I Had A Random Thought...

[BobbyBesar]

How do you feel about quay?

[jennegatron]

In the US, we don't call people lining up at a counter or anything like that a "queue." We exclusively call them lines.

The only time I ever see "queue" used is in a computer science context or like when WoW servers were full you would get put in a queue and it would explicitly tell you your position in line waiting.

[Markson]

I used to joke with my friends that queueing is like waiting in line, but pleasant. Like when you're in a line, you hate it the whole time - "Ugh, this waiting sucks! And the line is huge! And I have things to do and places to be!" But when you queue, it's just a pleasant and patient experience - "My what a nice day, so good to have some time to breathe and think. And at the end of it I get a hotdog or something! Life is grand..."

 

Maybe that's mostly just a dumb play on how I, as an American, view British folks though - more patient, content to slow down, probably waiting with purpose! Queues just sound so much nicer than lines to me. It's a fun, quirky little word that you can play with.

 

Lines r dumb, queue 4 ever.

[Badfinger]

How do you feel about quay?

 

I think it's nuts.

 

Totally quay quay.

[SecretAsianMan]

I think it's nuts.

 

Totally quay quay.

 

Queequeg?

[Zeusthecat]

Do we really even need the letter Q? It's clearly the worst letter in the alphabet and K, W, C, and U can all come together in various ways to accomplish everything that Q accomplishes.

[Gaizokubanou]

How can you kuastion the importance of the letter q!

 

It's also useful for rare but hilarious situations when someone ask how you typed that mirrored p.

[BobbyBesar]

Do we really even need the letter Q? It's clearly the worst letter in the alphabet and K, W, C, and U can all come together in various ways to accomplish everything that Q accomplishes.

Malay* uses K for all hard C sounds, and S for soft C sounds, so C is always pronounced CH.

 

* When using roman letters. There's a traditional written language that looks like arabic, but it's terrible and nobody likes it.

[Gormongous]

Do we really even need the letter Q? It's clearly the worst letter in the alphabet and K, W, C, and U can all come together in various ways to accomplish everything that Q accomplishes.

 

Some forms of medieval miniscule avoided Q entirely, using C and W to replace Q and U (no variant of Latin has K). It looks weird but workable.

[Patrick R]

So what would the Star Trek villain be called?

[elmuerte]

John

[dibs]

So what would the Star Trek villain be called?

Keweue

[tberton]

Cue.

[Ninety-Three]

So what would the Star Trek villain be called?

 

See-double-you.

[WickedCestus]

Kyuu.

 

I presented an essay in high school once about a new language I called "English II". Basically, I abolished q, c, and x with the reason being that all their sounds can easily be replicated with other letters. I also added letters for "ch" and "th". I still now think about that and say, "yeah that makes a lot of sense". 

 

I am far less angry about it now than I was in high school though. 

[tberton]

So basically you wanted the IPA.

[Ninety-Three]

Kyuu.

 

I presented an essay in high school once about a new language I called "English II". Basically, I abolished q, c, and x with the reason being that all their sounds can easily be replicated with other letters. I also added letters for "ch" and "th". I still now think about that and say, "yeah that makes a lot of sense". 

 

I am far less angry about it now than I was in high school though. 

 

I am reminded of this:

 

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

 

Generally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeiniing voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x"— bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez —tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivili.

 

 

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

[WickedCestus]

You know, yeah. I guess I did. But I wanted one of my own invention so I didn't have to learn or think about anything. 

 

Speaking of which, is anyone here actually able to read the IPA? Was it worth learning? I am sort of fascinated. 

[tberton]

IPA is really only meant for use by linguists when writing about phonetics, phonology and the like. It's pretty cool to learn about, though, especially just to remind yourself that your throat and mouth and tongue really are just like any other noise-making instrument. Make air flow differently and you get different sounds.

 

As for actually learning it, it's not that tough. Most of the consonants - at least the English ones - use pretty straightforward symbols. The vowels get a lot more confusing though, because the way English vowels sound does not line up with how they're written in the same way they do for most other languages using the Latin alphabet. Reading [sit] as "seat" rather than "sit" is kind of hard to wrap your head around.

[RyanCConnelly]

I actually find that IPA is very useful in learning languages.  Many programs do not properly teach pronunciation, and IPA can really help because since it is universal, it can be taught once and used for any situation!  I use it daily in my job, and it serves me over four, somedays five languages!

[WickedCestus]

I've learned the Korean alphabet and Japanese (syllabary?) and I'm quite interested in linguistics so I don't think it would take too much trouble for me to learn it. Maybe I'll give it a shot. Could be neat.

[brkl]

I'd like to make a joke about Vainamoinen appropriating my culture, but I can't in the thread where that's discussed because it could lead to a super dumb derail. 

 

But anyway, Vainamoinen is appropriating my culture. 

[Griddlelol]

Random thought - Queueing has the second-most consecutive vowels in an English word (5), the most is technically Euouae which is some stupid Latin thing/"word" that somehow counts as English and has 6 consecutive vowels (which people would always correct me with when I said queueing had the most)

 

Wikipedia says that Euouae is an abbreviation, so you could probably argue it doesn't count.

 

If you cared enough.

[syntheticgerbil]

In the US, we don't call people lining up at a counter or anything like that a "queue." We exclusively call them lines.

The only time I ever see "queue" used is in a computer science context or like when WoW servers were full you would get put in a queue and it would explicitly tell you your position in line waiting.

Because of that, I often do find myself saying queue when I'm in line for something where I have to take tickets that get called out or if it's some kind of electronic ordered system where names or positions get entered first.

[Dewar]

My wife has a linguistics degree and she gets a lot of value out of IPA as she works to better understand Japanese.