wheeldawg @ wheeldawg @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

I just admitted I did that, appreciated you calling me on it, then write a paragraph explaining I'm working on changing it, and I still get accused of boasting about it?

As for the descriptive vs prescriptive part, I've heard of it only as it came up in discussions of another concept (philosophy and religion. They were talking about using one type versus the other as it related to their point, but I didn't know exactly what they meant, because that wasn't what was being discussed directly). So yes, I've heard of it, but no, I wasn't really aware of the meaning of it because the concept at hand wasn't linguistics. Sorry, that wasn't clear. All I was trying to say was that I've heard of the concept, but hadn't learned what it was about yet. That was probably a poor choice of words.

Either way, having read the wiki page for it now, my main issue is that there really isn't (in my opinion) a good reason that any language should ever have a spelling that does not match the order of the sounds used to pronounce the word. Yes, that falls under prescriptive here. This doesn't exactly apply to languages that don't use an alphabet.

You can throw that opinion straight in the trash if you want. But until I find good reasons to think otherwise, that's just a statement of the ideal way to spell, if we were still forming the language.

No it's conscious.

I probably should have said something about it being true with the languages I've heard more often.

Things like Spanish, French, Italian... Basically things near where American English came from.

I was and am fully aware that other languages will possibly sound different. The way I said it did sound ignorant though. And with the previous reply, I was assuming they were coming from a European POV. All of that was wrong.

Anyway, add in the "in languages I've heard/am familiar with" to that.

I'm aware of the descriptive vs prescriptive concept, but not for linguistics specifically. I've got it open in a tab waiting for my next free moment. I've spent this one replying.

But you were right to call me out about the order of sounds part. I was assuming a bit. I'm not used to phrasing comments for international audiences 😅. Usually I'm talking to people that would share my perspective and familiarities. In my area I didn't run into a lot of people that haven't been from around here. I should get better about this, but changing my own perspective is a challenge. I'm trying.

But nothing has any weight in space.

If we're talking about the order the sounds are made, "liter" is more correct. I never understood why Europeans spell the "er" sound as "re". It's just now how the sound works.

My take is that spelling should reflect the sound. In any language. For every word, every time.

American English makes a ton of errors in this regard, you'll get no argument from me there (for example any word with "ough" or "augh" is automatically spelled wrong).

I'm sure tons of other examples in pretty much every language make the same mistake. But as far as I can tell, there is no good reason the spelling shouldn't be a representation of the exact order of sounds that make up the word.

All that to say, even when hearing people who speak all manner of different languages use the word "liter", not one has ever pronounced it "litre".

Honestly it should be more like "ledur" for most Americans. We don't have a habit of the actually making the proper "t" sound very often. But I'm getting into a whole different argument, so I'll leave that kinda rant for a different time.

The first sentence doesn't seem to have to do with the second sentence. And imo the first one is wrong too.

The amount of stupid it takes to even get the needle leaning to the right just by .00001% is pretty profound. It does exist everywhere, but that doesn't lessen the sheer amount of it. Conservatives kinda define themselves by their stupidity. It's their brand. They don't call it that, of course.

The middle in my ass

Maybe "The middle of my ass" would flow better

And as I replied to another, I learned that today based on the wording of their reply.

So that's a new thing I know now. I still don't think "they" is binary though. It's is kinda the star example of non-binary.

But I guess I did exclude a pronoun that I didn't know existed. I thought the word was specifically calling the cat an object, so now I know better. It wasn't intentional, and definitely not meant that way (as in not meant to force or exclude, aka discriminate).

You know what...

I went and looked this up because of this comment. I had never heard of "it" being used like that.

I've only ever heard it being used to specify something specifically as a non-person, or more generally a "being". So I thought it was literally defining it as a non-being.

So TIL. I wasn't trying to be prejudiced, I have literally never heard of "it" being anything other than specifically a non-living object.

So thanks for the chance to learn something interesting today.

Fair. This whole thread is unpopular opinions, so it's kinda natural for most people to disagree with each other.

Thread participation achieved. I'm not even mad. (งツ)ว

What an even more peculiar downvote amount. Even if you (the arbitrary you, not necessarily you in particular) don't think they're worthy of being considered beings, it's not like I said anything offensive or off-topic.

Maybe.

Either way, I am confused about how standing up for cats while literally commenting on /c/cats would be downvoted so hard.

I'm still wondering why everyone got so mad in 3 words, when I was betting nice to a cat!

I wasn't even mean to the guy I was replying to.

Unless I'm missing some kind of context here (and that would be really oddly specific), this is beneath reddit intelligence.

Not that it deserved upvotes either, it was just a remark that I totally forgot about until I got the reply notification. Lemmy should be better than this.

I'm still not sure how else to read it.

From my understanding, the only "it" you could be referring to here is the cat. "its new landing spot" = "the cat's new landing spot". Ergo, calling the cat "it".

My point was cats at least deserve the respect of "they" (in this example, "their new landing spot") instead of calling them "it".

I apologize if I'm reading it wrong, but that's how it looks to me. Just trying to make sure to give kitties some respect.

I made myself chuckle, too.

You're welcome.

I don't think a little buzz is ok either. Driving is dangerous at the best of times. Another reply somewhere in this thread already said it, but there's no need to make it worse than it has to be.

Mine are unpopular, but in the other direction.

I think your first DUI offense should be the last time you drive. Period. I feel like the fact it's so lax is due to people knowing they won't be severely punished.

Isn't this how they actually are? I've only seen 2 of these in my life, but both had the big button for a piss rinse, and the smaller one for the shit shoot.

Are you starting an aneurysm?

Cats aren't "it"s.

Lmao I wish. I still usually try it, sometimes the timing can imply what I mean. But she always asks.

Probably has to do with her liking using extra words. I say the following without a trace of exaggeration.

If she's in a room with any person she's familiar with, she seems to have a complete inability to stop talking, other than if the other person is replying.

There can't be silence at all. Lately she's slowed down a little because she's gotten hooked on her Facebook feed, so she gets distracted. But even this just slows it down. She really just likes talking and hearing voices.

Whereas I only really engage in topics of interest or points of contention. She will literally try to repeat past conversations ad nauseum if she runs out of ideas.

I really can't tell if she likes talking or being talked to more. But given that growing up, none of us (her children) share this trait, she usually is the one to fill the gaps. I feel like she thinks her mouth and ears are the bus in the movie Speed. If the words being spoken per minute drops below some imaginary quantity, she'll explode.

So, answering with a should-be-sufficient-but-is-now-vague answer, she'll use that as a launching point to another subject too.

It's rough in the streets lol

I run into this when texting my mother.

She'll ask the same thing from 2 different perspectives (probably a better word but I can't think of it atm). Both are technically the same question, but I can't just say "yes" it "no", because it answers the question from just one or the other, but indicates the opposite from the other question's pov. Or sometimes needing to know between 2 possibilities she asks about one and then follows it up asking about the other.

For example, if we've recently met up to see my baby niblings (not even sure if this is a common use word, but I mean my nieces/nephews, aka her grandchildren), she could ask "Could you send me the photos you got in a text?" And then she would follow up with something like "Or did you already send them to my email?"

Now, I can't say "yes" or "no", I have to spell out what I did.

Other times it will be a question that she knows I picked one of the 2 options, but instead of just "did you do option A? Which would allow a quick answer "yes" which conveys that I did A, or I could say "no", which would indicate I did option B. One word, clear defined message. But she'll (sometimes during the process of replying- oof that's frustrating), she'll add "or did you do option B?" meaning I now have to spell out what I did.

I like efficient communication, and hate wasting a lot of words. And I'm any other circumstance, a 1 word answer works so well to convey the entire thing. But she almost always throws in a wrench by adding another question that conflicts with the ability to do that.