4 Apr
2013
4 Apr
'13
1:56 a.m.
----- Original Message -----
----- Reply:-----
Yeah, come on, Fred; just because he doesn't seem to understand the concept
of a *plural* morpheme and why using the singular to refer to hundreds of an
item might cause confusion (especially in this context) doesn't mean he's
stupid ;-)
I thought that perhaps Swedish does not have such a concept but then I saw
that he does speak of power supplieS and fanS; he even talks about making
the CPU's pin compatible, although instead of multiple pins of multiple CPUs
that seems to suggest making the (single) pin of a single CPU compatible
with something...
Fun with words, and of course as usual surprising and a little disappointing
to see how ready and eager some people are instead to see insults or
personal attacks in simple misunderstandings...
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 09:41:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com>
...
On Tue, Apr
02, 2013 at 02:31:39PM -0700, Fred Cisin wrote:
> I'm having a little difficulty visualizing "The World's Top
> Supercomputer"
> as being a single chip CPU on a motherboard.
> When did "supercomputers" become single board devices?
> "Put the CPU on a daughterboard"?
On Wed, 3 Apr 2013, Pontus Pihlgren wrote:
Do you really think I'm that stupid?
Of course not. I acknowledge and respect your expertise.
And, I certainly had no intention of offending you. 
4 Apr
4 Apr
1:28 a.m.
On Thu, Apr 04, 2013 at 12:56:45AM -0500, MikeS wrote:
Yeah, come on, Fred; just because he doesn't seem
to understand the
concept of a *plural* morpheme and why using the singular to refer
to hundreds of an item might cause confusion (especially in this
context) doesn't mean he's stupid ;-)
A little stupid.. I know about the rules for appending an S in the right place, I just
can't seem to master them.
I thought that perhaps Swedish does not have such a
concept but then
I saw that he does speak of power supplieS and fanS; he even talks
about making the CPU's pin compatible, although instead of multiple
pins of multiple CPUs that seems to suggest making the (single) pin
of a single CPU compatible with something...
:)
Fun with words, and of course as usual surprising and
a little
disappointing to see how ready and eager some people are instead to
see insults or personal attacks in simple misunderstandings...
I should really know better than to write replies when I am tired and grumpy, sorry Fred.
Cheers,
Pontus
1:07 p.m.
On Thu, 4 Apr 2013, Pontus Pihlgren wrote:
A little stupid.. I know about the rules for appending
an S in the right place, I just
can't seem to master them.
> I thought that perhaps Swedish does not have such a concept but then
> I saw that he does speak of power supplieS and fanS; he even talks
> about making the CPU's pin compatible, although instead of multiple
> pins of multiple CPUs that seems to suggest making the (single) pin
> of a single CPU compatible with something...
English has inconsistent rules, and freely breaks them.
It seems to have more IRREGULAR conjugations, declensions, and plurals.
Can anyone explain why the 'I' is after the 'E' in "WEIRD"?
"I disconnected the speaker on all of the computers in the lab." does not
imply that they share a speaker. Should I have said that I disconnected
the "speakerS"? or maybe "the speaker on EACH computer"?
And, in this particular example, "pin compatible" (or
"pin-compatible")
is a commonly used adjective that is not plural, no matter how many pins
the device has.
> Fun with words, and of course as usual surprising
and a little
> disappointing to see how ready and eager some people are instead to
> see insults or personal attacks in simple misunderstandings...
Isn't that how MOST wars start?
We react to perceived insults.
I should really know better than to write replies when
I am tired and
grumpy, sorry Fred.
's'OK
I often ask about things that I don't have a clue about.
and I earned my nickname.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
2:51 p.m.
New subject: English spelling [was Re: World?s top supercomputer from ?09 is now obsolete, will be dismantled]
English has inconsistent [spelling] rules, and freely
breaks them.
Indeed. In my more cynical moments I sometimes feel it has more rules
than it does words. Consider `laughter'. Now prepend an `s'. Or
change the `l' to a `d'. Or take `bough' and append a `t' to it. Or
consider all the ways to pronouce `ough': bough, rough, through,
though, cough, ought...
Having lived for the last 30 years or so in Quebec, I am very aware of
the things that make French difficult to learn for an anglophone. But
English is no picnic itself; it's just that, having grown up with it,
I've internalized the issues to the extent that I no longer notice them
absent specific conscious attention (as now). The first time I had
occasion to pronounce the card game name "euchre", I picked the wrong
paradigm for the initial vowels and pronounced it "oyker" (my template
was (Leonhard) Euler's name - why that rather than "eunuch" or
"euphoria" or "eucalyptus" or "euphemism", I don't
know).
"I disconnected the speaker on all of the
computers in the lab." does
not imply that they share a speaker.
Strictly speaking, the grammatical construct does imply that; in the
case of that particular sentence that implication is overridden by the
semantic unlikelihood of having all the lab's computers sharing a
single speaker.
Should I have said that I disconnected the
"speakerS"? or maybe "the
speaker on EACH computer"?
Either one would fix it, yes.
And, in this particular example, "pin
compatible" (or
"pin-compatible") is a commonly used adjective that is not plural, no
matter how many pins the device has.
Right. The issue there wasn't with the "pin compatible" adjective,
possibly excepting its compound nature. The text was "... didn't make
the CPU's pin compatible". "CPU's" looks more like a possessive
than a
plural (the plural would be "CPUs"); if you read it as a possessive
then the parse is forced to "...didn't make (the CPU's pin)
compatible [with something unspecified]", and there's no way for "the
CPU's pin", as a noun phrase, to be anything but singular.
/~\ The ASCII Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
3:16 p.m.
New subject: English spelling [was Re: World?s top supercomputer from ?09 is now obsolete, will be dismantled]
On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 8:51 PM, Mouse <mouse at rodents-montreal.org> wrote:
I'm fond of this poem by Rosemary Chen, I guess what's true for Asians
is also true for the Dutch:
Enough Is Enough
Four letters cause me disillusion
OUGH makes phonetic confusion
Four simple letters with four pronunciations
Make learning English tough for Asians.
OUGH has no logic, no rule
Or rhyme or rhythm; it will fool
All who struggle to master expression
English may cause thorough depression.
I pour some water in a trough
I sneeze and splutter, then I cough.
And with a rough hewn bough
My muddy paddy fields I plough.
Loaves of warm bread in a row
Crispy crusts and doughy dough.
Now, my final duty to do
And then my chores will all be through.
My lament is finished, even though
Learning this word game is really slow.
It is so difficult, it's very rough
Learning English is really tough.
If a trough was a truff
And a plough was a pluff
If dough was duff
And though was thuff
If cough was cuff
And through was thruff
I would not pretend, or try to bluff,
But of OUGH I've had enough
Camiel.
English has inconsistent [spelling] rules, and
freely breaks them.
Indeed. In my more cynical moments I sometimes feel it has more rules
than it does words. Consider `laughter'. Now prepend an `s'. Or
change the `l' to a `d'. Or take `bough' and append a `t' to it. Or
consider all the ways to pronouce `ough': bough, rough, through,
though, cough, ought... 
5 Apr
5 Apr
8:56 a.m.
New subject: English spelling [was Re: World?s top supercomputer from ?09 is now obsolete, will be dismantled]
On 4 April 2013 20:16, Camiel Vanderhoeven <iamcamiel at gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 8:51 PM, Mouse <mouse at
rodents-montreal.org> wrote:
I'm fond of this poem by Rosemary Chen, I guess what's true for Asians
is also true for the Dutch:
Enough Is Enough
Four letters cause me disillusion
OUGH makes phonetic confusion
Four simple letters with four pronunciations
Make learning English tough for Asians.
OUGH has no logic, no rule
Or rhyme or rhythm; it will fool
All who struggle to master expression
English may cause thorough depression.
I pour some water in a trough
I sneeze and splutter, then I cough.
And with a rough hewn bough
My muddy paddy fields I plough.
Loaves of warm bread in a row
Crispy crusts and doughy dough.
Now, my final duty to do
And then my chores will all be through.
My lament is finished, even though
Learning this word game is really slow.
It is so difficult, it's very rough
Learning English is really tough.
If a trough was a truff
And a plough was a pluff
If dough was duff
And though was thuff
If cough was cuff
And through was thruff
I would not pretend, or try to bluff,
But of OUGH I've had enough
The ultimate test of English pronunciation is the Chaos, by Gerard
Nolst Trenit?:
http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j17/caos.php
It's quite famous - it's the verse that starts
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
I recommend it - memorising it would be useful for both students and
native speakers who have problems with the sounds of words. Its
internal rhyme and scansion provide many useful hints, although as a
century-old piece, sadly a whole bunch of its words are now obsolete.
I am perfectly OK with not knowing how to correctly say "topsail" or
"studding-sail". :?)
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884
English has inconsistent [spelling] rules, and
freely breaks them.
Indeed. In my more cynical moments I sometimes feel it has more rules
than it does words. Consider `laughter'. Now prepend an `s'. Or
change the `l' to a `d'. Or take `bough' and append a `t' to it. Or
consider all the ways to pronouce `ough': bough, rough, through,
though, cough, ought... 
10:17 a.m.
New subject: English spelling [was Re: World?s top supercomputer from ?09 is now obsolete, will be dismantled]
That is fantastic. I've never seen that before. It also illustrates how the
language is somewhat confounded by regional accents as well. Over here in
the US at least, the words "parquet" (pronounced par-kay) and "khaki"
(kak-ee) according to the verse rhyme, but here do not.
On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 7:56 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
On 4 April 2013 20:16, Camiel Vanderhoeven
<iamcamiel at gmail.com> wrote:
I'm fond of this poem by Rosemary Chen, I guess what's true for Asians
is also true for the Dutch:
Enough Is Enough
Four letters cause me disillusion
OUGH makes phonetic confusion
Four simple letters with four pronunciations
Make learning English tough for Asians.
OUGH has no logic, no rule
Or rhyme or rhythm; it will fool
All who struggle to master expression
English may cause thorough depression.
I pour some water in a trough
I sneeze and splutter, then I cough.
And with a rough hewn bough
My muddy paddy fields I plough.
Loaves of warm bread in a row
Crispy crusts and doughy dough.
Now, my final duty to do
And then my chores will all be through.
My lament is finished, even though
Learning this word game is really slow.
It is so difficult, it's very rough
Learning English is really tough.
If a trough was a truff
And a plough was a pluff
If dough was duff
And though was thuff
If cough was cuff
And through was thruff
I would not pretend, or try to bluff,
But of OUGH I've had enough
The ultimate test of English pronunciation is the Chaos, by Gerard
Nolst Trenit?:
http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j17/caos.php
It's quite famous - it's the verse that starts
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
I recommend it - memorising it would be useful for both students and
native speakers who have problems with the sounds of words. Its
internal rhyme and scansion provide many useful hints, although as a
century-old piece, sadly a whole bunch of its words are now obsolete.
I am perfectly OK with not knowing how to correctly say "topsail" or
"studding-sail". :?)
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884
On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 8:51 PM, Mouse <mouse
at rodents-montreal.org>
wrote:
English has inconsistent [spelling] rules, and
freely breaks them.
Indeed. In my more cynical moments I sometimes feel it has more rules
than it does words. Consider `laughter'. Now prepend an `s'. Or
change the `l' to a `d'. Or take `bough' and append a `t' to it. Or
consider all the ways to pronouce `ough': bough, rough, through,
though, cough, ought...
10:51 a.m.
New subject: English spelling [was Re: World?s top supercomputer from ?09 is now obsolete, will be dismantled]
On 5 April 2013 15:17, Geoffrey Oltmans <oltmansg at gmail.com> wrote:
That is fantastic. I've never seen that before. It
also illustrates how the
language is somewhat confounded by regional accents as well. Over here in
the US at least, the words "parquet" (pronounced par-kay) and
"khaki"
(kak-ee) according to the verse rhyme, but here do not.
Geoffrey, /please/ learn to bottom-quote if at all possible. It is
really disrupting to read your posts.
"Parquet" and "khaki" don't rhyme in British RP either (although
"khaki" is generally "car-key" here). This may be either a simple
mistake, or an artefact of the fact that the piece is roughly 75-100
years old.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884
4 Apr
4 Apr
4:40 p.m.
New subject: English spelling [was Re: World?s top supercomputer from ?09 is now
English has inconsistent [spelling] rules, and
freely breaks them.
Indeed. In my more cynical moments I sometimes feel it has more rules
than it does words. Consider `laughter'. Now prepend an `s'. Or "I
disconnected the speaker on all of the computers in the lab." does
not imply that they share a speaker.
Strictly speaking, the grammatical construct does imply that; in the
case of that particular sentence that implication is overridden by the
semantic unlikelihood of having all the lab's computers sharing a
single speaker.
Should I have said that I disconnected the
"speakerS"? or maybe "the
speaker on EACH computer"?
Either one would fix it, yes.
5 Apr
5 Apr
8:58 a.m.
New subject: English spelling [was Re: World?s top supercomputer from ?09 is now
On 4 April 2013 21:40, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
That reminds me of a sentence that I think is quoted in one of Martin
Gardner's books :
'Show the bold Prussian that praised slaughet, slaugher brings rout.
Teach this slaughter-lover his fall nears'
Yo can delete the intial letter of all the words to form a new sentence.
Incidentalyl, for the 'i before e' rule, I always liked :
'E before E except after C. We live in a weird society' :-)
But 'I disconencted the speakers of al lthe computers in the lab' could
mean multipel speakers for each machine.
That might have been comprehensible if not so typo-ridden that it was
word-salad.
That was one message, Tony, where it would have been worth your time
to go slowly and carefully. It's also not threaded for me.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884
English has inconsistent [spelling] rules, and
freely breaks them.
Indeed. In my more cynical moments I sometimes feel it has more rules
than it does words. Consider `laughter'. Now prepend an `s'. Or "I
disconnected the speaker on all of the computers in the lab." does
not imply that they share a speaker.
Strictly speaking, the grammatical construct does imply that; in the
case of that particular sentence that implication is overridden by the
semantic unlikelihood of having all the lab's computers sharing a
single speaker.
Should I have said that I disconnected the
"speakerS"? or maybe "the
speaker on EACH computer"?
Either one would fix it, yes.
5:36 p.m.
New subject: English spelling [was Re: World?s top supercomputer from ?09 is
On 4 April 2013 21:40, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
That reminds me of a sentence that I think is quoted in one of Martin
Gardner's books :
'Show the bold Prussian that praises slaughter, slaughter brings rout.
Teach this slaughter-lover his fall nears'
Yuo can delete the initial letter of all the words to form a new sentence.
Incidentally, for the 'i before e' rule, I always liked :
'E before E except after C. We live in a weird society' :-)
But 'I disconencted the speakers of all the computers in the lab' could
mean multiple speakers for each machine.
That might have been comprehensible if not so typo-ridden that it was
word-salad.
I have hopefully corrected the major one, it should bow be readable.
English has inconsistent [spelling] rules, and
freely breaks them.
Indeed. In my more cynical moments I sometimes feel it has more rules
than it does words. Consider `laughter'. Now prepend an `s'. Or "I
disconnected the speaker on all of the computers in the lab." does
not imply that they share a speaker.
Strictly speaking, the grammatical construct does imply that; in the
case of that particular sentence that implication is overridden by the
semantic unlikelihood of having all the lab's computers sharing a
single speaker.
Should I have said that I disconnected the
"speakerS"? or maybe "the
speaker on EACH computer"?
Either one would fix it, yes.
That was one message, Tony, where it would have been worth your time
to go slowly and carefully. It's also not threaded for me.
Yes, and perhaps one day you will be able to do trivial soldering jobs,
will be able to handle machine tools, and do various other things that I
do without having to think about it.
-tony
11:35 a.m.
New subject: English spelling [was Re: World?s top supercomputer from ?09 is now obsolete, will be dismantled]
Mouse wrote:
absent specific conscious attention (as now). The
first time I had
occasion to pronounce the card game name "euchre", I picked the wrong
paradigm for the initial vowels and pronounced it "oyker" (my template
was (Leonhard) Euler's name - why that rather than "eunuch" or
"euphoria" or "eucalyptus" or "euphemism", I don't
know).
German vs. Greek.
Peace... Sridhar
4 Apr
4 Apr
10:43 p.m.
New subject: English's irregularities - Re: World?s top supercomputer from ?09 is now obsolete, will be dismantled
On 04/04/13 1:07 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
On Thu, 4 Apr 2013, Pontus Pihlgren wrote:
It's claimed that fully 25% of words break the I-before-E rule:
https://www.quora.com/Grammar/What-are-the-trickiest-rules-in-English-gramm…
--Toby
A little stupid.. I know about the rules for
appending an S in the right place, I just
can't seem to master them.
> I thought that perhaps Swedish does not have such a concept but then
> I saw that he does speak of power supplieS and fanS; he even talks
> about making the CPU's pin compatible, although instead of multiple
> pins of multiple CPUs that seems to suggest making the (single) pin
> of a single CPU compatible with something...
English has inconsistent rules, and freely breaks them.
It seems to have more IRREGULAR conjugations, declensions, and plurals.
Can anyone explain why the 'I' is after the 'E' in "WEIRD"?
5 Apr
5 Apr
3:38 a.m.
New subject: English's irregularities - Re: World?s top supercomputer from ?09 is now obsolete, will be dismantled
------ Original Message ------
From: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au>
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Sent: 05/04/2013 03:43:28
Subject: English's irregularities - Re: World?s top supercomputer from
?09 is now obsolete, will be dismantled
On 04/04/13 1:07 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
Not sure if you can see this in West Pondia.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duqlZXiIZqA
On Thu, 4 Apr 2013, Pontus Pihlgren wrote:
It's claimed that fully 25% of words break the I-before-E rule:
https://www.quora.com/Grammar/What-are-the-trickiest-rules-in-English-gramm…
--Toby A little stupid.. I know about the rules for
appending an S in the
right place, I just
can't seem to master them.
>I thought that perhaps Swedish does not have such a concept but then
>I saw that he does speak of power supplieS and fanS; he even talks
>about making the CPU's pin compatible, although instead of multiple
>pins of multiple CPUs that seems to suggest making the (single) pin
>of a single CPU compatible with something...
English has inconsistent rules, and freely breaks them.
It seems to have more IRREGULAR conjugations, declensions, and
plurals.
Can anyone explain why the 'I' is after the 'E' in "WEIRD"?
10:05 a.m.
New subject: English's irregularities - Re: World?s top supercomputer from ?09 is now obsolete, will be dismantled
Good looking show. I'll have to see if we have that on BBC America.
On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 2:38 AM, Dave <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com> wrote:
------ Original Message ------
From: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au>
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Sent: 05/04/2013 03:43:28
Subject: English's irregularities - Re: World?s top supercomputer from ?09
is now obsolete, will be dismantled
On 04/04/13 1:07 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
Not sure if you can see this in West Pondia.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?**v=duqlZXiIZqA<http://www.youtube.com/watc…
On Thu, 4 Apr 2013, Pontus Pihlgren wrote:
It's claimed that fully 25% of words break the I-before-E rule:
https://www.quora.com/Grammar/**What-are-the-trickiest-rules-**
in-English-grammar/answer/**Caroline-Lee-4<https://www.quora.com/Grammar…
--Toby
A little stupid.. I know about the rules for
appending an S in the
right place, I just
can't seem to master them.
> I thought that perhaps Swedish does not have such a concept but then
> I saw that he does speak of power supplieS and fanS; he even talks
> about making the CPU's pin compatible, although instead of multiple
> pins of multiple CPUs that seems to suggest making the (single) pin
> of a single CPU compatible with something...
>
English has inconsistent rules, and freely breaks them.
It seems to have more IRREGULAR conjugations, declensions, and plurals.
Can anyone explain why the 'I' is after the 'E' in "WEIRD"?
4126
days inactive
4127
days old
14 comments
11 participants
participants (11)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
dave.g4ugm＠gmail.com -
dm561＠torfree.net -
iamcamiel＠gmail.com -
lproven＠gmail.com -
mouse＠Rodents-Montreal.ORG -
oltmansg＠gmail.com -
ploopster＠gmail.com -
pontus＠Update.UU.SE -
toby＠telegraphics.com.au