AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

[AndySir]

Ahhh, the eidetic instance argument.

I think you'll find that cultural membership, although fuzzy and non-exclusive, is very real.

The further removed you are from my cultural norms then the harder you will find it to fit in and in the words of us common people, fit in or **** off.

You mean the individual is the largest instance which can be said to have an identity? Um, I suppose so although that sounds like a question for UE. I'm far from convinced you can define any group by fuzzy or non-exclusive criteria... this is well out of my comfort zone but sounds like something Kant would have knocked down from one of my last conversations with UE. My naive understanding of the concept rests on the question of how you would say if someone was or wasn't a member of a group who's definition was not-exclusive.

[biffvernon]

One aspect of culture is language and the ability to pronounce words in a commonly accepted form. It is by no means a defining aspect of culture but just one of many, non-exclusive, aspects.

Try reading this out aloud:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

[emordnilap]

Excellent.

[biffvernon]

Of course it is perfectly possible for a foreign linguist to have sufficient mastery of English to be able to read the poem 'correctly' but to do so they will probably have had to be thoroughly steeped in English literary culture and a suitable variation of the Turing Test might identify them as 'English'.

[UndercoverElephant]

English is the only indo-European language that has both multiple spellings for the same sound and multiple sounds for the same spelling. It also well over twice as many words as any of the others. It must be a nightmare to learn as a foreign language. And it's not just the words themselves - we also use a lot of idioms, and for people not familiar with them the result is completely incomprehensible.

I speak no foreign languages, but I did know all but two of the words in the poem, and their correct pronunciation. The two were "Terpsichore" and "Melpomene", both of which are names of muses from Greek mythology.

ETA: I'm not sure we should really be counting purely Greek and Latin words that just happen get used in English, especially proper nouns. This causes me real problems in my daily life, because I need to tell people the latin names of various fungi we find and in most cases I've never heard anybody else pronounce those latin names. So I'm faced with words like "glyciosmus" and unsurprisingly don't know how to pronounce them. This is not really English.



Agathidium vaderi, the recently discovered "Darth Vader Beetle."

[Blue Peter]

English is the only indo-European language that has both multiple spellings for the same sound and multiple sounds for the same spelling.

It's because English spelling does not concentrate primarily upon sounds, but on meanings. So, related words have similar spellings, even though different sounds, e.g. 'ed' is generally used for the past participle, even though it is pronounced differently in different words (for example 'skipped' and 'rolled'). And foreign words tend to retain their spelling, even though they wouldn't sound like that if English, e.g. 'chef', 'phantom'



Peter.

Edit: for spoolin'

[the_lyniezian]

The eccentricities of English spelling have very, very little to do with peak oil, however...

[emordnilap]

The eccentricities of English spelling have very, very little to do with peak oil, however...

Oh yes they do, as in when we try to peek into the future of peak oil, some folks get awful piqued.

[the_lyniezian]

The eccentricities of English spelling have very, very little to do with peak oil, however...

Oh yes they do, as in when we try to peek into the future of peak oil, some folks get awful piqued.

Groan.

[biffvernon]

Agathidium vaderi, the recently discovered "Darth Vader Beetle."

Love it. Some of the fungi have good names too. Phallus impudicus for instance.

Since nobody remembers the Romans we are at liberty to pronounce Latin in whatever way we like, but the most obviously phonetic pronunciation is usually accepted.

[biffvernon]

The eccentricities of English spelling have very, very little to do with peak oil, however...

But we don't appear to have reached Peak Words yet:

The number of words in the English language is : 1,019,729.6. This is the estimate by the Global Language Monitor for January 1, 2012.

The English Language passed the Million Word threshold on June 10, 2009 at 10:22 a.m. (GMT). The Millionth Word was the controversial ‘Web 2.0′. Currently there is a new word created every 98 minutes or about 14.7 words per day.

http://www.languagemonitor.com/no-of-words/

[RenewableCandy]

How can you have 0.6 of a wor

[the_lyniezian]

How can you have 0.6 of a wor

The same way as you ended your sentence on 0.75 of a word.

[Snail]

Web 2.0 isn't a proper word! And neither is n00b (you could spell it with oo), nor ones made of two already known words like carbon neutral joined together!

[UndercoverElephant]

Agathidium vaderi, the recently discovered "Darth Vader Beetle."

Love it.

Believe it or not, this genus also contains the species A. bushi, A. cheneyi and A. rumsfeldi.