Time to abandon TAS?

[Dave Britten]

(06-22-2020 04:36 PM)grsbanks Wrote:  

(06-22-2020 04:15 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  It's not just a reminder, or at least it wasn't always. The circumflex used to indicate vowel lengthening, and in some cases it still does, like votre/vôtre, or in Belgian French in general.

It still does in Welsh, for example.

Trivia question: how many letters are there in the Welsh alphabet? It's less than 26...

This is getting way OT, but Japanese has a couple of phonetic characters (kana) that were discontinued around the late 1940s when they overhauled the "spelling" of words to match how the pronunciation had shifted over the centuries. So ゑ and ヱ (we/ye), and ゐ and ヰ (wi) were dropped and replaced with the existing え and エ (e), and い and イ (i) matching how the pronunciation of those characters had shifted.

The Japanese currency "yen" is actually pronounced "en", though you can hear some vestiges of the y sound reemerging occasionally, particularly when followed by an "n" sound (as in 千円 - thousand yen - which frequently sounds more like sen-yen than sen-en).

And then there's を (wo), which is only used as a particle/suffix indicating a direct object. The "w" sound has long since faded away, but the old kana was kept for some reason, and occasionally you can hear a "w" sound slipping out in some dialects and syllable combinations. But in almost all cases, it's pronounced exactly the same as お and オ (o).

What were we talking about again?

[Thomas Okken]

Isn't W a vowel in Welsh?

[Guenter Schink]

(06-22-2020 10:16 PM)Geoff Quickfall Wrote:  “ Trivia question: how many letters are there in the Welsh alphabet? It's less than 26...”

20 and they are all consonants:

B,C,D,F,G,H,J,K,L,M,N,P,Q,R,S,T,V,W,X,Z

GFF QCKFLL

This source says 29

Quote:a, b, c, ch, d, dd, e, f, ff, g, ng, h, i, j, l, ll, m, n, o, p, ph, r, rh, s, t, th, u, w, y

Günter

[BruceH]

(06-22-2020 10:16 PM)Geoff Quickfall Wrote:  “ Trivia question: how many letters are there in the Welsh alphabet? It's less than 26...”

The average word length in Welsh is > 26 characters. ;-)

[rprosperi]

(06-22-2020 10:16 PM)Geoff Quickfall Wrote:  “ Trivia question: how many letters are there in the Welsh alphabet? It's less than 26...”

20 and they are all consonants:

B,C,D,F,G,H,J,K,L,M,N,P,Q,R,S,T,V,W,X,Z

GFF QCKFLL

How does one use the word "you" ?

[Nad]

(06-21-2020 10:49 AM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  

(06-21-2020 05:31 AM)Nad Wrote:  Hello!

(06-21-2020 01:46 AM)rprosperi Wrote:  It seems folks only seem to find negatives...

People are easily offended these days, look at the decline in comedy over the years due to political correctness.

Citation needed.

Maybe there is a decline in bigoted jokes. Those were never funny to begin with, so good riddance. Those people will just have to find themselves a safe space, I guess.

[grsbanks]

(06-22-2020 10:29 PM)Guenter Schink Wrote:  This source says 29

Quote:a, b, c, ch, d, dd, e, f, ff, g, ng, h, i, j, l, ll, m, n, o, p, ph, r, rh, s, t, th, u, w, y

You can look at it that way but most Welsh speakers I know think of it being the alphabet that we all use for English minus the letters k, q, v, x and z, for which there is no use in the Welsh language.

A c is always hard, so there's no use for the k. Same for the q. A single f is pronounced like a v (hence the "fersiwn cymraeg" -- Welsh version -- on UK government and BBC web pages) and the f sound is obtained with ff in Welsh (Sîr-y-Fflint → Flintshire). No need for the x when you can use cs instead (Wrexham → Wrecsam), and there is no z sound in Welsh.

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(06-20-2020 09:54 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  I'm glad you took that well Max; re-reading it, it certainly came out harsher than intended. My intention was to comment that by being German, you are inherently both direct and an advocate for what you think is right (even if others don't agree).

No worry, I knew what you meant to say. Although I consider myself rather a „European“ (born in Germany, grew up in Italy, went to an international school, worked in international teams for many years, speaking english at work now) I guess I still have some „gemanism“ in me. Speaking out straight is among it, no-nonsese at times. But I have the complete collection of Monty Python's DVDs also, so nonsense is not banned from my life altogether.

At work I have been trained since 30 years to be as precise as possible. When I require 35 degrees of flaps I call "flaps 35!". Not "could you please move that lever controlling TDTIL to the 35 degree position?" with TDTIL standing for "Those Devices That Increase Lift" only because my colleague might not like a possible other meaning of the word "flaps".

I think this thread is worth continuing. It shows once more what a mixed community we are on this forum. Everything else would be boring. And by the way: Did anyone know that Gustave Eiffel had a second surname (if "Eiffel" does't really sound French to your ears then "Bonickhausen" will even less) ;-)

Regards
Max

[toml_12953]

(06-23-2020 02:28 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  Hello!

I think this thread is worth continuing. It shows once more what a mixed community we are on this forum. Everything else would be boring. And by the way: Did anyone know that Gustave Eiffel had a second surname (if "Eiffel" does't really sound French to your ears then "Bonickhausen" will even less) ;-)

Regards
Max

Bonickhausen sounds French to me! Then again I once served a chocolate cake in the shape of a mouth at a French Christmas party. When I was asked why it was in the shape of a mouth, I said, "It's a Bouche de Noël, of course!"