Thread of Random Babbling, iteration 111

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Sickness. Started vomiting last night, ended this morning, and I just finally kept some food and water down. Missed more class, and I will probably have to end up dropping one. Yay life.

 

Job party this Friday. I hope I get the other half of what I needed soon because otherwise it's going to be a long evening...

 

/me points and laughs

Glad to see that good ol' Gateway hasn't changed a bit!

You're both slackers....

Me fail English? That's unpossible!

 

A little late in all the english grammar and stuff :

Can someone please tell me how it was decided what sound "ow" makes?

Bow, low, mow, row, sow, tow.

vs

Cow, how, now, pow, vow, wow.

And if you take "now" and add a "k" in front of it, it makes "know". Why the hell does a letter change the pronounciation??

 

Words that sound alike are my biggest spelling problem, especially when I need to type fast (RP sessions) but feel tired. You can tell how tired I am by the number of nonsensical words randomly inserted in a sentence just because, somewhere in my head they *sounded* right.

Oh and the words that I really should know how to spell, but suddenly... don't.

An NPC of mine once "merely killed everyone in a city" instead of "nearly killing them". She is a lovely undead tanar'ri so it worked but still

"it's" and "its" happen to me too, but strictly as a typo.
A lot of other mistakes, too.

 

Actually there are some rules that govern the way words are pronounced in English but trust me you don't want to have to find out about them. English native speakers may not realize what a pain in the neck it is. I studied English phonetics and phonology and I had to learn countless lists of rules with countless exceptions. When you have more than a hundred words that are listed as exceptions you know that there is something wrong. In that context the fact that Ferdinand de Saussure said that "language is a system" always made me laugh.

Triactus your list is not comprehensive actually since you left out "row" and "sow" that rhyme with "cow" (that's two that I can think of right now).

What is also a pain is word stress which is probably the most important feature if you want an English speaker to understand what you're saying. But the most annoying thing is that numerous words can be pronounced in many different ways according to different accents and even if you only take into account RP (received pronunciation) which is roughly South-Eastern British English and General American.

According to my phonetics dictionary there are four different ways to pronounce "apartheid" that are considered to be correct.

Still if you want to find out more about how diphthongs evolved in English you should look into the Great Vowel Shift (google it and you shall find what you seek).

Being unable to sleep sucks. I've been awake for almost 27 hours now so I should probably stop posting about English pronunciation.

 

Ah, see the thing about English having weird pronunciations is because we've bastardised about 100 different languages and dialects to get to modern english

 

At least it isn't Afrikaans!

 

Got my new PC up and running. Just had to wipe the HD and start fresh. So much for Gateway Tech support though. Not very helpful, I got the feeling that the 2 different techs I spoke with didn't really give a hoot. But I have to say wow, WIn 7 is pretty! And I can actually surf the web with speed for the 1st time in my life.

 

I know what a pain it is. As someone whose first lanuage is English, I can tell you that the only way you can learn it properly is with a lot of practice (preferably while growing up). I feel sorry for anyone trying to trying to learn it as a second language.

And of coarse, if you can reed and right English, that does knot meen yoo can speach it.

 

My graduating class barely managed to stammer out words like ridiculous. Anything with more than two syllables caused head scratching. I've been told that Chinese is easy to learn, which really confuses me, because I can't make heads or tales of the characters .

On to important things, happy birthday me !

 

All this English geekieness is too much for my tired brain. I'm going to bed.

 

6:32... this should be an interesting day to say the least.

 

I have a routine for this weekend's competition! Now I just need to practice it enough to land it consistently. It's incredibly embarrassing getting marched in by a piper, having people applaud you and then messing up. Not this year!

 

Landed some Cubs tickets last Friday. They are playing Cincy that day, which stinks, but I'm not really going to Wrigley for the game. It's the whole Wrigleyville experience of good food and tavern hopping I plan on enjoying the most. Plus, it is on July 3rd, which means party-time in Chicago. Should be a blast!

 

I've been up for more than 36 hours now. The plan is now to drink as much bourbon as possible so I can pass out if I can't get some sleep.

 

Nyquil is also an excellent way to knock oneself stupid.

 

True, no need to get crunked and die.