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Imralu wrote:

Astraios wrote:OHG: habes
OHG: hazzos

So ... where does the t come from?

OHG d(ū), if memory serves.

linguoboy wrote:

Imralu wrote:

Astraios wrote:OHG: habes
OHG: hazzos

So ... where does the t come from?

OHG d(ū), if memory serves.

I vaguely remember that too, but I assumed it was long before OHG. English had -st too...

Rants about the passive voice are the best for this, in my experience; you get people trumpeting that "a sentence has to have a subject and a verb", or the person who I heard say, in all apparent seriousness, that "the passive voice should be eschewed."

Not to mention the ones who go on about the evilness of the passive voice without being able to identify it...

Neon Fox wrote:Rants about the passive voice are the best for this, in my experience; you get people trumpeting that "a sentence has to have a subject and a verb", or the person who I heard say, in all apparent seriousness, that "the passive voice should be eschewed."

Not to mention the ones who go on about the evilness of the passive voice without being able to identify it...

Language Log has been there already: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=19878

EDIT: not that you shouldn't have brought it up.

Frislander wrote:

Neon Fox wrote:Rants about the passive voice are the best for this, in my experience; you get people trumpeting that "a sentence has to have a subject and a verb", or the person who I heard say, in all apparent seriousness, that "the passive voice should be eschewed."

Not to mention the ones who go on about the evilness of the passive voice without being able to identify it...

Language Log has been there already: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=19878

...I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that the criterion for including an example in this thread was whether LL had failed to mention it. I'll keep that in mind for next time.

Neon Fox wrote:

Frislander wrote:

Neon Fox wrote:Rants about the passive voice are the best for this, in my experience; you get people trumpeting that "a sentence has to have a subject and a verb", or the person who I heard say, in all apparent seriousness, that "the passive voice should be eschewed."

Not to mention the ones who go on about the evilness of the passive voice without being able to identify it...

Language Log has been there already: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=19878

...I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that the criterion for including an example in this thread was whether LL had failed to mention it. I'll keep that in mind for next time.

Oh not again! I hate it when I do that. Sorry if that's how you interpreted it.

Frislander wrote:

Neon Fox wrote:

Frislander wrote:

Neon Fox wrote:Rants about the passive voice are the best for this, in my experience; you get people trumpeting that "a sentence has to have a subject and a verb", or the person who I heard say, in all apparent seriousness, that "the passive voice should be eschewed."

Not to mention the ones who go on about the evilness of the passive voice without being able to identify it...

Language Log has been there already: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=19878

...I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that the criterion for including an example in this thread was whether LL had failed to mention it. I'll keep that in mind for next time.

Oh not again! I hate it when I do that. Sorry if that's how you interpreted it.

Ah! The low bandwidth of text strikes again--also I'm still Before Coffee, which no doubt did not help. No problem.

Related: Strange, ad-hoc terminology people use when talking about the sounds of their language. I've heard English speakers use "hard" vs. "soft" to mean "voiced" vs. "voiceless" in either direction (i.e. both "hard" = "voiced" and "hard" = "voiceless"), especially when talking about voiceless/voiced pairs that are spelled the same, such as <th> for /θ/ or /ð/ or <s> for /s/ or /z/. I also occasionally hear "hard" and "soft" applied to English vowels, e.g. an SMBC comic from a few years back incidentally contrasting monophthongized [a] with "hard" [aɪ].

Neon Fox wrote:Rants about the passive voice are the best for this, in my experience; you get people trumpeting that "a sentence has to have a subject and a verb", or the person who I heard say, in all apparent seriousness, that "the passive voice should be eschewed."

Not to mention the ones who go on about the evilness of the passive voice without being able to identify it...

I keep hearing a lot about this on ZBB, but I've never witnessed it myself. Who are these anti-passive people (besides the one mentioned in the language log post)?

Chengjiang wrote:Related: Strange, ad-hoc terminology people use when talking about the sounds of their language. I've heard English speakers use "hard" vs. "soft" to mean "voiced" vs. "voiceless" in either direction (i.e. both "hard" = "voiced" and "hard" = "voiceless"), especially when talking about voiceless/voiced pairs that are spelled the same, such as <th> for /θ/ or /ð/ or <s> for /s/ or /z/. I also occasionally hear "hard" and "soft" applied to English vowels, e.g. an SMBC comic from a few years back incidentally contrasting monophthongized [a] with "hard" [aɪ].

This reminds me. I read a BA thesis a little while ago, where the writer kept using the word stressed when he meant voiced. And I kept face palming. It's a little understandable because in Swedish these words are betonad and tonande, but maybe one should write about a subject one knows a little more about.

Qwynegold wrote:

Neon Fox wrote:Rants about the passive voice are the best for this, in my experience; you get people trumpeting that "a sentence has to have a subject and a verb", or the person who I heard say, in all apparent seriousness, that "the passive voice should be eschewed."

Not to mention the ones who go on about the evilness of the passive voice without being able to identify it...

I keep hearing a lot about this on ZBB, but I've never witnessed it myself. Who are these anti-passive people (besides the one mentioned in the language log post)?

Just about anyone who writes or talks about good style, IME. My most recent encounter was a podcast I like which has an occasional segment called "How to Write Good"; that's where the thing about "passive should be eschewed" came from.

Generally it's the same people who exhibit a pathological fear of the suffix -ly, rant at length about omitting needless words, and try to treat English verbs as if they were Latin.

Qwynegold wrote:

Neon Fox wrote:Rants about the passive voice are the best for this, in my experience; you get people trumpeting that "a sentence has to have a subject and a verb", or the person who I heard say, in all apparent seriousness, that "the passive voice should be eschewed."

Not to mention the ones who go on about the evilness of the passive voice without being able to identify it...

I keep hearing a lot about this on ZBB, but I've never witnessed it myself. Who are these anti-passive people (besides the one mentioned in the language log post)?

I was drilled about not using passive voice in high school advanced English, despite never being told what it was besides that it uses be-verbs, with no clarification made that there's also predicative be, progressive be, or any other form of be. In fact I was told multiple times to avoid just using be-verbs altogether.

Chengjiang wrote:Related: Strange, ad-hoc terminology people use when talking about the sounds of their language. I've heard English speakers use "hard" vs. "soft" to mean "voiced" vs. "voiceless" in either direction (i.e. both "hard" = "voiced" and "hard" = "voiceless"), especially when talking about voiceless/voiced pairs that are spelled the same, such as <th> for /θ/ or /ð/ or <s> for /s/ or /z/. I also occasionally hear "hard" and "soft" applied to English vowels, e.g. an SMBC comic from a few years back incidentally contrasting monophthongized [a] with "hard" [aɪ].

I'm of the opinion that it makes sense to call both voiced and voiceless sounds "hard" or "soft," it's just that one use is talking about sonority while the other (which is what I've more commonly heard) is picking up on the tone-depressing of voiced consonants. There's also the acoustic similarity of voicelessness/aspiration with whisper. One of the first "shocking" things I learned when getting into linguistics was that voiced consonants are considered "softer" and aspirated "harder," but I think the linguistic and common use of the terms are referring to different things.

Chengjiang wrote:I've heard English speakers use "hard" vs. "soft" to mean "voiced" vs. "voiceless" in either direction (i.e. both "hard" = "voiced" and "hard" = "voiceless"), especially when talking about voiceless/voiced pairs that are spelled the same, such as <th> for /θ/ or /ð/ or <s> for /s/ or /z/.

Interesting. I can't ever recall hearing "hard th" used for /ð/ from anyone.

Neon Fox and vokzhen: That's interesting. In my earlier university, we were drilled to use passive voice in thesises.

And regarding soft and hard consonants, in Finnish the letter B is referred to as "soft P".

In Finland, voiced consonants are for softies.

Chengjiang wrote:Related: Strange, ad-hoc terminology people use when talking about the sounds of their language. I've heard English speakers use "hard" vs. "soft" to mean "voiced" vs. "voiceless" in either direction (i.e. both "hard" = "voiced" and "hard" = "voiceless"), especially when talking about voiceless/voiced pairs that are spelled the same, such as <th> for /θ/ or /ð/ or <s> for /s/ or /z/. I also occasionally hear "hard" and "soft" applied to English vowels, e.g. an SMBC comic from a few years back incidentally contrasting monophthongized [a] with "hard" [aɪ].

The way I was taught how to read (English) was by differentiating things like "hard c" (/k/) and "soft c" (/s/), or "hard g" (/g/) and "soft c" (/dʒ/). Likewise, we learned about "short" vowels and "long" vowels to differentiate e.g. /ɪ/ and /aɪ/ for <i>. I don't recall ever making a distinction for <th>, though; I think a lot of speakers don't really realize that /θ/ and /ð/ actually are different sounds. They may be able to tell them apart, but wouldn't be able to actually explain the difference.

Growing up, I never expected that these would be necessarily be official universal linguistic terminology; just the terminology used in English to describe how English itself functions.

hwhatting wrote:In Finland, voiced consonants are for softies.

lol

Axiem wrote:

Chengjiang wrote:Related: Strange, ad-hoc terminology people use when talking about the sounds of their language. I've heard English speakers use "hard" vs. "soft" to mean "voiced" vs. "voiceless" in either direction (i.e. both "hard" = "voiced" and "hard" = "voiceless"), especially when talking about voiceless/voiced pairs that are spelled the same, such as <th> for /θ/ or /ð/ or <s> for /s/ or /z/. I also occasionally hear "hard" and "soft" applied to English vowels, e.g. an SMBC comic from a few years back incidentally contrasting monophthongized [a] with "hard" [aɪ].

The way I was taught how to read (English) was by differentiating things like "hard c" (/k/) and "soft c" (/s/), or "hard g" (/g/) and "soft c" (/dʒ/). Likewise, we learned about "short" vowels and "long" vowels to differentiate e.g. /ɪ/ and /aɪ/ for <i>. I don't recall ever making a distinction for <th>, though; I think a lot of speakers don't really realize that /θ/ and /ð/ actually are different sounds. They may be able to tell them apart, but wouldn't be able to actually explain the difference.

Growing up, I never expected that these would be necessarily be official universal linguistic terminology; just the terminology used in English to describe how English itself functions.

"Hard" and "soft" for doublets like the values of C and G and "long" and "short" for the vowels are pretty normal and part of the naming tradition for English spelling. I'm talking about usages outside of that.

I do think a lot of English speakers aren't aware that there are two distinct sounds indicated by <th>. While they are contrastive in most environments, the distinction has a very low functional yield.

I sort of wonder: For Italians who do differentiate /s/ and /z/, is there much of a sense of them being separate sounds, or is the situation more like English <th> sounds? (I know that while they contrast intervocalically in the standard dialect, many speakers have fully merged them.) Or, for that matter, /ts/ and /dz/, another voiced:voiceless pair that's spelled the same.

Chengjiang wrote:I sort of wonder: For Italians who do differentiate /s/ and /z/, is there much of a sense of them being separate sounds, or is the situation more like English <th> sounds? (I know that while they contrast intervocalically in the standard dialect, many speakers have fully merged them.) Or, for that matter, /ts/ and /dz/, another voiced:voiceless pair that's spelled the same.

I'm not sure if they contrast intervocalically in the standard dialect? Intervocalically, /s/ = [z], /sː/ = [sː]. My Italian is increasingly Perugino-influenced, but for me [z] is just the singleton realization between vowels, with the contrast as much from the length on the vowel and consonant as the voicing. For me < casa > [kaːza], < cassa > [kasːa]

I think < z > is much like english < th >. There are definitely two separate pronunciations, but the contrast isn't really noted. I think razza /rattsa/,/raddza/ is the only minimal pair? I don't think we were ever taught a rule about pronunciation of /dz/ vs /ts/, or told they were seperate sounds though.
We were never taught about < o > vs < ò >, or < e > vs < è > either. I picked up the distinction from hearing and practice I guess. In Perugino è [ɛ] and ò [ɔ] are much more common than in Standard Italian, so maybe that's reinforced my contrast between the two.

Sexendèƚo wrote:

Chengjiang wrote:I sort of wonder: For Italians who do differentiate /s/ and /z/, is there much of a sense of them being separate sounds, or is the situation more like English <th> sounds? (I know that while they contrast intervocalically in the standard dialect, many speakers have fully merged them.) Or, for that matter, /ts/ and /dz/, another voiced:voiceless pair that's spelled the same.

I'm not sure if they contrast intervocalically in the standard dialect? Intervocalically, /s/ = [z], /sː/ = [sː]. My Italian is increasingly Perugino-influenced, but for me [z] is just the singleton realization between vowels, with the contrast as much from the length on the vowel and consonant as the voicing. For me < casa > [kaːza], < cassa > [kasːa]

I remembered reading that while it's being replaced by neutralization, the traditional standard pronunciation did have words with intervocalic [s] and words with intervocalic [z]. Maybe I read something out of date?

I think < z > is much like english < th >. There are definitely two separate pronunciations, but the contrast isn't really noted. I think razza /rattsa/,/raddza/ is the only minimal pair? I don't think we were ever taught a rule about pronunciation of /dz/ vs /ts/, or told they were seperate sounds though.
We were never taught about < o > vs < ò >, or < e > vs < è > either. I picked up the distinction from hearing and practice I guess. In Perugino è [ɛ] and ò [ɔ] are much more common than in Standard Italian, so maybe that's reinforced my contrast between the two.

Interesting.

I've noticed that a lot of younger Minnesotans having "accent denial", that is, thinking they speak General American, even when their accent is pretty clear. I suspect it is because a lot of people think a "Minnesota Accent" is their grandparents' immigrant-influenced affectations.

TaylorS wrote:I've noticed that a lot of younger Minnesotans having "accent denial", that is, thinking they speak General American, even when their accent is pretty clear. I suspect it is because a lot of people think a "Minnesota Accent" is their grandparents' immigrant-influenced affectations.

Interesting. Recently I moved from California to Minnesota, and I actually don't notice many accent differences between me and Minnesotans. The only thing that stood out to me is ash-tensing before /g/, and most of the people I've met who do that are aware that it's not "General American" and sometimes even a bit self-conscious about it if it's mentioned.

Chengjiang wrote: I do think a lot of English speakers aren't aware that there are two distinct sounds indicated by <th>. While they are contrastive in most environments, the distinction has a very low functional yield.

I commented on a YouTube video the other day how I thought it was weird that the guy pronounced 'thus' as [θʌs]. I didn't write that, though. I wrote: It's odd that he pronounces 'thus' with the TH as in THINK, rather than the TH as in THIS. A guy commented:

"The first syllable of 'this' and 'think' is pronounced identically."

I ignored the 'syllable' thing and went on to explain what the difference was, and how he could feel the difference in voicing by putting two fingers on his Adam's apple to feel the presence and absence of vibrations from the vocal cords. He replied:

"Eh, I guess it depends where you're from. I voice the first syllable in 'think' as well as 'this'. Not quite as much but not enough for it to be a big difference."

So, I think you're right; people's perceptions of which sounds are distinct in their language very much depends on the spelling. This is anecdotal, but I've run into this many times before.

TaylorS wrote:I've noticed that a lot of younger Minnesotans having "accent denial", that is, thinking they speak General American, even when their accent is pretty clear. I suspect it is because a lot of people think a "Minnesota Accent" is their grandparents' immigrant-influenced affectations.

Michiganders do this too, and Wisconsinites as well if I remember well from when I lived there. We're all in denial here about our accents. Someone fed us this Midwest accent=standard American, no accent, myth. People hear my accent when I go to other places and I sure as hell heard the Minnesota accent when I went there many many times. In fact, I often get self conscious myself of my accent and I live a mere 6 hours away from home. I have to be careful, for example, because I'm prone to saying /rUt/ instead of /rut/ when taking about grammar in my classes (when I have to use English that is).

I have noticed that Central Illinoisians don't have much in terms of variation in their accents. Here it's rather boring compared to Northeastern Wisconsin, Minnesota, or even back home in Michigan.

Viktor77 wrote:

TaylorS wrote:I've noticed that a lot of younger Minnesotans having "accent denial", that is, thinking they speak General American, even when their accent is pretty clear. I suspect it is because a lot of people think a "Minnesota Accent" is their grandparents' immigrant-influenced affectations.

Michiganders do this too, and Wisconsinites as well if I remember well from when I lived there. We're all in denial here about our accents. Someone fed us this Midwest accent=standard American, no accent, myth. People hear my accent when I go to other places and I sure as hell heard the Minnesota accent when I went there many many times. In fact, I often get self conscious myself of my accent and I live a mere 6 hours away from home. I have to be careful, for example, because I'm prone to saying /rUt/ instead of /rut/ when taking about grammar in my classes (when I have to use English that is).

I have noticed that Central Illinoisians don't have much in terms of variation in their accents. Here it's rather boring compared to Northeastern Wisconsin, Minnesota, or even back home in Michigan.

I'm painfully aware of my accent, largely because it is fucking weird by even Wisconsin standards, and to a good extent was always aware of my accent - because I remember consciously changing it as I grew up from the more conservative speech of my parents to the speech I heard of the other kids in school around me while at the same time being very aware of certain innovative pronunciations I had always remembered having which I could never get rid of (e.g. mister [ˈmɘɕtɕʁ̩(ː)]. sister [ˈsɘɕtɕʁ̩(ː)]). And I remember people pointing out that I had a really funny accent when I moved away from Wisconsin to Maryland, and even other people from other parts of Wisconsin pointing out my use of [ja(ː)] and like.

That said, though, I still perceive how people - not necessarily myself, but other people - speak here as how people normally speak. How people speak on TV feels like a register rather than dialect difference, especially since I can speak markedly closer to that than how I normally speak if I try, normally in formal speech. Of course that is not true, since formal speech here is still not GA by any means; the vowel systems are different, there is still l-vocalization and a bunched /r/, palatalization of alveolar and postalveolar consonants, and so on - but I am not normally aware of this unless I pay conscious attention to this.