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It turns out: Britain really is the exception. There are way more Vietnamese migrants in the Czech Republic than in Britain! Poland, too. It's weird, because in general Britain has huge East Asian populations, and there are obvious migration routes from Vietnam to Britain (via Hong Kong or Malaysia...

Just returned from an information session which concluded with a little activity where we supposed to find a partner and discuss a conversation at work which left us frustrated. Ironically, that conversation became very frustrating because they hadn't clearly defined what the purpose of the exercise...

I don't think I have ever encountered a specifically Vietnamese restaurant, of any stripe. Patterns of migration, I guess. Which is another way of saying that they were one of the countries y'all never got around to colonising/invading. An interesting facet to Vietnamese immigration to the USA is t...

I'm going to go ahead and lock the thread at this point. If you wish to resume discussing linguistic topics, you'll find a continuation of the discussion here: http://www.incatena.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=44865&start=125 . Vlürch, if you need further explanation of why it's inappropriate to continue...

Just a brief comment: AFAIK, Japanese namae is a compound, written with two kanji, and it wouldn't suirprise me if there were on'yomi involved, i.e. borrowings from Chinese. Not everything written with multiple kanji is a compound; jukujikun are a thing. In this case, it is a compound, but both ele...

I've never seen banh mi at any Vietnamese restaurant. Maybe it's a Saigonese thing? Only some of the restaurants here offer them. The bread stales quickly so if you aren't doing good volume, it's not really worth it. My fave bánh mì place in Little Saigon closed several years back, but their better...

I don't recall ever seeing that use of down to in a headline before. It's a very colloquial usage. Until now I've only seen it in sports and entertainment news when talking about elimination contests, e.g. It's down to two. Prior Lake's Becca in finals on 'The Bachelor' . On top of that, it's a very...

KathTheDragon wrote:What's so incomprehensible about that one?

What do you think it says?

I'm not sure if this is a gardenpath as much as just incomprehensibility caused by poor word choice:
New Research Suggests Social Issues are Down to Neurotypicals more than Autistics

Imralu wrote:

linguoboy wrote:language tables

Watu husema hilo?
Do people say this?

Mal googeln!
Try googling!

Wie heissen sie bei dir?
What d'y'all call 'em?

This conversation should be moved to the Random thread. General reminder: You can always address these requests directly to the mods via the reporting mechanism or PM. By the standards of the Venting Thread, the food discussion barely even qualifies as a tangent at this point. If it takes over to t...

This somewhere between a "How do you pronounce this?" and "What do you call this?" question. In my high school, you would sometimes hear affective pronunciations of the initial cluster /st/ as /ʃt/. For instance, you might jokingly call someone named "Steve" [ʃtiɪ̯v̥] or even [ʃtəɪ̯f]. (Obviously th...

PS: Am I the only one who feels weird pronouncing cherubim with /t͡ʃ/ rather than [kʰ]? The latter just feels more natural, probably because in Finnish the singular is kerubi , but also in all the source languages Latin, Greek and Hebrew it has a /k/. My pronunciation is really inconsistent here. I...

Obwohl ich wüsste, dass es hier an der Uni Stammtische für Sprachen gibt, hab ich gedacht, dass sie für Studenten geeignet waren. Aber in der Kundmachung hab ich gelesen, dass sie auch dem Lehrkörper und dem Hilfspersonal offen stehen, also bin ich diese Woche zweimal hingegangen. Although I knew t...

The relevant section of Ó Cuív (1948) is on page 118: Palatalised sh > x ′ [i.e. [ç]] before long back and open vowels, e.g. shiobhal [CO: shiúl ] x ′ u:l , sheól (vb.) x ′ o:l , Sheaán [sic] x ′ ɑ:n . So also in the name Shiubhán x ′ əˈvɑ:n . Exceptionally = h in some words, e.g. sheól (noun) ho:l ...

Chicken fingers in restaurants are generally considered to be children's food. This. Worse, this is not some kind of natural state of things but a recent cultural change foisted on us by the demands of corporate food production. (For a good potted history of how this happened, see: http://nationalp...

a Sheáin [əˈçaːnʲ] So, I gather h>ç before back vowels. But this applies here even when slender and preceding /a:/? (no offglide before the nasal, I see?) I think this applies only when slender and only before /a:/, at least in Munster. I'd have to check Ó Cuív to be sure. I don't think the distrib...

A couple years since they finished building a new hotel across from my bus stop and a restaurant has finally moved in. A chicken fingers restaurant . My first reaction to it was, "There it is: the complete infantilisation of our cuisine is finally complete." Today is the grand opening. As of 9 a.m.,...

yangfiretiger121 wrote:Exactly, why is Seán's final <n> velarized in Irish? Same goes for a Sheánin's last <n> being palatalized.

You mean what are the historical factors which gave rise to the current palatalised/velarised contrast? Once again, I'm not sure what you're really asking.

The question's about the final <n> in the names. I could be wrong, but I don't think Shawn or Shane has a palatalized <n> in English. If Wikipedia is accurate, Seán and Séan have their final <n> palatalized in Irish. Wikipedia is accurate. You just don't know how to interpret what it's telling you....

I read Pachinko , a family saga about Japanese Koreans that's got a lot of buzz going in Certain Circles, and I can't really see what the fuss is about. Min Jin Lee isn't a very interesting writer and the way she sprinkles gratuitous Japanese into her lackluster narrative is annoying. And if that we...

I don't understand the question. Irish palatalised /s/ is realised as an palato-alveoar fricative [ʃ]. If it weren't palatalised, it would be [sˠ], a velarised alveolar sibilant.

The fact that the English contrast of /ʃ/ and /s/ isn't one of systematic palatalisation isn't at all relevant to Irish.

One of the most useful works in my language-learning library is R.B. Farrell's Dictionary of German synonyms . In it, he identifies several dozen common semantic areas where German and English usage doesn't precisely line up and systematically discusses possible lexical equivalents. (If I'd had it t...

hwhatting wrote:Czy rzeczywiście nie byłem tutaj trzy tygodnia?
Est-ce que c'est réellement trois semaine que je n'étais pas ici?
Was ik werkelijk drie weken niet hier?
Is it really three weeks that I wasn't here?

Es kam mir lang vor, aber so lang nicht.
It seemed long but not that long.

From the most recent issue of the Economist: "Few of the prominent organisations that help veterans think the VA health system requires a radical restructuring."