malloc + 4??

[Keith Thompson]

As an American who speaks four languages and has travelled internationally,
I try to be sensitive to such things, but it just doesn't come naturally to
us. I see three reasons why -- meant as explanation, not justification:

1. IMHO, you can't understand how other cultures differ until you speak a
second language. The US is virtually the only place on earth you can life
your entire without consistently running into other languages, due to its
relatively homogenous culture, large population, and isolated geography.

[...]

Q: What do you call someone who speaks two languages?
A: Bilingual.

Q: What do you call someone who speaks one language?
A: American.

If I were a benevolent dictator imposing a universal language, I'd
pick something far more regular than English (though it's hard to beat
it for richness of vocabulary). I've heard that English is the only
language in which spelling bees are held (contests in which the object
is to correctly spell words after hearing them spoken).

On the other hand, as a native speaker of American English, I'm only
too glad to take advantage of the existing situation. If the dominant
language of this newsgroup were something other than English, I'd be
in deep trouble.

 

[Richard Bos]

Q: What do you call someone who speaks two languages?
A: Bilingual.

Q: What do you call someone who speaks one language?
A: American.

English. No, not British - the Welsh sometimes speak Cymru, and the
Scots Scottish.

USAnians speak zero languages, plus one uncategorisable bastardisation
of the language of the last answer ;-p

If I were a benevolent dictator imposing a universal language, I'd
pick something far more regular than English (though it's hard to beat
it for richness of vocabulary). I've heard that English is the only
language in which spelling bees are held (contests in which the object
is to correctly spell words after hearing them spoken).

Possible, but that may also be because it is an amazingly bad way of
holding a spelling contest. In the .nl and .be, we have our yearly
"Groot Dictee der Nederlandse Taal", but that consists of a number of
spoken _sentences_, which the candidates need to write down. That's much
more realistic, IMO.
It's not a school children's activity, either - the contestants are
adults, both a group of celebs and a group of selected "unknown"
candidates - plus, of course, everybody who sits behind the telly and
plays along, including yours truly - and the celebs, of course, tend not
to do as well as the others. Usually, a Belgian wins - last year, a
Belgian guy won with 0 - yes, zero - errors. That was bleedin' amazing.

Richard

 

[Joona I Palaste]

Possible, but that may also be because it is an amazingly bad way of
holding a spelling contest. In the .nl and .be, we have our yearly
"Groot Dictee der Nederlandse Taal", but that consists of a number of
spoken _sentences_, which the candidates need to write down. That's much
more realistic, IMO.
It's not a school children's activity, either - the contestants are
adults, both a group of celebs and a group of selected "unknown"
candidates - plus, of course, everybody who sits behind the telly and
plays along, including yours truly - and the celebs, of course, tend not
to do as well as the others. Usually, a Belgian wins - last year, a
Belgian guy won with 0 - yes, zero - errors. That was bleedin' amazing.

People here might know next to nothing about Finnish, but like it's
been said, Finnish is pronounced pretty much like it's written. I have
studied (at least cursorily) many languages, and I truly believe Finnish
gets the closest to a 1-1 correspondence between written glyphs and
spoken sounds. As a child, when I first heard of the complex
pronunciation rules of English, I tried very hard to find such rules in
Finnish. The closest I ever got was "ng" and "nk" which are pronounced
like the "ng" and "nk" in English, not as "n" and "g" or "n" and "k"
separately.
German is *almost* like Finnish, but even that language has "ei"
pronounced as "ai" and "ie" pronounced as "ii". (Phonetic renditions -
not to be read as English.)
I believe that the Finnish pronunciation system is by far the simplest
in the entire western world. That is not to say anything about the
Finnish grammar - it's mostly easy, but trying to explain the binding
rules between case suffixes and word stems can be extremely difficult
even for a native Finn.

--
/-- Joona Palaste ([email protected]) ------------- Finland --------\
\-- http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste --------------------- rules! --------/
"'So called' means: 'There is a long explanation for this, but I have no
time to explain it here.'"
- JIPsoft

 

[Mark Henning]

English. No, not British - the Welsh sometimes speak Cymru, and the
Scots Scottish.

I believe, that the word you are looking for is Cymraeg. (Cymru = Wales)

 

[Mark Henning]

People here might know next to nothing about Finnish, but like it's
been said, Finnish is pronounced pretty much like it's written. I have
studied (at least cursorily) many languages, and I truly believe Finnish
gets the closest to a 1-1 correspondence between written glyphs and
spoken sounds. As a child, when I first heard of the complex
pronunciation rules of English, I tried very hard to find such rules in
Finnish. The closest I ever got was "ng" and "nk" which are pronounced
like the "ng" and "nk" in English, not as "n" and "g" or "n" and "k"
separately.
German is *almost* like Finnish, but even that language has "ei"
pronounced as "ai" and "ie" pronounced as "ii". (Phonetic renditions -
not to be read as English.)
I believe that the Finnish pronunciation system is by far the simplest
in the entire western world. That is not to say anything about the
Finnish grammar - it's mostly easy, but trying to explain the binding
rules between case suffixes and word stems can be extremely difficult
even for a native Finn.

Welsh is a highly phonetic language. To the extent that the spelling of the
words mutate depending on their context to match the way that syllables
mutate
when spoken verbally. Welsh is pronounced *exactly* as it is written.

M Henning

 

[Joona I Palaste]

Welsh is a highly phonetic language. To the extent that the spelling of the
words mutate depending on their context to match the way that syllables
mutate
when spoken verbally. Welsh is pronounced *exactly* as it is written.

Not knowing anything about Welsh, I was unaware of this. Could you give
some examples of this?

 

[Richard Bos]

I believe, that the word you are looking for is Cymraeg. (Cymru = Wales)

You may well be right, _I_ don't speak the lingo <g>.

Richard

 

[Dan Pop]

it for richness of vocabulary). I've heard that English is the only
language in which spelling bees are held (contests in which the object
is to correctly spell words after hearing them spoken).

There are such contests for French, too. The winners are usually NOT
native French speakers.

BTW, the average native French speaker can speak French grammatically
correct, but cannot write French grammatically correct. For most verbs,
several tenses and forms are pronounced identically, but written
differently. Since they learned speaking instinctively, get it right
when speaking is trivial, while getting it right when writing requires
a solid understanding of the French grammar (otherwise, it's trivially
easy to mix up, e.g. the infinitive and past participle of most regular
verbs).

Dan

 

[Mark Henning]

Not knowing anything about Welsh, I was unaware of this. Could you give
some examples of this?

Examples of mutation? Well, since this thread has already strayed from any
semblance of topicallity...

Bear in mind i am not a native welsh speaker, indeed I am only passing
familiar with the language.

in = yn
Wales = Cymru
in Wales = yng Nghymru

Dydw i ddim yn byw yng Nghymru.

M Henning.

 

[Joona I Palaste]

"Joona I Palaste" wrote...

Examples of mutation? Well, since this thread has already strayed from any
semblance of topicallity...

Bear in mind i am not a native welsh speaker, indeed I am only passing
familiar with the language.

in = yn
Wales = Cymru
in Wales = yng Nghymru

Dydw i ddim yn byw yng Nghymru.

Wow, you sure use a lot of "y" letters in Welsh. =)
How do you go about pronouncing all that? It looks like gibberish to me.
And what does it mean? I can only fathom the "yng Nghymru" part, and
even that only because you translated it for me.
All this reminds me of the "sandhi" phenomenon in Sanskrit. The sandhi
is a rigid set of rules of sound assimilation between adjacent words,
or within one word. It is reflected in both speech and writing. Is this
the case with Welsh too?

 

[Mark Henning]

Joona I Palaste wrote...

Wow, you sure use a lot of "y" letters in Welsh. =)

In welsh, y and w are vowels.

How do you go about pronouncing all that? It looks like gibberish to me.
And what does it mean? I can only fathom the "yng Nghymru" part, and
even that only because you translated it for me.

It means "I do not live in Wales" which is true. In fact I only ever
visited the country once, and that was as a small child. As for
pronunciation, I am not entirely sure, since while I can read and write
very basic welsh, I have never actually *spoke* it (it is rarely,
if ever, used outside of wales). Though I believe it pronounced thusly:

Dadoo ee thim un bayoo ung ghymroo

All this reminds me of the "sandhi" phenomenon in Sanskrit. The sandhi
is a rigid set of rules of sound assimilation between adjacent words,
or within one word. It is reflected in both speech and writing. Is this
the case with Welsh too?

I don't know, i'm not a linguist .

It sounds similar. Welsh seems to 'flow' from one word to the next. The
mutations allow the boundaries between the words to be slurred. (more
precisely, the mutations probably arose because the word boundaries were
slurred due to the evolution of the language.)

There is a similar phenomonon in english. The word 'a' can be thought to
mutate to 'an' when it precedes a word beginning with a vowel, as it is
dificult to pronounce otherwise. Welsh is a lot more severe.

 

[Arthur J. O'Dwyer]

People here might know next to nothing about Finnish, but like it's
been said, Finnish is pronounced pretty much like it's written. I have
studied (at least cursorily) many languages, and I truly believe Finnish
gets the closest to a 1-1 correspondence between written glyphs and
spoken sounds.

Closer even than Spanish? I think the only significant irregularities
in Spanish pronunciation are what happens to 'c[aou]' versus 'c[ei]' and
'gu[ao]' versus 'gu[ei]'. But I'm a little out of it, so maybe I missed
a couple.

-Arthur

 

[Joona I Palaste]

Closer even than Spanish? I think the only significant irregularities
in Spanish pronunciation are what happens to 'c[aou]' versus 'c[ei]' and
'gu[ao]' versus 'gu[ei]'. But I'm a little out of it, so maybe I missed
a couple.

Well, like I said above, Finnish has *no* irregularities, if you don't
count "ng" and "nk". So it is closer to a 1-1 correspondence than
Spanish.

 

[Michael Wojcik]

What can be done about it? Diddly-squat, I'm afraid. The only possible
remedy would be to re-colonise North America, this time with more than
one nationality, but there's a snowball's chance in hell of that,
especially with the US having the world's largest military army.

The previous colonization involved more than one nationality.
Depending on your definition of "colonization", it was a 300-500 year
process involving at least three major European ethnicities, many
African ones (generally not by choice), and significant contributions
from South America and Asia. (There were not, AFAIK, many native
Australians who participated in the colonization of North America,
and native Antarticans tend to keep a low profile.)

And the folks who were already here were of more than one nationality
(pick a different word if you define "nationality" restrictively) too.
Five hundred is the popular estimation.

The folks who won the wars and had the money were nearly all
anglophone, so in the early US English became the dominant language,
and nothing else really had much chance of challenging it. And
because the US is a relatively young country, it had relatively
advanced communications technologies in place as it extended its
borders. That encouraged language homogeneity and tended to suppress
regional variation.

Still, there are plenty of Spanish speakers in the US. Most have at
least some English, but not all.

(By the way, Joona, sorry I never responded to your last post in the
comics thread - I was away from Usenet for a while due to a personal
emergency. My partner's car died and we had to get her a replacement
right quick. I'll answer your questions by email when I have a
chance.)

 

[Richard Delorme]

Dan Pop a écrit :

There are such contests for French, too. The winners are usually NOT
native French speakers.

That's not true. The most popular contest is "la dictée de Pivot" also
known as "Les Dicos d'or" and the winners are usually French, but there
is a category for non native French speakers.

BTW, the average native French speaker can speak French grammatically
correct, but cannot write French grammatically correct. For most verbs,
several tenses and forms are pronounced identically, but written
differently. Since they learned speaking instinctively, get it right
when speaking is trivial, while getting it right when writing requires
a solid understanding of the French grammar (otherwise, it's trivially
easy to mix up, e.g. the infinitive and past participle of most regular
verbs).

Although your last example is a common mistake, it's very easy to avoid
it for a native french speaker: just replace the verb by another one
(usually "prendre") and its pronunciation discriminates between the
infinitive and the past participle. The most difficult part of the
French grammar is the agreement of the adjectives and past participles.
In some cases, it only depends on the order of the words in the sentence.
Besides French grammar, spelling French is difficult because of the many
ways (not as much as English, though) to write the same sound and
because of the presence of mute letters (much more than English), e.g.
"saint", "sain", "sein", "seing", "ceint", "cinq" all share an identical
pronunciation but a different meaning.

 

[Keith Thompson]

There is a similar phenomonon in english. The word 'a' can be thought to
mutate to 'an' when it precedes a word beginning with a vowel, as it is
dificult to pronounce otherwise. Welsh is a lot more severe.

And similarly, "the" is pronounced with a long 'e' when followed by a
vowel, though the spelling doesn't change.

 

[CBFalconer]

And similarly, "the" is pronounced with a long 'e' when followed
by a vowel, though the spelling doesn't change.

Oh? I would pronounce "the ant" just the same as "the cat".

 

[Martin Dickopp]

Oh? I would pronounce "the ant" just the same as "the cat".

Would you say that it is /possible/ (in correct English) to pronounce
the "e" in "the cat" like the first vowel of the word "ago"? Does the
same apply to the "e" in "the ant"?

Martin

 

[Joe Wright]

Oh? I would pronounce "the ant" just the same as "the cat".

Are you sure? How about "The President of the United States"? I would
pronounce it "Thuh President of thee United States". You not?

 

[CBFalconer]

[...]
There is a similar phenomonon in english. The word 'a' can be
thought to mutate to 'an' when it precedes a word beginning with
a vowel, as it is dificult to pronounce otherwise. Welsh is a
lot more severe.

And similarly, "the" is pronounced with a long 'e' when followed
by a vowel, though the spelling doesn't change.

Oh? I would pronounce "the ant" just the same as "the cat".

Would you say that it is /possible/ (in correct English) to
pronounce the "e" in "the cat" like the first vowel of the word
"ago"? Does the same apply to the "e" in "the ant"?

IMO, no, but I may be mistaking the sound represented. The two
acceptible prononciations of "the" are thee and thuh. I believe
you are referring to a "tha" sound, which I expect is limited to
some rural areas in the UK and the Ottawa valley in Canada, and
others unknown to me.

I have no facility in sound representations :-(