English thread. Why not?

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Gez
 
 
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Gez »

Darkcrafter wrote:but we all know that every words still needs to be learnt individually whatever the language it is.
That's not true, there are several languages that are perfectly phonetic in their spelling.

A factor for divergences between spelling and pronunciation is how old literacy in that language is. For example, take Latvian. It basically wasn't written at all until the late 19th century. The literate people there spoke German, so they wrote German. If they needed to transcribe some Latvian words, they used the German rules. With literacy getting more widespread, the need to write the people's language appeared and it's only in 1908 that rules for orthography of Latvian were codified.

Inversely, English literature is very old, in fact older than Modern English, and this has given centuries for text and speech to diverge greatly. That's how you can find poems by Shakespeare that no longer rhyme the way English is spoken now; but they did back when they were first penned.
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Enjay »

And then we have place names. We've got loads around here that are not said the way that you might expect from their spelling. The reasons for this are varied. It could be names changing over time, or it could be old names from Scots (and other) languages beeing poorly transcribed and it could also be the first people writing it down doing a bad job of interpreting what they thought they heard people saying or local nicknames diverging from official names etc etc.

examples:
Finzean - pronounced "fing-an"
Garioch - pronounced "geary"
Footdee - pronounced "fittie"
Friockheim - pronounced "freak-am"
Bennachie - pronounced "Ben-a-hee"

And it gets ever weirder over on the west coast where many of the names are Gaelic and, for what ever reason, standard alphabet letters are recombined to give them new sounds even though existing letters and letter combinations already have those sounds. e.g. mh sounding like a v or dh sounding like ee.
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by wildweasel »

And then there's hard mode: Wales.
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Enjay »

I was there earlier this year. Other than the interesting name, it's a surprisingly dull, bland, charmless little place (although some of the nearby countryside is very nice indeed).

[edit]
Picture I took of the sign on the railway platform, in case anyone wants to practise the pronunciation.



[/edit]
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Gez »

I usually just call it Llanfair-blahblahblah-gogogoch. But now I'll know it's pronounced Llanvire-blahblahblah-gogogoch. :p
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Enjay »

Nailed it! ;)
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Reactor »

What is the English word for these tools? Can you tell me? :)
Attachments
Spakli
Spakli
spakli.jpg (2.07 KiB) Viewed 1244 times
Fángli
Fángli
fángli.jpg (3.72 KiB) Viewed 1244 times
Gez
 
 
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Gez »

Trowel and saucepan?
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Reactor »

I don't know, this is the funny thing...both are masonry tools, widely used here. The "spakli" is used to scratch down paint, residue or anything else from a surface, whilst the "fángli" holds cement, when masons build up a wall. I always thought saucepan is a kitchen utensil.
Maybe "masonry pan"? Nah, that's stupid.
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Gez »

So a scraper and I guess a bucket.
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Enjay »

I would agree with scraper but my guess is that the fángli probably - like so many tools - has some trade specific name that people in the know use and anyone out-with that circle has never heard of.
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by gramps »

That first thing is usually labeled as a "putty knife," but often just called "scraper" if you're scraping paint or whatever with it, instead of putting putty or spackle on something.

Have worked with concrete a few times, but have never seen that second thing, does it do anything special? I think people around here would probably just say "pan," but that would probably be wrong.

EDIT: apparently the second thing is called either "masonry mortar," "masonry pan," or "masonry pot," according to google image search + google translate.
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Enjay »

gramps wrote:That first thing is usually labeled as a "putty knife," but often just called "scraper" if you're scraping paint or whatever with it, instead of putting putty or spackle on something.
Depends what you are doing with it as much as anything I guess. I used to work in corrosion protection for offshore constructions (read: painting oil rigs and platforms). We used many of those tools for scraping surfaces as part of the preparation for painting. I never heard anyone use the term putty knife, but I saw thousands of scrapers. However, I am aware of the term putty knife, and it's certainly not wrong either. However, I had forgotten it until you mentioned it.
Wikipedia wrote:A spackle knife (called a scraper in British English, also known as a spatula in American English) is also commonly called a "putty knife", and is used for scraping surfaces or spreading material such as plaster in various construction trades.

FWiW, a trowel (mentioned earlier) would probably look something like this:

Image

if used by a bricklayer.

But a gardener's trowel looks like this:

Image
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by gramps »

Yeah, "scraper" is definitely what you'd usually call it here... "hand me that scraper." But it'll most likely say "putty knife" on the package.

Definitely never heard it called a spatula! I wouldn't wanna flip any eggs with that.
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Enjay »

And, I have seen the following also referred to as a spatula:
Kitchen
Image

Kitchen
Image

Science lab
Image
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