4045 -ough

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Capitalism in its mature form is corporate fascism. Fascism is the end game of capitalism.

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A rough, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman emerged from a slough to walk through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing.

The above sentence illustrates eight standard "Queen's English" ways to pronounce "ough".  

Of course, the actual number of pronunciations depends on local and regional dialects.  In the US, "slough" has so many variations that it's simply avoided.

I thought it was interesting.

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3535 More stuff I don't understand

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Sometimes one person's inability to understand looks like another person's inability to explain.

-- Dilbert --

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I don't understand English.  I suspected I didn't understand, but I didn't know how completely I didn't understand until I took the ESL (English as a second language) teacher training.  For example:
changer
hanger
anger
Angie
Why are they all pronounced differently?  What makes the "g" and "a" different?

I don't understand.

I do understand why the Québécois insist on speaking French.  At least there is consistency in pronunciation.  There are rules!

Speaking of pronunciation, I watched a video yesterday, a kid demonstrating how to do something.  Every other sentence started with, "Ima".  Like "Ima put this in the bowl, then Ima mix in the powder, then Ima add some water."  It took me a few minutes to realize that he was saying "I'm going to" (I think...).  

It's no damn wonder English is so difficult.  We don't even speak it any more.

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I have a plan of attack. 

I'm going to make an appointment with a specialist in blood vessels, and find out about why it hurts so badly when anyone messes with my veins, why they blow out and shut down, whether there is some way to make it easier to have blood drawn and to get contrast dyes, and get some details about my "fragile capillaries" and exactly how dangerous it would be to have the kidney stone zapped. 

Then I can maybe make some educated decisions on what to do next.

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I don't understand the fascination with pedestal sinks in the bathroom.  They're like granite counter tops.  You ain't got a high class house without 'em.

Why?

Granite (or any stone) counter tops don't make sense because they stain unless you constantly reseal them, are high maintenance, and their density is unforgiving if you set a piece of fine china down a bit too hard.

Likewise, pedestal sinks make no sense whatsoever.  There's no room on top to set anything down.  That was ok when bathrooms were huge - usually because in the dawn of indoor bathrooms, they were converted spare bedrooms.  There was plenty of space for cabinets and counters next to the sink. 

Somewhere a long time ago, as bathrooms became designed into new houses and therefore became smaller, someone looked back and forth between the pedestal sink and the cabinet that had to be also in the room for storing or setting things down, like the toilet paper, shaving items, tooth brushes and toothpaste, soap dish, drinking glass, combs, blah blah, for which there was no room at the sink, and said, "hey, let's combine them!  Let's cut a hole in the cabinet top, set the sink in, and then we'll have lots of convenient space to set the things we use at the sink!"

Brilliant!  Like sliced bread!

Now middle-class bathrooms are tiny, and people want to stick a pedestal sink in a tiny room that has no space for a separate counter or cabinet - simply because pedestal sinks are fashionable. 

It makes no sense to me.  Hell, I want the biggest sink cabinet and countertop I can get!
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3498 Pronunciation

Monday, March 26, 2012

When the elephants dance, the mice get trampled.

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Ever wonder how to pronounce a particular word? Especially if it's a different language?

Try http://www.forvo.com/languages/, or for just English, try http://www.howjsay.com/.

I understand Google, Google Chrome, and Wikipedia all have spoken pronunciation guides, too, but I don't know how to get to them. Comment if you know.

If it's one of those esoteric fictional words, or a proper name, you might be able to find it on YouTube.com.
- go to YouTube.com
- at the top, search for (for example) "ahmadinejad, cc", where the ", cc" says you want closed captions
- this will get you a list of all captioned videos whose titles or descriptions contain that word
- select one to view. If it's short, you can just listen to it
- if it's long, you can go directly to the word:
-- under the video you will see what looks like a page with a highlighted line
-- click on that icon
-- this gives you a printed transcript
-- look for the word you want, click on that line, and the video will go directly to that line.

Captioning on YouTube videos can sometimes be unintentionally hilarious, especially if it was machine generated. In the example above, in the CC transcript for the first video I tried for "ahmadinejad", it was transcribed as "on the teenager". So sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes the speaker is full of crap and pronounces it incorrectly. It's a crap shoot.