Didactic Thumbs (Pedantry Corner)

[Deadpan]

Well, pronounciation is a pretty complex thing that varies not only across regional (and other) variants but also according to the immediate and larger context of the word and sentence or simple day-by-day fluctuations. Phonetic transcription is only an approximation of how this all works, and I don't think it's worth getting too pedantic about individual examples.

 

For instance, the vowel in free is produced open-ended and is consequently probably pretty close to how you might produce it in isolation if prompted, while in the word beat your tongue has to be ready to produce that t sound at the front of the mouth. Likewise, a single person might pronounce the word robot pretty differently depending on whether you clearly enunciate it in isolation or slur it a little in the context of a sentence.

[RyanCConnelly]

Brkl, Oxford English uses IPA now?!  The last time I looked at one they were still using the weird "long vowel, short vowel" method, although I will say that was a long time ago.  Also all the texts I have been referencing are for pronunciation in music, since that's what my degree was in.  I sometimes notice that this creates a more "proper English" accent, like an old movie actor or something.

 

This is something though that I also find interesting, maybe non-US thumbs could chime in here.  When I IPA something in German, for example, I was trained to do so in what is considered a "universal" accent, which I was taught is Hochdeutsch.  Similarly in Italian, Roman Italian is kind of seen as the standard, although I feel like Italian is a lot easier to standardize because all vowels are pure.  But is that recognized within these countries?  I guess a sort of nonregional English would be Midwestern English, since there is very little accent or affectation, but even as such there is also a more "proper" version like I said that could be used... It's just kind of interesting to me how dialects work out.  In Italian specifically some of the dialects are so different that they can be incomprehensible.

[Badfinger]

[o] is the second 'o' in 'robot'. The first 'o' is a dipthong that's tough to write on a mobile phone. Unless you pronounce 'robot' and 'rowboat' identically.

Pedantry!

 

I am super puzzled how the first syllable in robot a diphthong? Only one vowel, seems impossible to string it like a true diphthong.

 

I do pronounce the first syllable as "row", but I also see tberton's second syllable in my pronunciation. row-baht.

[Ozzie]

Well, pronounciation is a pretty complex thing that varies not only across regional (and other) variants but also according to the immediate and larger context of the word and sentence or simple day-by-day fluctuations. Phonetic transcription is only an approximation of how this all works, and I don't think it's worth getting too pedantic about individual examples.

 

For instance, the vowel in free is produced open-ended and is consequently probably pretty close to how you might produce it in isolation if prompted, while in the word beat your tongue has to be ready to produce that t sound at the front of the mouth. Likewise, a single person might pronounce the word robot pretty differently depending on whether you clearly enunciate it in isolation or slur it a little in the context of a sentence.

 

All true. Though I will say, if you want to learn how to pronounce "ü", and you don't think of just saying the vowel in "free", but say the whole word, then it won't get you there, while "beat" does if you do with it the same (well, when you stop at the vowel, of course). So didactically, "free" just not a good word to use.

[tberton]

This is something though that I also find interesting, maybe non-US thumbs could chime in here.  When I IPA something in German, for example, I was trained to do so in what is considered a "universal" accent, which I was taught is Hochdeutsch.  Similarly in Italian, Roman Italian is kind of seen as the standard, although I feel like Italian is a lot easier to standardize because all vowels are pure.  But is that recognized within these countries?  I guess a sort of nonregional English would be Midwestern English, since there is very little accent or affectation, but even as such there is also a more "proper" version like I said that could be used... It's just kind of interesting to me how dialects work out.  In Italian specifically some of the dialects are so different that they can be incomprehensible.

 

For North America, at least, I've heard people talk about "news anchor" English as the dialect that is usually judged against. 

[brkl]

I am super puzzled how the first syllable in robot a diphthong? Only one vowel, seems impossible to string it like a true diphthong.

 

I do pronounce the first syllable as "row", but I also see tberton's second syllable in my pronunciation. row-baht.

The number of letters just plain doesn't matter. For example, as far as I know, 'caught' is never a diphthong even with the 'au' and just a simple /t/ even with that 'gh'. Diphthongs are considered single phonemes anyway, at least according to how I was taught.

It's been a long time since I had to think about this stuff.

[Deadpan]

Maybe you should just switch over to an easier language, like German, where letters actually mostly correspond with sounds (except for loan words, of which there are a lot, but many of them are Engiish, so you're basically set!).

[jennegatron]

Maybe you should just switch over to an easier language, like German, where letters actually mostly correspond with sounds (except for loan words, of which there are a lot, but many of them are Engiish, so you're basically set!).

 

Truuuuth. Except for a couple sounds (like the umlauted vowels and the slight roll to the r that some Germans do) it's super easy to know how to pronounce German words because if there's a letter there, pronounce it, and if it's not, don't. It makes some words harder that have things like silent p's in them like psychology (Psychologie for example) but on the whole, it's a very straightforward language in regards to pronunciation. Grammar and cases is harder as a native speaker of a language without gendered nouns. I loved studying German.

[brkl]

Maybe you should just switch over to an easier language, like German, where letters actually mostly correspond with sounds (except for loan words, of which there are a lot, but many of them are Engiish, so you're basically set!).

I already speak Finnish. We pronounce the 'p' in 'psychology'.

[Ozzie]

We do in German, too, actually.

[jennegatron]

We do in German, too, actually.

 

Thus my "Psychologie" reference above!

[RyanCConnelly]

Also in French! "psychologie" 

[Ozzie]

Thus my "Psychologie" reference above!

 

So I did misunderstand you! Sorry.

You meant to say then that in English the p in psychology is silent? Huh, good to know. ^^

[jennegatron]

So I did misunderstand you, sorry.

You meant to say then that in English the p in psychology is silent? Huh, good to know. ^^

 

Ahhh yeah, I can see why that would be confusing. I tried to distinguish by doing the German spelling & capitalizing since it's a noun, but yeah. It's a non-silent p in German and a silent p in english, which is why it's a cognate that's harder as a non-native German speaker. English is like 20% randomly silent letters : P

[BobbyBesar]

Sorry about dredging up an old argument, but I was thinking about this:

 

Oh I know that (Cantor's Diagonal Method is near the top of my list of mind-blowing revelations). What I'm talking about is when somebody describes a number as infinite when it's just really big or arbitrarily big.

 

There are certain contexts where finite but arbitrarily large numbers might be "effectively infinite", such as the number of possible chess games (which is too many to be played before the heat death of the universe).

 

For precision's sake, these should probably be referred to as "effectively infinite" or "un-computably many", but "almost infinite" may not be a terrible way to express this. (Pedantically, of course, it's still wrong.)

[Ninety-Three]

How do you criticize a pun? The language around puns has warped to the point where "That pun is awful" doesn't convey the same meaning as "That 'your mom' joke is awful", so how do you convey that meaning? Today I encountered a pun that was poorly constructed and I had to spend a small paragraph documenting the pun's flaws to avoid my comments being misconstrued as an appreciation of the pun. Is there anything you can say that's similar to the brevity of "That 'your mom' joke is awful"?

[Twig]

Bad puns can be really good, though. I don't mean in the same way that people generally say "that pun is awful" to mean good, I mean as in a poorly constructed pun can be great.

 

Why not just say "poorly constructed"?

[Zeusthecat]

How do you criticize a pun? The language around puns has warped to the point where "That pun is awful" doesn't convey the same meaning as "That 'your mom' joke is awful", so how do you convey that meaning? Today I encountered a pun that was poorly constructed and I had to spend a small paragraph documenting the pun's flaws to avoid my comments being misconstrued as an appreciation of the pun. Is there anything you can say that's similar to the brevity of "That 'your mom' joke is awful"?

 

"That pun was stupid and you're a fucking idiot for opening your dumb mouth." should do the trick.

[Mangela Lansbury]

"I don't think that was as clever as you think."

[Coods]

Give it a rating. Implies that you aren't just a guy who groans at puns and would rate higher if it was actually better. 

 

Other than that, I option for Zeus' response. Fuck puns. 

[Ninety-Three]

Give it a rating.

Ooh, I like that for brevity. "D minus" or "4/10. Apply yourself."

[Twig]

Fuck puns. 

puns are great tho

[tberton]

Fuck puns are pretty awesome.

[Claire Hosking]

Am I allowed to be pedantic just in general here? Because I have a gripe about the way people use envious/jealous as interchangable, when they mean different things. Envy is the desire for something you don't have. Jealousy is fear of losing a thing you have. I know language goes where it goes and people adapt words to fit their needs, I'm just sad two useful concepts are being merged into a less useful "you have something I like and I feel bad" idea.

[Ben X]

I've never heard "jealous" used in that way, interesting that it used to mean that.