UniLang

Well, now that you've said that, it's all I can see.

Today, while explaining the new invoicing system to one of our contractors, I said "if you need to cover a separate item" instead of "if you need to charge a separate item" because cobrar = charge...

But it's cobrir...

Osias wrote:Bit it's cobrir...

Cobrir means to cover, but cobrar sounds like "cover" too (and in my head that's what I've always associated it with), hence the confusion.

Pra piorar ainda temos couvert artístico, que deve ter vindo do Francês...

Osias wrote:Pra piorar ainda temos couvert artístico, que deve ter vindo do Francês...

Nunca ouvi, qual o significado? E vocês pronunciam como? kou-ver-tchi ou ku-ver ?

Ciarán12 wrote:

Osias wrote:Pra piorar ainda temos couvert artístico, que deve ter vindo do Francês...

Nunca ouvi, qual o significado? E vocês pronunciam como? kou-ver-tchi ou ku-ver ?

É uma taxa extra que se paga quando se está num restaurante/lanchonete/etc e tem um artista/banda tocando, que supostamente vai pro artista. Cada um pronuncia de um jeito, acho. Sei lá. Prestarei mais atenção da próxima vez que ouvir.

I’ve noticed a lot of English terms related to politics and debate getting a much wider, generic meaning lately.

For example, “gaslighting” originally meant manipulatively making someone question their sense of reality, but I’ve seen it used more and more over the past year or so to the point where it refers to any dishonest or disingenuous behaviour. Similarly, some people seem to use “disingenuous” to mean “incorrect” or “nonsense”.

Another thing is the words “stooge” and “shill”. Originally it meant someone who was actively working for a certain group or individual for their own material benefit, but lately I’ve seen people use it to mean someone who is (supposedly) duped into believing in “mainstream” narratives or random people on the internet who support this or that candidate for the US presidency.

Saim wrote:Similarly, some people seem to use “disingenuous” to mean “incorrect” or “nonsense”.

It seemed to me I've been hearing "disingenuous" more often lately, but I hadn't noticed there was a meaning shift. That would be a shame; it's a favourite word of mine because I think it's important to identify and call out this sort of behaviour.

Saim wrote:Another thing is the words “stooge” and “shill”. Originally it meant someone who was actively working for a certain group or individual for their own material benefit, but lately I’ve seen people use it to mean someone who is (supposedly) duped into believing in “mainstream” narratives or random people on the internet who support this or that candidate for the US presidency.

IMD, a "stooge" is someone who's been duped whereas a "shill" knows full well what they're doing. Kellyanne Conway is a shill, whereas Sondland comes off more as a stooge.

My brother and sister-in-law say they've been hearing "slam" all the time in the news lately, which they seem to find a bit odd. Always these headlines about someone "slamming" someone else.

Osias wrote:It's not the end results that are impressive, it's still stupid GT. It's the fact the google bothered to try something like this at all.

Well, I've directly experienced at least one of their competitors trying to do something kind of similar, so...

Ciarán12 wrote:Pff, /u/ is basically just a slightly more rounded /ø/

Or rather more back

linguoboy wrote:We routinely anglicise German names with <oe> (i.e. /ø:/) to /e:/, e.g. “Boehner”, “Spoede”. (The latter is /‘spe:di:/, not */spo:d/.)

I think maybe Boehner is more common than Spoede in the US.

Vlürch wrote:Does anyone else see the "dragon heads" of the oracle bone rainbow character as two horses facing opposite directions?

Well, now I do.

vijayjohn wrote:

linguoboy wrote:We routinely anglicise German names with <oe> (i.e. /ø:/) to /e:/, e.g. “Boehner”, “Spoede”. (The latter is /‘spe:di:/, not */spo:d/.)

I think maybe Boehner is more common than Spoede in the US.

I think I just used the first two examples that occurred to me. (Spoede Road is an important thoroughfare near where I grew up.) A more prominent example would be Groening, the surname of the creator of The Simpsons and Futurama. (In his comic strip, Life in Hell, he explained that it "rhymes with 'complaining'".) Another St Louis example is "Red" Schoendienst, former manager of the baseball Cardinals. David Koechner, whose face most people recognise from the Anchorman films and the US version of The Office pronounces his name /ˈkɛknər/, with a short vowel.

I guess there's also <Koenig>, and there's a street by that name here, but unless I'm remembering wrong, it's pronounced [ˈkʰinɪg̚] here.

linguoboy wrote:

vijayjohn wrote:

linguoboy wrote:We routinely anglicise German names with <oe> (i.e. /ø:/) to /e:/, e.g. “Boehner”, “Spoede”. (The latter is /‘spe:di:/, not */spo:d/.)

I think maybe Boehner is more common than Spoede in the US.

I think I just used the first two examples that occurred to me. (Spoede Road is an important thoroughfare near where I grew up.) A more prominent example would be Groening, the surname of the creator of The Simpsons and Futurama. (In his comic strip, Life in Hell, he explained that it "rhymes with 'complaining'".) Another St Louis example is "Red" Schoendienst, former manager of the baseball Cardinals. David Koechner, whose face most people recognise from the Anchorman films and the US version of The Office pronounces his name /ˈkɛknər/, with a short vowel.

You could also have mentioned Jonathan Toews (who's Canadian, though).

Speaking of umlauts:
https://www.thenameengine.com/pronounce ... Kuemper/55

There are some NHL pronunciation guides out there, e.g. this:
https://www.hockey-reference.com/friv/p ... -guide.cgi

Borderline language-related but definitely random, on TypeIt holding down AltGr instead of the left Alt button works again. After months of having gotten used to using the left Alt button, it's kinda annoying because now eg. AltGr+s becomes ʃ rather than š (my keyboard has AltGr+s = š) again so I can't type them on the same page. Ironically I complained about it when TypeIt made AltGr no longer work as the key to hold down, so this proves that things like this are a matter of getting used to and sometimes changes are for the better and things being reverted back to how they were "better" is actually worse.

księżycowy wrote:Well, now that you've said that, it's all I can see.

vijayjohn wrote:Well, now I do.

linguoboy wrote:A more prominent example would be Groening, the surname of the creator of The Simpsons and Futurama. (In his comic strip, Life in Hell, he explained that it "rhymes with 'complaining'".)

So /gɹeɪ̯nɪŋ/? That sounds cringy and I don't even speak German, but /kəmpløːnɪŋ/ sounds kinda cute and really funny.

Also, I thought complaining was /kɒmpleɪ̯nɪŋ/ or /kʌmpleɪ̯nɪŋ/...

Vlürch wrote:Also, I thought complaining was /kɒmpleɪ̯nɪŋ/ or /kʌmpleɪ̯nɪŋ/...

It is... isn't it?

Ciarán12 wrote:

Vlürch wrote:Also, I thought complaining was /kɒmpleɪ̯nɪŋ/ or /kʌmpleɪ̯nɪŋ/...

It is... isn't it?

Well, at least Wiktionary says it's /kəmˈpleɪnɪŋ/, so I don't know. It probably can be, and at least for me it definitely has something like [ɔ], but that could be either /ɒ/ or /ʌ/ since I'm a non-native speaker and my pronunciation is apparently pretty weird and tbh I can't even be arsed to try with these types of vowels (they'll either merge as [ɔ~o̞] or [ɑ~ɐ] or whatever depending on the word, although the latter probably does merge into /ə/ in some words too), and honestly I should just accept that I suck and approach English with a fresh pair of ears because ever since the realisation that I had never consciously paid attention to the fact that Americans pronounce laugh as /læf/ until laughing my ass off over it one day when it finally hit me, I haven't been able to trust my ears.

Also, I should maybe try to write shorter sentences... but...

Vlürch wrote:Also, I thought complaining was /kɒmpleɪ̯nɪŋ/ or /kʌmpleɪ̯nɪŋ/...

It is something like that. He's saying it rhymes with [kʰəmˈpʰl̥ejnɪŋ] because he himself pronounces it [ˈgɹejnɪŋ].

Just experienced a delicious bit of language mixing when my mother-in-law, speaking to my wife over Skype, was asking my wife why my aunt died, she said - なんでキーランのpaiのirmã faleした?

何 the hell foi isso aí?

That sounds pretty close to how Malayalees code-switch.