Solar liseuse charger (or: "Enjoyable descent into unutterable silliness.")

[slayda]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

heh, i also was raised by a teacher (primary school), so there was no latitude whatsoever for mis-pronunciation when i was growing up. when i was 2, my mother would impress her friends by asking me "what's that fish eating the algae in the aquarium ?" and i would reply (correctly enunciating) "it's a plecostomus." (i did have to check wikipedia just now to find how to spell it correctly !).

i have always been amazed by people who can imitate accents ; i have no talent for that. however i have little patience for people who speak lazily or badly (like in Taylor's quacking example, although i cannot for the life of me imagine what that could really sound like).

in french, there are the words "dénoter" (to denote) and "détonner" (to be out of tune, to jar). people are *always* saying "détonner" when they mean "dénoter" and it drives me crazy. especially since the meaning seems so obvious to me in each case, if you just think about it : "dénoter" like a note you would make to indicate something, and "détonner" like the "tone" of a sound or a color, which you are going against.

Ising "mythical" when you mean "legendary" also drives me crazy.

my friends often want to give me a good smack.

Whachew talkin bout? I ain' got no akcent but I do capitalize words properly, even though the Southern accent is a legedary myth.

[slayda]

NatCh (notice the correct capitalization) one reason Russion is so hard for me to pronounce is too many consonants together. My Southern tongue wants to add vowels it there.

As far as the imply/infer confusion, maybe if "exply" were a word, it would be less confusing. Exply would relate to explicit as impl does to implicit.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by NatCh

A very reliable differentiator as to whether an "American" is a Northerner or Southerner is the way they pronounce the word "greasy." If the "s" has a "z" sound, they're almost always a Southerner, and if the "s" is pronounced with an "s" sound they're almost always a Northerner.

Totally worthless, of course (unless the Civil War erupts again, I guess), but it's kinda fun, regardless.

And for East vs. West try the words weather and whether. (witch, which, etc.) If they sound the same then they are an Easterner. I had a friend from Pennsylvania that worked as a Radio announcer and had diction lessons but he could not even hear the difference between those two words much less say them differently.

Dale

[Taylor514ce]

I admit I don't do the "h" sound in front of whether, which, where, and so on. I did love the episode of Family Guy that lampooned that, though.

What's interesting is that East vs. West and South vs. North leaves out a huge region of the US. How would you classify a Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, or Missouri accent, for example?

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

I admit I don't do the "h" sound in front of whether, which, where, and so on. I did love the episode of Family Guy that lampooned that, though.

What's interesting is that East vs. West and South vs. North leaves out a huge region of the US. How would you classify a Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, or Missouri accent, for example?

In the USA, east and west are divided at the Alleghenies (a mountain range near the East coast). West is divided between midwest and farwest.

Dale

[Lobolover]

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

Lovecraft is an amazing author.

He is the progenitor of sci-fi that branched out from Space Opera and the kind of pulp tale that simply transposed cowboys and indians for spacemen and aliens.

While some of this work is quite thought provoking and eerie if one really contemplates it, some pieces are so hammy and campy that there should be that crazy zoom push-pull and a violin playing a "zing!" crescendo.

As for my present location, due to my job, am in an undisclosed one.

Sadly, Chicago is no longer a cromuent place for me, and once my wife & I sell the house, neither will Urbana.


Luckily, have not seen snow since last March. 'Tis pretty to look at while sipping hot cocoa with creme de menthe & peppermint Schnapps, but driving in it, walking in it, and all the other things you poor people must do is beyond me. For a while.

Actually, wife sent a photo of our house listing and I asked "why use a picture with snow?" Of course, it had been taken that day.

Vivaldi: Fire your travel agent or get a job where your conventions come to Chicago in the summer.

When you visit the Shedd, look up as you pass through the oceanic (I think) fish wing. You will see how these wretched shoggoth-spawn did to my little brother.

Never should have taught you little b**tards how to dream.....

Plus, do not spend overmuch time attempting to pronounce my name, lest you be beset by eldritch horror, leading to dementia and me eating your soul.

precisely.of all things labeled sci-fi,I hate "space opera",travells on huge space crafts and beams and inteligent semi cultured aliens speaking perfect english,even if they are in quadrants never before visited by man (the most hilariously stupid inconsistency in Star Trekk,ESPECIALY in Voyager).I mean, its like "real life,with a bit of something else and laser beams".

[NatCh]

Remember, the Star Trek universe has that lovely Universal Translator.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

hey, thanks for the suggestion ! that books sounds absolutely fascinating. i don't usually get audio books but it could be a good choice in this one, if he does the accents. does he ? (completely sincere question).

Yes, he does all the accents - he's a VERY good reader, and he reads most of his audiobooks himself, which is rather unusual. Most audiobooks are read by actors (I know a lady actor here in the UK who makes a good living from reading audiobooks - she's done hundreds of them.)

[Lobolover]

NaTch-which is not a reason for species who do not even seem to share the same dimension with the others,whose entrance is in a quadrant never before trodded by humans,to talk in english to each other.

[NatCh]

They're not talking English to each other, the Universal Translator is translating the speech back and forth between the speakers. It works through the communicator system somehow.

I agree it's kind of a goofy gimmick, but it was quite clever when they came up with it back in the '60s.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by NatCh

They're not talking English to each other, the Universal Translator is translating the speech back and forth between the speakers. It works through the communicator system somehow.

I agree it's kind of a goofy gimmick, but it was quite clever when they came up with it back in the '60s.

it's not nearly as goofy as the babelfish.

[Lobolover]

but returning to Lovecraft,he at least stears clear of moralism and ocultism, which can in turn get wery irksome.Question is-what would you call a fantasy seting with an ancient alien race present since before mankind?

[moz]

Oh, all right, you sucked me back into the thread. I can't resist...

Originally Posted by NatCh

I had to consciously prevent myself from slipping into one when I was around them, kind of a verbal chameleon effect.

I do that too. It's occasionally annoying, mostly when a third party is present but I slip into the accent of the primary speaker and the third party can't understand either of us. I have Scots relatives, y'see noo.

The one I've been running into recently is misuse of juxtapose.

I've never heard that misuse. Thankfully.

I love the "working along parallel lines" cross-cultural miscommunication. To merkins that phrase means working closely together, to many eastern asian nationalities it means we will never meet up or agree.

Speaking of which, to us Anglonesians "Asian" means east Asian - Han Chinese and Thai are Asian, Russians and Indians are not. But AFAIK very few people include Arabs when they say Asian, despite most of the middle east being on the Asian continent.

[moz]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

i have always been amazed by people who can imitate accents

I can't, I find it hard enough when someone asks me to say something in a foreign language that I speak. I struggle to force language changes. In Japan I once got into a humorous situation when someone asked me (in Japanese) to say something in English and I couldn't. So someone else repeated the question in English and I replied in English without thinking about it. Everyone laughed with me.

using "mythical" when you mean "legendary" also drives me crazy.

So, is the Christian bible myth or legend? What about the Mormon one?

(talk about dipped in shit, Nigel, he was going under for the third time)

One thing that amuses me with accents is minor variations. With NZ English vs Oztrayan English they're close to others but distinct to locals. Strayns leave out letters (and syllables) and have a whining tone to their voices - everything is shifted towards ee. So you get feeesh - fish - fush depending on which accents you speak and hear in (Australian as heard by New Zealanders, default and vice versa, respectively). Australians are notoriously lazy speakers, even compared to New Zealanders. Words trail off at the end and often lose syllables. Hence Oz, Oztraya, Strayns and Stryne (the country, country, people and language respectively).

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Lobolover

Question is-what would you call a fantasy seting with an ancient alien race present since before mankind?

Why, you'd call that Science Fiction, of course.

Originally Posted by moz

So, is the Christian bible myth or legend? What about the Mormon one?

I really should leave this one alone. I know better. So much better. But here I am anyway.

The events in the Christian Bible are mostly documentable history, so, if you choose to set aside any spiritual implications, you're left with history, or history with editorial/interpretive comments (which historians are generally allowed).

I won't touch the question on the Book of Mormon (it's separate from the Christian Bible, which they also use), primarily because I don't consider myself well informed enough on its contents to offer any observations that would be worth anything.