The CHAT thread

[MBH]

In the same theme as Laura's (but possibly less seriously);

If you've read a book, you can reread it. But wouldn't this also mean that you would have to "member" somebody in order to remember them?

If a word is misspelled in a dictionary, how would we ever know?

Is there another word for a synonym?

Shouldn't there be a shorter word for "monosyllabic"?

Why is abbreviation such a long word?

Why is it so hard to remember how to spell MNEMONIC?

Why is it that the word "gullible" isn't in the dictionary?

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?

Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds?

It's all A Question of Logic
Some English people can't understand why you find English difficult.
But if you ask them to explain something, they don't know how!
Here are some interesting questions to ask an English person to answer:

- If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
- If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren't people from Holland called Holes?
- Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
- Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker? Does he make you broke?
- Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called the rush hour?
- If horrific means to make horrible, does terrific mean to make terrible?
- Why is it called a building when it is already built?
- If vegetarians eat vegetables, do humanitarians eat humans?

Wonderful language we've got over here

[gill216]

I listened to a radio programme which tackled the evolution of our language and how if we left children to their own devices they would naturally straighten out a lot of the irregularities. the English language would then revert more to the way it was spoken centuries ago thus making it easier to learn as a foreign language.

I.E. A child will naturally say "I'm going to buy a ................., they also quite naturally say "I buyed a......................... and we then correct them to say bought.
Imagine how this would sound in different sceneraios : I cleaned the house , I clought the house

[giraffe]

Why is the alphabet in that order?

Strange, I was thinking that yesterday. It must be so that when they got round to inventing phones the vowels were all on different buttons, which helps with predictive text. (Well that was the conclusion I came to.)

[Scurra]

About the only one I can't see on your list of classics MBH is
Why is there only one word for "thesaurus"?

I wonder why it always takes the arrival of clvrlad before the issue of weird English comes up? We were getting along quite nicely until then

The thing I love most about English is that despite having one of the largest wordpools in the world, we still tend to use the same word to mean lots of different things - thus creating enormous confusion when the differences are quite subtle. Trying to explain the "Time flies/Fruit flies" line can be surprisingly difficult.

With my puzzle setter's hat on, it is worth observing a couple of things.
Firstly, correct spelling is utterly essential in a puzzle. (I recall an almost impossible crossword that someone did somewhere else... ) But secondly that a lot of puzzles depend upon the creative wordplay that is possible in English and which is a lot less common in other languages. German certainly goes in for puns a lot, but that's mostly because it has a lot of word concatenation (often, ro create a concept they will make up a single long word that consists of several other words.)

There's a splendid example of this in issue two of the magazine, where I chose my words very carefully at one point in order to convey two different things at the same time...

[clvrlad]

sorry to tell you scurra but something similar to that crossword is in the works
cruciform

blame a certain long necked individual

[giraffe]

[Bunnylump]

MBH I love your observations on the English Language!! Especially the Poland / Poles, Holland / Holes one. I sent some to my Brother in Law - he's just come back with

"If scaffolders don't fold scaf, then who does?"

[Bunnylump]

...and just now
"Two heads are better than one, unless you're paying the bill for hats."

[Cenwulf]

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?

No, it's very complicated. I've had Issachar, Xeno and Rotas help me with this:
1. The alphabet started out as the proto-Canaanite 'abgad, named from the initials of the first few letters ('aleph, beth, gimel, dalet). The words (still preserved in the Hebrew letter-names) just represented the initial sound of the word (e.g. dalet {door} represents D).
2. The proto-Canaanite letters developed into the Phoenician script. This was introduced into the Greek world by merchants. Though the Phoenecian letters were all consonants, the Greeks altered some letters they didn't need to become vowels. (e.g. the Phoenecian 'he' became the Greek epsilon). However, there were not enough letters for all the Greek sounds, so they added a few more on the end after tau. A few letters were redundant (e.g. qoppa), and these were eventually dropped from the alphabet.
3. This alphabet was used by the Etruscans, who modified some of the letter sounds. For example, the third letter 'C' (gamma), which in Greek represented G, became a 'k' sound as the Etruscans had no G in their language.
4. The Etruscan alphabet or abecedary was adopted by the Romans, who also fiddled with it - first dropping the 'zeta' letter and replacing it with a modified 'C' to represent 'g'. They also added a few letters to the end, starting with X, then adding Y and Z for use in loan-words from Greek.
5. The original Latin abecedary was added to in the Middle Ages as J was included for consonant I and V for consonant U. W was later added in Germanic languages such as English.
However, the Latin abecedary is not perfect, especially when it comes to written English. We have no separate letters for common sounds such as 'th', 'sh' or 'ch' and having 'C', 'K' and 'Q' means we have superfluous 'k' letters.
By the way, the proto-Canaanite 'waw' is the ancestor of 5 letters: F (from its position in the 'abgad), U (a second adoption by the Greeks), V and W (Medieval variants of U) and Y (Roman adoption from Greek).

If horrific means to make horrible, does terrific mean to make terrible?

Horrific means it horrifies , and terrific originally meant it terrifies. It's mentioned in Lords and [Ladies. "If you want to find the truth, look behind words which have changed their meanings."
On a contradictory note, if you said something was 'aweful' it originally meant it was full of awe - inspiring wonder. Only later did it lose the 'e' and completely flip its meaning.

[MBH]

Note to Self: Humourous commentry can take some very strange twists and turns when posted on a forum full of puzzlers who are high on Skittles (and other coloured sweets).

After saying that, the following has had me giggling like a loon:

Why is the alphabet in that order?

Strange, I was thinking that yesterday. It must be so that when they got round to inventing phones the vowels were all on different buttons, which helps with predictive text. (Well that was the conclusion I came to.)

{Let's see who considers it important to tell me that for all the sounds a loon can make, these birds are not known for their giggling}

[Bunnylump]

Yes, I liked that one too.

[Bunnylump]

Isn't it about time this got resurrected? Obviously we haven't chatted to each other for the past 14 months...

Here's my random thing which is floating about in my head. Plate tectonics. WTF is going on?
earthquakes: 22 of magnitude above 6 this year,
volcanic eruptions -
New activity:Egon Flores Island (Indonesia),Etna, Iceland, Banks Island (SW Pacific), Izu Islands (Japan),Southwestern Alaska, Ecuador.
Ongoing activity: Costa Rica Komba Island (Indonesia), four in Russia, Hawaii, Mexico, New Britain, Monserrat.

There seems to be rather a lot of shifting and jiggling going on, doesn't there? (That's the technical, geological term, btw).

[Scurra]

As (Professor) Brian Cox pointed out the other day, it's worth remembering that it's because of tectonic plates (and the consequent volcanic activity) that we are here at all - otherwise Earth would have lost its atmosphere a long time ago...

But there's nothing particular excessive about it. We just notice it because we happen to be living through it. Geological timescales are just different to ours. You know - like the way that the big volcano in Yellowstone Park is overdue to erupt - but we're talking give-or-take a thousand years, rather than a couple of weeks!

[Bunnylump]

It's just that the same source I was looking at recorded 19 earthquakes of that magnitude over the whole of last year.

And the Yellowstone park one - well all I can say is I hope I'm not around when that happens. It would be catastrophic. The last eruption was 1000 times stronger than Mount St Helens. Still, there's no point worrying about it, is there?

It never ceases to amaze me that people are prepared to live in such terribly dangerous places. I'm thinking California, for instance.

[clvrlad]

well bunny theres also another principle involved called regression to mean last year could have been abnormally low in seismic events
or it could be that the way of reporting the info is flawed if most of last years were at magnitude 5.9 for instance and they use above 6 to say any above median strength then its perfectly possible that we could be in for some that are slightly above average this year with only a minor shift in the median value
with out examining the data directly you cant take specific statements and extrapolate them significantly i mean it is possible (but unlikely) that we wont get any more seismic events greater than 6 for the rest of the year so we've gone from 19 to 22 on adjacent years which isnt that big a jump all depends on how the stats are manipulated analysed and how deeply we dig
ok i know more about stats than i should being a forklift driver

[MBH]

ok i know more about stats than i should being a forklift driver

I don't know - I'm sure you're always picking up new things

[Bunnylump]

Groan.......

[clvrlad]

lol depends have you read the newspapers?
its all the same now a days

[tricia]

I've come to this a liitle late But as Iceland is sitting on top of the mid atlantic ridge - there will be constant volcanic activity and every so often there will be a big one like this. Also scientists have been warning for years that a massive earthquake is due in the Sanfrancisco area because of its proximity to the San Anreas fault.

Closer to home - there was the earth tremor in folkestone a couple of years ago..Though I'm not too sure which tectonic plate caused this
Tricia

[giraffe]

Random thought that just occurred to me. When i'm typing a message and I want to put a smilie in I find myself pulling a face and then seeing which one most looks like what I'm doing. I don't do it consciously, but I've caught myself doing it several times.

Does anyone else do it?

(Discuss your weird facial tics here )

Supermarket checkout bloke winked at me today. (Gave me the creeps) (I never use the wink one as I don't wink at people)