M
MRAB
I get annoyed by those who say "pronounciation"...
C
Chris Angelico
I decided a while ago that my life would be alot better[1] if I didn't
get annoyed at misuse of English, but instead used it as a source of
amusement. Oddities can be found everywhere... our hymn book at church
has one nasty oops where a "not" is mistyped as "now", rather changing
the sense of the sentence. And sometimes it doesn't even take a single
letter of difference - someone who'd recently been doing all the
touristy stuff around Europe was discussing the historical Battle of
Thermopylae, and said "Some of us were there (pause) earlier this
year" - several people began snickering in the pause.
ChrisA
[1] Bahahahaha, trolled you!
A
Andrew Berg
For those who haven't yet seen it:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html
D
Dennis Lee Bieber
Though that can be explained as being an attempt at phonetically
transcribing the contraction "should've"...
"Here the shepherd's heir is collecting merino hair"
N
Neil Cerutti
The cases where written and spoken English diverge are hotbets of
word usage problems. I'm glad the issue doesn't exist for
programming languages, which thankfully don't really have a
colloquial or spoken version.
Written English probably changes much slower than spoken English,
and we have the curmudgeon's to thank.
G
Grant Edwards
And I'm convinced that the more proficient the typist, the more often
one makes those sorts of mistakes when composing text. If you've got
to hunt and peck on the keyboard, then you've got to actually think
about how each word is spelled, and you realize which one you're
actually typing. If you're a proficient touch typist (and are typing
something on-the-fly rather than transcribing), I think the "sound" of
the word is more directly connected to the fingers without benefit of
grammatical conext invervening to choose the correct homonym.
I don't make those mistakes typing on a phone (where I have to
actually think about the act of typing), but I do make them with a
regular keyboard, where I don't have to think about mechanics of
typing the words.
OTOH, maybe that's just me...
D
David Robinow
It's me too. I certainly know the difference between 'there' and
'their', etc. but that fact is not always reflected in my typing.
M
Mark Lawrence
Somebody published a link to this poem some months back, I think it's
worth repeating http://www.i18nguy.com/chaos.html
G
Gregory Ewing
Neil said:
The curmudgeon's what?
S
Steven D'Aprano
The curmudgeon's what?
The curmudgeon's cudgel of course.
*wack* "Will you speak proper now or wot?"
I
Ian Kelly
And the obligatory response:
Iltnsegnetiry I'm sdutynig tihs crsrootaivnel pnoheenmon at the
Dptmnearet of Liuniigctss at Absytrytewh Uivsreitny and my
exartrnairdoy doisiervecs waleoetderhlhy cndairotct the picsbeliud
fdnngiis rrgdinaeg the rtlvaeie dfuictlify of ialtnstny ttalrisanng
sentences. My rsceeerhars deplveeod a cnionevent ctnoiaptorn at
hnasoa/tw.nartswdbvweos/utrtek
./il taht dosnatterems that thehhpsteyios uuiqelny wrtaarns criieltidby if the aoussmpitn that the
prreoecandpne of your wrods is not eendetxd is uueniqtolnabse.
Aoilegpos for aidnoptg a cdocianorttry vwpiienot but, ttoheliacrley
spkeaing, lgitehnneng the words can mnartafucue an iocnuurgons
samenttet that is vlrtiauly isbpilechmoenrne.
C
Chris Angelico
isbpilechmoenrne. I totally want to find an excuse to use that word
somewhere.. It just looks awesome.
Paradoxically, it's actually more likely that a computer can figure
out what you're saying here. In fact, I could easily write a little
script that reads /usr/share/dict/words (or equivalent) and attempts
to decode your paragraph. Hmm. You know what, I think I will. It's now
0958 UTC, let's see how long this takes me.
Meh. I did something stupid and decided to use a regular expression.
It's not 1020 UTC, so that's 21 minutes of figuring out what I was
doing wrong with the regex and 1 minute solving the original problem.
But here's your translated paragraph:
-- cut --
Interestingly I'm studying this controversial phenomenon at the
Department of Linguistics at Absytrytewh University and my
extraordinary discoveries wholeheartedly contradict the picsbeliud
findings regarding the relative difficulty of instantly translating
sentences. My researchers developed a convenient contraption at
hnasoa/tw.nartswdbvweos/utrtek
./il that demonstrates that thehypothesis uniquely warrants credibility if the assumption that the
preponderance of your words is not extended is unquestionable.
Apologies for adopting a contradictory viewpoint but, theoretically
speaking, lengthening the words can manufacture an incongruous
statement that is virtually incomprehensible.
-- cut --
It couldn't figure out "Absytrytewh", "picsbeliud", or
"hnasoa/tw.nartswdbvweos/utrtek
./il". That's not a bad result. (Andas a human, I'm guessing that the second one isn't an English word -
maybe it's Scots?) Here's the code:
words = {}
for word in open("/usr/share/dict/words"):
word=word.strip().lower()
transformed = word if len(word)==1 else
word[0]+''.join(sorted(word[1:-1]))+word[-1]
words.setdefault(transformed,set()).add(word)
words.setdefault(transformed.capitalize(),set()).add(word.capitalize())
import re
for line in open("input"):
line=line.strip()
for word in re.split("(\W+)",line):
try:
transformed = word if len(word)==1 else
word[0]+''.join(sorted(word[1:-1]))+word[-1]
realword=words[transformed]
if len(realword)>1: realword=repr(realword)
else: realword=next(iter(realword))
line=line.replace(word,realword)
except LookupError: # catches three errors, all of which mean
we shouldn't translate anything
pass
print(line)
Yeah, it's not the greatest code, but it works
ChrisA
I
Ian Kelly
It couldn't figure out "Absytrytewh", "picsbeliud", or
"hnasoa/tw.nartswdbvweos/utrtek
as a human, I'm guessing that the second one isn't an English word -
maybe it's Scots?) Here's the code:
It's been posted widely on the Internet, and you can probably find the
full solution by googling it up. For now, I'll just leave the hints
that the name of the university is Welsh, and that the second word
above is spelled in the British way, which is probably why your script
couldn't find it in a dictionary.
C
Chris Angelico
I sense another letter to your Minister for Education regarding the teaching
of Geography. Fancy not recognising a well known UK place name when it's
put right in front of you. And Scots indeed, my mum will be turning in her
grave
Oh, I recognized Aberystwyth (though I can't spell it without the help
of a search engine), it was the second I wasn't sure about. (Though
Ian was right - I was working with a limited dictionary, which is why
it didn't pick that one up.) I guessed Scots for the second one
because it didn't look Welsh and it seemed plausible to get a
mostly-English paragraph with one Welsh name and one Scots word.
Wrong, but hopefully not so implausibly wrong as to cause gyration of
the encephalographically-challenged.
Anyway, we Aussies know more about your geography than you know about
ours, I reckon. Which of these is not a real place: Parramatta,
Warrnambool, Cerinabbin, Mordialloc? No fair Googling them, see if you
can call it. I've been to three of the above places, the other one
came up in a fantasy name generator.
Okay, maybe that's not exactly fair, but I'd still be curious to know
how many of you know Aussie place names
ChrisA
C
Chris Angelico
I sense another letter to your Minister for Education regarding the teaching
of Geography. Fancy not recognising a well known UK place name when it's
put right in front of you. And Scots indeed, my mum will be turning in her
grave
Oh, I think I see where the misunderstanding may have been. I said
"It" couldn't figure those out, meaning the script; one of them isn't
a word at all, another one is a place name (and therefore not in its
dictionary), and one happened to be a form of the word that it didn't
have (as it had the equivalent with a 'z'), and I wasn't able to
figure it out myself either. But I grokked the university's name no
trouble. No other university has that many y's and so few other
vowels.
ChrisA
C
Chris Angelico
Oh. I've heard both, thought "Scots" was a valid term for the
language. My apologies. Scottish, then.
ChrisA
C
Chris Angelico
Hmm, I don't know that it's that clear-cut (other than the drink).
Derrick McClure is himself a Scot, and he posted this on Savoynet:
https://mailman.bridgewater.edu/pipermail/savoynet/2013-August/030264.html
Note his use of "Scots" to mean the language. Derrick, I'm cc'ing you
in on this: have I been led astray here by misreading your post?
ChrisA
T
Tim Golden
I thought that's how they came up with Australian place names normally?
TJG
TJG
C
Chris Angelico
Certainly not. The early white settlers had a very sophisticated
technique for naming places, and one that showed great respect for the
prior owners of the land: find the nearest person with darker skin
than yours, point to the surrounding area, and say "What's this place
called?". That's why most Australian place names translate to, in the
local language of the area, "Huh?" or "What do you mean?" or "I
haven't the faintest clue what you're talking about, old chap", or
occasionally "Place of the Elbow" or "Dung Heap" once they figured out
how easy these people were to troll.
No, the fantasy name generators are used in the US of A. And Canada
just picks someone else's place name and adds "-eh" to it.
ChrisA
M
MRAB
You need to distinguish between "Scottish English" and "Scots", the
latter being related to English, but isn't English, much as Danish is
related to Swedish, but isn't Swedish.