? How do you pronounce the vowel in the article "the" when used before "evil"? (American English) | the and thee (I prefer to pronounce it as thuh all the time) My question is can I always pronounce THE with thuh instead of thee? Because unlike "a" "an" rule, pronouncing "thee" seems cumbersome for some people (including me) Note that I know the "emphasis" and "vowel, consonant" rule about THE but I still prefer to pronounce it as thuh everytime. So can I?? | ON an American street, but IN a British one. Do the twain ever meet? In the United States, we say that someone lives on a street, whereas I've noticed that British people say in. For instance: Bubba lives on Washington Street. Colin lives in Cavendish Avenue. I believe we both would use at when a number is given. For instance: Bubba lives at 16 Washington Street. Colin lives at 7 Cavendish Avenue. I don't think it matters if it's a road, avenue, street, circle, or lane — as far as I know, in America, we always live on a street. Does it vary in British English, or is it always in? If it varies, what are the rules? | eng_Latn | 28,655 |
Why do British people pronounce "idea" with an "r" sound at the end? Non-rhotic dialects tend to drop "r" sounds, so why is one added here when there is no "r" in the word? | Why is "idea" sometimes pronounced as "idear"? I know that idea is pronounced as /aɪˈdiə/, but I've meet several people in real life who put an 'r' at the end of the word. How come? | In Ruby on Rails, how do I format a date with the "th" suffix, as in, "Sun Oct 5th"? I want to display dates in the format: short day of week, short month, day of month without leading zero but including "th", "st", "nd", or "rd" suffix. For example, the day this question was asked would display "Thu Oct 2nd". I'm using Ruby 1.8.7, and just doesn't seem to do this. I'd prefer a standard library if one exists. | eng_Latn | 28,656 |
Rules to pronounce "cha-" words I am puzzled on how to pronounce cha- words. For example, I know that "chameleon" or "chamomile" are pronounced with a hard "c" like in "camel", not with a soft "c" like in "change". "Charity", on the other hand, is pronounced as in "change". Is there some rule to infer the correct pronunciation? | Character vs Charm - Pronunciation Is there a rule to understand how the group "Cha" has to be pronounced? "Character" sounds with a hard first syllable, while "Charm" sound softer, but I don't find how to tell which sound to use before earing someone saying the word. It could be because of the double consonant "rm" vs "ra"? Or is it just a matter of knowing the rule for every single word? EDIT: More specifically, let's talk about UK English pronunciation. | How can I do a Cache Refresh in Google Chrome? I don't know what exactly it's called, by cache refresh I mean, refresh the page after clearing its cache. I don't want to clear the entire browser cache. I can't seem to cache refresh my pages. In Firefox, I know it to be Shift+Refresh. In Chrome, I've tried Ctrl+R, Ctrl+Refresh, Alt+Refresh, Shift+Refresh but none of them work. | eng_Latn | 28,657 |
Is the hamburger icon a recognized navigation symbol? Do you think the icon "☰" is enough for users to know that a menu is underneath? Medium.com doesn't even use an icon, it is linked from its logo on the top. Other websites just use the word "Menu" which I think is a little more intuitive. Is the "☰" becoming the international symbol for "menu/navigation"? | Has user testing found that the "three horizontal bars" for main menu on mobile is commonly understood? "Three horizontal lines" aka "hamburger icon" seems to be becoming a convention for the "main menu" button, especially on mobile sites: Has anyone done any user testing of this convention, or got any A/B testing results? (i.e. is there an increase in bounce rate compared to using the word "Menu"?) I did some quick user testing with wireframes featuring this icon for the main menu. 3 out of 6 people got it and used it. The others did not. One person in particular had a lot of trouble "getting back to the top" (i.e. restarting their navigation from the top level of the site) as they didn't know about the convention, or that the logo would link to the home page. I guess it will be different for different demographics - users of Facebook on mobile probably know it. Anyone got any findings they can share? | Variations in the pronunciation of "the" Although there are rather simple rules determining the pronunciation of "the", native speakers quite often deviate from these rules (including, e.g., TV shows). According to the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, The EFL learner is advised to use [ðə] before a consonant sound (the boy, the house), [ði] before a vowel sound (the egg, the hour). Native speakers, however, sometimes ignore this distribution, in particular by using [ðə] before a vowel (which is in turn usually reinforced by a preceding ʔ), or by using [ði:] in any environment, though especially before a hesitation pause. Furthermore, some speakers use stressed [ðə] as a strong form, rather than the usual [ði:]. My question is: when native speakers use [ðə] instead of [ði] before a vowel sound, do they do it on purpose or accidentally? If it is on purpose, how do they (typically) decide which pronunciation to use? What is a valid reason to use [ðə] before a vowel sound? | eng_Latn | 28,658 |
Shifting tenses in a short story I am writing a short story using past tense, but I am a little bit confused when it comes to writing this part: She had never seen a man as athletic as him before. She knew Japanese men (were / are) not as tall as British men... Is it appropriate to shift tense here? Or do I use the past tense throughout? The narrator is stating a fact about a fictional world in my story. Hope my question and explanation makes sense. Thanks! | Tense change: previous actions on something that's currently true I'm describing a situation that happened in the past. To explain it, I want to use a description that is both true now and true when the situation happened. Specifically, I want something like: She touched me where my neck met my collarbone. Since my neck is still attached to my collarbone (thankfully), I'm wondering if I shouldn't use the present tense here instead: She touched me where my neck meets my collarbone. Which is preferable, and why? | When is it appropriate to use the original pronunciation of a foreign word versus the English pronunciation? When reading to an audience, or speaking in conversation, when is it appropriate to use the original pronunciation of a foreign word versus the English pronunciation (assuming you know the appropriate pronunciation for it)? Is it considered rude, or condescending? Or is it considered a mark of being knowledgeable? One of the things to consider are place names. When referring to Paris, France, should it be pronounced with the silent 'S' as the French would say it, or with the 'S'? Should Hiroshima be pronounced as a Japanese speaker would pronounce it slightly more emphasis on RO, rather than the SHI? Should Mount Pinatubo be pronounced as a Filipino speaker would pronounce it with shorter stronger vowels, or the longer vowels? (e.g. Pi as is 'pick' rather than 'pea'.) Should Wichita be pronounces as the original "shi" rather than the modern "chi"? Pronounce pesos or sombrero as a Spanish speaker 'eh' or the English 'ay'? (I can't think of other common words right now that aren't words taken from other languages like hurricane, boondocks, tornado, etc. which I think have (correctly) changed to English pronunciations.) | eng_Latn | 28,659 |
Do a Wisconsin Accent | Your first exposure to the Wisconsin way of speaking may be a jarring one. Wisconsinites speak in a strong, nasal tone and use several unique phrases. | 'St' can be a difficult sound to pronounce. Here are some tips to getting it right. | eng_Latn | 28,660 |
im just curious to find out. | E. T or R is the most frequently used consonant depending on what source you consult. | Don't air your dirty laundry on the internet like this. This service is for people who have concerns, people who have solutions, and those of us who just want to learn more about a specific topic. This isn't the place to bash another user. Use the site for it's intended purpose, not for this. | eng_Latn | 28,661 |
I was taught to only use "an" when the next word began with a vowel. Am I crazy? And has it always been this way and I'm just now noticing or what? | In the case of "historic" it is not necessary, but it's not improper either. There are good historical and phonological reasons for it.\n\nBASIC explanation why "an" may appear before a word beginning with /h/:\n\n1) the initial /h/ IS not pronounced\n*generally in "hours" hono(u)r"\n*American English - "herb"\n*some dialects "humble", "hotel"\n\n2) history - that is, the /h/ USED to be silent:\nthere are a number of words whose initial /h/ was originally not pronounced, esp. those derived from (Old) French, which did not pronounce it (sometimes did not even spell it)\nSome of these (examples listed in #1) STILL do not pronounce the /h/ in many or all English dialects. Others that have added a pronounced /h/ may still be treated as if they did not have it -- 'historic(al)' is perhaps the best example of this\n\nBUT this is not enough -- those who say "an historic(al) event" (pronouncing the /h/) ALSO usually say "a history"!\nSo, there's one other very important factor, which is:\n\n3) The syllable starting with /h/ LACKS an ACCENT\n--Specifically, if the SECOND syllable is accented, the initial /h/ is WEAKER, perhaps only very slightly pronounced (It seems especially weak if the following vowel is formed in the front of the mouth -- a, i, e (as opposed to vowels made further back -- o, u)\n\nSo, if the first syllable HAS an accent (especially the MAIN accent of the word) it is preceded by "a" --thus we say "A HISTORY" (unless, of course, you're Cockney)\n\nTo get the sense of how this works, just try saying the word "historic" all by itself. You may notice that you scarcely pronounce the /h/. Even if you do, it may feel like it takes extra energy do so (whereas when you say "history" the 'energy' is already supplied by accenting the syllable)\n\n[Some have said 'accented' or 'unaccented', but this is not quite correct. When the SECOND syllable is accented, the first syllable has the LEAST accent; if a LATER syllable has the primary accent the first syllable may still have a SECONDARY accent, and the 'fule' just described does not apply. Examples: 'hospitality' 'hippopotamus']\n\nIn fact, in expressions like "an historic..." many find that the inclusion of the /n/ can actually make the words easier to pronounce (though in that case the /h/ is usually only VERY slightly pronounced).\n\nOther examples where "an" may be found (all of which have an accent on the second syllable): "an hereditary title" [vs. "a HERitage], "an habitual liar" [vs. "a HA-bit"], cf. "an hysterical child"\n\nNow if you were to try some of these expressions in a search engine you would likely find that "an historic" and "an historical" are much more commong (in proportion to "a historic" "a historical") than these other examples. That leads to the FINAL(?) factor that affects pronunciation.\n\n4) HABIT! That is, we're USED to hearing it that way, and so it just seems right, even if it does not follow the "rules" we may generally us for such cases.\n\nThus, the reason 'historic' and 'historical' are far more likely to be preceded by "an" than other words that might "qualify" is that they are more COMMON words or expressions. People are used to hearing them this way. This is hardly unusual. In any language the LESS common a word is in everyday speech the MORE likely it is speakers apply the "general rules" to that word. Thus, irregular verbs in a language [forms of to be, come, go, sit, etc.] are COMMON words. | That sounds like a textbook case of OCD to me. You should be evaluated by a mental health professional ASAP. | eng_Latn | 28,662 |
Why do the Aussies have such a funny accent? I know that he meant, "You came today?", but it sounded.....different. | Dialects are varieties differing in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar not to be confused with the regional accents of English speakers, which mark speakers as members of groups by their various pronunciations of the standard language.\n\nAustralian English is a non-rhotic dialect. The Australian accent is most similar to that of New Zealand and is also similar to accents from the South-East of Britain, particularly those of Cockney and Received Pronunciation. As with most dialects of English, it is distinguished primarily by its vowel phonology.\n\nAustralian English vowels are divided into two categories: long, which includes long monophthongs and diphthongs, and short, all of which are monophthongs. The short vowels mostly correspond to the lax vowels used in analyses of Received Pronunciation with the long vowels corresponding to its tense vowels as well as its centralising diphthongs. Unlike most varieties of English, it has a phonemic length distinction: a number of vowels differ only by the length.\n\nAustralian English consonants are similar to those of other non-rhotic varieties of English. In comparison to other varieties, it has a flapped variant of /t/ and /d/ in similar environments as in American English. Many speakers have also coalesced /tj/ and /dj/ into /tʃ/ and /dʒ/, with pronunciations such as /tʃʉːn/ being standard. | Kum ba yah, meaning "Come By Here" in the Gullah language, is the title of a Christian hymn which originated in the lowlands of South Carolina. | eng_Latn | 28,663 |
I am doing and abc book for ancient egypt and i need the definitions of 4 letters i cant gte i need an egyptian word for the letters of x,l,u, and v and i need a definition or short explanation of it please help i need it ive been working on tryin to find forever | The first link below has information that may help.\n\nThe second link is part of the same site and this displays equivalent hieroglyphics for on-screen letter input.\nIt doesn't look like there was a letter x so you'd probably have to create the sound with k+s instead. There isn't a true equivalent of v either (see the comments on the site about closest sound match)\n\nThe third link gives details of letters/alphabet derived from the hieroglyphs, and this also shows a lack of equivalents for what we are used to. | LOL (also spelled lol) is a TLA, the abbreviation for "laughing out loud", "laugh out loud", or less commonly "lots of laughs". LOL is a common element of Internet slang used, historically, on Usenet.\n\n\nAnalysis\nMany people are critical of "LOL" and its related acronyms and there is widespread controversy over their use. Some message boards ban the usage of "LOL". Most people seem to use "LOL" as a filler in a message instead of actually "laughing out loud," for example, someone may say "lol I don't know" despite the fact that "lol" does not necessarily mean the person is laughing out loud. "LOL" can also be used to mean 'lots of love', however, those who use it in this form are clearly stretching it. The abbreivation LOL, lol, LoL, etc... is not case sensitive. As part of Internet Jargon language, it is commonly linked with leet.\n\nIt should be noted that the word 'lol' is Dutch for 'fun'. It is however unclear if the abbreviation of LOL came from this word. | eng_Latn | 28,664 |
Pronunciation of 'Con' words | The pronunciation of words which begins 'con' and 'com' | The pronunciation of words which begins 'con' and 'com' | eng_Latn | 28,665 |
the first consonants of "think" and "than" | Is there a rule for pronouncing “th” at the beginning of a word? | The title word filter is one of the worst ideas ever implemented on SO | eng_Latn | 28,666 |
Why are naked and baked not pronounced the same? | Why are "baked" and "naked" not pronounced the same? | Why are "baked" and "naked" not pronounced the same? | eng_Latn | 28,667 |
Why connection is "pronounced" as C while "concert" is pronounced as K | Is there a rule to know when to pronounce letter c as a "soft c" (s) or "hard c" (k)? | There does not exist group $G$ such that Aut$(G)\cong \mathbb{Z}_n$ (for odd $n$) | eng_Latn | 28,668 |
Was "bicycle" ever pronounced "bi-cycle" and if so where and when? | Why is "bicycle" pronounced differently from other obviously related words? | Why is "bicycle" pronounced differently from other obviously related words? | eng_Latn | 28,669 |
Why "admit" with T but "admissible" with SS? | Are there names for consonant-shifts when suffixes are added? | Not including stdlib.h does not produce any compiler error! | eng_Latn | 28,670 |
When is the plural 'es' pronounced "ess/ez/izz" vs. "eez"? | What is the correct pronunciation of the word “processes”? | What is the plural form of "Software"? | eng_Latn | 28,671 |
Where did the British accent originate from in Star Wars? | Why does Leia's accent change during A New Hope? | Why wasn't Poe told about Holdo's plan? | eng_Latn | 28,672 |
Rebel pronunciation | A term for words that change pronunciation with part of speech | How to pronounce $\mathcal{E}$? | eng_Latn | 28,673 |
Why is high spelled that way? | Why is "high" pronounced "hiy" but is not spelled that way? | Why is "high" pronounced "hiy" but is not spelled that way? | eng_Latn | 28,674 |
If you think the answer is it's shorter or quicker to say, then think again. Reciting the five letters causes a person to utter five sylables. Yet speaking the "double-A" version is a total of six sylables. | Like many acronyms, it has evolved into a pronunciation that, due to a more rhythmic sound, people are likely to find more "catchy" and memorable.\n\nAnd simply calling us "colored" doesn't make people racist, but imagining oversimpllified explanations for racial defensiveness probably does. | A -> B\nB -> C\n...\nT -> U\nYou (U) -> V\nV -> W\n\nSo, You -> V | eng_Latn | 28,675 |
In the IPA phonetic transcription. | What state do you live in? | The exapi toi is explained on the following webpage: \nhttp://www.spyware-browser.com/items/-/18667/1/6/?start2=50&sm=1365\nIt's an American Online program | eng_Latn | 28,676 |
you use it a lot in your avswers | LOL (also spelled lol) is a TLA, the abbreviation for "laughing out loud", "laugh out loud", or less commonly "lots of laughs". LOL is a common element of Internet slang used, historically, on Usenet.\n\n\nAnalysis\nMany people are critical of "LOL" and its related acronyms and there is widespread controversy over their use. Some message boards ban the usage of "LOL". Most people seem to use "LOL" as a filler in a message instead of actually "laughing out loud," for example, someone may say "lol I don't know" despite the fact that "lol" does not necessarily mean the person is laughing out loud. "LOL" can also be used to mean 'lots of love', however, those who use it in this form are clearly stretching it. The abbreivation LOL, lol, LoL, etc... is not case sensitive. As part of Internet Jargon language, it is commonly linked with leet.\n\nIt should be noted that the word 'lol' is Dutch for 'fun'. It is however unclear if the abbreviation of LOL came from this word. | *checks spelling,punctuation and grammar*\n\nYep,I think so! I do know what you mean though.It doesn't make a very good impression if we look like we can't spell.I hope your question makes an impact! | eng_Latn | 28,677 |
hi every one, i am from Taiwan. As you know we have problem with china in the sense if Taiwan on the earth is a country or just a administrative area....but it is not the topic of my question now...\n\nplz teach me how to pronounce the following mathematic symbol.\n\nhow to pronounce those symbol? \n d/dx, d^2/dx^2, d^4f/dx^4, f', f", f''', n!\n\n(note 2^2= 4 (a+b)^2= a^2 +2ab +b^2 I don't know how to type the symbol in here.) | d/dx: I say "d.d.x.", or the derivative with respect to x\nd^2/dx^2: The second derivative with respect to x\nd^4f/dx^4: the fourth derivative of the function with respect to x\n\nf': F prime, or the derivative of the function\nf": F double prime, or the 2nd derivative of the function\nf''': F triple prime, or the 3rd derivative of the function\nn!: N factorial | It's not Farquarson, it's Featherstonehaugh that's pronounced Fanshaw. There are plenty of other examples, including placenames: Happisburgh in Norfolk pronounced Haysbro', Belvoir pronounced Beaver. It's the sign of an old language: names evolve, pronounciation deteriorates, and sometimes spelling doesn't keep up. \nSometimes it does: Bristol used to be called Brigstow, but the local dialect adds an L to the end of words that end in vowel sounds (Bristolians drink 'vodkal' that they buy from 'Asdal'), and so Brigstow became 'Brigstowl', which decayed into 'Bristol'. | eng_Latn | 28,678 |
What is it about an accent that drives a person wild? | Every-body has an accent. The way how some-one speaks, reveals where their ancestors came from.An accent does not make a person better than any other. How-ever if accents is the issue I love the Jamaican accent. Jamaicans talk real pretty. | "What would you like for breakfast, darling?"\n\nI duno if I can explain why... I do like something nice first thing tho ;-)\n\nOh, actually, something nice for dinner would go down well, too... | eng_Latn | 28,679 |
Haven't we heard enough slang? | Fax Monkey - What tha?\nSlang will always be around whether you like it or not, if you don't like it, go and sit in an igloo out in the antarctic.And don't watch TV, In fact why don't you just end the torture now. Every language has slang every person has words that they use a lot that others find irritating.\nLike 'For the record' and 'Honestly' at the begining of a sentence.\nThough I have to admit i'd be pissed if people actually wrote, exactly how they talk.\nLets not kid ourselves, we all speak a version of slang which we can turn on or off, as and when we choose.\nThe kids today have just added their own slang to what's gone on before. | I am in full agreement with you. People show learn to press the spell check! | eng_Latn | 28,680 |
How do you make a nasal sound in Portuguese, like the word for "mother" and "no"? | Physically you make the vowel sound of the letter "a" but you open up your velum. Now, that's easier said that done, but that's the physical process. The velum is the muscle that closes the nasal passage and prevents air from going out through your nose. You open it to make the "m", "n" and "ng" sounds in English.\n\nOpening the velum allows air to flow out through the nose. Say "con" (as in "con job") and, without changing anything about the other sounds, carefully say it without the "n". The "o" is nasalized before the "n" in English. So that's the sound you are shooting for. | This is a site I use for small amounts of text. \n\nhttp://www.freetranslation.com/\n\nthey have a software program available. \n\nPlease Note - I have NOT used the software - just noting they have one available. | eng_Latn | 28,681 |
A word meaning discord between the phonology of a word and its meaning? | Name for a word whose sound is contrary to its meaning | Intersection of all $p$-Sylow subgroups is normal | eng_Latn | 28,682 |
English term for switching phonemes between words? | Is there a term for switching syllables of words? | Is there a term for switching syllables of words? | eng_Latn | 28,683 |
What was the historical pronunciation of the digraph like? | Why is "night" spelled with "gh"? | No room for a new \dimen | eng_Latn | 28,684 |
Pronunciations for "Either" | Is there a rule in British English about how to pronounce "either"? | Is there a rule in British English about how to pronounce "either"? | eng_Latn | 28,685 |
How do I pronounce "Cynwyd"? | In the US, it's pronounced "SIN-wood", as in Bala Cynwyd in the Philadelphia area. | go to ytmnd.com, they explain it, check wikipedia.org\n\nThey ask to have cookies enabled, cookies may contain spyware, but unless your downloading something, dont worry about it... | eng_Latn | 28,686 |
I have noticed that many words for mother and father are the same or very similar in many languages. eg? | I would guess because its the first semi-coherent sounds that a baby can make linguistically | Oh my god what is that guy going on about Allah and all that jazz?!\n\nGod the amount of religious fanatics we have on this site is scary...\n\nIt is a beautiful coincedence! | eng_Latn | 28,687 |
how do you say " I miss you baby, and I can't wait to see you" to a guy in hebrew? | I miss you baby.\nAnd I can not wait to see you.\n\nAni mitga’age’at elecha motek.\nVe’ani cvar lo yecholah lechacot lirot otach.\n\nI = ani (a-nee)\nmiss = mitga’age’at (meet-ga-a-gay-at)\nyou = elecha (e-lay-CHa)\nbaby = motek (moe-tek)\n\nAnd = ve (vey)\nI = ani (a-nee)\nalready = cvar (cvar) like tsar\nno = lo (low)\nable = yecholah (yeh-CHo-lah)\nto wait = lechacot (lay-CHa-coat)\nto see = lirot (leer-oat)\nyou = otcha (oat-CHa)\n\nCHa is a guttural ‘Ha!’ sound\nCHo is a guttural ‘Ho!’ sound\nMotek comes from the word sugar/sweet Matok and is the preferred term of endearment | If you're using Windows, go to the Start Menu, and click "Run." Type in "charmap" (minus the quotes) and hit enter.\n\nThis will bring you to the Windows Character Map. If you look down in the status bar, it'll tell you how to make each of the characters.\n\nTo make the heart, according to charmap, do ALT+2665. | eng_Latn | 28,688 |
How do i find, in simple terms from the periodic table what the charge will be when the following atoms acquire a complete set of electrons. Oxygen, NA, F< or N for instance! | Well, you'll have to look at it's original state. Like oxygen. Oxygen normally has 6 valence electrons, so to get a full shell (8), it'll need two more. The charge of the oxide anion is -2.\n\nSodium has 1 VE. So, the best way for it to get a full shell is to drop that lone e. Hence the +1 charge.\n\nF has 7, so it has to pick up one, forming F- with a -1 charge.\n\nN has 5 e's normally, so it picks up three to get a -3 charge. | Japanese pronunciation is extremely easy and consistent. Learn that, and you can figure out how to pronounce pretty much any word. \n\na = "ah" as in father\n\ni = "ee" as in we\n\nu = "oo" as in moo\n\ne = "eh" as in head\n\no = "oh" as in Ohio\n\nThe rest of the sounds in the language are made by adding a consonant in front of the vowel. Those are always pronounced just like they look, so it's not hard. Ha = H-ah, Ki = key and so on.\n\nThe trickiest sound is "tsu" which is kind of like "tsoo" only more blended. I don't know how to explain it better...\n\nIn the examples you posted, you'd break them down like this:\n\nO-HA-YO-GO-ZA-I-MA-SU \n\nKO-N-NI-CHI-WA \n\nKO-N-BA-N-WA \n\nO-YA-SU-MI-NA-SA-I \n\nSA-YO-NA-RA\n\nBAI-BAI \n\nHA-JI-ME-MA-SHI-TE \n\nSee? Easy!\n\n\nCheck out these sites for pronciation help:\n\nhttp://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~bestor/easy_pronunciation.htm\n\nhttp://www.interq.or.jp/japan/se-inoue/e_japanese2.htm\n\nhttp://www.japanippon.com/japanese/lesson_1.htm\n\nhttp://www.abcb.com/misc/pron_00.htm\n\nhttp://www.mit.edu/~isshinryu/pronun.html\n\nhttp://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese:_Pronunciation:_Consonant_doubling_&_long_vowels\n\n\n\nThe thing that helps most is to just go ahead and learn hiragana/katakana. It only takes a week or two if you work hard at it, and once you know them, pronunciation becomes an absolute breeze. It makes it very easy to remember how to say and spell anything.\n\n\nAlso try:\n\nhttp://www.angelfire.com/anime/byako/japanese/learn.html\n\nhttp://japanese.about.com/blphrase.htm\n\nhttp://www.freejapaneselessons.com/\n\nhttp://www.angelfire.com/anime/byako/japanese/learn.html | eng_Latn | 28,689 |
Can you guys plz tell the difference..? | Alliteration differs from consonance insofar as alliteration requires the repeated consonant sound to be at the beginning of each word, where in consonance it is anywhere within the word, although often at the end | What the **** are you talking about?\n\nAre you five or do you just sleep during English class? | eng_Latn | 28,690 |
My friend came to this country when he was 12 and learned english and these examples below have come up in conversation and I just find it fascinating.\n\nWords like: where it is pronounced differently but spelled the same. Which is correct and how do they remember. \nRoute-(ROUT)\nRoute-(ROOT)\n\nHouston(HOOSTON)\nHouston(HOUSEton)\n\nSTATUS(STAT-us)\nSTATUS-(STATE-us) | english is an extremely complicated language. we have words that don't sound the way they look and homophones. | You're thinking of whinge. Whine is pronounced the same as wine. They both mean the same thing pretty much, except when you whine you are moaning in a higher pitch than when you whinge. | eng_Latn | 28,691 |
Do we know how to pronounce the hieroglyphics symbols? | It seems that when Jean François Champollion deciphered the ancient Egyptian writing (using Rosetta Stone and others), he discovered that it was still quite similar with Coptic despite the time difference. Coptic hasn't been a spoken language since the 1600's, but is the liturgical language of the coptic church and hence has been well preserved (as Latin has been).\n\nSo I think he used coptic to get the ponunciations.\n\nAbout "Ra": We don't really know what the vowel is. In fact, I don't think we know any vowels!\n\nHopefully and expert is online and can give a better answer!\nCheck out the source. I Didn't have time to read it properly. | A - The Algae island\nF - Frenchman (blind)\nH - Hyena on boat\nJ - Japanese cargo ship\n\nthose are the ones I can help you with. Good luck. | eng_Latn | 28,692 |
I am looking for any word that does not contain a vowel. | There are NO words(English) that has NO vowels. Exceptions migh be Dr. Mrs. shhh, try.. but the DR. and Mrs. are abreviations and the shhh is a SOUND, not a word and the Y in try is a vowel. | The moon? Bats? Flying witches? The sheets on your bed? No body parts, please, let's help keep this site suitable for kids! | eng_Latn | 28,693 |
Data-Driven Phonetic Comparison and Conversion Between South African, British and American English Pronunciations | Issues in Building General Letter to Sound Rules | DoS & DDoS in Named Data Networking | eng_Latn | 28,694 |
Factors affecting degree of foreign accent in an L2: a review | native italian speakers ' perception and production of english vowels . | Does an iridotomy provide protection against narrowing of the anterior chamber angle during Valsalva maneuvre in eyes with primary angle closure | eng_Latn | 28,695 |
I'm taking an online course in Ayurveda, but the course materials do not provide pronounciations! Can anyone recommend a good website, book, resource or provide the most common terms?\n\nFor example: is Pitta pronounced "Pih-tah" or "Pee-tah"? | It doesn't matter one way or the other if you don't have to recite it somewhere. Just be consistent and read for the letters. The first one is correct. | If you are just looking for that sound bite, you can try downloading it on a P2P (Peer-to-Peer) program. Try typing limewire into a seach engine and download that program. Its free. When you log into the program type key words that might bring up that sound. Some examples would be Chewbacca, Star Wars, wookie. | eng_Latn | 28,696 |
I'm not saying ALL New Yorkers do but the ones from Staten Island and Long Island talk so harshly. It's not pleasing to hear at all. | I have family there and HATE their accents. I'm a midwesterner, and love a southern accent, but long island speak is like nails on a chalkboard to me. | Check your dictionary...both pronunciations are acceptable. But as to why...the best reason I've heard is due to a type of reading issue. When some people look at the word "Nuclear" they see a blending and mixing of the letters "nuculear." It's mainly due to the types of letters that are close to one another. That isn't to suggest the President sees it that way...only that someone did who influenced his speech. \n\nAnother suggestion is the regionalization of language. Every region in the United States has its own dialect. West Texas dialect is different than East Texas, South Texas, North Texas or even Central Texas. The dialect in Houston is different than in other parts of the state. For example, people in the Houston area (natives) don't usually pronounce the "h" in the city's name. I grew up in West Texas, and I can assure you that people there have a very distinctive dialect. "Noo kyoo lur" is common there, even among those of us with advanced degrees (mine is in English, no less!). Wait 'til you hear us try to pronounce that black stuff that comes out of the ground (or that USED to come out of the ground)! | eng_Latn | 28,697 |
....and be careful what you say....our President says it wrong, too. | Check your dictionary...both pronunciations are acceptable. But as to why...the best reason I've heard is due to a type of reading issue. When some people look at the word "Nuclear" they see a blending and mixing of the letters "nuculear." It's mainly due to the types of letters that are close to one another. That isn't to suggest the President sees it that way...only that someone did who influenced his speech. \n\nAnother suggestion is the regionalization of language. Every region in the United States has its own dialect. West Texas dialect is different than East Texas, South Texas, North Texas or even Central Texas. The dialect in Houston is different than in other parts of the state. For example, people in the Houston area (natives) don't usually pronounce the "h" in the city's name. I grew up in West Texas, and I can assure you that people there have a very distinctive dialect. "Noo kyoo lur" is common there, even among those of us with advanced degrees (mine is in English, no less!). Wait 'til you hear us try to pronounce that black stuff that comes out of the ground (or that USED to come out of the ground)! | Yep the people in the white coats, or as I like to refer to them, the "Head Shrinkers" need to get a hold of her and examine that cranium of hers... | eng_Latn | 28,698 |
Bruce Lee movie 'Game of Death' - when he catches the two cooks who poisoned everyone with their shirts off, and the camera pans in low on one guy's nipple. Then Lee says, "So, you're Japanese then!" He identifies the traitors as Japanese (as opposed to Chinese) by their nipples! Don't believe me? Well seconds later, the dude _covers up the offending nipple_. What is up with that? Are nipples racial identifiers? This completes your morning segue. | It wasn't 'Game of Death', it was 'Fist of Fury' aka 'The Chinese Connection'.\nHe wasn't looking at his nipples, he was looking at his underwear. The kind of underwear the murderous cook was wearing is worn only by Japanese men.\n\nNOW your morning segue is complete.\n\n*additional* \n\n'FistS of Fury' aka 'The Big Boss' was a movie about Bruce working in an ice factory.\n'FisT of Fury' aka 'The Chinese Connection' featured Bruce beating up the murderous cook wearing the Japanese underwear. | Chinese people have their own unique ways of doing things, including writing and typing using regular pens or keyboards. \n\nOK, Windows has many different IMEs (Input Method Editors) other than English. They can be easily set and configured in the Language settings of the Windows. There are also many kinds of Chinese IMEs. The most popular and easiest is the so-called PINYIN. Latin letters are used to represent different sounds pronounced in Chinese. Therefor, by just pressing on the letter keys you can type thousands of different Chinese characters. Characters with the same pronunciation are listed in an option bar for you to choose from. It's that easy! | eng_Latn | 28,699 |
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