I frequently ask questions about Da Rulez!!! and people tell me. From now on, if I ask a question about Da Rulez!!! tell me where to look in the Multiverser rulebook, which I now own. I'm serious. It will help motivate me to study the rulebook.
[closed]
Hey everybody, do me a favor
(19 posts) (5 voices)-
Jhiaxus
MemberActually, I have never heard about H being commonly silent in the English language, so instead of trying to respond in kind and likely getting flamed, I did a search and we'll let facts to the talking:
Value
H occurs as a single-letter grapheme (with value /h/ or silent) and in various digraphs, such as ch (/t?/, French /?/, Greek and Italian /k/, German & Scots /x/), gh (silent, /g/, or /f/) , ph (Greek words with /f/), rh (Greek words with /r/), sh (/?/), th (either /?/ like thin or /ð/ like then), wh (either /w/, /?/or /f/: see wine-whine merger). In transcriptions of other writing systems, zh may occur (as in Russian Doctor Zhivago); this is generally pronounced /?/ in English, although this rendition is not necessarily faithful to the sound in the original language (as in the case of pinyin transcriptions).
Usage in Spanish
In Spanish, H is a silent letter with no pronunciation, as in hijo [?ixo] ('son'), hola [?ola] ('hello'), and hábil [?a?il] ('skillful'). The spelling reflects an earlier pronunciation of [h] did exist. The [h] sound exists in a number of dialects in Spanish, either as a syllable-final allophone of /s/ (for example Andalusia, Argentina or Cuba - vg. esto [?eht?o] 'this' , or as a dialectal realization of Standard /x/ (for example Mexican caja [?kaha] 'box' ).
While some languages that English is derived from, H is silent, it is not common at all in English, I provided the Spanish as the primary language that this occurs in. :P
Fri Sep 5 2008 5:07 pm # -
I would have expected the JH sound to be to Z what CH is to S.
That might take some explaining.
Working with modern American notation for phonemes, I learned to recognize the relationships between various consonants. S is a pure sibilance; we use SH for the sound of the voiceless sibilant fricative, SHall. In lingustics, this is represented by an S with a wedge over it. Absent the availability of the wedge character, SH is used.
Z is a voiced fricative. You position your mouth identically to the way you make an S, but you vibrate your vocal chords while doing so, and thus the sound of Zoo. However, we have a voiced sibilant fricative that we do not distinguish orthographically, but do use as a distinct phoneme, as represented by the Z in aZure. In linguistics, this is represented by a Z with a wedge over it. Sometimes it is represented by ZH.
The CH sound in English is a most commonly the SH voiceless sibilant fricative with a dental stop in front of it, the equivalent of TCH. We use this three-letter representation in the ends of words such as baTCH and caTCH, but it is the same consonantal formation when it is in the beginning or middle of words, CHoose or attaCHment. In linguistics, it is represented by a C with a wedge over it.
The equivalent sound in English, what we might represent as DZH, is represented by J. J is a poor choice for use in linguistics, however, as it comes from the Latin I, and so tends to have a consonantal Y sound in northern and eastern European languages and an breathed H sound in Spanish and, I believe, Portuguese. English is the only language in which consonantal shift raised the "E" of this consonant to make contact with the open mouth, and thus "J".
However, adding an H to any English consonant tends to shift it to a fricative. The J is already a fricative with a stop. It thus makes sense for the H to attach to the stop, giving us something like DHZH. DH is the normal representation for the voiced labiodental fricative; in our orthography both the voiced and the voiceless labiodental fricatives are represented by TH, but in phonetic spelling thin would be TH and then would be DH.
English does not like complicated consonantal strings, and so it tends to collapse these. The result is that the DHZH represented by JH would collapse into the same sound as ZH, the same sound as Azure.
What I believe, though, is that Adam was going for a foreign fantasy sound for his name. I would have written that (assuming I am pronouncing it correctly) J'haxus, but I wasn't there and it wasn't up to me. His spelling is a perfectly reasonable way to spell what he pronounces.
--M. J. Young
Sat Sep 6 2008 3:03 am # -
I had assumed the same sound as MJ, though in the IPA it's written with an ezh rather than a carrot-top z. (And yes, that 'zh' makes the ezh sound.)
Sat Sep 6 2008 7:10 pm # -
Jhiaxus
MemberI find it amusing that John tries to find a way to directly insult someone over how you pronounce a name. Pot calling the kettle black so to speak. To respond to the post, it's Gee-Hax-Us, and no I didn't make it or set how you pronounce it. The creator made it as a joke, knowing the comic book would likely be canceled in under a year. He was right. As for my "horrible" English and "speaking skills" (which is funny since John has never heard me speak), I chose to make my career in the IT Field, and with the advent of spellcheck, I don't have to worry much about that. How has your Doctorate in English helped you in the job field A1?
Adam
Mon Sep 8 2008 8:02 pm # -
JohnA1nut
MemberI find it amusing that John tries to find a way to directly insult someone over how you pronounce a name. Pot calling the kettle black so to speak.
How did I directly insult you there? You thought my name meant that I was a steak sauce nut. If I was insulting you, then you were insulting me. I was simply saying that is how it looks like it should be pronounced TO ME. Same as you believing mine to be steak sauce.
To respond to the post, it's Gee-Hax-Us, and no I didn't make it or set how you pronounce it. The creator made it as a joke, knowing the comic book would likely be canceled in under a year. He was right.
A gamer that named himself after a Transformer..... Uber-Geek. (not an insult, just an observation)
As for my "horrible" English and "speaking skills" (which is funny since John has never heard me speak), I chose to make my career in the IT Field, and with the advent of spellcheck, I don't have to worry much about that. How has your Doctorate in English helped you in the job field A1?
I have an internet friend from the island of Malta (It's an island off the coast of Italy) She speaks 4 languages, and she speaks better English than you do. When I was in high school, I had a girlfriend from Hungary. She came to the US when she was 10 years old, and (at that time) had only been speaking English for about 6 or 7 years. She spoke (and wrote) better than you do. It is a sad day when someone from a foreign country speaks better English than an American native.
And since you seem to want to bring that back up, it wasn't your horrible butchering of the English language that bothered me. It was that you made absolutely no effort to improve it. However, you expected me to never once make a single OOC post, on a site that had a non-functioning edit feature. I figured if you were going to persist in annoying me, I had the right to annoy you. However, you wouldn't reply for a day if I made an OOC post, and never even told me why. Your English was still as bad as ever. (My best Mr. Rogers' accent) "Can you say 'Double Standard' boys and girls? I thought you could."
Mon Sep 8 2008 8:19 pm # -
Graham
MemberI come back after months of silence to find you squabbling like children! Sheesh.
Anyway, if you think speaking English is hard, try learning Chinese. Frickin' tonal languages are crazy (also, the 10,000+ characters don't hurt). Basically, the entire meaning of a word can change depending on inflection.
Mon Sep 8 2008 9:29 pm # -
JohnA1nut
MemberAdam, ya know, I really feel stupid. An MP rolls up. I've got 2 guns and 2 hunting knives on me. I could have shot him.
I had a key that most likely would have opened the handcuffs. I could have unlocked myself at any time.
What I say I'm doing is "Repeatedly TK pulsing the back of his head, saying not a word." and I WONDER why I almost get killed!!!!!!!!!!! Pearl Harbor was a great world. I got a much needed wake-up call to the realities of the game. Thank you for that.
I still think you're a jerk that needs to grow up and learn to speak English properly, but I hold absolutely no malice towards you for anything that happened to my gaming character. I actually had a pretty good time there, all things considered.
Tue Sep 9 2008 12:30 am # -
John, stop it. You're being infantile, and you're baiting Adam.
Adam, don't rise to the bait.
John, most educated foreigners who speak English (or nearly any language, for that matter) speak it better than most native speakers. This is because foreigners learn languages from books and training programs that are grammatically precise, and natives learn from listening to other natives, who tend to be sloppy in their usage. This is an established fact in the lingustics profession, although I've also got anecdotal evidence: my sister's Taiwanese born and raised husband has repeatedly told us that we should adopt my sister's pronunciation of Chinese words, because she has the better pronunciation--he says he has the Chinese equivalent of a Brooklyn accent. So nearly all foreigners schooled in English speak it better than nearly all natives. So your anecdotes prove nothing.
--M. J. Young
Tue Sep 9 2008 5:39 am # -
JohnA1nut
MemberAnd his refusing to reply when I made an out of character post, and not even telling me why was the act of an adult? I want to clear the air with Adam, and I want to do it in a civilized fashion. That's what this is. I'm not baiting him at all. I'm clearing the air.
Tue Sep 9 2008 5:52 am # -
JohnA1nut
MemberI want to know what your problem is, Adam.
I bet you want to know what my problem is.
My problem is that I can't let things go. If something is unresolved, it bothers me, and this is bothering the hell out of me. It's part of the mental illness, I'm sure. I want to talk to you, Adam. I want to clear things with you. I wouldn't be lying if I said that this keeps me awake at night. You don't want me to contact you on Myspace, so you leave me little choice.
Tue Sep 9 2008 6:03 am # -
Jhiaxus
MemberWe tried writing on Myspace, but the ranting, raving and insults almost at random made me close that line of communication. Since there are no private messaging features here, let's end it with, I will answer game questions or threads, and when the insults start, you may reference my response below:
"Either the poster or what they said isn't worthy of my response".
I think it will be easier for everyone this way, as to drag down a thread again.
Adam
Tue Sep 9 2008 2:45 pm # -
JohnA1nut
Member"We" didn't try writing on Myspace. I tried writing on Myspace. You never once wrote me back. I don't know how you interpret a threat or an insult, but I never once threatened you on Myspace. I only started insulting you in an attempt to get you to reply. If you want to take it back to Myspace, then message me there. However, I'm not going to let this go until I clear things with you. I see it as finally having the chance to sit down with the school bully and find out why he does what he does.
Tue Sep 9 2008 5:19 pm # -
My problem is that I can't let things go. If something is unresolved, it bothers me, and this is bothering the hell out of me.
Well, John, this one you are going to have to let go. Some people don't like out of character posts or comments in their games, others like to socialize while they play. You and Adam were on that level mismatched. Neither of you handled the situation entirely well, and it escalated to the point that now we have these sporadic running arguments that neither of you are enjoying and I am disliking.
I have little leverage here. I can delete posts, and I can refuse to respond. I don't like to delete posts, but that further limits me. Thus all I can say is if you can't play nice together you can't play with me here.
I am not asking either of you to apologize to me or to each other. I am not apportioning blame. All I am doing is asking that the subject be dropped unresolved.
--M. J. Young
Tue Sep 9 2008 9:37 pm #
Topic Closed
This topic has been closed to new replies.