@scottalanmiller said in What did you have for lunch or dinner today?:

@jmoore said in What did you have for lunch or dinner today?:

@tonyshowoff Right! To all of that. I don't care if its a local pronunciation or not, if its obviously a word from a different language then respect that language and don't look like an idiot.

I'm from Covington, NY where we mispronounced our own language!

Actually that may not be true. Studies show that American English is closer to the English at the time of the establishment of the colonies than British English is, by quite a margin. And many things that we say that don't sound like "proper English" are actually us keeping the language more stable while Britain went off and developed new ways to say things recently.

I studied English language history at University as a minor, including learning Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English. Contrary to what most people think, Shakespeare spoke Early Modern English, as is "Ye Olde" which is pronounced "The Old". American English is actually closer to the English spoken by Shakespeare or at least in his time since we can't know for sure exactly what he sounded like. Most of the differences from American and the billions of British accents happened in the 18th and 19th centuries. So when in Shakespeare In Love you hear RP, East London, and Cockney accents, these are basically as accurate giving them 1920s Chicago gangster accents...nyaa see, copper! I'll get into more about it in a second...

@Dashrender said in What did you have for lunch or dinner today?:

How do you record something like that? phonic diagrams?

Well, this is a bit more complex, but the most evident thing to see is how in Britain, essentially all accents are non-rhotic, meaning they don't pronounce R at the end of a word unless the next word starts with a vowel. If English was always spoken this way, or was spoken this way prior to standardisation of spelling by noted crazy person Samuel Johnson, then words like "there" would be spelled more like "thea". A few minor American accents also have this feature, and both share in another bizarre feature of adding -r where a word actually ends in a vowel, this is more obvious in many English accents where they'll say "Africar" instead of "Africa."

English is also a Germanic language, and like all Germanic languages it went through a series of changes that the Grimm Brothers (among others) noted happened, and through this we can work backward to see how different accents and Germanic languages themselves were pronounced by the resulting changes. They changed at different paces and in some places changes which happened in some either didn't happen in others or are continuing to happen today. It's not as easily noticed because unlike English, all other Germanic languages have updated their spelling as their languages changed -- many English language scholars and general users think complex spelling makes their language unique and adds words to the language which is not only stupid but the exact reverse of how words are added.

English would have just as many words if there were more consistent spelling, and ironically you don't see many people other than Samuel Johnson arguing all the dozens of meanings of the words "set", "run", etc all need different spellings, but that's the logic. English speaking intellectuals often have and in the past certainly had a huge complex with their language, often denying it was a Germanic language at all, in fact I've heard English speakers claim their language comes from Latin.

But this isn't just a rant about spelling reform, rather it's an example of how we can see how words were pronounced to an extent. A simple example is "gh" which was at one time pronounced like the "ch" in German or similar to the "ch" in how Scottish people say "loch". Knowing this shows how words like "light" in English are directly related to words like "licht" in German. However during the Great Vowel Shift, which happened to some degree in all Germanic languages but to the highest degree in English, when long vowels (long as in duration, "long" and "short" vowels in English tend to mean "front" and "back" vowels in all other languages on the entire planet; so short i as in feet, was pronounced twice as long as long i feed. It's subtle in English but matters in Old English and in many other languages.). Most Germanic languages updated this, so Ice, spelled "is" before the French changed it, which was pronounced something like "Ees" in English in German, they updated it to "Eis" in German. This means that while they're pronounced the same, they spelling is vastly different.

And believe it or not the messed up spelling, created by several events other than the Great Vowel Shift, for example the Norman invasion of England, they added silent letters where English previously had no silent letters at all. This is because of their spelling rules. So for example English did not use the letter "v" as a consonant, instead "f" was used, so "Love", "Have" were spelled "Luf" and "Haf" (depending on conjugation). The Norman French didn't do this, so they changed those to "v", but in Norman French spelling rules words cannot end in "v", so an "e" was added, and a U and V were the same letter, so if a vowel version of "V" (now written U) was next at a consonant version of "V" (still written "V") they wrote it as O, so Luf becomes Love. This same rule applies with N and M, so "cum" became "come", really it was spelled like that.

We can use this as well to understand a bit about how English was pronounced, at least in areas where Norman French monks where.

Samuel Johnson who created the first notable English dictionary also added a lot of letters, and prior to him English was a bit more free floating, which helped show accent differences to a degree. Johnson was one of these people who had a huge complex about English being a Germanic language and never stopped hating it. He made up false etymologies, such as saying that "island", "aisle", "debt" were all originally from Latin, they weren't, so he changed their spelling it look more like similar Latin words, intentionally adding false etymology, making that stupid "complex spelling shows etymology and thus meaning" argument really nonsense... as though children learning to read also speak Ancient Greek, Latin, and Norman French. Nevertheless, these words were spelled "iland", "il", and "dett" before they were changed.

And finally, people, primarily monks early on but later writers, also described the sounds of their languages and accents, either intentionally or in some cases by making fun of the way other people spoke, this was especially common in Ancient Greece. By making comparisons to other languages and certain words we are able to make out even more details we can confirm with all the other stuff. So while we can't know exactly, precisely how English was spoken, we can say with pretty good certainty how the writer heard it, and that means British English is really the least English in the history of English since the Norman invasion.

There's even more insanity than that, but that's the basics, and while Shakespeare would have been more comfortable with how many Americans spoke (so long as they're not on the east coast with all the contact with the British) rather than his own countrymen, though it wouldn't have been exactly the same, the primary difference would have been that perhaps, though unproven, Shakespeare pronounced -ng simply as -n, but many Americans do that too.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@Donahue said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

tattoo?

OMG, someone has to get this as a tattoo for MangoCon!

If someone adds a battle axe in your hand, I'll get it.

Edit: I am not joking, I need something to distract from my other tattoos that send the "wrong message" within my favourite country.

@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

Or in other words "Nobody actually speaks this way, I think they should" and since that time most people still say "less" just as they did then.

Actually, most people you'd want to talk to speak this way.

I've yet to see any proof there's a connection between education and whether or not someone uses less vs fewer "correctly" without overt hypercorrection. In fact there are many really advanced grammarians who point out it's totally arbitrary, because it's an issue of prescriptive grammar vs descriptive grammar. I actually went to a debate between two different Oxford professors (can't remember the college(s) or their names other than one was a woman and the other an old man) where they each argued both sides of fewer vs less, but that wasn't the debate issue, it was about prescriptive vs descriptive grammar.

To my surprise it was the older man who was in favour of descriptive grammar, but then again the woman also claimed that English spelling impacts the lexicon and without a complex spelling system English would have less words and less meaning, a statement I was surprised to hear because it's so stupid. I don't think this has an impact either way on the argument, I'm just still so baffled at how utterly idiotic someone can be and still be an Oxford professor.

All language rules, in all languages, are made up by someone and then become accepted convention.

No they are not. Essentially all rules, except literary rules, are created by the evolution of language and by the speakers themselves. If we ignore writing, aside from "ain't", there are very few aspects of spoken grammar which ever need to be taught to anyone who is a native speaker. Children learn the rules with totally incomplete information. English speaking nations like to think children would never be able to speak properly without an education in grammar, but this creates a huge logic problem for language in general. The best way to learn advanced grammar is to read books.

But in English, correctly using less vs fewer is common and is one of the more obvious dividers between those that know how to speak and those that do not.

The vast majority of major languages have language academies which control rules for spelling, grammar, and usage. English has never had this so rules are made up by random people, often with little understanding of history. As I demonstrated, Robert Baker himself said he just thought it was better and sounded more correct, and if 248 years later we still need to hypercorrect people on the usage it shows that there's no innate confusion with mixing them up. Not only that, the rule is based upon his own misunderstanding of both "less" and "few" and how he thought people should speak.

If I say "There were 10 less than yesterday" and we're talking about weight then it makes sense, if we're talking about countable items, it still makes sense. Most people actually speak this way. Very few people say "10 items or fewer" because it sounds hypercorrected and silly.

That doesn't mean fewer has no use, it certainly does, the question is whether or not less can carry the weight of both, and they can, because in all Germanic languages except English the word "less" exists in various forms, but "fewer" does not. And English functioned quite well without Robert Baker making up the rule in 1770.

I have seen stats on usage taken amongst college educated individuals or professors (I don't recall), in the "fewer vs less" argument, only about 50% of them even knew of the distinction, and only about 20% actually used it. I don't have that information anymore and was trying to see if I could find it online and I can't so it doesn't prove anything and it's based on my word alone. I wish I had it because it had a lot of other weird stats too.

And it is not arbitrary.

Actually it totally is, there are few rules which are as arbitrary as this one. It's a rule that is trying to base itself on class, just as you demonstrated, the implication one is uneducated by saying "10 items are less". There are few rules like this in spoken language, the biggest certainly is "ain't", which even when I was in University, a professor actually argued with me that "ain't ain't in the dictionary" and, no, she was not an English professor, but it is a common myth because it's considered such wrong use.

I myself don't typically say "ain't", except sarcastically or joking way, mostly because it doesn't fit right and I didn't use it when learning English. Having said that, "ain't" actually did evolve within English and was brought to America by Protestants, primarily to the South East, hence its use there.

The struggle against it is related to class, but it's an issue that originates back in Jolly Ol' England, where language was a function of class, and in America that was not the case until primarily the mid-1800s when newspapers began using bad spelling and bad grammar as a means to communicate someone was stupid, uneducated, or poor primarily to demean politicians. It's a very British view of language indeed.

If someone literally makes up a rule based on his personal opinion and then finally by the end of the 19th century some people start taking it up as a real rule rather than ignoring it, it is arbitrary. If less can be stated as "less" or "fewer" and it still makes equal sense, then the distinction is arbitrary.

Here's my biggest and best trump card I wish I would have thought of when writing essays about language at university, because while it's not proof of anything, it's so goofy but sort of an interesting thought about language:

The mere fact there's absolutely no jokes, good jokes or terrible sitcom jokes, based on someone confusing the meaning of something because "less" was used rather than "fewer" shows it's not something built into the function of the language but tacked on.

Fewer people means a small number in head count.

Less people means a small volume, like in weight or displacement.

Less people than yesterday, I weigh less than I did before. They're both perfectly fine statements and they're what most people would use.

They aren't interchangeable unless you don't want the ability to communicate clear meaning.

Who does that though? As someone who has learned English as a second language I can't say I've ever been confused by someone using the wrong one nor has the meaning been misunderstood. Context is more important than word meaning when it comes to language, in other words nobody would understand children or foreigner language learners at all until they were great at the language.

And the thing is, it's a convention I also even use, but without thinking about it, I don't hypercorrect to the point where I am saying "10 items or fewer" or "at fewest 10 people like dirt flavoured chicken wings." I certainly fall into the descriptive grammar camp where usage in spoken language has an impact on the importance of language. There are cases now where "fewer" is in use even amongst those who were not forced to learn how to speak properly.

That does not mean that more information is made available if I say "10 items or fewer" rather than "10 items or less" and within language aside from hypercorrection, only when there's an issue that even context clues cannot solve are rules, arbitrary or evolutionary, are adopted. There's no chance in hell that "less" won't also always mean "fewer", primarily because it's a word like "set" or "run" that is heavy with meaning and context, unless there's contact with another language or English creates a language academy and sets a rule. If a rule is created that can be backed up by linguists based on logic and use and there isn't a huge gulf between general use and hypercorrection then I'll stop bitching about it.

My master thesis was on the concept of an English language academy, and I argued that America should have its own and not give a damn what Britain said about it, largely because of arguments like "whose accent?" are stupid and irrelevant, even many Indians want to speak with American accents now rather than British ones. It was more elegantly put, I just think that argument is sort of a cop out to any discussion and in the English speaking world who matters more, Britain and her countless god awful accents or America and her several god awful accents?

This isn't a new concept because originally there was an American language academy called American Academy of Language and Belles Lettres which described itself as having the purpose of establishing a unified grammar, spelling, typeset standard system for the entire country. They were biggest until the late 1820s. Thomas Jefferson was involved and years earlier Benjamin Franklin not only promoted the idea but promoted his own ideas to reform spelling to create a unique American spelling system, to be called American, not English.

I think one of the biggest mistakes made was not adopting this, because it would saved millions in education because far less time would have been used to learn spelling and more to learn essentially anything else remotely more useful. Most people who don't speak a language aside from English don't realise most languages could never have spelling bees because most things are spelled regularly, even if not perfectly. I think spelling bees are hilariously overrated and really only demonstrate that you can do what my computer can do far better. I also went into other things, unfortunately I don't have a digital form nor a scanner, but it's a boring read for probably most people.

I'm still in favour of the idea and I think that there would likely be a ruling for fewer vs less in some place in between, because Robert Baker's original suggestion is too broad and far too potentially ambiguous, because his understanding of his own generalisations were wrong. "Fewer" as a word has come into general use, but with varying meaning like "less" has, and it would be interesting to see how they could be defined and along which lines.

@mlnews That's also how he programs printers

@mlnews Something similar happened to me once, I was trying to do some plumbing and a pipe I had cut was still stuck in, so I was kicking it to dislodge it (it was an old iron pipe, so super rusted and stuck to concrete) and as I was doing this the cat freaked out and climbed my leg and kept scratching and attacking me. She never did this before or since. And after I flung her off, she came back and kept trying to get me. I've lived through wars and stuff and yet I was terrified. I can't believe I'm admitting that.

@mlnews said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

It's even more insane and complex than that because initially the middle part of the year wasn't even technically on the calendar at all, they just realigned the calendar at certain parts of the year and much of the summer was just an inter-calendar period. Adding months was initially a way to try to transition to a proper calendar, because they were in some sort of weird space between a lunar calendar (which is why it was 10 months originally) and a solar calendar (which is why they began skipping summer).

There were other month names though, Quintilis (Quintember) used to be the name for July (Julius) so he wasn't responsible for creating that month, in fact it was named that after his death. August was name Sextilis (Sextember) a name which I think we can all agree should have stuck around.

@jmoore said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@Reid-Cooper the Dallas world aquarium

@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

Sadly.... sort of...

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tourist-roller-coaster/

I went on a roller coaster exactly once, and change fell out of my pockets. Never again. Plus it was boring and expensive, and they got even more money out of me.

@DustinB3403 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@tonyshowoff I did say a Brave in italics.

Well that's emphasis, quotes would be sarcasm. But I'm sure you "knew" that.

See, seems much more jerky.

@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@tonyshowoff said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Shit I even have an older server at my house that I can't use for my lab any more.

If you wanted a server to lab with, come get it.

Will it be compatible with my BSL-4 lab? I got some mad scientist projects I'm working on.

sure?

Here I am in my BSL-4 lab posting to Mangolassi. Gotta protect yourself from hackers.

@scottalanmiller Honestly when I first read Brave I thought of that film. Damn kids movies!

@WrCombs said in Something not said enough;:

@tonyshowoff said in Something not said enough;:

@WrCombs said in Something not said enough;:

@tonyshowoff said in Something not said enough;:

@JaredBusch said in Something not said enough;:

@WrCombs said in Something not said enough;:

@gjacobse said in Something not said enough;:

Thank you - I feel that I have continued to learn from input from a number of people...

@scottalanmiller
@JaredBusch
@travisdh1
@DustinB3403

and a number of other people...

So - I express my thanks.

Adding @Dashrender as well - Huge help with a lot of things personal and work related.
Thanks Dash.

Suck up.

Yeah, why don't you marry him if you love him so much?

cause he's my uncle....
That be weird.

So you admit it's nepotism? The truth is finally out!

I don't work for him, How would it be nepotism?

I sense a troll in our mix..

So he isn't good enough to work for?! Oh ho ho.

And yes.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

was on shark tank and they were offered : 50,000 for 10% plus 1/potato until he gets 150,000.00 and then .50/potato....
and it was accepted.

Shark Tank is just a guise over infomercials. They've made a "show" out of traditional infomercials, nothing more. Everything on it is garbage. It's just a new spin on an old format with some "reality show" thrown in to make it more "fun" for that specific audience.

What? You don't see the ultimate benefit of napkins with faces of the US presidents made to also look like your dog with an app, or gourmet ice cream you have to buy with an app, or an exercise bike with wheels made of feet with an app, or a cup holder for your motorised cart...with an app?

@jmoore said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@nadnerB Photocopy machine, really?

You've never setup your copy machine as a DC? Well, you sir are an amateur! Amateur I say!

@scottalanmiller I would guess that's from someone who speaks Vietnamese, because in Vietnamese "TH" is an aspirated "T"... and thus concludes almost all I know about Vietnamese.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@jmoore said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller Ive never used cpanel. Just used Linux from the start. I would be lost if I had to use cpanel

I tried it once and it was SO hard to use. Mind blowing to me that people actually pay for that.

I had to set it up for a client (they really insisted, and even paid for it), the mere face you had to start with a new install of Linux and it had to take everything over, build its own versions of things, etc and then create crazy configs and then there's a level of needless complexity to configuring. Why make it so complex to change one damn thing in a config file? It takes no time at all in a text editor.

@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Just getting into the office, Got my Radar up
Coffee and closing tickets

Looking for speeders huh? Watch out for those damn teenagers hot roddin' around.

@Dashrender You lost me at banana, should have started with 1/2 milkshake.

@JaredBusch said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

So used to Windows using / for switches on the command line.

The moronic decisions of Gary Kildall and everyone else that decided to copy the command syntax of OpenVMS and RDOS rather than something a bit more logical like Unix. Not to mention busted ass syntax made worse even today with PowerShell... great, commands with hyphens, that's not irritating at all. Maybe let's copy bash or something, oh no let's instead really mess things up even more and invent something worse.

Also with classic DOS, you want to run it in the background? Can't use &, instead && is used as a command separator. Essentially the bad syntax choices made early on made it to where every additional change was equally terrible or made even worse.