Language Learners' Library

Interesting that they might have actually changed the language a bit.

Ohashi Hirofumi talks AI. Specifically the recent weakness of AI although they start long way from 2016.

Here’s a game Ohashi played against Katago.

From a discussion about coordinates and words from another topic I’d like to add this:

Are they really directions though, for the people to use them and have words for them?
In the local dialect - the everyday use - we do not even use “north/south, east/west” but instead garbled phrases turned into words that mean “this way, that way, up way, down way”:

Σαπάν = Ίσα πάνω (straight up) = ‘σα παν’ = σαπάν …

The funny thing about this system of coordinates is that it is totally subjective depending on who is using it, where they are coming from or even what day it is. The same person one day might say “I am going up” towards the town square or say “I am going down” or I say “I didn’t have the change to come down to town X” but people coming from town X say “we are coming down to your town”.

Village coordinates are very funny :slight_smile: But word garbling is very interesting here.

Particularly here there is a small village that the residents there are known to be very sneaky and when you meet them and you ask “hey, where are you going?” they answer “sapansakat” grarbling now BOTH directions, practically saying “I am going up and down”, to avoid saying where exactly they have been.

Germans combine words to create longer words. Greek villagers combine them while crunching them, almost beyond recognition when they talk fast.

WHEN YOU WATCH FULL DUB

3 Likes

Hi!

I ask for explanations from English native speakers.
What’s the correct pronunciation for “residue”?
On Collins I find rezɪdjuː but in the song “Orestes” from “Mer de noms” by “A perfect circle” (watch out: explicit or disturbing contents) I think I hear something like rezaɪdjuː
Could it be maybe some sort of local pronunciation or something? Any idea?

Link to the song on YouTube:

I think it sounds like re-ZAH-due because of the metre. Musically the emphasis seems to fall on the second syllable, instead of the first as it ought to be. The other factor, is that it is very hard to sing certain vowels loud at high pitch (in particular closed vowels where your tongue is high), so in the last chorus it makes sense that they change the pronunciation from a rather closed /ɪ/ to a more open /a/ or /e/.

2 Likes

The two pronunciations I know are:

  • REZ-i-doo: This is my pronunciation and maybe the most common in California.
  • REZ-i-dyoo: This seems to be the standard dictionary pronunciation. Maybe more common worldwide.

As @Vsotvep said, singers sometimes bend or alter pronunciations for rhythm, rhyme, or emphasis or to fit the melody. So that could be what’s happening in the song. This isn’t necessarily wrong, just stylized artistic license.

3 Likes

Write examples with んじゃ . Explain what exactly んじゃ means in each example.

GPT-4-turbo:

The phrase “んじゃ” is a contraction of “のでは” in spoken Japanese, which is used to make casual statements or questions, often when explaining or deducing something. It is colloquial and considered informal. Here are a few examples of how it might be used in sentences, along with explanations for each:

  1. 明日は忙しいんじゃない?
  • Ashita wa isogashii n ja nai?
  • Aren’t you busy tomorrow?
    Explanation: Here, “んじゃない” is the negative form of “んじゃ”, which is used to confirm or question the listener’s situation about being busy tomorrow. It is a casual way to ask for confirmation, equivalent to saying “Isn’t it the case that you are busy tomorrow?”
  1. 雨が降ってるんじゃ、傘を忘れないでね。
  • Ame ga futteru n ja, kasa o wasurenaide ne.
  • It’s raining, so don’t forget your umbrella.
    Explanation: “んじゃ” here is used to provide a reason for the following request or advice. It’s like saying “Since it’s raining,” in a casual manner.
  1. そういうことなんじゃ。
  • Sou iu koto n ja.
  • So that’s how it is.
    Explanation: In this sentence, “んじゃ” is used to express understanding or realization about a situation or explanation that has just been presented. It’s a colloquial way of saying “So it is the case that…”
  1. もう帰るんじゃ?まだ早いよ。
  • Mou kaeru n ja? Mada hayai yo.
  • You’re leaving already? It’s still early.
    Explanation: Here, “んじゃ” is used in a question to express surprise or seek confirmation about the action of leaving. The speaker is informally asking, “Is it the case that you’re going home already?”
  1. 彼が言ったんじゃ、信じられない。
  • Kare ga itta n ja, shinjirarenai.
  • I can’t believe he said that.
    Explanation: “んじゃ” in this sentence is used to refer to something that has been said, and then it is followed by the speaker’s reaction. It can be interpreted as “Given that he said that, I can’t believe it.”

Remember that “んじゃ” is very casual, so it’s best used in informal conversations with friends or close acquaintances. It wouldn’t be appropriate in formal or polite contexts.

This is a nightmare. The “th” pronounced in “think” is a mouth movement I have never experienced.

4 Likes
3 Likes

Personally a lot of those are [ʌ] for me and a [ʊ] in gonna and a few [ı]

In my dialect, there’s no distinction between ʌ and schwa: they are the same vowel. (I guess you could say the former is always stressed and the latter never is, but that doesn’t really make them two different vowels.)

1 Like

Yeah, [ʌ] and [ə] are the same phoneme in my idiolect, but I don’t always use it in unstressed syllables

So the vowels in “butter” would be the same? Isn’t the first vowel closer to the /ɑ/ in “father” /ˈfɑːðə/?

I’m not an English speaker, but for me the /ɑ/ in “father” and the /ʌ/ in mother /ˈmʌðə/ would seem much closer to each other than to /ə/.

Dutch makes extensive use of /ə/. I’d say it’s clearly more like the vowel in “err” than in “are”. And stressed it becomes more closed and rounded like /ʏ/ or /ɵ/ than more open and unrounded like /ʌ/ or /ɐ/.
[Those linked vowel pages have audio samples, so you can compare them]

Stressed schwa in Dutch:

image

Stressed schwa in English?

image

Then again, I can also find that /ʌ/ in English is not quite like /ʌ/ in that official IPA diagram. In standard US and British English accents the location of /ʌ/ seems much closer to IPA /ɐ/ than to IPA /ʌ/.

image

image

I think it varies across the USA, so in some cases yes, but I think a common American pronunciation is like ˈbʌtɚ

However, ˈbʌtə seems to be the British (RP) pronunciation.

I don’t think I’ve heard people pronounce “butter” with the first vowel like the /ɑ/ in “father” /ˈfɑːðə/.

1 Like

Perhaps I’m more prone to confuse /ɑ/ with /ʌ/, because (Southern) Dutch /ɑ/ may be our closest approximation to (General American) English /ʌ/.

image

image

I assume the shape of the wedge symbol ʌ came from capital A to suggest the sound has some “ahh”/“aha” quality.

How about “mother” vs “bother”? Would those vowels be the same in your accent or different? Would “bother” be closer to “father” than to “mother”?

In my accent (Toronto, Canada), father and bother have identical vowel sounds (but not mother).

1 Like

And how about “butter” vs “mother”?