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My posts might look OK to many, but often I will spend 30 mins doing a simple reply (lots of editing and making sure it’s easy for others to read before posting, whereas most people probably spend only two or three mins doing the same sort of reply.
You missed the closing bracket
I noticed that the third time I read it, so it clearly wasn't that important!
and you quoted wrongly. you put your words into HobGoblyn's mouth and HobGoblyn's words into Nominal Animal's. be carefull with opening and closing quote's tag (missing opening or closing bracket is not as bad) this can be seen as irresponsible act. preview your post before posting. cheers ymmv.Mind you, in my defence, at infant school in the late 60s my school decided to experiment on my year (both my older sisters escaped this) by trying to teach me using something called ITA.
One of my earliest memories is asking my father to teach me to read. He did. We got a few pages into the second "Janet and John" book, and decided to move onto interesting stuff. Consequently I could read well before starting school at 5. School was boring.
A couple of years later I saw the ITA, thought it was a bloody stupid idea for two reasons. Obviously you have to learn to read twice. Plus you can't continue to learn by reading all the interesting things you find around you.
Summary: I have a lot of sympathy. -
...I will keep you, Susy, busy,...
thats called poet and its poetry. there's an art in drawing canvas, there's an art in developing rigol GUI, and there's an art in using words (linguistics), poets, analogical skill or idioms are few of them imho... you seem to have the linguistics artistic talent... i dont usually unleash that talent unless to girls or to my wife before we marry, because they can be affected the most. normally i just tend to use shortest sentence possible to convey (mostly technical) message such as "Suzy can you give me a massage? because my head is dizzy" thats it. no need unnecessary redundant use or extra words. from some point of view i do see redundant words as similar to nonsensical hieroglyphs, just a waste of space and time
ymmv cheers.
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and you quoted wrongly. you put your words into HobGoblyn's mouth and HobGoblyn's words into Nominal Animal's. be carefull with opening and closing quote's tag (missing opening or closing bracket is not as bad) this can be seen as irresponsible act. preview your post before posting. cheers ymmv.
The second one was careless; corrected. Not sure why you included the first one, but it isn't worth discussing. -
Not sure why you included the first one, but it isn't worth discussing.
i'm not interested in missing bracket either (although in some cases it can raise confusion as to where the sentence stop or continue), the relevance is that, we need to check our post more carefully. so your advice/reminder in that post is relevant to him, to you and me and other readers. cheers. -
A small offtopic, may be.
There are a lot of not native English speakers (including me, of course), but sometimes we can see here some sentences which hardly understandable. Only a few wish to decipher these writing.
It seems that it writes not in English at all.
Like this -QuoteNo one had had the slightest desire to learn the language of the boghogs for the simple reason that these creatures communicated by biting each other very hard on the thigh.
But much worse when someone starts to write in all cap. Come across the title "HELP!!!!" and think - it’s a matter of life and death. Next open topic and read "AM NEWBIE. HOW TO CONNECT BULB TO BATTERY?
??"
Another quote -QuoteHe got as far as, “Where shall I put -” when there was a sudden violent flurry and he collapsed heavily against the door, trying to beat off a small and mangy creature that had leapt snarling out of the wet night and buried its teeth in his thigh, even through the thick layers of leather padding he wore there. There was a brief, ugly confusion of jabbering and thrashing. The man shouted frantically and pointed. Arthur grabbed a hefty stick that stood next to the door expressly for this purpose and beat at the boghog with it.
...
“What do you think it was trying to say?” asked Arthur in a small voice.
“Ah, nothing much,” said the man “Just its way of trying to be friendly. This is just our way of being friendly back,” he added, gripping the stick.
My message: Write right - Be Human, not boghot!
PS. Quotes from book "Mostly Harmless" by Douglas Adams (Book 5 of trilogy "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") -
english spelling is FUBAR (no insult intended)
Oh, I think you had every intention of insulting the English language. 😉 Don't worry, most native speakers agree with you.ps: imho its possible to spell english in phonetics way just using normal alphabets
I... respectively disagree, at least if you aren't going to use a whole lot of multi-glyph clusters to represent vowel sounds. English uses approximately 13 unique monophthongs. If by "normal alphabets" you mean ASCII, that gives you six "obvious" glyphs unless you make upper- and lower-case glyphs distinct. Personally, I don't recommend it.
I actually developed my own system for writing English phonetically. For monophthongs, I use 'a', 'ä', 'å', 'e', 'ë', 'i', 'y', 'ÿ', 'o', 'û', 'u' and 'ü'. Diphthongs are 'ai', 'au', 'oi' and 'üi'; dipthongs with 'ÿ' usually omit it, i.e. fear is "fir" not "fiÿr". (But see exception, below.) TBH, 'ÿ' and 'û' could probably be combined without loss of readability.
I'd spell "mi" and "laik" the same as you, but the second-person pronoun is "ju", and a feline is a "kät". IMHO your vowel choices... aren't very intuitive. I base mine on ecclesiastical Latin pronunciations (with possibly a bit of Spanish influence), and (at least if you can muddle your way through pronouncing Latin/Spanish) it's surprisingly easy to read even if you've never seen it before:
Mai kät lüvz mi, liaks mai dåg, änd hets ju. Äkshûli, shi hets ëvriwün büt mi änd mai dåg.
Diryst kricÿr yn krieshûn
Stüd'jyŋ Yŋġlysh pronünsjeshûn,
Ai wyl tic ju yn mai vÿrs
Saundz laik korps, kor, hors änd wÿrs
Ai wyl kip ju, Suzi, byzi,
Mek joÿr hëd wyth hit ġro dyzi;
Tir yn ai, jor drës jûl ter;
Kwir, fer siÿr, hir mai prer.
Pliz dont sir thü siÿr.
(Note "stüd'jyŋ" (two syllables) in the second line rather than "stüdiyŋ" (three syllables), and similarly "pronünsjeshûn" (four syllables) rather than "pronünsieshûn" (five syllables). The latter is still a horrid force-fit to the meter. Still, it's interesting how phonetic spelling can be used to change the spelling of words depended on how they're meant to be spoken. It's also useful for "writing" accents.)
Writing is another matter, of course, but with only a very little practice, I find I'm able to read this system almost as fast as "normal" English. -
A major issue with trying to write English phonetically is that pronunciation is not constant or consistent. Not only does it change regionally, and over time (accents change with each generation), but also by placement within a phrase (weak forms and strong forms).
Even something as simple as the short "a" in cat varies dramatically in sound depending on where you hear it spoken.
Phonetics can be really complicated. -
I feel I really need to emphasize that it is important to try to express yourself as clearly as possible; how well you succeed in that is not very important at all.
The reason is twofold.
One is that the attempt itself will organize your thoughts on the matter; see my earlier mention about rubber duck debugging to find out exactly why. That is, just by making the effort of expressing yourself to others clearly, you end up organizing your thoughts. So, it is worth the effort to the asker to do this, even if they get zero responses.
The other is that the effort does show up. I personally have to re-read my own posts afterwards to make sure I expressed what I intended, and often end up having to modify the post for grammar and individual words. (Be careful to not change the meaning of the post, especially after someone has responded, because the history of the discussion is itself important and useful. Adding a note, or using overstrike, to show that some part is wrong/incorrect/needs clarification, is perfectly okay.)
So, even if you have trouble expressing yourself, just take your time and spend the effort you wish others would spend when responding to you (or if you prefer helping others, the effort you wish others would spend when asking questions). If anyone has difficulties understanding the question or answer, they should ask for clarification; perhaps via "do you mean you have ...." explaining how they understood it, to make it easier to clarify. (A post stating "I don't understand you." is not very useful, because the not-understood person has no idea how to adjust their output to make it more understandable.)
Some of the posts above related to phonetics (the "standard" is international phonetic alphabet, or IPA, although various languages have their own; for example Chinese Pinyin) show how complicated it is to express a spoken English word in writing.
Consider, therefore, how complicated it can be to express a technical idea or problem, exactly!
Even if you have it crystal clearly in your mind, conveying it to others is not so simple. It takes effort.
For arithmetic, algebra, calculus, and formal logic we have mathematical notation; MathJax seems widely used on the web as of 2024, and works here too. (See e.g. this thread.) For programming, we have a number of programming languages and even "pseudocode", not implementing any specific programming language but being similar to many. For electronics circuits, we have schematic diagrams with more or less standard set of electronic symbols.
It is quite common that the actual "showstopper" to understanding or solving some problem is not where the asker believes it to be, but one or more steps "deeper" into the question. In mathematics, we typically avoid that by examining entire equations, possibly generalized by replacing and combining numerical constants with named constants. In programming, where the entire source is often too large to show, one is expected to distill the problem into a minimal, complete, verifiable example (MCVE), that is short enough to convey, but still exhibits the same problem. Similarly, when the problem concerns an electrical circuit, it is important to include everything relevant to the problem, while omitting the unrelated details.
Obviously, it takes time and effort to learn to do any of those well. My own point here is that as long as you put in and show the effort –– including a followup post when you decide on your solution path, and recording your conclusions for others reading the thread later on ––, and are willing to learn, it suffices. But, at the same time, the effort is necessary, as otherwise the signal-to-noise ratio of discussion can drop to the level of shouting in a crowded mall, which is no fun at all when technical discussions are involved. -
I feel I really need to emphasize that it is important to try to express yourself as clearly as possible; how well you succeed in that is not very important at all.
The reason is twofold.
...
Yes, in all respects. Another useful post.
Dave made this thread sticky notably soon after you started it. That has turned out to be a prescient choice. -
A major issue with trying to write English phonetically is that pronunciation is not constant or consistent.
True, and if you're going to do it seriously, you'd reflect those differences. Hopefully by using different spellings within a consistent system. (I did mention "written accents" as a specific use case.)
Of course, spelling already has regional differences, so I'm hardly convinced this is fatal to the idea.[T]he "standard" [for writing phonetics] is international phonetic alphabet, or IPA.
The problem with IPA is a) the glyphs are unfamiliar (and not very uniform!), b) some are case dependent or don't have upper- and lower-case variants, and c) they are very difficult to type. (Personally, I think IPA looks like a mix of Latin and very-non-Latin scripts.) The system I designed can be typed on any system that supports a compose key, and possibly some existing Latin-like international keyboards. Additionally, every glyph used has both upper- and lower-case variants. Compare this:
Dɪɹɪst kɹiːt͡ʃɚ ɪn kɹiːˈʲeɪʃɘn
Stʌdjɪŋ ɪŋɡlɪʃ pɹənʌnsiˈeɪʃən,
Aɪ wɪɫ tiːt͡ʃ juː ɪn maɪ vɝs
Saʊnz laɪ̯k koɹps, koɹ, hoɹs ænd wɝs
Sɔɹd ænd swɔɹd, ɹəteɪn ænd bɹɪtən
(Maɪnd ðiː lætəɹ haʊ ɪts ɹɪtən).
Meɪd hæz nɑt ðiː saʊnd ʌv beɪd,
Seɪ-sɛd, peɪ-peɪd, leɪd bʌt plæd.
...with my earlier example.
On the subject, there's also Shavian, with its own set of glyphs, but even worse; it's completely foreign to existing English speakers, and the glyphs aren't even in Unicode (AFAIK). There's also English Phonemic Representation (enPR) which is closer to my system (and lacks several of the mentioned problems with IPA), though I would argue that 'ə' and 'û' don't need to be distinguished. Otherwise, aside from the vowel glyph assignments differing, it's very similar to my system except that nearly every vowel uses a non-ASCII glyph ('ou' is the only exception).
For completeness, here's the fourth stanza in my system:
Sord änd sword, riten änd Brytyn
(Maind thü lätyr hau yts rytyn).
Med häz nat thü saund üf bed,
Se-sëd, pe-ped, led büt pläd.
(Incidentally, I don't get the last line; "made" and "bade" do rhyme. At least how I've ever heard "bade" pronounced...) -
(Incidentally, I don't get the last line; "made" and "bade" do rhyme. At least how I've ever heard "bade" pronounced...)
It can be either, as per "bade, past tense of bid, is traditionally pronounced /bad/, rhyming with bad, but /beɪd/, rhyming with spade, is also heard."
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199661350.001.0001/acref-9780199661350-e-443
The good thing about standard accents/pronounciations is that there are so many to choose from
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(Incidentally, I don't get the last line; "made" and "bade" do rhyme. At least how I've ever heard "bade" pronounced...)
Historically, they didn't rhyme. But this is a case where new generations pronounce a word differently, and eventually they most likely will rhyme.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/learner-english/bade
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extra vowel sounds can be represented with combination of two letters such as "ae", "ao", "ua" etc. i'm sure expert linguists can find a way for it, i'm not really a linguist guy myself, i just want to think whats more practical, technical or engineering thinking may affect my opinion. adding extra letters or characters such as "a" with hat or dash or double dots and those IPA thing will complicate existing 26 normal letters. keyboard layout need to be changed/added to and it can be difficult for fast handwriting or keyboard typing skill we currently have. imho ymmv.ps: imho its possible to spell english in phonetics way just using normal alphabets
I... respectively disagree, at least if you aren't going to use a whole lot of multi-glyph clusters to represent vowel sounds. English uses approximately 13 unique monophthongs. If by "normal alphabets" you mean ASCII, that gives you six "obvious" glyphs unless you make upper- and lower-case glyphs distinct. Personally, I don't recommend it.
I actually developed my own system for writing English phonetically. For monophthongs, I use 'a', 'ä', 'å', 'e', 'ë', 'i', 'y', 'ÿ', 'o', 'û', 'u' and 'ü'. Diphthongs are 'ai', 'au', 'oi' and 'üi'; dipthongs with 'ÿ' usually omit it, i.e. fear is "fir" not "fiÿr". (But see exception, below.) TBH, 'ÿ' and 'û' could probably be combined without loss of readability.Dɪɹɪst kɹiːt͡ʃɚ ɪn kɹiːˈʲeɪʃɘn
looks like a FU phonetics system i cant read, i only familiar with standards back around 90's used in my dictionary, not sure what standards but it seems they are so many variants.
Stʌdjɪŋ ɪŋɡlɪʃ pɹənʌnsiˈeɪʃən,
and then there's "ny", nya is not "nee-ya"...