ha ha
― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Friday, 23 August 2019 07:24 (four years ago) link
2+ tamales, 1 tamal.
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 24 August 2019 22:55 (four years ago) link
"lousy" from louse/lice
just now, duh
― The Ravishing of ROFL Stein (Hadrian VIII), Sunday, 25 August 2019 01:42 (four years ago) link
traceable in the usage meaning "infested" i.e. "that place is just LOUSY with cops!"
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 25 August 2019 08:18 (four years ago) link
well I guess you'd expect the s in a descriptive form of a given word to be soft. Maybe if it was pronounced more like loussy you'd get it clearer. Does adding a y to the end of a word tend to harden the letter before it, pronunciationwise?
― Stevolende, Sunday, 25 August 2019 08:45 (four years ago) link
I think it varies? Most people don’t say greasy to rhyme with easy eg
― YouGov to see it (wins), Sunday, 25 August 2019 08:49 (four years ago) link
except in yeats
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Sunday, 25 August 2019 08:51 (four years ago) link
(xp) Not sure about that tbh.
― Boulez, vous couchez avec moi? (Tom D.), Sunday, 25 August 2019 08:56 (four years ago) link
Or to be more specific changing a word from noun to adjective does it harden an end syllable's soft letter. Language pronunciation tends to change to what flows naturally off the tongue over time. & it can obscure etymological evolution, innit?
― Stevolende, Sunday, 25 August 2019 09:04 (four years ago) link
a good example of where changing a word from noun to adjective fails to harden the end syllable's soft letter is louse and lousy, which goes in exactly the opposite direction (except no doubt in the dialects where this doesn't happen)
― mark s, Sunday, 25 August 2019 09:14 (four years ago) link
id use both words either way tbh, tryin to think why/when and it may be depending on following consonant or somesuch
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Sunday, 25 August 2019 09:31 (four years ago) link
I might use a z sound for louse if I’m saying “louse up the joint”. Maybe. I’ve never said that I don’t think
― YouGov to see it (wins), Sunday, 25 August 2019 09:41 (four years ago) link
I would very much see a soft s as in louse as not being a hard s which is more like zee in lousy.
what you're saying would be the noun would be louz and the adjective would be loussee. I haven't heard anybody talk like that.
So I'm wondering why you're making what appears to be a contrarian statement.
― Stevolende, Sunday, 25 August 2019 09:44 (four years ago) link
bcz to me the z sound is evidently a "soft s" and the SSSS sound is a hard s?
i mean this is a formulation you've more or less invented so you can define it how you like i guess
― mark s, Sunday, 25 August 2019 09:53 (four years ago) link
Prett sure there's no such thing as soft or hard 's' sound.
― Boulez, vous couchez avec moi? (Tom D.), Sunday, 25 August 2019 10:16 (four years ago) link
... there is however definitely a y at the end of prett.
― Boulez, vous couchez avec moi? (Tom D.), Sunday, 25 August 2019 10:17 (four years ago) link
well lol actually i was unfair to stevolende, as there *are* other ppl out in the world (including language teachers) (bad ones) who insisting on terming them soft and hard s in exactly this confusing way
linguists favour voiced (zzz) vs voiceless (sss): the difference being the sound made in the back of yr throat is the voicing of the zzz
― mark s, Sunday, 25 August 2019 10:18 (four years ago) link
Liza Minnelli to thread
― YouGov to see it (wins), Sunday, 25 August 2019 10:29 (four years ago) link
Sean Connery and Ally McCoisht to thread.
― Boulez, vous couchez avec moi? (Tom D.), Sunday, 25 August 2019 10:36 (four years ago) link
ztfu everyone
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Sunday, 25 August 2019 10:38 (four years ago) link
There are no special IPA symbols for /s/ and /z/ - they are just /s/ and /z/ - dunno why we need to talk about 'soft' and 'hard' as it is always confusing.
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Sunday, 25 August 2019 10:41 (four years ago) link
is it or isnt it
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Sunday, 25 August 2019 10:42 (four years ago) link
Apologies for introducing the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative into the discussion for cheap laughs.
― Boulez, vous couchez avec moi? (Tom D.), Sunday, 25 August 2019 10:42 (four years ago) link
his work really fell off after live flesh
― mark s, Sunday, 25 August 2019 10:44 (four years ago) link
lol
― YouGov to see it (wins), Sunday, 25 August 2019 10:46 (four years ago) link
blouse/blousy
― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Sunday, 25 August 2019 10:51 (four years ago) link
I thought that US English changed a lot of what is represented by the letter s in English spelling to z precisely because of that differentiation.
& would have thought of the more liquid s sound as soft and the more curt z sound as hard but that could just be synaesthetic association.& think there are several other letters that voiced/unvoiced differentiation is true of depending on what letters it is juxtaposed with.
― Stevolende, Sunday, 25 August 2019 10:53 (four years ago) link
An interesting one is "abuse", where the "s" becomes voiced when it goes from noun to verb, with no change in spelling.
― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Sunday, 25 August 2019 10:57 (four years ago) link
blowze/blowzy
(early 17th century: from obsolete blowze ‘beggar's female companion’, of unknown origin.)
― Boulez, vous couchez avec moi? (Tom D.), Sunday, 25 August 2019 11:02 (four years ago) link
floss / floozy
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 25 August 2019 11:04 (four years ago) link
thought 1: if you mean ise vs ize, the z form was not introduced by american spelling and is not present by reason of american usage (OED favours "ize" where relevant). it's there because the early root form of the relevant word is classical greek, and it began to be swapped out (in the UK) by printers tending followed the subsequent french versions of the root (which tended to convert the z to an s).
thought 2: it's possibly simply by association with soft c -- viz "soft c" is sss hence s pron.sss must be the "soft s")
thought 3: someone else can pick this one up
― mark s, Sunday, 25 August 2019 11:11 (four years ago) link
"Blousy" can also mean "like a blouse" but now that I'm slightly more awake, I think I do use a voiced consonant in "blouse" anyway, although my parents don't. This may change again after I drink coffee.
― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Sunday, 25 August 2019 11:16 (four years ago) link
Thought 3: the grave iirc
― YouGov to see it (wins), Sunday, 25 August 2019 11:20 (four years ago) link
as with grammar it's a bit of a clown's errand anyway trying to pin down reliable eng lang rules of pronunciation
such as there arertend to arrive in the form "i before e except after c, when the sound is eeee, or when sounded as *guido voice* "EEEY!" except in february alone each leap year, when the moon is in the second house, plus also there's when *dies*"
it is an irregular language with a great deal of valuably unruly regional variation
― mark s, Sunday, 25 August 2019 11:24 (four years ago) link
Ha, was "except after c" there just because of "ceiling"? I haven't had coffee yet but I can't recall what other "cei" words a 7yo might have occasion to use.
― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Sunday, 25 August 2019 11:32 (four years ago) link
receive and just possibly receipt i guess
― mark s, Sunday, 25 August 2019 11:36 (four years ago) link
Ah
― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Sunday, 25 August 2019 11:37 (four years ago) link
Someone get sund4r a coffee already
― YouGov to see it (wins), Sunday, 25 August 2019 11:39 (four years ago) link
in hackney we call it soffee
― mark s, Sunday, 25 August 2019 11:48 (four years ago) link
That the Zing icon means ilx could be mistaken for a MAGA forum
― Alba, Monday, 26 August 2019 13:14 (four years ago) link
That MAGA is just a ripoff of Thatcher's "Make Great Britain Great Again", without a play on words or faded empire.
― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Monday, 26 August 2019 13:57 (four years ago) link
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Sunday, August 25, 2019 11:41 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink
Looking up that IPA symbols list it looks like it breaks down along the same lines I would have thought of as soft and hard. /s/ covers what has been called soft c as well as the more fluid/liquid/whatever s sound, presumably the default s sound whereas /z/ covers the other s sound as in desert, -ised and whatever alongside things normally spelt with the letter z.
I would have broken that down to soft and hard since I'd say it follows the pattern delineating the difference between hard and soft c or g and other letters I would have thought of as hard and soft sounding.
― Stevolende, Monday, 26 August 2019 17:45 (four years ago) link
"soft" and "hard" are not linguistic terms and they are not esp useful for describing sounds/phonemes
IPA is the best reliable way to describe the sounds that human mouths produce as well as suprasegmental features like intonation, stress, etc
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, 26 August 2019 18:11 (four years ago) link
i did not just learn that -- i am responding to the above discussion about lousiness
I think what they are getting at is the difference between voiced and unvoiced sounds, maybe? "soft" meaning unvoiced? But it is still a poor way to refer to it, there's an underlying assumption that orthography represents pronunciation in some deliberate way, there is just a /s/ and a /z/ and they can be represented in a load of different ways.
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 26 August 2019 21:29 (four years ago) link
Yeah, no one calls the "g" in "guitar" a "hard 'c'" or says that the "v" in "velvet" is a hard "f" so "voiced" vs "voiceless" would be a better way of describing the distinction (if you're not going to use IPA). However, it was completely clear to me (and I'm guessing most here) what Stevolende meant by "hard and soft 's'" so I didn't think it necessary to pick that nit.
― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Monday, 26 August 2019 22:51 (four years ago) link
Voicing is part of IPA! Aspiration too. It covers everything that is why it’s the best. Long/short/hard/soft are the layman’s terms that help elementary school students learn to read; they are useful terms for that purpose but not universally understood the way IPA terms/notation are for describing linguistic features. I swear I’ve been yammering on Ilx about this for nearly 15 years.
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, 26 August 2019 23:29 (four years ago) link
However, it was completely clear to me (and I'm guessing most here) what Stevolende meant by "hard and soft 's'" so I didn't think it necessary to pick that nit.
No, I was totally confused as I would've put them the other way around, I'd associate the /s/ sound in louse with being "hard", it just... seems that it is to me, on a sonic/connotation-based level rather than a scholarly linguistic one. Voiced and voiceless are so much easier for me (though tbf I have qualifications that mean I know my way around IPA pretty well, so not vouching for their ease for other people, I guess).
― emil.y, Monday, 26 August 2019 23:53 (four years ago) link
Actually, I think I associate all voiceless consonants with being "harder" sounding than voiced ones. They're proper full stops whereas voiced consonants flow.
― emil.y, Monday, 26 August 2019 23:56 (four years ago) link
Shameful confession: I have an English degree, in the course of which I studied linguistics with considerable enthusiasm, thirtymumble years ago. All too often, IPA just looks like gibberish (or denotes a type of beer) to me.
― Rumspringsteen (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 27 August 2019 00:01 (four years ago) link