Interesting Links for 30-10-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Why some people use "aks" instead of "ask"

(tags:language slavery history racism )

2. 'Hellraiser' writer Clive Barker on homophobia in publishing and JK Rowling

(tags:CliveBarker jkrowling bigotry )

3. Enheduanna: The world's first named author

(tags:writing history archeology )

4. The best computer games of all time

(tags:games lists )

5. Edinburgh workplace parking levy: Charge could be up to £650 a year, raising £19 million for transport investment

(tags:Edinburgh transport tax )

6. Europe prepares to rewrite the rules of the Internet (really interested to see how this pans out)

(tags:Europe internet communication regulation )

Comments

[cmcmck]

1. And 'ask' also has a long a or a short one depending where you grew up.

Since we both grew up in the same part of the world I suspect you also use the long a!

[andrewducker]

I do!

[conuly]

Question: When you say "long a", do you mean something other than the vowel found in "say" or "weigh"?

[channelpenguin]

To a Scot like me (who uses a short "a") a long "a" version of "ask" sounds like "aherrsk". :-).

My "a" sounds more like an ultra short bark I suppose. Hard attack and immediately stopped.

Most vowels in most English accents sound like *at least* 2 vowels, (often with added "r"s) to me.

[conuly]

I don't suppose you know IPA? Not that I can read it myself without looking at a chart, but.

[channelpenguin]

No, I never could get the hang of it - largely because of my own Scottish accent, I knew the example words for learning it didn't/wouldn't work.


Also, back with I was young, it was all text, we didn't have any handy ability to play sound samples.

I always wondered about those notations. How you were supposed to know which characters meant which precise sounds, since there are many many many different accents, and not all of us can precisely imitate a different one, even if told which...

[mellowtigger]

4 and 6.
"Arcanum" isn't in that top 100 list, so it's obviously invalid. ;)
But will we finally get games through whatever publisher platform we want? (Steam, please.) I'm so tired of pc game "exclusive" deals.

[andrewducker]

I doubt they'll force games makers to work with publishers they don't want to.

But we'll see!

[conuly]

So putting aside the weirdness of treating "it's just their accent" as somehow a bad thing to say, in general it's not a good idea to cite McWhorter, because... well, he's kinda sloppy. In this case he's correct, but it's low-hanging fruit.

As an example, LanguageHat rips him apart today: https://languagehat.com/mcwhorter-on-you/

[channelpenguin]

You plural - German has this in the informal but not the formal, which is identical with the plural. Interestingly, I think this plural you was ALSO used to high status individuals in the past.

The one I miss, is "we" (including the person being addressed) as opposed to "we" (not including). Not sure if any language has that (though Japanese distinguishes in-group and out-group by informal/formal forms and maybe more stuff I've forgotten after 30 years).

[conuly]

The one I miss, is "we" (including the person being addressed) as opposed to "we" (not including).

Clusivity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clusivity

[channelpenguin]

Cheers for that!

I suppose I improvise in English with "you(r) lot" / "us (our) lot"

[conuly]

I don't know if you've ever seen this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQYjZc7gKXc

If you turn on the captions it'll provide a gloss of the ASL.

What's interesting, if you pay attention, is that the ASL glosses inclusive and exclusive we differently - though IIRC, when I googled it I found that there's some controversy over whether or not ASL even properly has pronouns or not.

[hairyears]

Aks vs Ask...

You know that parts of England still have 'Wops' for 'Wasp'?

[andrewducker]

I did not! Language is fascinating!