So here in Québec City, the mayorship was called early in the night for Savard, the longtime advisor and successor of our hugely popular outgoing mayor Labeaume. In the past week Marchand, her main rival and a newcomer in municipal politics, had been climbing by leaps and bounds in the polls, helped in part by Savard's terrible debate performances, but he was still several points behind her.
So imagine everyone's surprise when the last ballot boxes were opened and the votes came out for Marchand, giving him the narrowest of wins, 0.4% ahead of Savard. This, again, after the election had been called for her!
Marchard was my favourite candidate, so I'm quite happy about this turn of events. Also, the Savard candidate in my riding is a woman I strongly dislike, so having her lose to Marchand's riding candidate is a nice bonus. Plus plus, the anti-public-transit trash-radio candidate Gosselin got demoted from "official opposition" to "third party", which is gravy.
That said, it's not going to be easy for Marchard. Despite being mayor, he has only 6 advisors elected to council to Savard's 10, and another 5 for two other parties. It'll be a challenge for him to implement his policies in that setup. And Gosselin failing and falling won't stop our media from giving him a disproportionate amount of time in the spotlight - as we know from sixth-place-winner less-than-2%-popular-vote Bernier being propped up by the national news as equal to Trudeau and O'Toole, and in Québec the zero-elected-MNA provincial conservatives being reported on before the three opposition parties, when it comes to alt-right conservatives in power none is too many.
Meanwhile, in Lévis, the conservative "only whiners are against me" "I don't want to see any opposition in city hall" Lehoulier was massively re-elected, unfortunately but unsurprisingly. In Montréal Plante has crushed Codere once again, so we can look forward to another four years of right-wing media pissing on her and whining endlessly.
If you want some good Canadian drama, Nova Scotia premiere Tim Houston said the quiet part out loud yesterday when his response to $15 minimum wage implied that minimum wage jobs aren't real jobs.
He has "apologized" today insofar as saying that wasn't what he meant.
...
But apparently what that meant was that nobody should want to do them, and increasing minimum wage would disincentivize people from wanting to switch careers.
A fun bit of math and digging will reveal that $15/hour is ~$30,000, and that more than half of the province's workforce (52%) makes less than $30k annually. Shockingly, little c cons are still cons.
No one ever needed to be incentivized away from minimum wage jobs: the kind of employers who would like to pay you even less tend to be very, very shitty bosses, no matter what the actual minimum wage is.
The usual excuse is that minimum wage jobs are low-qualification, low-stress and low-importance, but, for some reasons, more and more jobs are minimum wage, including some rather essential ones.
It's almost as if the free market was not working properly when it comes to working conditions. But I'm certain that things would improve now that small employers have no people to lord over.
One would think that the pandemic would've helped dispel the myth around minimum wage jobs being low-stress and of low-importance but here we are.
... In Montréal Plante has crushed Codere once again, so we can look forward to another four years of right-wing media pissing on her and whining endlessly.
Yes, Project Montréal crushed Ensemble Montréal. It was not even close. Given the low turnout, I suspect it's a matter of motivation: Coderre's supporters are noisy like the cars they worship, but they don't actually care that much, since the status quo caters to them.
On the other side, Plante's want to change things for the better, so I suspect they were more inclined to vote to preserve the gains of the last 4 years.
I mean, I don't know, that's a guess, but the polls were much closer than the actual results, and turnout is low.
My borough is also majority Project Montréal, every candidates I voted for won, and, looking at the rest of the island, every borough on my habitable list elected Project Montréal candidates.
I'm also rather happy that the two vanity borough mayor candidates lost.
Chrystia Freeland called the board on the head of Air Canada; Blanchet said they should cut subsidies. I guess if you wanted to control them you shouldn't have spun them off?
Chrystia Freeland called the board on the head of Air Canada; Blanchet said they should cut subsidies. I guess if you wanted to control them you shouldn't have spun them off?
All I know is that when I speak Nučaanuł around others, the responses can be varied, from "What did you say?", "What does that mean?", "Bye", "Same to you", "I'm sorry I don't speak that language", laugh (which also carries a range) or nothing at all and just ignore that I said anything.
Making a point of saying "I don't have the time to learn that" is among the kinds of responses that usually only comes with the tone that is either meant to convey disdain or apathy. Its rude whether intended or not because they are learning right in that moment from the person in front of them speaking and are pointedly dismissive of that experience of the region it comes from and its people's perspectives.
I say this knowing how few people speak Nučaanuł to the point that you would label it a dying language that was actively attempted to be officially discontinued with genocide, I don't speak it with the intent that I will be understood or that I have any right to have someone respond in kind with the same language, to be told that a person has no intent to learn in the moment where they are learning, well...
J'parle francias en petite (sorry for my poor spelling/grammar), so I might have some idea why its important to the future of Canadian culture that the Air Canada CEO responded in that manner even nonchalantly, IMHO fluency wasn't the issue.
All I know is that when I speak Nučaanuł around others, the responses can be varied, from "What did you say?", "What does that mean?", "Bye", "Same to you", "I'm sorry I don't speak that language", laugh (which also carries a range) or nothing at all and just ignore that I said anything.
Making a point of saying "I don't have the time to learn that" is among the kinds of responses that usually only comes with the tone that is either meant to convey disdain or apathy. Its rude whether intended or not because they are learning right in that moment from the person in front of them speaking and are pointedly dismissive of that experience of the region it comes from and its people's perspectives.
I say this knowing how few people speak Nučaanuł to the point that you would label it a dying language that was actively attempted to be officially discontinued with genocide, I don't speak it with the intent that I will be understood or that I have any right to have someone respond in kind with the same language, to be told that a person has no intent to learn in the moment where they are learning, well...
J'parle francias en petite (sorry for my poor spelling/grammar), so I might have some idea why its important to the future of Canadian culture that the Air Canada CEO responded in that manner even nonchalantly, IMHO fluency wasn't the issue.
"Je parle un peu français."
Also, as a personal pet peeves: I'm always annoyed when languages are written using the Latin alphabet but with their own pronunciation. It's actively confusing for people who do not know that specific transliteration, and it usually does not sound like what the spelling would be pronounced in English or French.
Don't get me wrong: having written forms of languages is important, but I prefer when it's something like the Canadian aboriginal syllabics, or even the IPA.
Like, the Latin alphabet being used to write Western European languages is already bad enough. You even have people who decided to pronounce "h"! That's how bad it gets!
For example, I have no idea how "Nučaanuł" is pronounced, despite knowing the base letters, and google is not helping.
You're annoyed that every language doesn't have it's own unique alphabet?
Yes. Or at least the same pronunciation of the same written form. I have heard what English speakers did to the word "genre", for example. Same spelling as French, same meaning, about 1 phoneme in common, if I'm generous.
As I understand it, a Cantonese speaker and a Mandarin speaker could easily share a newspaper, but couldn't easily understand each other's spoken languages. They're about as far apart as English and Dutch, or so I'm told. To use an English/Dutch example, phrases like "the child eats an apple" and "het kind eet een appel" are darn close and can be puzzled out, but as phrases get more complex the gaps become more clear.
To use a historical example, Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur (Henry VIII's older brother, her original bethrothed) correponded in Latin before they were married, but when they met they couldn't understand each other at all - they had learned different pronuciations of Latin.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
As I understand it, a Cantonese speaker and a Mandarin speaker could easily share a newspaper, but couldn't easily understand each other's spoken languages. They're about as far apart as English and Dutch, or so I'm told. To use an English/Dutch example, phrases like "the child eats an apple" and "het kind eet een appel" are darn close and can be puzzled out, but as phrases get more complex the gaps become more clear.
To use a historical example, Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur (Henry VIII's older brother, her original bethrothed) correponded in Latin before they were married, but when they met they couldn't understand each other at all - they had learned different pronuciations of Latin.
Exactly! Writing systems matter!
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
As I understand it, a Cantonese speaker and a Mandarin speaker could easily share a newspaper, but couldn't easily understand each other's spoken languages. They're about as far apart as English and Dutch, or so I'm told. To use an English/Dutch example, phrases like "the child eats an apple" and "het kind eet een appel" are darn close and can be puzzled out, but as phrases get more complex the gaps become more clear.
To use a historical example, Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur (Henry VIII's older brother, her original bethrothed) correponded in Latin before they were married, but when they met they couldn't understand each other at all - they had learned different pronuciations of Latin.
Exactly! Writing systems matter!
Not sure why you want them to become more confusing for people though. Whatever advantage the Universal Standardized Alphabet System might provide in making written languages easier to pronounce correctly (assuming you knew the full alphabet), you'd more than lose by destroying any accidental literacy people might have due to loanwords or having closely related languages that happen to pronounce things differently.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Also, as a personal pet peeves: I'm always annoyed when languages are written using the Latin alphabet but with their own pronunciation.
... Like English, you mean?
And French, German, Spanish, Italian, and all other Western European languages. Like I mentioned in the next line.
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
I certainly feel like I lean closer to mrondeau's position here. French uses the same letters as English, but as far as pronunciation goes there's as much different as there is the same. Same thing if you decide to take an interest in Celtic/Nordic culture and have to teach yourself that - contextually - J is actually pronounced like Y.
It's preference/personal opinion. No need to try and slam people down for wanting distinct characters so they know ahead of time that they don't actually know how to say a word.
If you're asking for languages to have unique, consistent and permanently fixed orthographies which others should be able to learn without learning the actual language, I don't know what to tell you besides "languages don't work that way, they have never worked that way, and they never will work that way."
If you're asking for languages to have unique, consistent and permanently fixed orthographies which others should be able to learn without learning the actual language, I don't know what to tell you besides "languages don't work that way, they have never worked that way, and they never will work that way."
I work on those kind of things for a living, thanks. That's why I actually care about the way languages work and evolve enough to be annoyed by it.
This is me: https://xkcd.com/2390/
Except I occasionally wish all of this was well documented and regular already, and then enforced by helpful shock collars. Usually for about 10 minutes after looking as some particularly creative use of language.
All I know is that when I speak Nučaanuł around others, the responses can be varied, from "What did you say?", "What does that mean?", "Bye", "Same to you", "I'm sorry I don't speak that language", laugh (which also carries a range) or nothing at all and just ignore that I said anything.
Making a point of saying "I don't have the time to learn that" is among the kinds of responses that usually only comes with the tone that is either meant to convey disdain or apathy. Its rude whether intended or not because they are learning right in that moment from the person in front of them speaking and are pointedly dismissive of that experience of the region it comes from and its people's perspectives.
I say this knowing how few people speak Nučaanuł to the point that you would label it a dying language that was actively attempted to be officially discontinued with genocide, I don't speak it with the intent that I will be understood or that I have any right to have someone respond in kind with the same language, to be told that a person has no intent to learn in the moment where they are learning, well...
J'parle francias en petite (sorry for my poor spelling/grammar), so I might have some idea why its important to the future of Canadian culture that the Air Canada CEO responded in that manner even nonchalantly, IMHO fluency wasn't the issue.
"Je parle un peu français."
Also, as a personal pet peeves: I'm always annoyed when languages are written using the Latin alphabet but with their own pronunciation. It's actively confusing for people who do not know that specific transliteration, and it usually does not sound like what the spelling would be pronounced in English or French.
Don't get me wrong: having written forms of languages is important, but I prefer when it's something like the Canadian aboriginal syllabics, or even the IPA.
Like, the Latin alphabet being used to write Western European languages is already bad enough. You even have people who decided to pronounce "h"! That's how bad it gets!
For example, I have no idea how "Nučaanuł" is pronounced, despite knowing the base letters, and google is not helping.
Thanks for helping me with francais, I will try to help in return, I did use their alphabet to type out that word using a program called Keyman which changes my keyboard to their alphabet (sorry I didn't remember how to change my keyboard to french alphabet). For much of the history with the language, the english'ized version of how things are sounded out (and since there isn't the same sound in english, often mispronounced in repeating and then mispelled, see: Nuu-chah-nulth is how Canada has forced them to use an anglicized phonetic version and Nučaanuł is their alphabet, both are meant to sound exactly the same) further complicated by that much of the language has only recently been written down, at least in part because fluent speakers were repressed from Residential concentration camps and in general discouraged by both systemic and casual racism from using the language anywhere else than in the privacy of their homes, if even that from trauma.
In my own education, certain sounds didn't make sense until I saw this:
I find First Voices to be a very handy reference as well but even there my lady who is seeking to get her Phd in language to help her people's language survive and thrive, there can be errors in the transcriptions that she has found with her elder's help. There is more than one dictionary being worked on, complicated by underfunding, systemic problems in higher education making wealth gap road blocks to furthering its use, and elders moving on to join their ancestors, an especially pronounced concern as of late with Covid, the clock is ticking on Canada getting its chance to make some amends on Residential concentration camps in some respects and some days it feels like that's the systemic and conservative culture intent.
Sometimes we need the new alphabet and to try to see it, despite wanting the supposedly easier syllabic, just like I realize I need to understand how to use "ç". Canada can change, we can get to know each other better,
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
At least a good chunk of other European languages are easy enough to figure out once you know how to pronounce each letter. English and French are extra fun in that the answer to 'How do you pronounce this letter?' is 'It depends.'
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Regarding Nučaanuł:
First: you should be able to use multiple keyboard layouts in Windows (and Linux, etc.) without any external programs; It's a basic function of OS since about 1995.
Second: yes, right now, the important things is preserving the language, especially by recordings speakers and translating. That cannot be replaced; arguments about writing systems can wait.
Third: Transliterations into another writing systems are, indeed, very much not good at representing pronunciations. Looking at the Wikipedia page, I noticed quite a few phonemes that are not used in English (or European languages in general).
Obviously, those won't "render" well into English. Kind of like tonal languages, where a non-tonal rendering of the sound will be missing some essential information.
Regarding Places of articulations:
Don't forget manner, it's just as, if not more, important as place. And even then, it's an approximation: the actual dynamics of the articulators are not fully represented there.
My favorite example of that is /θ/ and /ð/: essentially, the "th" of "the". The closest place and manner of articulation for those in French is /z/.
Which is why France's English teachers have been busy teaching students about "zhe English language".
If you actually look at a spectrogram, and how the tongue move, and listen to the sound, you realize that /θ/ and /ð/ are more like plosives, so /t/ and /d/ are better approximations.
In fact, depending on the context, English speakers will sometime use /t/ and /d/.
And sometime they will slur it into /f/.
As I understand it, a Cantonese speaker and a Mandarin speaker could easily share a newspaper, but couldn't easily understand each other's spoken languages. They're about as far apart as English and Dutch, or so I'm told. To use an English/Dutch example, phrases like "the child eats an apple" and "het kind eet een appel" are darn close and can be puzzled out, but as phrases get more complex the gaps become more clear.
To use a historical example, Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur (Henry VIII's older brother, her original bethrothed) correponded in Latin before they were married, but when they met they couldn't understand each other at all - they had learned different pronuciations of Latin.
I've been going under the belief that written Chinese is essentially an entirely separate language from spoken Chinese languages, is that not the case?
At least a good chunk of other European languages are easy enough to figure out once you know how to pronounce each letter. English and French are extra fun in that the answer to 'How do you pronounce this letter?' is 'It depends.'
My wife was watching a video the other day of an American trying to teach an Italian how to pronounce "rough", "through", and "cough" and needless to say he gets extremely frustrated.
In other language news, Facebook has recently discovered that French is a language. Following this realization, and in accordance with its policy of doing the strict bare minimum to maintain a public façade of opposing violent neo-nazi groups while not-secretly enabling and supporting them, Facebook has banned exactly one violent Québec neo-nazi group. Baby steps, people.
In other language news, Facebook has recently discovered that French is a language. Following this realization, and in accordance with its policy of doing the strict bare minimum to maintain a public façade of opposing violent neo-nazi groups while not-secretly enabling and supporting them, Facebook has banned exactly one violent Québec neo-nazi group. Baby steps, people.
I wish I could say that it's because there's only one, but no, there's more than one.
This is something the government need to deal with.
That specific group, for example, got away with some pretty explicit threats to journalists a few years ago, because freedom of expression.
From what I saw, the current laws are probably adequate, but we need to allocate more resources to investigation, and we might want to explain a few concepts to some judges.
In other language news, Facebook has recently discovered that French is a language. Following this realization, and in accordance with its policy of doing the strict bare minimum to maintain a public façade of opposing violent neo-nazi groups while not-secretly enabling and supporting them, Facebook has banned exactly one violent Québec neo-nazi group. Baby steps, people.
I wish I could say that it's because there's only one, but no, there's more than one.
This is something the government need to deal with.
That specific group, for example, got away with some pretty explicit threats to journalists a few years ago, because freedom of expression.
From what I saw, the current laws are probably adequate, but we need to allocate more resources to investigation, and we might want to explain a few concepts to some judges.
From what I saw, we need to explain a few concepts to politicians first. We need political leadership to take a stand against this crap and crack down on it.
Instead, we have one side of the political spectrum that puts its head in the sand and pretends nothing worse than a few public agitators and occasional lone-wolf attack is happening and we must respect them and protect their freedoms at all costs, and the other side that openly embraces these people, joins them in their rallies and enlists them in their party.
If you want some good Canadian drama, Nova Scotia premiere Tim Houston said the quiet part out loud yesterday when his response to $15 minimum wage implied that minimum wage jobs aren't real jobs.
He has "apologized" today insofar as saying that wasn't what he meant.
...
But apparently what that meant was that nobody should want to do them, and increasing minimum wage would disincentivize people from wanting to switch careers.
A fun bit of math and digging will reveal that $15/hour is ~$30,000, and that more than half of the province's workforce (52%) makes less than $30k annually. Shockingly, little c cons are still cons.
No one ever needed to be incentivized away from minimum wage jobs: the kind of employers who would like to pay you even less tend to be very, very shitty bosses, no matter what the actual minimum wage is.
The usual excuse is that minimum wage jobs are low-qualification, low-stress and low-importance, but, for some reasons, more and more jobs are minimum wage, including some rather essential ones.
It's almost as if the free market was not working properly when it comes to working conditions. But I'm certain that things would improve now that small employers have no people to lord over.
One would think that the pandemic would've helped dispel the myth around minimum wage jobs being low-stress and of low-importance but here we are.
RE: French - When I as a little kid learning french, I asked how they determined what gender an object is. Why is a pen one thing and a pencil is another, how do I know which is which, there's a rule right? Like, ends in l is one thing, ends in n is another? Naw dawg, we just made that shit up! I believe my critical grade 8 analysis at the time was "That's dumb, can we learn some other language?"
Dog Food: "Good news everyone, the minimum wage is going up a dime or something to 15 bucks! Now you can afford rent!" McDonalds in the background along with scores of other businesses, "We already pay 15.35 an hour and a livable wage in some cases which is 16 and change."
RE: French - When I as a little kid learning french, I asked how they determined what gender an object is. Why is a pen one thing and a pencil is another, how do I know which is which, there's a rule right? Like, ends in l is one thing, ends in n is another? Naw dawg, we just made that shit up! I believe my critical grade 8 analysis at the time was "That's dumb, can we learn some other language?"
A better question is, why are they even called genders? Did past grammaticians feel that the world just wasn't sexist enough, and needed more tacked on top?
Not sure they could explain that to me, why inanimate objects had a gender at all. I think the languages that don't assign gender to nouns and such is in the minority too.
RE: French - When I as a little kid learning french, I asked how they determined what gender an object is. Why is a pen one thing and a pencil is another, how do I know which is which, there's a rule right? Like, ends in l is one thing, ends in n is another? Naw dawg, we just made that shit up! I believe my critical grade 8 analysis at the time was "That's dumb, can we learn some other language?"
A better question is, why are they even called genders? Did past grammaticians feel that the world just wasn't sexist enough, and needed more tacked on top?
Grammatical gender is a feature of most Indo-European languages, last I checked, so it's ancient.
I've been (very, very slowly) learning Spanish through Duolingo, and when I come to a word I usually just think to myself "what's the most sexist/stereotypical answer" and I'm right most of the time.
Dress (Vestido) being masculine, however, still catches me from time to time. Yes, even with the o at the end.
Never claimed to be good at languages, but I'm approaching two years poking away at it all the same.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
RE: French - When I as a little kid learning french, I asked how they determined what gender an object is. Why is a pen one thing and a pencil is another, how do I know which is which, there's a rule right? Like, ends in l is one thing, ends in n is another? Naw dawg, we just made that shit up! I believe my critical grade 8 analysis at the time was "That's dumb, can we learn some other language?"
A better question is, why are they even called genders? Did past grammaticians feel that the world just wasn't sexist enough, and needed more tacked on top?
Grammatical gender is a feature of most Indo-European languages, last I checked, so it's ancient.
Yup. It's just a thing a ton of languages do and they do it in all sorts of different ways as well. There's theories on it's origins and purpose (in so much as any weird language quirk has a purpose) but it's obviously all speculatory because nobody decided how languages would work, they just kind of happen and also it happened a long long time ago.
RE: French - When I as a little kid learning french, I asked how they determined what gender an object is. Why is a pen one thing and a pencil is another, how do I know which is which, there's a rule right? Like, ends in l is one thing, ends in n is another? Naw dawg, we just made that shit up! I believe my critical grade 8 analysis at the time was "That's dumb, can we learn some other language?"
A better question is, why are they even called genders? Did past grammaticians feel that the world just wasn't sexist enough, and needed more tacked on top?
Grammatical gender is a feature of most Indo-European languages, last I checked, so it's ancient.
It shows up across most of the Afroasiatic languages too, which probably pegs it as at least sixteen thousand years old. That's a good quarter or fifth of the way back to when language-as-we-understand-it probably showed up in the first place, so it wouldn't be surprising if it's a feature that goes all the way back.
I've been (very, very slowly) learning Spanish through Duolingo, and when I come to a word I usually just think to myself "what's the most sexist/stereotypical answer" and I'm right most of the time.
Dress (Vestido) being masculine, however, still catches me from time to time. Yes, even with the o at the end.
Never claimed to be good at languages, but I'm approaching two years poking away at it all the same.
The one that I currently find most hilarious is that beard is feminine in French.
I've never stopped slowly slogging through the French courses on Duolingo; I actually had the entire French tree completed at one point, and then they substantially changed and enlarged it and I found myself well back into the first third of the tree again. I also try to at least get the very basics of a language before I travel to a country that speaks that language. I've done a bit of the Italian, Spanish and German courses; I didn't actually make it to Spain, but it seems like such a useful language in general that I'll likely go back to it if/when I finally get the French tree sorted out.
I've now started learning Dutch, in anticipation of the possibility of travelling to the Netherlands next spring. And I acknowledge, I'm just at the very start of the tree. But my goodness, the degree to which it frequently sounds like someone with a heavy accent is speaking English is hilarious. For example, the lesson I'm on right now includes the phrase "Duo is een uil" which is basically pronounced "Duo is an owl" and coincidently means "Duo is an owl." But then I get to a word like "varken" and I'm like "er, what?"
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
It's useful to remember that the relationship of masculine, feminine, and gender in grammar and in actuality is tenuous at best
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So here in Québec City, the mayorship was called early in the night for Savard, the longtime advisor and successor of our hugely popular outgoing mayor Labeaume. In the past week Marchand, her main rival and a newcomer in municipal politics, had been climbing by leaps and bounds in the polls, helped in part by Savard's terrible debate performances, but he was still several points behind her.
So imagine everyone's surprise when the last ballot boxes were opened and the votes came out for Marchand, giving him the narrowest of wins, 0.4% ahead of Savard. This, again, after the election had been called for her!
Marchard was my favourite candidate, so I'm quite happy about this turn of events. Also, the Savard candidate in my riding is a woman I strongly dislike, so having her lose to Marchand's riding candidate is a nice bonus. Plus plus, the anti-public-transit trash-radio candidate Gosselin got demoted from "official opposition" to "third party", which is gravy.
That said, it's not going to be easy for Marchard. Despite being mayor, he has only 6 advisors elected to council to Savard's 10, and another 5 for two other parties. It'll be a challenge for him to implement his policies in that setup. And Gosselin failing and falling won't stop our media from giving him a disproportionate amount of time in the spotlight - as we know from sixth-place-winner less-than-2%-popular-vote Bernier being propped up by the national news as equal to Trudeau and O'Toole, and in Québec the zero-elected-MNA provincial conservatives being reported on before the three opposition parties, when it comes to alt-right conservatives in power none is too many.
Meanwhile, in Lévis, the conservative "only whiners are against me" "I don't want to see any opposition in city hall" Lehoulier was massively re-elected, unfortunately but unsurprisingly. In Montréal Plante has crushed Codere once again, so we can look forward to another four years of right-wing media pissing on her and whining endlessly.
One would think that the pandemic would've helped dispel the myth around minimum wage jobs being low-stress and of low-importance but here we are.
On the other side, Plante's want to change things for the better, so I suspect they were more inclined to vote to preserve the gains of the last 4 years.
I mean, I don't know, that's a guess, but the polls were much closer than the actual results, and turnout is low.
My borough is also majority Project Montréal, every candidates I voted for won, and, looking at the rest of the island, every borough on my habitable list elected Project Montréal candidates.
I'm also rather happy that the two vanity borough mayor candidates lost.
Is Blanchet still beating that dead horse?
Making a point of saying "I don't have the time to learn that" is among the kinds of responses that usually only comes with the tone that is either meant to convey disdain or apathy. Its rude whether intended or not because they are learning right in that moment from the person in front of them speaking and are pointedly dismissive of that experience of the region it comes from and its people's perspectives.
I say this knowing how few people speak Nučaanuł to the point that you would label it a dying language that was actively attempted to be officially discontinued with genocide, I don't speak it with the intent that I will be understood or that I have any right to have someone respond in kind with the same language, to be told that a person has no intent to learn in the moment where they are learning, well...
J'parle francias en petite (sorry for my poor spelling/grammar), so I might have some idea why its important to the future of Canadian culture that the Air Canada CEO responded in that manner even nonchalantly, IMHO fluency wasn't the issue.
"Je parle un peu français."
Also, as a personal pet peeves: I'm always annoyed when languages are written using the Latin alphabet but with their own pronunciation. It's actively confusing for people who do not know that specific transliteration, and it usually does not sound like what the spelling would be pronounced in English or French.
Don't get me wrong: having written forms of languages is important, but I prefer when it's something like the Canadian aboriginal syllabics, or even the IPA.
Like, the Latin alphabet being used to write Western European languages is already bad enough. You even have people who decided to pronounce "h"! That's how bad it gets!
For example, I have no idea how "Nučaanuł" is pronounced, despite knowing the base letters, and google is not helping.
EDIT:
Got it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuu-chah-nulth_language
Yes. Or at least the same pronunciation of the same written form. I have heard what English speakers did to the word "genre", for example. Same spelling as French, same meaning, about 1 phoneme in common, if I'm generous.
That's not uncommon in the world.
As I understand it, a Cantonese speaker and a Mandarin speaker could easily share a newspaper, but couldn't easily understand each other's spoken languages. They're about as far apart as English and Dutch, or so I'm told. To use an English/Dutch example, phrases like "the child eats an apple" and "het kind eet een appel" are darn close and can be puzzled out, but as phrases get more complex the gaps become more clear.
To use a historical example, Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur (Henry VIII's older brother, her original bethrothed) correponded in Latin before they were married, but when they met they couldn't understand each other at all - they had learned different pronuciations of Latin.
Exactly! Writing systems matter!
Not sure why you want them to become more confusing for people though. Whatever advantage the Universal Standardized Alphabet System might provide in making written languages easier to pronounce correctly (assuming you knew the full alphabet), you'd more than lose by destroying any accidental literacy people might have due to loanwords or having closely related languages that happen to pronounce things differently.
... Like English, you mean?
And French, German, Spanish, Italian, and all other Western European languages. Like I mentioned in the next line.
It's preference/personal opinion. No need to try and slam people down for wanting distinct characters so they know ahead of time that they don't actually know how to say a word.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
I work on those kind of things for a living, thanks. That's why I actually care about the way languages work and evolve enough to be annoyed by it.
This is me:
https://xkcd.com/2390/
Except I occasionally wish all of this was well documented and regular already, and then enforced by helpful shock collars. Usually for about 10 minutes after looking as some particularly creative use of language.
Thanks for helping me with francais, I will try to help in return, I did use their alphabet to type out that word using a program called Keyman which changes my keyboard to their alphabet (sorry I didn't remember how to change my keyboard to french alphabet). For much of the history with the language, the english'ized version of how things are sounded out (and since there isn't the same sound in english, often mispronounced in repeating and then mispelled, see: Nuu-chah-nulth is how Canada has forced them to use an anglicized phonetic version and Nučaanuł is their alphabet, both are meant to sound exactly the same) further complicated by that much of the language has only recently been written down, at least in part because fluent speakers were repressed from Residential concentration camps and in general discouraged by both systemic and casual racism from using the language anywhere else than in the privacy of their homes, if even that from trauma.
In my own education, certain sounds didn't make sense until I saw this:
Further elaborated on by this specific to the :
Found here: https://toquahtlanguage.com/nuu-chah-nulth-texts/
I find First Voices to be a very handy reference as well but even there my lady who is seeking to get her Phd in language to help her people's language survive and thrive, there can be errors in the transcriptions that she has found with her elder's help. There is more than one dictionary being worked on, complicated by underfunding, systemic problems in higher education making wealth gap road blocks to furthering its use, and elders moving on to join their ancestors, an especially pronounced concern as of late with Covid, the clock is ticking on Canada getting its chance to make some amends on Residential concentration camps in some respects and some days it feels like that's the systemic and conservative culture intent.
Sometimes we need the new alphabet and to try to see it, despite wanting the supposedly easier syllabic, just like I realize I need to understand how to use "ç". Canada can change, we can get to know each other better,
First: you should be able to use multiple keyboard layouts in Windows (and Linux, etc.) without any external programs; It's a basic function of OS since about 1995.
Second: yes, right now, the important things is preserving the language, especially by recordings speakers and translating. That cannot be replaced; arguments about writing systems can wait.
Third: Transliterations into another writing systems are, indeed, very much not good at representing pronunciations. Looking at the Wikipedia page, I noticed quite a few phonemes that are not used in English (or European languages in general).
Obviously, those won't "render" well into English. Kind of like tonal languages, where a non-tonal rendering of the sound will be missing some essential information.
Regarding Places of articulations:
Don't forget manner, it's just as, if not more, important as place. And even then, it's an approximation: the actual dynamics of the articulators are not fully represented there.
My favorite example of that is /θ/ and /ð/: essentially, the "th" of "the". The closest place and manner of articulation for those in French is /z/.
Which is why France's English teachers have been busy teaching students about "zhe English language".
If you actually look at a spectrogram, and how the tongue move, and listen to the sound, you realize that /θ/ and /ð/ are more like plosives, so /t/ and /d/ are better approximations.
In fact, depending on the context, English speakers will sometime use /t/ and /d/.
And sometime they will slur it into /f/.
Oh, and lookup the vowel triangle.
I've been going under the belief that written Chinese is essentially an entirely separate language from spoken Chinese languages, is that not the case?
MWO: Adamski
My wife was watching a video the other day of an American trying to teach an Italian how to pronounce "rough", "through", and "cough" and needless to say he gets extremely frustrated.
I wish I could say that it's because there's only one, but no, there's more than one.
This is something the government need to deal with.
That specific group, for example, got away with some pretty explicit threats to journalists a few years ago, because freedom of expression.
From what I saw, the current laws are probably adequate, but we need to allocate more resources to investigation, and we might want to explain a few concepts to some judges.
From what I saw, we need to explain a few concepts to politicians first. We need political leadership to take a stand against this crap and crack down on it.
Instead, we have one side of the political spectrum that puts its head in the sand and pretends nothing worse than a few public agitators and occasional lone-wolf attack is happening and we must respect them and protect their freedoms at all costs, and the other side that openly embraces these people, joins them in their rallies and enlists them in their party.
Seriously min wage jobs are not easy
Dog Food: "Good news everyone, the minimum wage is going up a dime or something to 15 bucks! Now you can afford rent!" McDonalds in the background along with scores of other businesses, "We already pay 15.35 an hour and a livable wage in some cases which is 16 and change."
A better question is, why are they even called genders? Did past grammaticians feel that the world just wasn't sexist enough, and needed more tacked on top?
Grammatical gender is a feature of most Indo-European languages, last I checked, so it's ancient.
Dress (Vestido) being masculine, however, still catches me from time to time. Yes, even with the o at the end.
Never claimed to be good at languages, but I'm approaching two years poking away at it all the same.
Yup. It's just a thing a ton of languages do and they do it in all sorts of different ways as well. There's theories on it's origins and purpose (in so much as any weird language quirk has a purpose) but it's obviously all speculatory because nobody decided how languages would work, they just kind of happen and also it happened a long long time ago.
It shows up across most of the Afroasiatic languages too, which probably pegs it as at least sixteen thousand years old. That's a good quarter or fifth of the way back to when language-as-we-understand-it probably showed up in the first place, so it wouldn't be surprising if it's a feature that goes all the way back.
The one that I currently find most hilarious is that beard is feminine in French.
I've never stopped slowly slogging through the French courses on Duolingo; I actually had the entire French tree completed at one point, and then they substantially changed and enlarged it and I found myself well back into the first third of the tree again. I also try to at least get the very basics of a language before I travel to a country that speaks that language. I've done a bit of the Italian, Spanish and German courses; I didn't actually make it to Spain, but it seems like such a useful language in general that I'll likely go back to it if/when I finally get the French tree sorted out.
I've now started learning Dutch, in anticipation of the possibility of travelling to the Netherlands next spring. And I acknowledge, I'm just at the very start of the tree. But my goodness, the degree to which it frequently sounds like someone with a heavy accent is speaking English is hilarious. For example, the lesson I'm on right now includes the phrase "Duo is een uil" which is basically pronounced "Duo is an owl" and coincidently means "Duo is an owl." But then I get to a word like "varken" and I'm like "er, what?"
For example, "Personne" is always feminine, so gender-less text in French can be feminine.