Language Evolution, it's Fantastic, it's Incredible

[kladner]

Originally Posted by chalsall

What about "effect" vs. "affect"? I still have trouble with that one when writting.

I had intended to include that example, but forgot.
I was not sure, myself, just now, so I did a search. I think I was close to correct. Thing is, I wasn't sure how strong the rules are, as I had not relied on rules in speech, but on my ingrained response to the sounds of the words.

Anyway,
AFFECT is a verb, always, I think.
EFFECT is a noun except when used in phrases like "They wish to effect change." Approximately equivalent with "to bring about."

Another summary I am comfortable with is that
Affects produce Effects, in the things Affected.

The storm badly affected the field. The effects include downed grain and flooding.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Those folks at the Economist have a lot to answer for.

Personally, I love The Economist.

Deep analysis, and strong writing. And they are the first to admit that economics is the least scientific of all the sciences.

Have you read their style guide? I have a more recent hard copy (read: dead trees) around here somewhere.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Nor should it. Those folks at the Economist have a lot to answer for. Instead of achieving freshness through novelty, they have achieved a "new" way of expression that is born tired.

I had a similar reaction to the word "growing" changing from a thing organisms do within themselves, to something externally imposed. I remember this starting with Bill Clinton talking about "growing" the economy.

EDIT: I have to admit that I would say things like, "I am growing many house plants." Perhaps I was more bothered by the change from living organisms to abstract concepts like "economy".

[science_man_88]

Originally Posted by kladner

I had intended to include that example, but forgot.
I was not sure, myself, just now, so I did a search. I think I was close to correct. Thing is, I wasn't sure how strong the rules are, as I had not relied on rules in speech, but on my ingrained response to the sounds of the words.

Anyway,
AFFECT is a verb, always, I think.
EFFECT is a noun except when used in phrases like "They wish to effect change." Approximately equivalent with "to bring about."

Another summary I am comfortable with is that
Affects produce Effects, in the things Affected.

The storm badly affected the field. The effects include downed grain and flooding.

Not quite:
https://www.google.ca/search?q=defin...obile&ie=UTF-8. The psychology definition applies when talking about pseudobulbar affect or schizoaffective disorder.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by science_man_88

Not quite:
https://www.google.ca/search?q=defin...obile&ie=UTF-8. The psychology definition applies when talking aboutmpseudobulbar affect or schizoaffective disorder.

Bravo! That one got past me completely, as I did not read far enough in my source material. I am familiar with that usage, though, as in "to have a flat affect."
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/affect-vs-effect/

[xilman]

You colonials may not like "hotted". We English speakers find "gotten" particularly grating.

Two nations divided by a common language.

[a1call]

Please spare us the runaround.

https://www.websters1913.com/words/Whitlow

[a1call]

I said I would stop, but this one is too straightforward not to point out.
So one more indication of a more direct link between English and Persian than prescribed by linguistics.

The word "Bad" has identical pronunciation and meaning (please trust me on this) in Persian.
Yet according to linguists it has roots in a Proto-Germanic words with very different pronunciations:

From Old High German bad, from Proto-Germanic *baþą. Related to bähen.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Bad

An interesting side to this is that the word "Bad" on the Persian side is unique to Persian and is not shared in Arabic, Turkish, Azary and so on.

This can always be dismissed as a coincidence, but when you have too many coincidences, you usually end up with a probable case.

[Dubslow]

The proto-germanic word for "to have" sounds almost exactly the same as the word with the same meaning in Latin, but they come from very different proto-Indo-European roots.

Let us all re-emphasize: "sounding similar (or the same)" is not how one concludes that two words (or languages) are related. You can find words that sound and mean the same thing between any two languages in the world, but no one, not even you, would claim that English is related to e.g. the Gayo language.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ap_English.svg

[science_man_88]

Originally Posted by a1call

I said I would stop, but this one is too straightforward not to point out.
So one more indication of a more direct link between English and Persian than prescribed by linguistics.

The word "Bad" has identical pronunciation and meaning (please trust me on this) in Persian.
Yet according to linguists it has roots in a Proto-Germanic words with very different pronunciations:



https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Bad

An interesting side to this is that the word "Bad" on the Persian side is unique to Persian and is not shared in Arabic, Turkish, Azary and so on.

This can always be dismissed as a coincidence, but when you have too many coincidences, you usually end up with a probable case.

How many sounds can a human voice make ... ?

[a1call]

Originally Posted by science_man_88

How many sounds can a human voice make ... ?

It depends on language and even race.

My Russian grandmother could not pronounce "H" and would pronounce the words containing it as "kh".

A South American friend could not pronounce the sound of "kh" no matter how hard she tried.

Arabic does not have the letter equivalent of "P" or "JH" which is why after the Arab conquest of Persia most of the "P" containing Persian words were pronounced with "F" instead such as "Parsi" to "Farsi".

English does not have the pronunciations for "JH", "KH", "GH"

Many languages don't have the pronounciation of "Th". To this day I can not pronounce "the" as anything other than "de".

There is a South-African letter/sound that is made by clicking the tongue from the roof of the mouth which is absent in every other known language.

There are sounds that can be made by human phonics which is not present in any known language. You can make one such a sound by pronouncing "N" by touching your upper lip by your tongue. It will sound a letter in between "N" and "M"

I think old voice synthesizers had 256 phonics which was sufficient but sounded robot-like.

In German there are about 2500 Diphones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech...hone_synthesis

The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/ex...glish-language

Inevitably some are Multinyms.

http://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/...multinyms.html