Wish I knew the translation of the word ομόηχα in english, and I'm not trusting any translating service anyway. Not even Babel Fish yes. Anyway, anyone knows a good site/way where I can like put a word and have a list of words of any language that sound the same and/or similar.
Perhaps this is not like possible yet via internet, so if anyone knows a program, I'd love to hear it.
Nikolas, if you bump into this, and know the word, please do say so. :D
They're called homonyms, which turns out to be exactly what Google Translate translated your Greek word to (why not trust online translators?).
Edit: Well, technically when they only sound the same, they're called homophones. So, just to understand what you need - you want words that sound the same as one in a different language than that of the speaker?
Depends what you mean, really. I don't think that there's anywhere that matches the sounds of words other than rhyming dictionaries, but they are usually single language.
I'm guessing this is for a puzzle in a game, so you don't want to give more details...
However, there are usually various of these things:
Homonyms are words that are written and pronounced the same with different meanings "right" (not left) and "right" (nor wrong)
Homographs are ones that are written the same but prounced differently "bow" (bend over) and "bow" (fires arrows)
Homophones sound the same but are written differently "bow" and "bough"
Homophobes look reasonable but sound unreasonable
:)
I think that Jim is looking for homophones, as described by SSH above! ;)
A bit off-topic. This reminds me that Torin's Passage came in several languages (http://www.allowe.com/Torin/russian.htm). I wonder how they translated the sound crystal puzzle to other languages. ::)
I hate that puzzle VERY, VERY much!1! I was stuck there like forever and the extensive in-game hint system didn't help...
Spoiler
...because of a trailing 'd' voice crystal fragment, that had to be used in forming a certain word. Maybe this wasn't a problem in the other language versions.
This is an interesting topic. Incidentally, I just taught homophones/nyms/graphs in school, although, of course, only in Swedish.
I googled for inter-lingual homophones and found this (http://ishaindia.org.in/Inter-Lingual-Homophone.pdf) rather interesting thesis on the subject, however I couldn't find anything that offers the kind of service you're looking for.
The problem is that unless you're every liberal in how you regard sounds, the differences in individual phonems exclude many language-combinations.
I'm fairly fluently bilingual between English and Swedish, but I have troubles coming up with just a handful of proper (exact phonetic resemblence) homophones.
You´re probably looking for homonyms, I guess.
As far as words sounding the same in different languages, there are a couple I know of in urdu, at least. For example, "Cheese" means "thing" in urdu.
I guess regional accents make it difficult to create a homophones-are-us website. For instance, I pronounce 'fort' and 'fought' the same. If I was Irish, American or a pirate they'd sound similar, but not necessarily identical.
Quote from: Ali on Mon 15/03/2010 18:43:36
I pronounce 'fort' and 'fought' the same.
They shouldn't be pronounced the same at all. lol
Is that a Canadian starting an argument about weird pronunciation?
Many English accents (with the notable exception of the west country) have a very weak 'r' sound in contrast with Scots and the Irish. An English RP accent would pronounce them 'fought' and 'fort' the same.
Quote from: Ryan Timothy on Mon 15/03/2010 18:54:18
Quote from: Ali on Mon 15/03/2010 18:43:36
I pronounce 'fort' and 'fought' the same.
They shouldn't be pronounced the same at all. lol
Shouldn't they?
fought = |fôt|
fort = |fôrt|
So fort just barely has a stronger 'r' sound.
Plus do I detect sarcasm in Ryan Timothy's earlier post? Hopefully ;)
Edit: Hmm, the clips below demonstrate this perfectly, but baring in mind my examples are from an American dictionary it's expected anyway.
I don't know if these will work without you visiting the site, I stole the link from dictionary.com. It's the audio clip pronunciation of how to say the two words. It's exactly how I pronounce them, and how tv and everyone else around here does as well.
Fought (http://dictionary.reference.com/audio.html/lunaWAV/F03/F0321000) (or the direct link (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fought)).
Fort (http://dictionary.reference.com/audio.html/lunaWAV/F03/F0309000) (or the direct link (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fort)).
I also have no idea why people say that Canadians pronounce things weird. Like 'a boot' instead of 'about' for instance. I personally don't believe I am saying 'a boot', nor do I hear it. Perhaps it's those eastern provinces like New Foundland who we get confused with, they have a horrible accent.
I don't know if this is just due to my accent, but when I say "Steak ham" it sounds the same as "Stay calm".
Quote from: IndieBoy on Mon 15/03/2010 20:01:12
I don't know if this is just due to my accent, but when I say "Steak ham" it sounds the same as "Stay calm".
Yep, it's your accent. :P
We just guess things when you speak Indieboy. If you smile you're talking about Grundislav and how he changed your life, if you laugh a lot, you talk about various movies and/or food. If you're like moving dizzy you're drunk so it's better that we don't hear the details.. :D
Ryan Timothy, are you absolutely serious when you say you didn't know some Brits don't pronounce R's except right before vowels?
At first I thought you were just fooling around when you said "they shouldn't etc", as if there are shoulds and shouldn'ts when it comes to accents
Tom Wilson: The Homonym Song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI_VViWehzA)
Quote from: Andail on Mon 15/03/2010 20:51:53
Ryan Timothy, are you absolutely serious when you say you didn't know some Brits don't pronounce R's except right before vowels?
At first I thought you were just fooling around when you said "they shouldn't etc", as if there are shoulds and shouldn'ts when it comes to accents
Well, I realize every accent is a little different, so no Andail I'm not an idiot. Some acknowledge each letter, and some completely void them.
When I say 'should' be pronounced a certain way, is mostly because this is how the most common and widely known english accent (hollywood) is pronounced. You technically can't say we say it wrong, and neither can I say it about you... but I try anyway. ;)
Edit: Actually one thing that I am curious about, is this how they're taught in school? Are they actually taught to pronounce the R only when it's before a vowel? Or is it just a losing battle between teachers and accents?
When I was 5 or 6 years old I had to attend a special class once a week for a month or two just so I could pronounce my R's, TH's, and a few others. I was saying 'cah' instead of 'car', or 'fee-ater' instead of 'theater'.
An R is supposed to have a rolling of the tongue sound, are you guys even taught this? Do you even get taught basic rules on how to pronounce letters as a whole? Or are there literally different english rules for each country/area?
Quote from: IndieBoy on Mon 15/03/2010 20:01:12
I don't know if this is just due to my accent, but when I say "Steak ham" it sounds the same as "Stay calm".
Quick question from me: When the f*** have you ever found yourself saying "Steak Ham?" =P
@Ryan Timothy:
It's at least as East as Ottawa, all my friends their say about like that. It's no so much "A boot" as it is like "a boat" or "a bough it." More troublesome is this "Zed" nonsense; what's the first letter of the pronunciation of "Zed?" is it "Zed?" Or is it "Zeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee..."
Dang, edited my above post shortly after you posted.
Quote from: Questionable on Tue 16/03/2010 00:39:41
It's at least as East as Ottawa, all my friends their say about like that. It's no so much "A boot" as it is like "a boat" or "a bough it." More troublesome is this "Zed" nonsense; what's the first letter of the pronunciation of "Zed?" is it "Zed?" Or is it "Zeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee..."
Totally. I wholeheartedly believe it actually should be 'Zee' instead of 'Zed'. It's hard for me to shake the 'Zed' from my brain since it's how I was taught, but I try to say 'Zee' as often as I can.
I guess it's similar to W (double-u), you never say double-u in a word that contains a U. They probably wanted to mix it up a bit instead of actually having the pronunciation of that letter within a word to be the same as how the letter on it's own is pronounced.
If you listen to Celine Dion's Titanic song, one line sounds like "I believe that the hot dogs go on" :=
In Chinese, which I'm currently studying, there are things that sound like homophones to foreigners but sound completely different to the Chinese ear. Like, with the different tones, and zh and j both pronounced "j", sh and x both pronounced "sh", etc.
And in Spanish b and v are pronounced the same, which means that many homophones are not homographs.
Quote from: SSH on Tue 16/03/2010 01:59:18
If you listen to Celine Dion's Titanic song, one line sounds like "I believe that the hot dogs go on" :=
Hopefully that wasn't another Canadian joke. ;D
Celine is french Canadian, and we all know they don't count. ::)
French-Canadians speak Canadian-French... hmm
Talking of cross-linguistic homophones, how about 'oui' vs. 'wee'?
Also, in Japanese, I've recently learnt the word for kind of 'investigation' is 'chousa', whch is pronouced very much like 'Chauser', the Cantebury Tales chappy.
Quote from: Stupot on Tue 16/03/2010 03:12:34
Also, in Japanese, I've recently learnt the word for kind of 'investigation' is 'chousa', whch is pronouced very much like 'Chauser', the Cantebury Tales chappy.
Yes, they are pronunced similar but they're not homophones (I'm refering to RP English). The word 'Chauser' ends in short schwa (ə) while 'chousa' ends in 'a' (which is, I would say, something between 'a' as in 'cup' and 'a:' in 'far'). Also, I think 'o' in 'chousa' is a bit longer, since it's a double 'o'.
It's hard to search for English + another language homophones because English has a pronunciation system totally different from many other languages (aspiration, vowel length etc.).
English itself has quite a lot of homophones.
But Japanese, on the other hand, has tones of them. For example, 'kami' means either 'hair' or 'paper' or 'God'. Consulting a dictionary, I found at least three additional meanings. (233 matches, actually, but those are mainly compounds).EDIT: whoops, i think those aren't homophones
I like that in Chinese the word that means "head" is pronounced "toe".
Depends on which dialect you're after. :=
sorry to go OT (we probably have to give up finding a search enginge that lists inter-lingual homophones) but can your language produce a word that has three different meanings, covering the three wordclasses verb, noun and adjective?
The Swedish language has one such word; rå. It has the meanings raw (adjective), care or manage (verb) and fairy [as in skogsrå=female forest spirit](noun).
bow is (at least) two different adjectives, three different nouns and a verb. It is also a homophone of both bo and bough!
Pardon my ignorance, but how is bow an adjective?
bow legged
bow tie
bow wave
We have "vetää" which as a verb basically translates into every possible verb in our language.
To Dualnames, or who ever started this thread. If you can write it in phonetic alphabet, there should be dictionaries that translate accordinly... at least some are in progress of being done soon.
SSH: in your examples bow is merely a determiner for the substantive.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bow
Tuomas, having looked up the meanings of "subjective" and "determiner" in grammar, I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about.
Hehe, fine, I've only got 2 years of linguistics behind me, but that's all in German. False translation there. A subjective is different than substantive, which is what I'm after here, and bow is an apposition in this phrase as a determiner and acts as an adjective, but in fact, is not an adjective even though your dictionary so says.
Quote from: Ryan Timothy on Mon 15/03/2010 23:56:56
Edit: Actually one thing that I am curious about, is this how they're taught in school? Are they actually taught to pronounce the R only when it's before a vowel? Or is it just a losing battle between teachers and accents?
When I was 5 or 6 years old I had to attend a special class once a week for a month or two just so I could pronounce my R's, TH's, and a few others. I was saying 'cah' instead of 'car', or 'fee-ater' instead of 'theater'.
An R is supposed to have a rolling of the tongue sound, are you guys even taught this? Do you even get taught basic rules on how to pronounce letters as a whole? Or are there literally different english rules for each country/area?
Yes there are many different rules!
Except they're not rules so much as guidelines. The only rule is
never ask someone from Sunderland if they have a geordie accent.
No one is really taught an accent in school, you just develop one. We did have a Scottish supply teacher who told us off for not pronouncing 'r', but he was an angry, angry man so we didn't pay him any attention.
Quote from: SSH on Tue 16/03/2010 14:57:08
bow legged
bow tie
bow lifeboat
I'm not even sure what a 'bow lifeboat is', but I think 'bow-legged' is a single, hyphenated unit. 'Bow tie' is a compound noun. I'd say 'bow' here is a noun, even if it does kind of modify 'tie'.
Sorry, SSH, but those are in no way adjectives.
Tuomas and Stupot are absolutely right, so just trust us on this one :)
What about the nautical sense in the link given by SSH: "of or pertaining to the bow of a ship"? That's adjectival, right?
Incidentally, I just found an dictionary where you can hear fought and fort with an English (i.e. proper) accent. In the phonetics it indicates that the 'r' sound in the former is optional:
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/fort
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/fought
Ali, not more than "deck" would be adjectival when you put it before things that pertain to the deck of said ship.
Is "dog" an adjective just because it can determine "leash"?
Quote from: Ali on Tue 16/03/2010 15:16:06
The only rule is never ask someone from Sunderland if they have a geordie accent.
Is that pronounced "Jord-ee?" If so... that is one of the MOST difficult accents in the world to understand. They all sound like people from Boston with Downs Syndrome, and a loving dollop of an British-Speak.
Geordies sound like Bostonians with Down Syndrome, eh? I can't work out to whom that statement is most offensive!
By coincidence I was this very night playing the scene with the Geordie on the train from Broken Sword. I guess Geordie is a tricky accent, mainly because of dialect words like 'howay', but not as tricky as Northern Ireland.
Quote from: Andail on Tue 16/03/2010 17:46:48
Sorry, SSH, but those are in no way adjectives.
Tuomas and Stupot are absolutely right, so just trust us on this one :)
As opposed to trusting the dictionary that says:
Quote
â€"adjective
18.
curved outward at the center; bent: bow legs.
â€"adjective
5.
of or pertaining to the bow of a ship.
OK, here's maybe a better one: abstract
n: summary
v: steal
a: non-concrete
or
mean:
n: average
a: nasty or poor
v: definition or intention
As far as I can see "mean" is the best example, as there seems to be different etymology for the three cases which are all entirely independent. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mean
However, there is some interaction between the meaning "average" and meaning "poor" in the same way that the word "common" can mean both "average" and "poor".
Oh, and its a homophone of mein, too!
It wouldn't be the first time the dictionary lied...
Well, of course, the word "adjective" can be defined as "The part of speech that modifies a noun or other substantive by limiting, qualifying, or specifying and distinguished in English morphologically by one of several suffixes, such as -able, -ous, -er, and -est, or syntactically by position directly preceding a noun or nominal phrase." in which "bow" fits. Or you can start applying esoteric rules to restrict it further, by excluding quantitites and calling them "determiners" instead and saying that attributive nouns used as adjectives aren't etc.
Its analgous to someone saying that there are three forms of matter (solid, liquid, gas) and then a physicist then coming along and saying no, what about plasma and Boseâ€"Einstein condensates. All very well and true, but you also have to accept that in the world of normal people there is a simpler model that uses some of the same terminology differently to specialists. That model is not necessarily wrong but there may be contrdictions between the simple and complex models.
Apparently those ignoramuses at many dictionaries use the simpler model.
Anyway, back to Homonyms, etc. In Chinese there is a poem called Shī Shì shà shī shǐ. Its about a poet who eats lions in his stone den. (http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/10466/)
SSH, "mean" and "abstract" are perfect adjectives (and the other classes too btw, good work there :))
It troubles me a bit that you don't recognise the very simple rules that describe the wordclass of adjectives. There's nothing esoteric about how bow in "bow tie" and "bow lifeboat" simply isn't an adjective!
What about collar? You can say collar bone, is that an adjective since it modifies bone? Or wait, you can say four legged, so I guess four is also an adjective?
Quote
Its analgous to someone saying that there are three forms of matter (solid, liquid, gas) and then a physicist then coming along and saying no, what about plasma and Boseâ€"Einstein condensates. All very well and true, but you also have to accept that in the world of normal people there is a simpler model that uses some of the same terminology differently to specialists. That model is not necessarily wrong but there may be contrdictions between the simple and complex models.
This is all analogous to you not willing to accept that you're wrong :P
Quote from: SSH on Wed 17/03/2010 06:29:42
Anyway, back to Homonyms, etc. In Chinese there is a poem called Shī Shì shà shī shǐ. Its about a poet who eats lions in his stone den. (http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/10466/)
Hate to be a prick, but those of course lack the homophonic side of homonyms and thusly are just homographs in a sense. though only in pinyin, in mandarin they're all different characters :)
Err, many of the Chinese words are homophones: there are only 4 tones and at least a couple of dozen different meanings from those 4 tones.
So, what would you say is the real definining characteristic of an adjective? Most high-school kids would be told that it is a word that it limits, qualifies or specifies a noun. What additional rule is it that you're applying to bow to rule it out?
yeah, but homophones are pronounced the same, homographs written and homonyms both, two kinds of shi here are pronounced differently but sound the same to most of us. The pronounciation is what separates the two words/syllables so there's a complamentary distribution between the í and ì and all of them.
Adjective is an open word class (nomini) which includes noun, adjective, verbs and adverbs to name a few. Adjective does define/modify a noun or a pronoun, but it is also used comparatively, which a noun as an appoisition doesn't. In most languages the adjective word also bends with the numerus (number) or genus (gender) of the word making it either plural or singular, masculine, neutral or feminine: see "ein schönes Mädchen, das schöne Mädchen/kleine Kinder, kleines Kind. Of course in English there's no wordgenders, but there is comparative, which is one of the fine defining things of language you guys haven't thrown away already: good, better, best... *bow, bower, bowerest tie. Sadly you also have no suffix to indicate the number of the noun either :(
However, a noun can also act as a defining or modifying part of a noun mentioned, a pronoun can. Quite a few can, actually: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determiner_(class)#English_determiners_2
So basically your definition of an adjective is correct, but it's like saying bread is food. There are other edible things too :)
SSH, how do you respond to this
Quote
What about collar? You can say collar bone, is that an adjective since it modifies bone? Or wait, you can say four legged, so I guess four is also an adjective?
?
The problem is that with wordclasses, you need to look at the word's inherent qualities. Sure, you can put bow before stuff to modify it or classify it, and you can also use it with adjectives or nouns to create compounds. It doesn't mean that bow in itself is an adjective, because it can't describe any arbitrary noun.
Purple, big, small, attractive etc work as standalone adjectives - you can put them in front of any noun (it won't always make sense, but it won't turn out ungrammatical). Like
a purple curtain and
a small car but also
a purple idea which doesn't necessarily make sense, but is still a grammatical phrase.
You can't say "I saw a bow sofa yesterday" or "the road is very bow" to indicate that something has a curved shape.
How would you distinguish two sofas on a boat, one at the stern and the other at the opposite end? So "the bow sofa" would make sense there. As for "the road is very bow", I think you could say that a road is bow, it wouldn't be a common usage but then that doesn't make it wrong. Seems that you're having trouble defining adjective, too.
There's this interesting bit on the wikipedia article: "In many languages, including English, it is possible for nouns to modify other nouns. Unlike adjectives, nouns acting as modifiers (called attributive nouns or noun adjuncts) are not predicative; a beautiful park is beautiful, but a car park is not "car". In English, the modifier often indicates origin ("Virginia reel"), purpose ("work clothes"), or semantic patient ("man eater"). " which is perhaps what you are trying to say.
However, if someone is bow legged, the legs would be bow. :P This doesn't work for the bow (ship) pseudo-adjective, though, I admit. And most people would say "bowed" rather than "bow", but "his legs were bow" features in Lorna Doone (http://www.gramotey.com/?page=8&open_file=1195196489.89)
Quote
but "his legs were bow" features in Lorna Doone
This is the only relevant argument you've come up with so far, so let's just say you're right.
(Even though noone born after the industrial revolution would actually make such an utterance)
I guess we just have to accept that you regard every noun as an adjective and move on...
Good. The bow in bow-legged sounds to me like it started out as bow-like legs and was used enough to make it a common phrase in the language. However, the grammar can always disagree.
Quote from: Andail on Wed 17/03/2010 13:21:47
I guess we just have to accept that you regard every noun as an adjective and move on...
I guess that we also have to accept that for all your condescending tone and supposed expertise you're still unable to answer what rule it is that bow was supposedly breaking other than having some unspecified "inherent qualities".
'bow-legged' is a single unit. The hyphen gives that away.
It seems Ms. Doone has taken that set unit and played with it. Indeed she seems to have cleverly used it as an adjective in this way, but this in an exception to the trend, and not enough to change the definition of the word.
Quote
I guess that we also have to accept that for all your condescending tone and supposed expertise you're still unable to answer what rule it is that bow was supposedly breaking other than having some unspecified "inherent qualities".
SSH well I'm sorry but I've really really tried.
Maybe you could consult some other grammarian or language teacher whom you trust better and get a proper explanation, as apparently I don't cut it.
Until then, it would be interesting to hear you address this question I've asked several times by now - is every noun an adjective? Because virtually every noun can be used as you have used "bow", however you have dodged this question every time.
Adjectives are a fuzzy class which tends to blend over into both nouns and verbs (i.e. there are adjective-like noun and verb forms, and it's common to construct new adjectives from nouns and verbs). I don't think we can say definitely that in this case or that case, a word is an "adjective". I seem to remember that professional linguists therefore use more sophisticated classifications.
Like Andail, I would resist considering noun modifiers as adjectives in most cases (IMO even when the modifying noun describes the shape, material, position or other property of the modified noun, e.g. "wicker chair", "front row", not just in cases like "car park" or "table manners"). Maybe this is because compound nouns are usually written as a single word in the Scandinavian languages, which makes it more natural to consider it to be of the same class as the compound as a whole.
If you would say "a very bow leg" or "the left leg is more bow than the right one", you are probably right that "bow" is an adjective. I don't think those expressions would be grammatical to most English-speakers, though, so it might be an archaic or a dialect usage.
Quote from: Andail on Wed 17/03/2010 17:34:11
Quote
I guess that we also have to accept that for all your condescending tone and supposed expertise you're still unable to answer what rule it is that bow was supposedly breaking other than having some unspecified "inherent qualities".
SSH well I'm sorry but I've really really tried.
Where?
QuoteUntil then, it would be interesting to hear you address this question I've asked several times by now - is every noun an adjective? Because virtually every noun can be used as you have used "bow", however you have dodged this question every time.
No, I don't think so. Since one apparently doesn't have to explain, I'll leave it at that. :)
Well lets take any number of other such compounds... would you call 'cauliflower' and adjective because it appears in the phrase 'cauliflower ear'? Well, you might, but you'd be wrong.
I could, if I wanted to, have a play about and come up with something like Doone: 'his ears were cauliflower'...
Or as Snarky has done: 'a very cauliflower ear', or 'the left ear was more cauliflower than the right one'.
But these are all examples of a bit of word-play based on the compound noun 'cauliflower ear' and by no means give the word 'cauliflower' license to call itself an adjective.
Bow-legged is exactly the same... except it has a hyphen, so to me 'bow' is even LESS eligible for adjectivisation than 'cauliflower' is.
Is 'club' an adjective because of 'club-foot'?
Is 'cock' an adjective because of 'cock-eyed'?
Is 'beer' an adjective because of 'beer belly'?
I'm going to argue 'no' in all cases.
You do know that Lorna Doone is the title of the book and that the author is called Richard Doddridge Blackmore?
Your argument is persuasive in the examples you give, Stupot, but the thing is you're telling me could also be used for the word "orange". Why is orange an adjective and cauliflower or bow, not. Obviously all of these words are also a noun, but that isn't what disqualifies bow and caluiflower or orange would be disqualified too. So what is, exactly?
You can say that bow is not an adjective becuase it is short for "like a bow", but then so is orange as an adjective short for like an orange. Is it simply down to the frequency of usage, and if I could presuade (in theory) thousands of people or maybe a couple of famous authors to use bow as an adjective frequently then it would become a valid adjective?
Quote
Your argument is persuasive in the examples you give, Stupot
I guess you're ignoring me completely now, as I've given the same kind of examples, but hey I'll keep going anyway...
Quote
Is it simply down to the frequency of usage, and if I could presuade (in theory) thousands of people or maybe a couple of famous authors to use bow as an adjective frequently then it would become a valid adjective?
You're entering a new ball park now, SSH. Naturally, if people started to use "bow" as an adjective, it would become one. Language is what you make it.
Then in the end you could say "the line I just drew is bower than yours" and "My house has the bowest roof of all the houses in my block" and "I don't like this street, it's too bow"
But right now we're not there yet - as we perceive "bow" now, it's not an adjective. Actually, that's the only way I can explain it; it can't be used as a stand alone adjective (only as a modifier in compounds - but so can virtually any noun) and
hence it isn't an adjective, end of story.PS: also...
Quote
No, I don't think so. Since one apparently doesn't have to explain, I'll leave it at that.
I think you're taking this a bit too much as some kind of debating competition. I'm not pretending to know the English language better than you (as a non-native I know I don't), so let's not be childish. I think the "are all nouns adjectives"-question is rather relevant in this context.
Oh boy...I'm spending all my coffee breaks the exact same way I spend the time between them...talking grammar :-\
OK, this is the answer I was looking for: its a matter of entering into common usage (heh, now define "common"). I realise that at points it did sound like a debating contest but I was also looking for some information, too.
SO, shall we move on to a less contentious subject like religion or healthcare? ;)
Quote from: SSH on Thu 18/03/2010 09:18:24
SO, shall we move on to a less contentious subject like religion or healthcare? ;)
Not yet. I think it's important to understand that (written) English is not a constructed language. It's a homogenization of many other languages (it's why English dictionaries state the origin of words) and spoken English. As such, the "rules" are not clearly defined as some like to pretend they are.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/punctuation.html
Lewis Thomas has an essay dealing with the farce that is the governing rules of punctuation. Just as the laws of punctuation are fluid, so is almost every part of the English language. What we've done with our language is come up with reason for certain things existing AFTER they came into existence. To pretend like the English language is Black and White is stupid... it doesn't even HAVE black and white, it's all just shades of gray.
It's also important to be aware that "English" isn't a unified language, as well. British English, Australian English, Canadian English and American English (and etc.) are tightly related but all have their own unique philosophies (even when ignoring dialect and local words.) Any rules that and of you point out about the English language are suggestive at best because there is no ubiquity. We're not talking about Hangul or Esperanto. We're talking about (arguably) the most fractured and f****d up language on the face of the Earth.
So honestly, I think you're ALL right. I've seen truth from every individual post here... that's the great thing about the English language, at the end of the day, if you dig deep enough, nobody is wrong (and if they are: consider it slang.)
Questionable; what you're saying is neither new, nor very isolated to English, nor very relevant to our current discourse...
All languages are mixtures of various other languages, due to borrowing, migration, politics, fashion trends etc. English words may be especially easy to trace back, and break up into German, French and Latin roots etc - but all languages have dictionaries that explain the etymology of its words, and these words can come from all over the world, it's the same with any modern language! Swedish to mention one has had three major influxes of loan words (german industrial/trade words from the Hansa days, French fashion/beauty/court words from the 1700 hundreds and English ever since the early 1900), and these groups of words make up a considerable portion of our modern dictionary.
And the fact that there shouldn't be "rules" to govern how we speak has little to do with the properties of English per see, and more with how modern linguists treat language change.
There used to be a much stronger prescriptive movement, that more or less denied that languages change over time. Now most linguists describe what they see instead, and accept that a language is something dynamic and vibrant.
This doesn't mean that everything is ok! No, we can't all be right! Not because it says so in old dusty tomes, but because there must be some sort of agreement in order for proper communication to take place.
All in all, the anglocentrism in your post is quite astonishing.
Andail:
The fact of the matter is that the rules are not what they once were and will not continue to be what they currently are. You made the point that SSH believed an adjective was something contrary to the definition that the majority was aware of (myself included) and yet you discussed the possibility that in the future his word could be considered an adjective. Also considering that SSH pointed out that our understood definition of an adjective is flawed, there is another layer to adjectives (archaic as it might be.) Based on these admissions you agree that language is not static, that it is constantly evolving. Now, I agree that I can't genuinely claim that we can "all be right," that is true (forgive me for living in my head where everything is drenched in rainbows and unicorns =P ) I can claim, however, that stretching grammar like SSH has done is all right because that's why linguists accept that language is. in fact, dynamic: people simplify, expand and explore and as a result language is ever changing. SSH is part of a process, not a problem. The point that I was trying to make, but failed to explicitly state, is that you can easily say that SSH has an incorrect belief of what the accepted usage of an adjective is, however, by your own admission there is the potential that in the future his usage could be considered correct (maybe even proper) and for all we know perhaps it was the case in the past. Additionally, the dusty old tome makes the point that many of the accepted rules are meaningless and in some cases confuse the content of a communication in which case they are obstructive and should be ignored, even if it means that it breaks from what is accepted.
As a side note, it is difficult for me to not Anglo-centric; The United States is essentially culture locked. Mexico (the most accessible "other" culture) is a half of week away, Canada is approximately the same distance and for all practical purposes is culturally identical. I have extremely limited exposure to other cultures and I don't feel comfortable commenting on other cultures when I lack real-world experience with them. Europe is great in many ways, one of which is the radically unique cultures in relatively close proximity. Not being exposed to other cultures is probably more difficult than being exposed. There is a saying: when in doubt, go with what you know and ultimately (and probably unfortunately) the Anglicized world is all I know. =' [ Keep in mind that I did specify languages that i am familiar with that ARE NOT constructions of cultural assimilation: Hangul is the written Korean language, the creation of which was commissioned by a former Korean King to bring Unity to his Country and to differentiate it culturally from China and other Asian countries; and, Esperanto, constructed with the ideal of becoming a universal language, it DOES have static rules and a set of standards in order to facilitate pan-cultural communication, something other languages like English are not necessarily built for.
To reiterate my point: If spelling the word "Armor" as "Armour" is incorrect today but correct tomorrow, is it proper to have called it incorrect previously? Also, when something IS dynamic it is very difficult to ascribe value to "rules" that change apparently on a whim, an illustration of different rules can be observed by examining British-English versus American English. Plurals, verbs, compliments, titles, proper nouns, prepositions, dating and tenses are all treated differently between British English and American English, and not meaning to ignore the lexicographic rules such as the aforementioned "armor" versus "armour," but I find this information sufficient enough to dispute honestly claiming that anybody is wrong! At the end of the day though, the important thing isn't adherence to rules it is coherence of content and while it is true that standards help establish coherence they can never guarantee it and (as mentioned before) can often obstruct it.
All in all, your litigiousness is astonishing.
:P People. Aren't we supposed to discuss about words/phrases/whatever that sound similar or something here? I think if you still want to continue on arguing about something else that lead to no definitive answer after debating for centuries, either change the topic or give this thread a split.
True. Let's discuss words that sound alike instead.
stare/stair
discuss!
hare/hair
...yeah, I kinda stole there.
mair/mare? ;D (I actually looked them up and they both exist, while I didn't have a clue and they do seem to sound the same...)
Watt/WHAT?
Discuss
or
Discus?
:=
Pi / Muffin
I can think of a few homophones between English and Norwegian:
cock/kokk (cook)
sleep/slip (polish)
fin/finn (find)
be/bi (by - uncommon/archaic)
use/jus (juice)
paw/på (on)
...
A lot of sounds are subtly different between the two languages, so the homophony may not be 100% exact, but in these cases the correspondence is close enough that I don't think a native speaker would notice anything wrong with the pronunciation if not specifically listening for it. If you relax it further, it gets a lot easier:
knock/nok (enough)
lot/lått (song - dialect)
sleek/slik (such, thus)
soot/sutt (suckle, suck)
nut/nødt (necessary, required)
...
Another phenomenon that might be relevant is "false friends (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friends)", where two words in two different languages look similar enough that you assume they mean the same thing, but actually have different meanings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg5_mlQOsUQ it's shit but it's what we're talking about.
Much of this may have been said already, but here goes anyway.
When you combine two nouns to make a compound noun (as in "bow tie"), the first noun is still a noun, even though it modifies the second noun. It's called a modifier when it's used like this. In English, *any* noun can be used in this way ("weather forecaster", "computer keyboard") and it is even possible to form strings of nouns, as newspaper headline writers (there's an example right there) are fond of doing: (eg, "LONDON JEWEL HEIST SUSPECT ARRESTED"). That would make every noun an adjective as well, which is just not the case.
Some grammarians require that inflected forms must exist for a word to be an adjective (so "red" is an adjective because the inflected forms "redder" and "reddest" exist, but "land", as in "land animal", is not) but this does not apply to all true adjectives (eg, "alive" in the sense of "living").
Accents where are* is not pronounced except before a vowel or at the end of a word when the following word begins with a vowel are called non-rhotic accents, while those where it is are rhotic. Do kids in regions were the accent is rhotic get taught not to pronounce the letter are* before a consonant? No, of course not, because kids learn to speak before they learn to read, so they already know when to pronounce an are* in a spoken word and when not to. I would think they have no difficulty with understanding why there are silent are*s in some written words and ones that are pronounced in others, because all are*s before consonants will be preceded by a vowel ("or", "ar", etc) and when kids learn to read they are taught that these combinations are pronounced in the same way as "aw", "ah", etc, respectively.
It's debatable whether translingual homophones exist because, while the same phonemes may exist in two languages, they may not be phonetically identical. For example, French "lit" ("bed") and Italian "li" ("them") are phonemically identical (/li/) but may be pronounced slightly differently by French and Italian native speakers. If you are only after a phonemic match, then you can probably come up with dozens for any given pair of languages that use a similar set of phonemes.
EDIT: Modify my posting for txt-style spelling, would you? Grrr! >:( Those "are*s" above refer to the plural of the eighteenth letter of the alphabet :)
Quote from: paolo on Tue 23/03/2010 19:00:22
It's debatable whether translingual homophones exist because, while the same phonemes may exist in two languages, they may not be phonetically identical. For example, French "lit" ("bed") and Italian "li" ("them") are phonemically identical (/li/) but may be pronounced slightly differently by French and Italian native speakers. If you are only after a phonemic match, then you can probably come up with dozens for any given pair of languages that use a similar set of phonemes.
But this is true even within the same language. Different speakers will pronounce phonemically identical words differently (and of course, even the same speaker will not always pronounce the same word exactly the same way). And some words are homophones in some dialects but not in others, e.g. famously pen/pin in some American dialects, or for some speakers but not others, e.g. while/wile depending on whether you pronounce the H in while ("hwile") or not. (This also applies to the previously mentioned what/Watt.)
Maybe the standard should be whether someone speaking Italian + French with an Italian accent (or French + Italian with a French accent) would pronounce the two words the same.
Quote from: Snarky on Tue 23/03/2010 23:26:10
Quote from: paolo on Tue 23/03/2010 19:00:22
It's debatable whether translingual homophones exist because, while the same phonemes may exist in two languages, they may not be phonetically identical. For example, French "lit" ("bed") and Italian "li" ("them") are phonemically identical (/li/) but may be pronounced slightly differently by French and Italian native speakers. If you are only after a phonemic match, then you can probably come up with dozens for any given pair of languages that use a similar set of phonemes.
But this is true even within the same language. Different speakers will pronounce phonemically identical words differently (and of course, even the same speaker will not always pronounce the same word exactly the same way). And some words are homophones in some dialects but not in others, e.g. famously pen/pin in some American dialects, or for some speakers but not others, e.g. while/wile depending on whether you pronounce the H in while ("hwile") or not. (This also applies to the previously mentioned what/Watt.)
Maybe the standard should be whether someone speaking Italian + French with an Italian accent (or French + Italian with a French accent) would pronounce the two words the same.
Quiet Riot was named because everyone heard Quiet Right wrong, due to the English accent.
I thought it was: Quite Right -> Quiet Riot
sorry for double posting
...like sea/see