Downtown Khazan: Ice Cold Utopia

[Guy1]

[Sharpandpointies]

Bernie Sanders apparent endorsed Jagmeet Singh, leader of our left-of-centre party, the New Democrat Party (NDP) the other day.

People have been making a bit of an online row about it, all foreign interference this, there outta be a law that.

Yet when Obama endorsed Trudeau for the second time, crickets. Funny how accepted hegemony and the media machine works.

...man I can't wait for Monday to pass. There'll be a few parliamentary seats switched around, but I predict we'll all be in pretty much the same place we were before this election was called :/

Yeah, I saw that. Ugh. It's pretty hilarious (as in, hilariously BAD) how Canada's media is basically fully in support of the Lib-Con machine. And so many loud voices on social media follow this.

Like, Trudeau has already started the whole 'if you vote for any progressive but us [haha, libs not progressive], you're putting O'Toole into power!' fearmongering. Lib playbook for how many decades? And completely/conveniently ignoring that it's the swing voters who go back and forth between libs and cons that do this, not the people voting for the NDP....

Well yes, but my point was how proud America is of not being part of the British Empire that we went and made our own systems of measurements. That are TOTALLY better than Imperial Units.

^_^ So totally better (I see what you did, there).

Like how we took all the unnecessary "u"s out of all the British words.

On a more serious note, perhaps unnecessary for you depending on how you pronounce 'color', but perfectly reasonable for people who pronounce said words differently than an 'or' word. See below.

To be fair, I never understood what the British fascination with unnecessary "u"s about. Why write colour or honour when literally color and honor is simpler and pronounced the same. Useless use of the letter u.

Because it's actually pronounced differently? I mean, even in Canada we say colour differently than we would say 'color'. Similarly armour.

Given various accents and how different cultures pronounce something, I get the confusion. But the spelling is perfectly reasonable where I come from.

Also, given the fact that the 'British' spelling is used preeeetty much everywhere but America, one might also accurately say 'everyone else doesn't understand why America has a fascination for removing the 'u' from such words'. ^_^ From 'grammerly.com':

The shorter one, color, is the preferred spelling in the United States.
The rest of the English-speaking world uses the longer form, colour.

Emphasis mine.

[Vakanai]

not worth it

[Sharpandpointies]

Hmm, like you said, I always chalked up the difference in pronunciation up to accents. I mean it's the same word with the same meaning.

Point being, that saying the 'u' has 'no purpose' is an American viewpoint that isn't held by basically the rest of the English-speaking world.

I mean, nothing wrong with Americans saying 'u has no purpose in our dialect, we're tossing it', but to go on about how the 'u' has zero purpose period when it actually does have a purpose in, for example, Canada, seems a tad..I don't know, America-focused (my original word was 'arrogant', but that seems a trifle inflammatory).

Because the u serves no purpose? Also as yet another minor screw you to the British. So it's both practical and cultural.

Edit: Oh, and also to most of us Americans the u just make words look old timey and archaic. We associate it with Renaissance Fairs.

Again, 'u' has a purpose in other places. You guys want to toss it, perfectly fine. But saying it has 'no purpose' given that in other places it actually shows a difference in pronunciation seems a little...well, snotty. And it looks fine to places that actually use the 'u'. Again, it seems you're apply your American lens to the entire world.

I mean, we're perfectly fine with Americans deciding to write 'color' and 'armor' and such their own way. Feel free.

Maybe want to understand that other people have actual reasons for doing things, is all.

[Sharpandpointies]

Also as yet another minor screw you to the British. So it's both practical and cultural.

Also, I'm not sure how the mods would take a post that says something like "Also as yet another minor screw you to the Americans. So it's both practical and cultural." <-- this is just another take on the above quote.

Seems to be somewhat against the rules.

[Guy1]

I don't even know what's going on in this anymore.

[Vakanai]

Point being, that saying the 'u' has 'no purpose' is an American viewpoint that isn't held by basically the rest of the English-speaking world.

Maybe. Still, there's nothing wrong with Americans ditching it either. There's no "correct" version save what's appropriate for one's culture.

I mean, nothing wrong with Americans saying 'u has no purpose in our dialect, we're tossing it', but to go on about how the 'u' has zero purpose period when it actually does have a purpose in, for example, Canada, seems a tad..I don't know, America-focused (my original word was 'arrogant', but that seems a trifle inflammatory).

Yes and no - I think we're having a difference in communication here - this whole time I've been under the impression that this was a silly/joke-y convo and haven't been serious at any point until now when I realize you have been taking this seriously.

It wasn't arrogance, it was humor. But humor that didn't land, so my apologies. Not going to respond to the rest of your post, because it's a serious thing for you, and I never had any interest in being serious this whole time.

Also, I'm not sure how the mods would take a post that says something like "Also as yet another minor screw you to the Americans. So it's both practical and cultural." <-- this is just another take on the above quote.

Seems to be somewhat against the rules.

Again, my apologies - it was meant as an inoffensive joke, kind of like that Scots bit a couple pages back.

(Edit: Not that all of it was a joke, some parts about u not having a point was genuine, but super casual.)

[Len Ikari145]

[Vakanai]

This and Idiocracy were so prophetic, and oddly wrong. Their predictions were right, but they were off by half a thousand to a thousand years...

[Beadle]

As a minor, semi-jokey side-note to the colour vs color debate (specifically this one, not touching on other ‘o vs ou’ examples), I should point out that neither really reflects the pronunciation in their respective countries very well.

The vowels in the US version would probably more naturally be pronounced like ‘Hodor’ from GoT. There’s certainly little reason for the first part to be pronounced so markedly differently to ‘colon’.

With the UK/RoW version, ‘coe-lauer’ is probably closer to the pronunciation (though the e would be flattened into a diphthong rather than a separate syllable, like with hour or dour).

You could argue that at least the UK pronunciation is consistent with a word like ‘thorough’ in UK English, but anyone trying to argue consistency and using an ‘-ough’ word as an example is probably onto a loser. ‘-ough’ is pronounced completely differently in thorough, though, through, bough, thought, rough and cough. Anyone whose first language is not English must look at that crap and think “Seriously, you guys are just making this **** up to troll foreigners at this point, right?”

But to add to Sharp’s point somewhat, there are so many differences in pronunciation that a lot of the arguments over spelling become trite. US English doesn’t even contain all the vowel sounds that UK English has, the flat ‘o’ being one of those that’s in UK English and not in American English. I’ve seen detailed breakdowns of vowel sounds in American English issued by American linguistic experts explaining how the isolated vowel sound (i.e. ignoring the surrounding consonants) in ‘park’ is the same as it is in ‘block’ - in UK English they’re massively different sounds.

Sorry - I realise I missed the heated discussion overnight, but I’ve had to analyse this stuff quite closely in the past when teaching actors how to approach learning accents.

[Beadle]

*watches another episode of Flash*

*despairs at the bullshit super-science that’s even more pervasive in this season*

The whole thing is based on the different forces and their… ugh… “Isotope energy”. And now we have “electromagnetic particles” gathering in a storm above Central City, and the forces are being described as “the isotopic forces”.

I mean… STOP. USING. REAL. SCIENCE. TERMS. IF YOU. DON’T. KNOW. WHAT. THEY. MEAN.

Just use fake science-y sounding words and we’ll all be happy.

(And no, I will never not call this kind of crap out.)

[Postmania]

*watches another episode of Flash*

*despairs at the bullshit super-science that’s even more pervasive in this season*

The whole thing is based on the different forces and their… ugh… “Isotope energy”. And now we have “electromagnetic particles” gathering in a storm above Central City, and the forces are being described as “the isotopic forces”.

I mean… STOP. USING. REAL. SCIENCE. TERMS. IF YOU. DON’T. KNOW. WHAT. THEY. MEAN.

Just use fake science-y sounding words and we’ll all be happy.

(And no, I will never not call this kind of crap out.)

It sounds like the ionic continuum of your critical bs flux velocity has reached magnetic dissection. Quick, prepare for a reversal of quark pH levels into the muon jetstream!

[Sharpandpointies]

Maybe. Still, there's nothing wrong with Americans ditching it either. There's no "correct" version save what's appropriate for one's culture.

Yes and no - I think we're having a difference in communication here - this whole time I've been under the impression that this was a silly/joke-y convo and haven't been serious at any point until now when I realize you have been taking this seriously.

It wasn't arrogance, it was humor. But humor that didn't land, so my apologies. Not going to respond to the rest of your post, because it's a serious thing for you, and I never had any interest in being serious this whole time.

Again, my apologies - it was meant as an inoffensive joke, kind of like that Scots bit a couple pages back.

(Edit: Not that all of it was a joke, some parts about u not having a point was genuine, but super casual.)

Okay, so last night I was apparently in A Mood™. I'm going to apologize, myself, for getting cranky about the whole thing. Was totally unnecessary, and while I appreciate you taking it so well, I really don't think it should have been on you to apologize.

Sorry, man.

[Sharpandpointies]

I’ve seen detailed breakdowns of vowel sounds in American English issued by American linguistic experts explaining how the isolated vowel sound (i.e. ignoring the surrounding consonants) in ‘park’ is the same as it is in ‘block’ - in UK English they’re massively different sounds.

O_o Never heard this one before. Just goes to show a further difference.

*watches another episode of Flash*

*despairs at the bullshit super-science that’s even more pervasive in this season*

The whole thing is based on the different forces and their… ugh… “Isotope energy”. And now we have “electromagnetic particles” gathering in a storm above Central City, and the forces are being described as “the isotopic forces”.

I mean… STOP. USING. REAL. SCIENCE. TERMS. IF YOU. DON’T. KNOW. WHAT. THEY. MEAN.

Just use fake science-y sounding words and we’ll all be happy.

It sounds like the ionic continuum of your critical bs flux velocity has reached magnetic dissection. Quick, prepare for a reversal of quark pH levels into the muon jetstream!

Was going to reply, but Post basically won that war. ^_^

[Beadle]

O_o Never heard this one before. Just goes to show a further difference.

Yeah, I just assumed the US & Canadian ‘park’ and ‘block’ vowel sounds had a subtle difference that my British ears just couldn’t hear (which is certainly a thing that happens as we develop post-toddler age, whereas babies can recognise the subtleties in multiple different languages at the same time), but no, not in this case. The US-origin phonetics chart I was using at the time listed them as the same sound.

In British English they’re not even close. So I had to modify the chart and add the UK ‘short o’ in order to train people in accents.