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Dec-16-10
 | | OhioChessFan: Tsagan is into the tsars. |
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Dec-16-10
 | | Domdaniel: <crawf> Nice bit of Zzzzzz lateralism. Don't the best ideas come in sleep, like Kekule's molecular snake? I was well on the way through mutiples of 6th powers. There aren't *really* so many until you reach z = 2. |
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Dec-16-10
| | Domdaniel: <Annie> Yeah, I know. Try telling that to English speakers who've forgotten they used to have letters for the voiced/unvoiced forms of 'th', as Iceland still does. I would argue, however, that there is a difference between more-or-less arbitrary consonant clusters like 'th' -- the sound is not 'tuhhuh' -- and 'ts', where the phoneme *does* contain the basic articulations of 't' and 's' -- an alveolar plosive gone sibilant, I think. Or maybe that's the Lisp version...
;) |
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Dec-16-10
 | | chancho: <“The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.” Thomas Hardy> |
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| Dec-16-10 | | crawfb5: I think it was Zzzzzz <literalism>. Just in case it was something like "zzz" vs "zzz" or something, I did a search on my copy of the database for a partial "zzz." The only other "player" that popped up was: Chezzz (Computer) Given <Zzzzzz>, <XINIX> seemed the appropriate opponent. At least they didn't post this clue minutes before I had to dash out the door like they did to me the last two days. Still, my luck is running much better this year than the last two, so I shouldn't complain. |
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Dec-16-10
| | Domdaniel: <Conversely, Hungarian uses 3(!) letters to represent a sound which doesn't really exist in the language> This explains why Mikel Dzsaxon was never big in Budapest. |
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Dec-16-10
 | | Annie K.: Heh - the actual phonetic spelling would be something like Májkl Dszekszn. :p I do believe the attempt to represent the sound at all in the language may have come about when it became impossible to ignore Dzsordzs Herriszn... ;) |
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Dec-16-10
| | Domdaniel: Or Dzsordzs Best, Dzsordzs Dzsonz ..? |
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Dec-16-10
| | OhioChessFan: <Or maybe that's the Lisp version> Always wondered why lisp had an s in it. |
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Dec-16-10
| | Domdaniel: <Ohio> Thadithm. |
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Dec-16-10
| | Annie K.: <I would argue, however, that there is a difference between more-or-less arbitrary consonant clusters like 'th' -- the sound is not 'tuhhuh' -- and 'ts', where the phoneme *does* contain the basic articulations of 't' and 's' -- an alveolar plosive gone sibilant, I think. Or maybe that's the Lisp version... ;) > Heh - no, that's the point. The actual phoneme which is represented by c in Hungarian and apparently Polish as well, *does not*, in fact, contain the basic articulations of 't' and 's'. It's ONE sound, and NOT a combination of t and s, or t and z, or c and z. It's ONE sound, that <doesn't exist> in English, and therefore English is trying to APPROXIMATE it. But that's all these combos are - approximations. |
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Dec-16-10
| | Annie K.: <Or Dzsordzs Best, Dzsordzs Dzsonz ..?> Close. Dzsordzs Beszt, and Dzsordzs Dzsounsz ... ;) |
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| Dec-16-10 | | MostlyAverageJoe: <Annie K.: Heh - the actual phonetic spelling would be something like Májkl Dszekszn.> For possibly even more fun, transliterate into Hungarian the last word in Polish here: http://translate.google.com/#pl|en|... (the "Listen" gadget does pretty good job there on Polish pronunciation). :-) |
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Dec-16-10
| | Annie K.: I take it it's clear enough to English speakers that the sound "j" is not in fact a combination of d and the french j, but an independent single sound, aka phoneme ? Now, try to wrap your mind around the idea that English also lacks representations of perfectly valid phonemes, the attempts to represent which are imperfect. (Btw, the key to understanding all the Hungarian combos involving the letter 's', is to be aware that the letter 's' in Hungarian actually stands for the English 'sh' sound - so Hungarian arrives to the English 's' by combining 'sh' and 'z'.) <MAJ> I'll try that when I get home. No speakers attached to my work comp. ;) |
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Dec-16-10
| | Domdaniel: Shzei. |
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| Dec-16-10 | | MostlyAverageJoe: <Annie K.: The actual phoneme which is represented by c in Hungarian and apparently Polish as well, *does not*, in fact, contain the basic articulations of 't' and 's'.> Indeed. To do this sound correctly, you can try to merge English sounds represented by 't' and 's' (or 't' and 'z') while keeping the tip of your tongue touching the palate about 1/2 inch behind the teeth. Do not let it touch the teeth at any time. |
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Dec-16-10
| | Annie K.: <MAJ> hmm... not sure if that would help me a lot if I didn't know the sound. ;s OK <Dom>, how do you pronounce 'tsk', as in 'tsk, tsk, you're not getting it?' ;p That's probably more or less the phoneme. ;) |
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Dec-16-10
| | Annie K.: Well, akshly, you do get it, mostly... sorry about that. ;) And I get your point about the difference between randomly chosen letters to represent a sound new to a language, and letters chosen in actual attempts to approximate the newly imported sound. Still, there may be something not fully "digested" there, as I get the impression that you may still be viewing the 'c' sound as a "product" of s and t (or whatever) on a basic level. But it's not a "product" of any other phonemes, it's an independent phoneme, fully "equal" to t or s - though generally "related", maybe. |
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Dec-16-10
| | Domdaniel: <Annie> I know the phoneme, really. I know it's not literally made of an s and a t. But, if you wanna get oral about it, it begins by placing the tongue tip roughly where one would for a 't' -- and then squeezing air round it, in a sibilant plosive, rather than a straight plosive as in 't'. I do know about phonemes and the infinitely weird orthographic systems in use. I 'ave nev-air dropped an aitch. Or a haitch, as the Erse say. Incidentally (heh) the t-sound itself has several subvariants, depending on exactly where the tongue-tip goes. Which is why people from North India have a unique t-sound, and there's even a small difference between Ireland and England. Canada just uses 'd'. Ride? |
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Dec-16-10
| | Domdaniel: I like a nice labio-dental fricative myself. |
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Dec-16-10
| | Annie K.: Heh. OK then... ;) |
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Dec-16-10
| | OhioChessFan: Pronunciation is important. Here's a case where 42,000 people died because they said something wrong. Judges 12:5-6 The Gileadites seized the fords of the Jordan before the Ephraimites arrived. And when any Ephraimite who escaped said, "Let me cross over," the men of Gilead would say to him, "Are you an Ephraimite?" If he said, "No," then they would say to him, "Then say, 'Shibboleth'!" And he would say, "Sibboleth," for he could not pronounce it right. Then they would take him and kill him at the fords of the Jordan. There fell at that time forty-two thousand Ephraimites. |
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Dec-16-10
| | Domdaniel: Wasn't much balm in Gilead *then*, was there?
<Ohio> I love that Old Testament story. First, because it gave us the ever-useful word 'shibboleth'. Second, because it's among the oldest evidence available about discrimination between different groups of humans, based on pronunciation -- and crucially, on the inability to make a particular sound. And thirdly because of all the slaying. Why a deity should want his followers to be quite so bloodthirsty is beyond me. |
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Dec-16-10
| | Domdaniel: Those unfortunate Ephraimites, shortly before they got shlain, couldn't even 'hear' the difference -- their language was one where 'sh' either didn't exist or was lumped with 's'. Shad. |
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Dec-16-10
| | Annie K.: Yesh. |
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