Let's try and get 1,000,000 replies to this post
- Thread starter The Ancient Mariner
- Start date
Dr. Eddies Wingman
Brighter than thousand_suns
Now, that was something I needed to look up. I have never earlier needed to know what a morphological suffix was, although I am probably using them on a daily basis.
mtmccox
Ancient Mariner
Dr. Eddies Wingman
Brighter than thousand_suns
I want this:
Dr. Eddies Wingman
Brighter than thousand_suns
Linguistics, eh? Bloody hell.
Dr. Eddies Wingman
Brighter than thousand_suns
No, you tell me about it. You're the one who has studied it! 
Crimson Idol
Caveman
Eddies Wingman said:I want this:
Sheesh... you'd never get away with that here. Even if the glasses are twice the size needed to hold all that extra head, in t'north you wouldn't get away with anything more than a fingers depth, and in south they don't want any full stop - no sparklers, they have it flat.
Travis The Dragon
AFTERGLOW!!!
Fucking people. I'm glad its time to go home.
The following is a spambot post I just deleted restructured as free verse.
Who wants to set it to music?
Gensheng make things difficult for Mr Yu Ma:
Who would you re-start the line?
Gensheng ask, if you are the second re-start,
enter their respective fields,
who would you more?
The audience laughed in good faith,
the cow looks like honest,
in fact, very cunning.
want to see an e-commerce,
a field in ahead of their English education
how pop star.
Ma said before, I first have to do is to Mr Yu
Please do CEO, and then asked what he wants,
I can do.
English is a very important tool
to broaden their horizons,
I want to do the first idea,
the team well, let him do more successful.
Mr Yu a laugh in there. ;
Ma is not practical,
generally able to train people
who will become bigger and their careers,
the team will be the last
I took a fresh start.
I know that Ma did teachers have had training,
but if not successful.
He said he did e-commerce
will make English education better than Ma,
Alibaba's model because it has been,
where is the money and the rest of the team,
investment to me.
e-mail, Internet, business vision
and thinking are very similar,
so the success rate is much larger.
Ma could not split,
he is the first business
in order to understand what to do,
if Mr Yu said that from his hands
into the English language training own business,
this is what he wants,
to baidu about Ma and Mr Yu,
Mr Yu is doing now is to know the new East,
Ma of Alibaba,
and Niu Gensheng Mengniu is the boss,
on how they answer and to do analysis.
one thing they uniform:
that is to dig, dig directly
Ma chose Michael Yu,
so Yu do CEO, to what to what,
which gives Yu's largest space,
it can be hard to imagine
the development of the East
with the new as good or better ,
provided that you can dig ...
all move Mr Yu Yu openings to laugh,
because he has personal experience,
may have come to understand t
hat to a certain extent that people will go it alone,
start all over again,
so do e-commerce,
when Lao Shu on the choice of the dig team,
he thought that the Ma team
can dig over the operation,
because he is not mortal,
capable of at this time
Ma rebutted, saying that if invited Yu
Yu later became the English
Yu's training career,
this is what you want to say
that this generosity Ma,
Ma's success is not accidental,
as really as it said,
it is also why reinvent the wheel it?
now analyze the two through their own channels
to explore other areas of the cause
of the probability of success,
Ma Yu dug, and then do the English,
than digging Ma Yu's team
to do e-commerce to be successful,
Ma's method, after Yu to do in English,
certainly more effective as successful,
the only worry Yu also said that fresh start,
why reinvent the wheel in front and analyze it,
so Ma is winning; the other hand,
Yu, he chose to dig Ma's team,
which may well be the best policy,
the problem is that he really Ma's team
the leadership of that?
obviously not,
and who would guarantee a hit?
Ma's team dug over the course e-commerce
is certainly better than they do out of a team
is much better for many,
but not all are suitable with the team,
such as Mengniu Shi Yuzhu
he can lead the team to it?
he can go with the new East team it?
Gensheng to go with New Oriental or Alibaba?
apparently not so absolute,
so this problem is to win Yu Ma,
and Ma You think you own this business
as a career like this is that he would like to see,
and that there will be who will start all over again?
Ma have to say this high! really high!
this is the problem of the surface,
The Ins and Outs of this problem
through what they reflect?
1, on Yu, Yu I think that entrepreneurship
is the process of having someone say to him
the case of separation,
but also for English piece,
their ability and sufficient ,
so the fresh start is aggrieved
2, on horse, his view is that I believe that
as long as I give you what you want,
you will get things done,
there is no any problem start all over again,
you put Alibaba Well,
as you are working for yourself,
not for Ma to work, which can
one is decentralization, one centralized
Who would you re-start the line?
Gensheng ask, if you are the second re-start,
enter their respective fields,
who would you more?
The audience laughed in good faith,
the cow looks like honest,
in fact, very cunning.
want to see an e-commerce,
a field in ahead of their English education
how pop star.
Ma said before, I first have to do is to Mr Yu
Please do CEO, and then asked what he wants,
I can do.
English is a very important tool
to broaden their horizons,
I want to do the first idea,
the team well, let him do more successful.
Mr Yu a laugh in there. ;
Ma is not practical,
generally able to train people
who will become bigger and their careers,
the team will be the last
I took a fresh start.
I know that Ma did teachers have had training,
but if not successful.
He said he did e-commerce
will make English education better than Ma,
Alibaba's model because it has been,
where is the money and the rest of the team,
investment to me.
e-mail, Internet, business vision
and thinking are very similar,
so the success rate is much larger.
Ma could not split,
he is the first business
in order to understand what to do,
if Mr Yu said that from his hands
into the English language training own business,
this is what he wants,
to baidu about Ma and Mr Yu,
Mr Yu is doing now is to know the new East,
Ma of Alibaba,
and Niu Gensheng Mengniu is the boss,
on how they answer and to do analysis.
one thing they uniform:
that is to dig, dig directly
Ma chose Michael Yu,
so Yu do CEO, to what to what,
which gives Yu's largest space,
it can be hard to imagine
the development of the East
with the new as good or better ,
provided that you can dig ...
all move Mr Yu Yu openings to laugh,
because he has personal experience,
may have come to understand t
hat to a certain extent that people will go it alone,
start all over again,
so do e-commerce,
when Lao Shu on the choice of the dig team,
he thought that the Ma team
can dig over the operation,
because he is not mortal,
capable of at this time
Ma rebutted, saying that if invited Yu
Yu later became the English
Yu's training career,
this is what you want to say
that this generosity Ma,
Ma's success is not accidental,
as really as it said,
it is also why reinvent the wheel it?
now analyze the two through their own channels
to explore other areas of the cause
of the probability of success,
Ma Yu dug, and then do the English,
than digging Ma Yu's team
to do e-commerce to be successful,
Ma's method, after Yu to do in English,
certainly more effective as successful,
the only worry Yu also said that fresh start,
why reinvent the wheel in front and analyze it,
so Ma is winning; the other hand,
Yu, he chose to dig Ma's team,
which may well be the best policy,
the problem is that he really Ma's team
the leadership of that?
obviously not,
and who would guarantee a hit?
Ma's team dug over the course e-commerce
is certainly better than they do out of a team
is much better for many,
but not all are suitable with the team,
such as Mengniu Shi Yuzhu
he can lead the team to it?
he can go with the new East team it?
Gensheng to go with New Oriental or Alibaba?
apparently not so absolute,
so this problem is to win Yu Ma,
and Ma You think you own this business
as a career like this is that he would like to see,
and that there will be who will start all over again?
Ma have to say this high! really high!
this is the problem of the surface,
The Ins and Outs of this problem
through what they reflect?
1, on Yu, Yu I think that entrepreneurship
is the process of having someone say to him
the case of separation,
but also for English piece,
their ability and sufficient ,
so the fresh start is aggrieved
2, on horse, his view is that I believe that
as long as I give you what you want,
you will get things done,
there is no any problem start all over again,
you put Alibaba Well,
as you are working for yourself,
not for Ma to work, which can
one is decentralization, one centralized
Who wants to set it to music?
Crimson Idol
Caveman
I coded, and sent a bot-blocker mod for the forum to Jon earlier tonight... no idea if he still checks the site or will use it but heh, I've tried ... hopefully it won't break anything (it shouldn't)
... hopefully it won't break anything (it shouldn't)
Travis The Dragon
AFTERGLOW!!!
Cool CI. Hopefully he can put it to good use.
AHAHAHAHAHA.
EPIC post, Shades.
ooooooohhhhhhh yeahhhh.
EPIC post, Shades.
ooooooohhhhhhh yeahhhh.
Albie
Keeping an open eye on the Weeping Angels.
Is this really so bad that it could cause a diplomatic row? Get over yourselves! 
Forostar
Ancient Mariner
Eddies Wingman said:
LOL, that is your alternative theory for this one (have a look Wingman!):
Is Danish an intrinsically more difficult language to understand than Swedish?
Danish has the reputation of being hard to understand. This is the case not only for speakers of the closely related Scandinavian languages, Swedish and Norwegian, but there are also indications that Danes have difficulties understanding their own language themselves. Many Danes, both laymen and linguists, regard Danish as a non-distinctly articulated language, which sometimes causes communication problems among its users. On the other hand there are also linguists who believe that one language cannot be intrinsically more difficult to understand than another language. However, we think there is no principled reason why there could not be some variation in the intelligibility threshold of different languages. Danish might be an example of a language with properties that make it difficult to understand, even for natives.
Results of linguistic research seem to support the impression that Danish is indeed a difficult language. Bleses & colleagues (Bleses & Basbøll 2004, Bleses et al. 2008) have shown that the early language development of Danish children is somewhat slower than that of children with other mother tongues, such as English and Swedish. A comparison with 15 different languages revealed that Danish children score lowest on vocabulary comprehension as reported by the parents. Bleses et al. attribute this result to the poor segmentability of Danish, which is caused by prosodic phenomena such as lack of specific juncture cues, of compulsory sentence accents and of local signals to utterance function. At the segmental level, lenition of consonants and other reduction phenomena, in particular schwa-assimilation and schwa deletion, would result in poor segmentability.
Other evidence for the fact that Danish is an intrinsically difficult language is that Danish-Swedish mutual intelligibility is asymmetric. Danes understand Swedish better than Swedes understand Danish. Various investigations on inter-Scandinavian intelligibility have shown that Danish is the most difficult neighbouring language in Scandinavia (e.g. Maurud 1976, Bø 1978, Börestam 1987, Delsing & Lundin Åkesson 2005). Also immigrants of various origins have more difficulties understanding Danish than immigrants in Norway and
Sweden have understanding Norwegian and Swedish, respectively (Delsing &Lundin Åkesson 2005).
The asymmetrical intelligibility scores are sometimes explained by a negative attitude of Swedes towards Denmark and Danish whilst Danes are more positive towards Sweden and Swedish. Also, contact with the language in its written or spoken form is likely to improve the performance on a language test. Danes often live close to Sweden which makes it possible to watch Swedish television and visit the country while many Swedish subjects live further away because of the large size of the country and the geographical position of the capital at the east coast. However, correlations between intelligibility scores and these two factors are low; a direct relationship is difficult to prove (Gooskens 2007). For a further discussion of the role of extra-linguistic factors in the mutual intelligibility between Swedes and Danes see Schüppert & Gooskens (this volume).
In the present paper, we assume that linguistic factors are likely to play a role. Specifically we will test the hypothesis that Danish in intrinsically more difficult to understand than Swedish. If Danish is indeed difficult for the Danes themselves, it can be expected to be difficult for non-natives as well. Grønnum (2003) attributes the difficulty that Swedes have understanding Danish to the same factors as mentioned by Bleses et al. In addition, she mentions the large number of phonologically distinct vowels. Danish has more than forty vowel sounds (including long vowels with a stød, a kind of creaky voice) and a large number of diphthongs.
Surprisingly, the idea that Danish would be difficult to understand even for native speakers has never been addressed experimentally. The first aim of our study was to compare the intelligibility of Danish for Danes with the
intelligibility of Swedish for Swedes. An intelligibility test was developed both with sentences and isolated words read out in the mother tongue of the listeners. The test sentences and words were presented in a series of descending noise levels, from difficult to easy. If Danish is indeed an intrinsically more difficult language, the intelligibility threshold should be higher for Danish native listeners than for Swedish native listeners.
The second aim was to investigate the role of prosodic phenomena and reduction phenomena across word boundaries. As mentioned above, according to Bleses et al. and Grønnum such phenomena would degrade the segmentability of Danish. Poor segmentability is known to inhibit intelligibility. By comparing the intelligibility results for isolated words with those for sentences, conclusions can be drawn about the influence of these factors on intelligibility. If the isolated words are easier to understand (suffer less from noise) than read sentences in
comparison to Swedish, this supports the hypothesis by Bleses e.a. that Danish is difficult to understand due to the low segmentability caused by prosodic phenomena and reduction phenomena across word boundaries.
Danish has the reputation of being hard to understand. This is the case not only for speakers of the closely related Scandinavian languages, Swedish and Norwegian, but there are also indications that Danes have difficulties understanding their own language themselves. Many Danes, both laymen and linguists, regard Danish as a non-distinctly articulated language, which sometimes causes communication problems among its users. On the other hand there are also linguists who believe that one language cannot be intrinsically more difficult to understand than another language. However, we think there is no principled reason why there could not be some variation in the intelligibility threshold of different languages. Danish might be an example of a language with properties that make it difficult to understand, even for natives.
Results of linguistic research seem to support the impression that Danish is indeed a difficult language. Bleses & colleagues (Bleses & Basbøll 2004, Bleses et al. 2008) have shown that the early language development of Danish children is somewhat slower than that of children with other mother tongues, such as English and Swedish. A comparison with 15 different languages revealed that Danish children score lowest on vocabulary comprehension as reported by the parents. Bleses et al. attribute this result to the poor segmentability of Danish, which is caused by prosodic phenomena such as lack of specific juncture cues, of compulsory sentence accents and of local signals to utterance function. At the segmental level, lenition of consonants and other reduction phenomena, in particular schwa-assimilation and schwa deletion, would result in poor segmentability.
Other evidence for the fact that Danish is an intrinsically difficult language is that Danish-Swedish mutual intelligibility is asymmetric. Danes understand Swedish better than Swedes understand Danish. Various investigations on inter-Scandinavian intelligibility have shown that Danish is the most difficult neighbouring language in Scandinavia (e.g. Maurud 1976, Bø 1978, Börestam 1987, Delsing & Lundin Åkesson 2005). Also immigrants of various origins have more difficulties understanding Danish than immigrants in Norway and
Sweden have understanding Norwegian and Swedish, respectively (Delsing &Lundin Åkesson 2005).
The asymmetrical intelligibility scores are sometimes explained by a negative attitude of Swedes towards Denmark and Danish whilst Danes are more positive towards Sweden and Swedish. Also, contact with the language in its written or spoken form is likely to improve the performance on a language test. Danes often live close to Sweden which makes it possible to watch Swedish television and visit the country while many Swedish subjects live further away because of the large size of the country and the geographical position of the capital at the east coast. However, correlations between intelligibility scores and these two factors are low; a direct relationship is difficult to prove (Gooskens 2007). For a further discussion of the role of extra-linguistic factors in the mutual intelligibility between Swedes and Danes see Schüppert & Gooskens (this volume).
In the present paper, we assume that linguistic factors are likely to play a role. Specifically we will test the hypothesis that Danish in intrinsically more difficult to understand than Swedish. If Danish is indeed difficult for the Danes themselves, it can be expected to be difficult for non-natives as well. Grønnum (2003) attributes the difficulty that Swedes have understanding Danish to the same factors as mentioned by Bleses et al. In addition, she mentions the large number of phonologically distinct vowels. Danish has more than forty vowel sounds (including long vowels with a stød, a kind of creaky voice) and a large number of diphthongs.
Surprisingly, the idea that Danish would be difficult to understand even for native speakers has never been addressed experimentally. The first aim of our study was to compare the intelligibility of Danish for Danes with the
intelligibility of Swedish for Swedes. An intelligibility test was developed both with sentences and isolated words read out in the mother tongue of the listeners. The test sentences and words were presented in a series of descending noise levels, from difficult to easy. If Danish is indeed an intrinsically more difficult language, the intelligibility threshold should be higher for Danish native listeners than for Swedish native listeners.
The second aim was to investigate the role of prosodic phenomena and reduction phenomena across word boundaries. As mentioned above, according to Bleses et al. and Grønnum such phenomena would degrade the segmentability of Danish. Poor segmentability is known to inhibit intelligibility. By comparing the intelligibility results for isolated words with those for sentences, conclusions can be drawn about the influence of these factors on intelligibility. If the isolated words are easier to understand (suffer less from noise) than read sentences in
comparison to Swedish, this supports the hypothesis by Bleses e.a. that Danish is difficult to understand due to the low segmentability caused by prosodic phenomena and reduction phenomena across word boundaries.