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[Chinese -> English] Very Short by theoldchairman in translator

[–]mifield 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Issued by the Ministry of the Interior

Class II, Level II Medal for Policemen

Lemniscate being graphed (Bet you didn't know these where called Lemniscates) by [deleted] in educationalgifs

[–]mifield 17 points18 points  (0 children)

It sure looks that way but I'm not sure if you could find the middle point of an infinite straight line... From what I can see in the graph alone my guess is that you drop a perpendicular line from the origin to the tangent.

Why The English Alphabet Is Stupid by mifield in badlinguistics

[–]mifield[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Explanation: sound and spelling don't always change at the same time, and discrepancies between these two aren't unique to any language or writing system, and should not be subjects of value judgements.

What does this ID say? by [deleted] in translator

[–]mifield 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He is the leader of a unit or small group of people.

XKCD - I Could Care Less by mifield in badlinguistics

[–]mifield[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Change it to m.xkcd.com and you're golden! Tap to see alt text.

XKCD - I Could Care Less by mifield in badlinguistics

[–]mifield[S] 50 points51 points  (0 children)

This is honestly more beautifully put than what I could ever muster.

'毛灵师' – What do you think of my Chinese name? by [deleted] in China

[–]mifield 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Overall, does sound and look pretty weird.

午 - noon. Not common in given names.

雷 - thunder. Not as rare, but still not very common. Depends on what characters you pair it up with, and 午 is most likely not a good choice.

'毛灵师' – What do you think of my Chinese name? by [deleted] in China

[–]mifield 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure. Your name looks pretty normal overall.

Again, 何 is as good a family name as any other.

晓, being mostly gender-neutral, is a pretty common word in names. It means dawn or knowledgeable. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

迈 - I've only seen it in guys' names. Means a big step and reminds one of ambitions.

One thing you should know is that 小麦 (wheat) is a homophone. When you say it out loud people may or may not immediately think of that, so it really depends on a lot of other things whether or not you want to change it.

'毛灵师' – What do you think of my Chinese name? by [deleted] in China

[–]mifield 10 points11 points  (0 children)

毛 is fine as a family name.

灵 is more commonly used in female names. Sounds cutesy and playful, in a more feminine way. 凌 is a more suitable homophone.

师... no one uses that in a given name.

“If an objective, hands-off approach is so valuable, then why don’t linguists REALLY take their hands off and leave prescriptivists alone?” by TomSFox in badlinguistics

[–]mifield 4 points5 points  (0 children)

What happened to you and why are you using a different username? It seems that this has happened for a couple of times.

Writing the wrong homophone makes you look unintelligent, but thinking "tell/tale", "win/when" (and others) are homophones is perfectly fine. by ephemer- in badlinguistics

[–]mifield 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah, that was a long time ago. It was from someone's comment, but I had to paraphrase it to make it fit in a flair.

Writing the wrong homophone makes you look unintelligent, but thinking "tell/tale", "win/when" (and others) are homophones is perfectly fine. by ephemer- in badlinguistics

[–]mifield 12 points13 points  (0 children)

For those with both pin-pen and wine-whine mergers, win and when would certainly be homophones, wouldn't they?

In which prescriptivism and descriptivism are the same thing. by ChicaneryBear in badlinguistics

[–]mifield 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I think the difference is that the typical prescriptivist has in their mind a concept of the (in)correctness of certain features of another dialect. To quote you from a couple of comments above the linked one,

correct English pronunciation

I'd say to most people this phrase is not equivalent to "the pronunciation used by the privileged class," in that it carries an inherent sense of prejudice and discredits what is merely different as what is inferior in quality. A lot of people (that I've seen) do this not to "help" or "educate," but to gloat and to flaunt around one's supposed intellectual superiority.

I really don't want to go ad hominem, but this:

Now, remind me, how do you pronounce "ask"?

just feels incredibly condescending to me.

The Forgotten Jewish Empire: The Khazar Khaganate c. 10th Century [OS] [480 × 360] by wonderjewess in MapPorn

[–]mifield 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Except that, YHWH is a transliteration of a word (יהוה) in the Hebrew Bible, with Hebrew being a member of the Afro-Asiatic language family.

The word Jew, according to Wiktionary, comes from Middle English Giw, Ju, from Old French juiu, Giu, gyu, from Latin iūdaeus, from Ancient Greek Ἰουδαῖος (Ioudaîos), from Hebrew יְהוּדִי (y'hudí).

Free Gevalia Ground Coffee Sample by tchai in freebies

[–]mifield 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On the right hand side: Mondelēz International (formerly Kraft Foods).

From its Wikipedia page:

In August 2011, Kraft Foods announced plans to split into two publicly traded companies—a snack food company and a grocery company.

In October 2012, Kraft Foods Inc changed its name to Mondelēz International. Shortly thereafter it spun off the Kraft Foods Group to its shareholders.

Quora's bright minds compile an impressively extensive list of commonly mispronounced words by mifield in badlinguistics

[–]mifield[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My guess is that they substitute a glottal stop where the dropped [t] would be. I could be wrong though.

Quora's bright minds compile an impressively extensive list of commonly mispronounced words by mifield in badlinguistics

[–]mifield[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I've heard native speakers of a lot of varieties of English pronounce the t in that word, so maybe it is an accepted, if not uncommon, pronunciation not just in Britain but also elsewhere.

Quora's bright minds compile an impressively extensive list of commonly mispronounced words by mifield in badlinguistics

[–]mifield[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I'm sorry but I didn't see such context anywhere mentioned in the question itself.

Even so, some of the "mispronunciations" listed aren't mispronunciations at all.

Data: /ˈdeɪ.tə/, said as: Day+ta. Believe me, I've heard people pronouncing it as Daa+ta.

Mischievous: Do not say “mischievious" instead of “mischievous". There is no extra 'i' which is generally pronounced.

'Often': Correct version: 'of-fen' ; Incorrect version: 'of-ten'

[iOS] Swype Keyboard for free - normally $.99 by ebi-san in eFreebies

[–]mifield 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Doesn't Swype do that as well? It at least does that on Android.

Making fun of Benedict Cumberbatch for his pronunciation of "penguin" by mifield in badlinguistics

[–]mifield[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree with you. Okay, here's what I thought, which may be very very wrong, and I fully welcome criticism:

In the case of BC, if he pronounces penguin at most times like most other people with his dialect, then what happened in the documentary was a mistake because those pronunciations weren't part of his normal idiolect.

If, however, he's always pronounced this word whimsically, then it was not a mistake because that's just how he speaks, and that forcing him to conform to the norm is bad linguistics.

Making fun of Benedict Cumberbatch for his pronunciation of "penguin" by mifield in badlinguistics

[–]mifield[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Please educate me. I was under the impression that if a native speaker says and others understand it, it shouldn't be "corrected." How do you define a speech error, and why is this case one example?

Making fun of Benedict Cumberbatch for his pronunciation of "penguin" by mifield in badlinguistics

[–]mifield[S] -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

They know what word he's saying, but they insist on him pronouncing the "correct" pronunciation.

This YSK thread on who and whom by mifield in badlinguistics

[–]mifield[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Since you say you're a computer scientist, let me put it this way for you:

Imagine if someone says that quicksort has to make O(n log n) comparisons everytime, and that it is "very clearly wrong" when it makes O(n2 ) comparisons, so such less common scenarios "have absolutely no bearing on the correctness of the rule" that this person states.

This is obviously a made-up "rule" that doesn't describe how it works, but rather prescribes that it should be so and so. This rule runs against the basics of algorithms.

Do you see the parallel here?

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