Latin, the Enlightenment, and science
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From: jmfbahciv on 31 Dec 2009 09:53 Brian M. Scott wrote: > On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:45:53 +0100, Athel Cornish-Bowden > <acornish(a)ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr> wrote in > <news:7pv4jhFk1U1(a)mid.individual.net> in > sci.math,sci.physics,sci.lang,alt.usage.english,alt.philosophy: > >> On 2009-12-29 19:28:36 +0100, Ruud Harmsen <rh(a)rudhar.eu> said: > > [...] > >>> sheath sheathe > >> Likewise. I don't think I've ever heard "wreathed" in >> uninflected form. > > I've *used* <sheathe> (which I suspect is what you meant). > So have a lot of re-enactors. > >>> mouth (noun) mouth (verb) > >> OK > >>> thou (short for 1000) thou (pronoun) > >> The first is engineers' slang; > > Also used of money. > >> the latter is archaic (other than in church) > > [...] I don't think I've heard engineers use thou for their slang other than money (which other people use). Our slang for thou was K. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 31 Dec 2009 10:01 Peter T. Daniels wrote: > On Dec 29, 9:27 pm, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...(a)paradise.net.nz> wrote: >> jmfbahciv wrote: >>> PaulJK wrote: >>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote: >>>>> On Dec 28, 5:01 am, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...(a)csuohio.edu> wrote: >>>>>> On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:40:47 +1300, PaulJK >>>>>> <paul.kr...(a)paradise.net.nz> wrote in >>>>>> <news:hh9nbf$ejq$1(a)news.eternal-september.org> in >>>>>> sci.math,sci.physics,sci.lang,alt.usage.english,alt.philosophy: >>>>>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote: >>>>>>>> On Dec 27, 3:49 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...(a)csuohio.edu> wrote: [...] >>>>>>>>> True, though some linguists would argue that the [ ]~[ ] >>>>>>>>> distinction still isn't phonemic, since the distribution is >>>>>>>>> predictable (albeit the conditioning isn't phonological). >>>>>> [...] >>>>>>>> Whatever you recently did to "fix" your encoding has >>>>>>>> resulted in blank spaces where you typed funny letters. >>>>>>> No, it's posted with Content-Type: text/plain; >>>>>>> charset="iso-8859-1" I don't think the problem was caused >>>>>>> by his last mod farther down the list of formats. >>>>>> It's almost certainly a problem with Google Groups. If >>>>>> Peter would break down and get a decent news client, he'd >>>>>> not have the problem. >>>>> Yet somehow Google Groups managed to show the letters a few minutes >>>>> later. >>>>> None of the newsgroup-snobs has ever explained what's _wrong_ with >>>>> google groups. >>>> Do you realize you sound like Franz Gneadiger? >>>> Most of the users of Usenet client utilities have tried Google >>>> and worked out their own reasons for not using it. The reasons >>>> are many and varied. Some of them have also been discussed in >>>> this group over the past several years. There are specific Usenet >>>> groups for people wanting to talk pros and cons of various client >>>> utilities. >>>> You yourself have problems with google groups. Yet, like Franz, >>>> you stick to your belief that somebody else is causing them. >>> Well, from his description of the behaviour, which wasn't >>> adequately detailed, it sounded like he has different ISO >>> character set assignments for each thread level. I would >>> guess that he has no default set but uses the character >>> set described in the header. If it is absent, the default >>> is the generic standard (don't recall the precise spec of the >>> name). >>> but that's just a guess, albeit and educated guess. >> Not being able to see how precisely is his machine and >> Google i/f set up (and he aparently not being able to >> describe it), there is nohing more that one can do, but guess. > > Are you talking about me? Yes. We were trying to help you. > > No one ever asked me to describe my setup. I figured you wouldn't know.... > > AFAIK I have never set my charset to anything; it just takes whatever > is sent. And I was right that you don't know. > >> Your guess seems to me to be a good one. It would >> explain how sometimes he sees chars with diacritics and >> sometimes just spaces giving him the impression that it's >> something the posters do, not his google i/face. > > The missing-character thing NEVER happened before I mentioned it a day > or two ago. > > Either I see the proper accented letters, or I see gibberish. Never > before have I seen a blank instead of a funny letter. > > And I usually have no problem with the cyrillic, devanagari, Hebrew, > Arabic, or Chinese characters that are sometimes posted here. If the behaviour really never happened before now, then something changed on your system. Note that this can happen with a typo on these ^(*&()*&^%$%-ing modern machines. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 31 Dec 2009 10:11 Joachim Pense wrote: > jmfbahciv (in alt.usage.english): > >> The third explanation is that English is more versatile. IOW, >> people can make up new words easily. I did this as part of >> my job. >> > > Greek is versatile in making up new words by composition, and that's what > western scientists did until recently. They mixed a lot of Latin words into > this procedure, too. Chinese has been used for the same purpose in the > east, and still is, (e. g., in Japan.) > Sure. The language used by the people who distributed new technology throughout the world for the last 50-60 years were English-speaking people. Europe was behind because of the messes and losing WWII. The first person to distribute a particular piece of technogolgy gets to name it and its parts; if most of these people spoke English, the default language of technology would become English. It's what happened with the airline industry and the computer industry to a lesser degree. /BAH
From: António Marques on 31 Dec 2009 10:09 jmfbahciv wrote (31-12-2009 14:46): > António Marques wrote: >> jmfbahciv wrote (29-12-2009 13:39): >>> António Marques wrote: >>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote (28-12-2009 12:29): >>>>> On Dec 28, 5:01 am, "Brian M. Scott"<b.sc...(a)csuohio.edu> wrote: >>>>>> On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:40:47 +1300, PaulJK >>>>>> <paul.kr...(a)paradise.net.nz> wrote in >>>>>> <news:hh9nbf$ejq$1(a)news.eternal-september.org> in >>>>>> sci.math,sci.physics,sci.lang,alt.usage.english,alt.philosophy: >>>>>>> Peter T. Daniels wrote: >>>>>>>> On Dec 27, 3:49 pm, "Brian M. Scott"<b.sc...(a)csuohio.edu> wrote: >>>>>>>> Whatever you recently did to "fix" your encoding has >>>>>>>> resulted in blank spaces where you typed funny letters. >>>>>>> No, it's posted with Content-Type: text/plain; >>>>>>> charset="iso-8859-1" I don't think the problem was caused >>>>>>> by his last mod farther down the list of formats. >>>>>> >>>>>> It's almost certainly a problem with Google Groups. If >>>>>> Peter would break down and get a decent news client, he'd >>>>>> not have the problem. >>>>> >>>>> Yet somehow Google Groups managed to show the letters a few minutes >>>>> later. >>>>> >>>>> None of the newsgroup-snobs has ever explained what's _wrong_ with >>>>> google groups. >>>> >>>> I don't see that there is much wrong with GG from the POV of who >>>> doesn't use GG (whereas Outlook has a number of bugs, after all these >>>> years, that can disrupt other people's experience of the 'news'). The >>>> problem with GG is that it's a pain to use, though I don't know of any >>>> web interface that isn't, and the occasional weird behaviour - the >>>> inconsistency you mention above being a good example. >>> >>> I've been using Seamonkey which is web-based. >> >> Uh? > > You wrote that you don't know of any other web interface newsgroup > software.... I thought i would point you to one that isn't > as painful as Google's. But how is Seamonkey a web interface? It's a native program like, say, Firefox (in fact it's FF + Thunderbird, properly done). Whereas a web interface is something that runs inside a browser.
From: Joachim Pense on 31 Dec 2009 10:16
jmfbahciv (in sci.lang): > António Marques wrote: >> jmfbahciv wrote (29-12-2009 13:39): .... >>> >>> I've been using Seamonkey which is web-based. >> >> Uh? > > You wrote that you don't know of any other web interface newsgroup > software.... I thought i would point you to one that isn't > as painful as Google's. > But the fact that Seamonkey has a web-browser functionality doesn't make it's news-reader functionality web-based, does it? Joachim |