Butch Malahide wrote: > On Nov 4, 9:46 am, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com> > wrote: >> Butch Malahide wrote: >>> At any rate, the status of >>> "thy" as a word would be rather dubious if English were not a >>> written >>> language; there would be no way of telling if the "thy" in "thy >>> will" >>> is a separate word or just a prefix.
>> If "thy" were a prefix, by analogy so would be "my", "his", >> "John's", >> "the dog's", "my oldest sister's", etc.
> Non sequitur. In Hungarian, which uses suffixes instead of prefixes > to > show possession, there are suffixes for "my", "thy", etc., but no > special suffix for "the dog's". For exampla: > isten = god > istenem = my god > istened = thy god > istene = his/her/its god > Janos istene = John's dog > a kutya istene = the dog's god
That's Hungarian. Enlglish, being AFAIK the least inflected of any Indo-Europena language, doesn't have anything that special-cases first and second person over third.
> On Nov 3, 1:42 pm,sigvaldi<sigv...@binet.is> wrote:
> > On Nov 3, 7:04 pm, Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> > > On Nov 3, 6:57 am,sigvaldi<sigv...@binet.is> wrote:
> > > > On Nov 3, 9:54 am, goldf...@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb) wrote: > > > > > The alphabet of Old English included letters for the initial sounds > > > > > of "thing" and "they": two different ones, called "thorn" and "edh".
> > > > The Icelandic alphabet does too, Ž og Š
> > > What a coincidence! They're even the _same_ two letters! > > Not on my screen :)
> I did not mean they were only one letter. I meant that they were the > same two letters as are used in Old English.
> John Savard
Yes, I know :) Joking aside, Old Norse and Old English are similar on a large number of points, I belive I can read Old English better (from a knowledge of modern Icelandic and modern English) than many speakers of English today.
: Szymon =?utf-8?Q?Sok=C3=B3=C5=82?= <szy...@bastard.operator.from.hell.pl> : Neither is correct ;-) (well, OK, maybe it is correct pronounciation for the : name of that town, but not for the name of the man after whom the town was : named).
Yeah, that sort of thing ran through my mind; my initial reaction way back when was "why those west virginians, don't even know how to pronounce Pulaski", but then I thought... the Pennsylvanians were probably mangling it also (though in that area, there were several families named Pulaski, who pronounced it like the town). But anyways, I eventually came to forgive the egregious trespasses of the west virginians, as I hope others forgive us provincial heathens ours.
David Goldfarb wrote: > In article <DgxcRgjdaE8KF...@parkhead.demon.co.uk>, > Jacey Bedford <lookin...@nospam.invalid> wrote: >> In message <KsJ267.1...@kithrup.com>, David Goldfarb >> <goldf...@ocf.berkeley.edu> writes >>> Here's an exercise: put your hand or a few fingers on your throat, >>> right on your Adam's apple. Say the sound of the letter T a few times. >>> Now say the sound of the letter D. Notice that your tongue is in >>> exactly the same place for both -- but when you say the D, there is a >>> vibration in your throat. This is called "voicing", and is the >>> distinction between T and D, K and G, S and Z (among others). >> Thanks for that, David, I'll add it to my very scanty knowledge of >> linguistics. Beyond knowing they were different I hadn't a clue why.
> Many years ago I took an introductory linguistics course at the same > time as introductory Japanese. The linguistics course covered voiced > vs. unvoiced, at the same time as the Japanese told me "This character > from the syllabary is read 'ka' but if you draw two extra small lines > at the upper right it becomes 'ga'." That rather drove it home.
In fact, the allegedly Roman alphabet we use had the letter C pronounced always as K and they added a little line to turn it into G.
Mike Schilling wrote: > Mike Ash wrote: >> In article <hcr433$ts...@news.eternal-september.org>, >> Rebecca Rice <rebecca_r...@att.net> wrote:
>>> I have to admit that they sounded the same to me too, until >>> I tried the "hold your fingers on your Adam's apple" trick, >>> and I am a native English speaker. >> In my experience, being a native speaker doesn't help for >> distinguishing sounds which don't have an impact on the meaning of >> words. There aren't any English word pairs which are distinguished >> only by voiced or unvoiced "th", so native speakers aren't set up to >> be able to tell the difference.
> thy/thigh > teeth/teethe
You can't really count that second one because the vowel is so different - I think this applies to all the -the/-th verb/noun pairs like bathe/bath.
Rebecca Rice wrote: > David DeLaney wrote: >> William December Starr <wdst...@panix.com> wrote: >>> Jacey Bedford <lookin...@nospam.invalid> said: >>>> sigvaldi <sigv...@binet.is> writes >>>>> The Icelandic pronounciation is similar to how the English >>>>> pronounce "thing" or "their" etc. >>>> Two very different sounds. 'Thing' is a soft th. 'Their' is hard. >>> I just said "You've got your thing, they've got their thing" out >>> loud a few times. The pronunciation of the 'th' in the last two >>> words neither sounds different to my ears nor feels different to my >>> tongue and teeth.
>> To put it a clearer way: "thing"'s th is not voiced. "they've" and >> "their"'s >> is voiced. Try saying "thing" with a voiced th or "they've" or 'their' >> with >> an unvoiced one, and it should sound VERY strange to you.
> This may be where the problem lies... I can't really grasp the > difference between how a voiced and unvoiced th sound. So when you say > "try saying "thing" with a voiced th", I can't even comprehend what it > should sound like, much less that it should sound strange. And you > can't just say "like you would say "their"", because that gets back to > the entire "I don't consciously hear a difference" problem. The Adam's > apple trick has shown me that they _feel_ different, but that doesn't > translate to sounding different. (And is probably being made more > difficult because the ng in thing makes the same sort of buzzy feel as > the th in they, so the words as a whole have the same sort of feel to > them.)
Try saying "nothing" and "bathing" and see if the last part sounds the same to you and whether you can interchange the sounds. If you can do it, I think you'll find it sounds sort of foreign.
: Robert Bannister <robb...@bigpond.com> : You can't really count that second one because the vowel is so different : - I think this applies to all the -the/-th verb/noun pairs like bathe/bath.
Huh? The way I pronounce them they seem nigh-identical "ee" sounds. Just about the *only* difference in the way I say them is the voicing of the final "th". Hm. I suppose the fact that in "teeth" I have to chop off voicing, and in "teethe" I don't, will make the vowel seem different, but I think that's mostly illusion.
Robert Bannister wrote: > Mike Schilling wrote: >> Mike Ash wrote: >>> In article <hcr433$ts...@news.eternal-september.org>, >>> Rebecca Rice <rebecca_r...@att.net> wrote:
>>>> I have to admit that they sounded the same to me too, until >>>> I tried the "hold your fingers on your Adam's apple" trick, >>>> and I am a native English speaker. >>> In my experience, being a native speaker doesn't help for >>> distinguishing sounds which don't have an impact on the meaning of >>> words. There aren't any English word pairs which are distinguished >>> only by voiced or unvoiced "th", so native speakers aren't set up >>> to >>> be able to tell the difference.
>> thy/thigh >> teeth/teethe
> You can't really count that second one because the vowel is so > different - I think this applies to all the -the/-th verb/noun pairs > like bathe/bath.
Sounds like the same long "e" to me. (Agreed about bath/bathe.)
> Butch Malahide wrote: > > On Nov 4, 9:46 am, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com> > > wrote: > >> Butch Malahide wrote: > >>> At any rate, the status of > >>> "thy" as a word would be rather dubious if English were not a > >>> written > >>> language; there would be no way of telling if the "thy" in "thy > >>> will" > >>> is a separate word or just a prefix.
> >> If "thy" were a prefix, by analogy so would be "my", "his", > >> "John's", > >> "the dog's", "my oldest sister's", etc.
> > Non sequitur. In Hungarian, which uses suffixes instead of prefixes > > to > > show possession, there are suffixes for "my", "thy", etc., but no > > special suffix for "the dog's". For exampla: > > isten = god > > istenem = my god > > istened = thy god > > istene = his/her/its god > > Janos istene = John's dog <----------- John's *god*, not dog > > a kutya istene = the dog's god
> That's Hungarian.
Doesn't matter. The point of the example was to refute the claim that if "my", "thy", "his/her/its", "our", "your", "their" were prefixes, then "John's", "the dog's", etc. would also have to be prefixes.
> Enlglish, being AFAIK the least inflected of any > Indo-Europena language,
If we didn't have *writing* (or if we wrote like the ancients with no space between words), how could you tell that "to the house", "by the house", "in the house", "on the house", "for the house", "into the house", "through the house", etc. are not inflected forms of "the house? If you counted all those "cases", you'd find about as many cases in English as in Hungarian or Finnish.
> doesn't have anything that special-cases first > and second person over third.
Huh? The only "special casing" I see is that, if you choose to *name* the possessor, there are many choices for a 3rd person possessor, not so many for 1st or 2nd person. Diacriticals omitted, isten = god, a(z) = the.
istenem = my god, en = I, az en istenem = MY god istened = thy god, Te = thou, a Te istened = THY god istene = his/her/its god, Janos = John, a Janos istene = JOHN'S god
>> I was addressing the way the sounds are spoken in normal speech, >> not the way they're pronounced when artificially drawn out or >> spoken unnaturally slowly.
> Ah. So you *would* say that "d" and "t" are the same sound, since > after all, one can come up with examples where they are > nigh-indistinguishable in "normal speech". I admit, that's a > novel way of looking at it.
Please don't try to expand "William thinks that the 'th's in two particular words sound alike" to a statement that begins "William claims that there's no difference ever between..."
Mike Schilling wrote: > Butch Malahide wrote: >> On Nov 4, 9:46 am, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com> >> wrote: >>> Butch Malahide wrote: >>>> At any rate, the status of >>>> "thy" as a word would be rather dubious if English were not a >>>> written >>>> language; there would be no way of telling if the "thy" in "thy >>>> will" >>>> is a separate word or just a prefix. >>> If "thy" were a prefix, by analogy so would be "my", "his", >>> "John's", >>> "the dog's", "my oldest sister's", etc. >> Non sequitur. In Hungarian, which uses suffixes instead of prefixes >> to >> show possession, there are suffixes for "my", "thy", etc., but no >> special suffix for "the dog's". For exampla: >> isten = god >> istenem = my god >> istened = thy god >> istene = his/her/its god >> Janos istene = John's dog >> a kutya istene = the dog's god
> That's Hungarian. Enlglish, being AFAIK the least inflected of any > Indo-Europena language, doesn't have anything that special-cases first > and second person over third.
That's a confusing statement. The Hungarian example does not demonstrate anything special about 3rd Person - only nouns - and if you look at the forms, you can see it is forming a kind of genitive by using "John his god" ("dog" must have been a typo there) and "the dog its god" - this type of genitive is quite common in many European dialects.
::: thy/thigh teeth/teethe :: You can't really count that second one because the vowel is so :: different - I think this applies to all the -the/-th verb/noun pairs :: like bathe/bath.
: thro...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) : The way I pronounce them they seem nigh-identical "ee" sounds.
On the other hand, my pronunciation of "bath" and "bathe" is indeed very distinct, naict.
In article <KsLE0A.2...@kithrup.com>, goldf...@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb) said:
> William December Starr <wdst...@panix.com> wrote:
>> Does one need to have studied linguistics to determine whether >> parts of two words sound the same?
> You failed to recognize the difference in sound for parts of two > words that do in fact sound different,
Unless they don't.
> and you have never studied linguistics. So you tell me.
> (If you're going to continue to assert that the th in "thy" is the > same as the th in "thigh", I will simply start laughing.)
How can I continue to assert something which I have never asserted at all?
As I just said to Wayne Throop, please don't try to expand "William thinks that the 'th's in two particular words sound alike" to a statement that begins "William claims that there's no difference ever between..."
In article <81b0b325-36de-4ea8-a4ae-5f4c3a591...@g23g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>, Butch Malahide <fred.gal...@gmail.com> said:
> wdst...@panix.com (William December Starr) wrote:
>> Yes, the "th" sounds in those two words are different to me. I >> never meant to claim that 'th' can't have different >> pronunciations in different words in English, just that I >> don't/can't perceive a difference in the their/thing example that >> Jacey gave. Or at least, that when both 'th's are pronounced the >> same, it sounds perfectly normal to me.
> Does the th in their/thing sound like the th in bath or the th in > bathe?
:::: I just said "You've got your thing, they've got their thing" out :::: loud a few times. The pronunciation of the 'th' in the last two :::: words neither sounds different to my ears nor feels different to my :::: tongue and teeth.
: wdst...@panix.com (William December Starr) : Please don't try to expand "William thinks that the 'th's in two : particular words sound alike" to a statement that begins "William : claims that there's no difference ever between..."
Point taken. However, the way I pronounce them, there's also a distinct difference in that particular case. The voicing cuts out for the "th" in thing, very distinctly, when I do it. Mind you, that's "the same feel to tongue and teeth", since the only difference is down in the throat.
In article <32e39c53-b86f-4351-a83d-b9d868ce5...@k17g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>, Butch Malahide <fred.gal...@gmail.com> said:
> Do you perceive a difference between "who's there?" and "who's > Thayer?"?
Yes, though it _could_ be due to 'there' being a one-syllable word while 'Thayer,' being two syllables<1>, demands that emphasis (accent) be placed on one of them, and it's the first one. (Or not.)
>> Or at least, >> that when both 'th's are pronounced the same, it sounds perfectly >> normal to me.
> I suspect you aren't actually pronouncing them the same. I expect > I could be convinced otherwise by voiceprinting.
Certainly possible. My original comment which has gotten me dogpiled here was that they _sound_ the same to me, not "They are the same, they are, they are, they are!"
> Mike Ash wrote: > > In article <hcsek8$8u...@news.eternal-september.org>, > > "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >> Mike Ash wrote: > >>> In article <hcr433$ts...@news.eternal-september.org>, > >>> Rebecca Rice <rebecca_r...@att.net> wrote:
> >>>> I have to admit that they sounded the same to me too, until > >>>> I tried the "hold your fingers on your Adam's apple" trick, > >>>> and I am a native English speaker.
> >>> In my experience, being a native speaker doesn't help for > >>> distinguishing sounds which don't have an impact on the meaning of > >>> words. There aren't any English word pairs which are distinguished > >>> only by voiced or unvoiced "th", so native speakers aren't set up > >>> to > >>> be able to tell the difference.
> >> thy/thigh > >> teeth/teethe
> > Good point. Perhaps I should say, when such pairs are rare but the > > different sounds are common, you aren't set up to distinguish > > between > > them except where it matters (and perhaps not even then; I suspect > > that, at least in the case of thy/thigh, the distinction is made by > > context).
> Hell, if you said that, I wouldn't be able to argue with you.
Consider it said, then.
-- Mike Ash Radio Free Earth Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
:: Does the th in their/thing sound like the th in bath or the th in :: bathe?
: wdst...@panix.com (William December Starr) : Bath.
Hm. Let me see. So, you're pronouncing "there" much the same way as the first sylable of "theremin"? So, does "that theramin there" have the same sound of th in the final two cases, the way you say it?
In article <1257375...@sheol.org>, thro...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) said:
> Hm. Let me see. So, you're pronouncing "there" much the same way > as the first sylable of "theremin"? So, does "that theramin > there" have the same sound of th in the final two cases, the way > you say it?
Alas, 'theremin' is one of those words that I think I've only ever seen in print so I don't know how it's supposed to be pronounced.
(Insert here story of my incredible mangling of 'Pharoah' in front of my elementary school's entire combined fourth-grade classes while trying to read a line from the play "Oklahoma.")
> If we didn't have *writing* (or if we wrote like the ancients with > no > space between words), how could you tell that "to the house", "by > the > house", "in the house", "on the house", "for the house", "into the > house", "through the house", etc. are not inflected forms of "the > house? If you counted all those "cases", you'd find about as many > cases in English as in Hungarian or Finnish
Arbitrarily large numbers of other words (other sounds or morphemes, if you like), can go in between a proposition and its object. A preposition can even come later, though some people think (foolishly) hat's it the wrong sort of word to end a sentence with. That makes it difficult to see it as some sort of affix.
Mike Ash wrote: > In article <hcsiq5$gn...@news.eternal-september.org>, > "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Mike Ash wrote: >>> In article <hcsek8$8u...@news.eternal-september.org>, >>> "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Mike Ash wrote: >>>>> In article <hcr433$ts...@news.eternal-september.org>, >>>>> Rebecca Rice <rebecca_r...@att.net> wrote:
>>>>>> I have to admit that they sounded the same to me too, until >>>>>> I tried the "hold your fingers on your Adam's apple" trick, >>>>>> and I am a native English speaker.
>>>>> In my experience, being a native speaker doesn't help for >>>>> distinguishing sounds which don't have an impact on the meaning >>>>> of >>>>> words. There aren't any English word pairs which are >>>>> distinguished >>>>> only by voiced or unvoiced "th", so native speakers aren't set >>>>> up >>>>> to >>>>> be able to tell the difference.
>>>> thy/thigh >>>> teeth/teethe
>>> Good point. Perhaps I should say, when such pairs are rare but the >>> different sounds are common, you aren't set up to distinguish >>> between >>> them except where it matters (and perhaps not even then; I suspect >>> that, at least in the case of thy/thigh, the distinction is made >>> by >>> context).
>> Hell, if you said that, I wouldn't be able to argue with you.
> > If we didn't have *writing* (or if we wrote like the ancients with > > no > > space between words), how could you tell that "to the house", "by > > the > > house", "in the house", "on the house", "for the house", "into the > > house", "through the house", etc. are not inflected forms of "the > > house? If you counted all those "cases", you'd find about as many > > cases in English as in Hungarian or Finnish
> Arbitrarily large numbers of other words (other sounds or morphemes, > if you like), can go in between a proposition and its object. A > preposition can even come later, though some people think (foolishly) > hat's it the wrong sort of word to end a sentence with. That makes it > difficult to see it as some sort of affix.
Wayne Throop <thro...@sheol.org> wrote: >You can also say "p-p-p" and "b-b-b".
Hold on, the bilabial fricatives were an entirely different part of the thread!
>At this point, I am inspired to call "yasid" on the story about the >martian bartender who couldn't tell how he mixed a drink, and whenever >he slowed down to try to watch himself to see how much of each ingredient >he added, it came out horrid. Finally had to resort to high-speed cameras. >This was in aid of creating a robot to do the mixing.
Um ... Have read it ... Asimov I think?
Dave -- \/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK> http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Robert Bannister <robb...@bigpond.com> wrote: >Rebecca Rice wrote: >> David DeLaney wrote: >>> To put it a clearer way: "thing"'s th is not voiced. "they've" and >>> "their"'s >>> is voiced. Try saying "thing" with a voiced th or "they've" or 'their' >>> with an unvoiced one, and it should sound VERY strange to you.
>> This may be where the problem lies... I can't really grasp the >> difference between how a voiced and unvoiced th sound. So when you say >> "try saying "thing" with a voiced th", I can't even comprehend what it >> should sound like, much less that it should sound strange. And you >> can't just say "like you would say "their"", because that gets back to >> the entire "I don't consciously hear a difference" problem. The Adam's >> apple trick has shown me that they _feel_ different, but that doesn't >> translate to sounding different. (And is probably being made more >> difficult because the ng in thing makes the same sort of buzzy feel as >> the th in they, so the words as a whole have the same sort of feel to >> them.)
>Try saying "nothing" and "bathing" and see if the last part sounds the >same to you and whether you can interchange the sounds. If you can do >it, I think you'll find it sounds sort of foreign.
Same sort of distinction can be heard with "breath" versus "breathe" - the former's unvoiced, normally, while the latter is voiced.
Dave -- \/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK> http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
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