English questions

[jal]

For me as an EFL speaker, "route" has MOUTH when having anything to do with computer hardware, and GOOSE otherwise.


JAL

[Raphael]

For me as an EFL speaker, "route" has MOUTH when having anything to do with computer hardware, and GOOSE otherwise.


JAL

Interesting. When "Router" is used as a loanword in German, it's always pronounced with GOOSE.

[Raphael]

Unrelated trivial question: what's the English name of that kind of powdery substance which gymnasts and people who do similar stuff use to increase friction between their hands and their equipment?

[bradrn]

Unrelated trivial question: what's the English name of that kind of powdery substance which gymnasts and people who do similar stuff use to increase friction between their hands and their equipment?

‘Chalk’ (though apparently it’s actually magnesium carbonate these days).

[Raphael]

Unrelated trivial question: what's the English name of that kind of powdery substance which gymnasts and people who do similar stuff use to increase friction between their hands and their equipment?

‘Chalk’ (though apparently it’s actually magnesium carbonate these days).

Thank you!

[Travis B.]

For me as an AmE speaker, "route" is always with GOOSE as a verb and is in free variation GOOSE/MOUTH as a noun.

I have less free variation for route as a verb than as a noun; with route as a noun GOOSE is an acceptable variation for me (even though I would normally use MOUTH except in names like 'Route 66'), but with route as a verb it always has MOUTH. If I heard route the verb with MOUTH in isolation I would think someone meant root as in to root for a team or to root a computer.

Oopsies. I meant to say that it is always MOUTH as a verb, not always GOOSE. That should make more sense.

I fixed my original comment where I wrote "route the verb with MOUTH" instead of the intended "route the verb with GOOSE".

[bradrn]

I noticed this sentence from zompist:

I note that her list is missing John Scott's course at the University of Indiana, which he invited me to visit and be a resource twice.

That bit after the comma is quite interesting. For me, if you get rid of the conjunction it becomes completely ungrammatical: *‘which he invited me to be a resource twice’. With the conjunction, it still feels very odd but not quite as unacceptable. How do other people find this?

[Richard W]

I noticed this sentence from zompist:

I note that her list is missing John Scott's course at the University of Indiana, which he invited me to visit and be a resource twice.

That bit after the comma is quite interesting. For me, if you get rid of the conjunction it becomes completely ungrammatical: *‘which he invited me to be a resource twice’. With the conjunction, it still feels very odd but not quite as unacceptable. How do other people find this?

That's unsurprising, because 'which' functions as the object of 'visit' only, and your reduction deletes that word. The proper reduction is 'which he invited me to to be a resource twice’. The whole bit is uneven - it would process more easily if it were "which he invited me to visit and be a resource for twice", with the new word also governing 'which', but would still have the problem that it could easily mean "which he twice invited me to visit and be a resource for" or "which he invited me to visit twice and be a resource for". Further improvement is possible.

[Travis B.]

I noticed this sentence from zompist:

I note that her list is missing John Scott's course at the University of Indiana, which he invited me to visit and be a resource twice.

That bit after the comma is quite interesting. For me, if you get rid of the conjunction it becomes completely ungrammatical: *‘which he invited me to be a resource twice’. With the conjunction, it still feels very odd but not quite as unacceptable. How do other people find this?

That's unsurprising, because 'which' functions as the object of 'visit' only, and your reduction deletes that word. The proper reduction is 'which he invited me to to be a resource twice’. The whole bit is uneven - it would process more easily if it were "which he invited me to visit and be a resource for twice", with the new word also governing 'which', but would still have the problem that it could easily mean "which he twice invited me to visit and be a resource for" or "which he invited me to visit twice and be a resource for". Further improvement is possible.

I would analyze this the same way myself here.

[Travis B.]

(Also, there's no such thing as "standard Swedish"; like Norwegian and to a lesser degree Danish, there's not a single standard: everyone just speaks their own accent/dialect.)

From reading more about North Germanic varieties and particularly Swedish varieties, there are definitely more standardized Swedish varieties, even if there is no single "Standard Swedish" -- traditional Swedish dialects seem to me to vary far more than typical modern Swedish regiolects. Claiming that there is no such think as "Standard Swedish" is like claiming there is no such thing as "Standard English" just because there is not a single standard variety of English.

[Raphael]

Hair cosmetics terminology question. (OK, is "hair cosmetics" itself the right term? I have no idea.)

Among people with naturally straight, that is, non-curly hair, some, sometimes, like to treat their hair with substances that make it "voluminous". My question is, is there a specific English word or term for hair that has been treated in that way? And, is there a specific English word or term for hair that has not been treated in that way?

[Travis B.]

Hair cosmetics terminology question. (OK, is "hair cosmetics" itself the right term? I have no idea.)

The typical terms are hair styling products, hair care products, or just hair products.

Among people with naturally straight, that is, non-curly hair, some, sometimes, like to treat their hair with substances that make it "voluminous". My question is, is there a specific English word or term for hair that has been treated in that way? And, is there a specific English word or term for hair that has not been treated in that way?

The stuff you put in your hair to do this seems to be called volumizer, and hair so treated is referred to as having been volumized. As for hair that has little 'volume', it is typically referred to as being flat.

[Raphael]

Thank you!

[jal]

From reading more about North Germanic varieties and particularly Swedish varieties, there are definitely more standardized Swedish varieties, even if there is no single "Standard Swedish" -- traditional Swedish dialects seem to me to vary far more than typical modern Swedish regiolects. Claiming that there is no such think as "Standard Swedish" is like claiming there is no such thing as "Standard English" just because there is not a single standard variety of English.

I think with English there's the extra dimension of the language being the standard languages of different countries, that are also quite seperated geographically. What it would be like is as if English was only spoken in the UK, and RP wouldn't exist. But I'll ask my sister, who's a teacher of Swedish, what the actual situation in Sweden is.


JAL

[jal]

Interesting. When "Router" is used as a loanword in German, it's always pronounced with GOOSE.

Interesting. Of course "router" with MOUTH could just be a spelling pronunciation, but I would've expected that to be blocked by the Dutch pronunciation of "route" (/rut@/) which came from French. But it could be that the lack of assiciation between "route" and "router" (despite of course that technically a router is a thing that routes) made the MOUTH pronunciation possible. Of course, there's people using GOOSE, so it's not clear-cut.


JAL

[jal]

From reading more about North Germanic varieties and particularly Swedish varieties, there are definitely more standardized Swedish varieties, even if there is no single "Standard Swedish" -- traditional Swedish dialects seem to me to vary far more than typical modern Swedish regiolects. Claiming that there is no such think as "Standard Swedish" is like claiming there is no such thing as "Standard English" just because there is not a single standard variety of English.

I think with English there's the extra dimension of the language being the standard languages of different countries, that are also quite seperated geographically. What it would be like is as if English was only spoken in the UK, and RP wouldn't exist. But I'll ask my sister, who's a teacher of Swedish, what the actual situation in Sweden is.

Ok, I asked, and I'm right and you're wrong. There's something called "rikssvenska", which is a standardized middle-ground variety that nobody actually speaks. The Stockholm dialect, and perhaps the Västerås dialect are closest to that, and it's the variety that SFL speakers get taught. However, every Swede speaks its own dialect, no matter how far removed from rikssvenska, whether IRL, on tv (even news readers), radio etc. Additionally, there's no such thing as "traditional dialects" and "modern regiolects", because these are typically associated with countries where there is a national standard, and people are taught this standard in school, and the "traditional dialects" aren't spoken anymore and "regiolects" start to appear. But this is explicitly not the situation in Sweden, where everyone, as said, just speaks their own dialect.

EDIT: One final note, Swedish dialects differ mostly in pronunciation, not so much in grammar (though there are exceptions). Each dialect has their dialect-specific words, and dialect speakers are mostly aware of which they are, and will substitute them for broadly-understood words.


JAL

[Travis B.]

From reading more about North Germanic varieties and particularly Swedish varieties, there are definitely more standardized Swedish varieties, even if there is no single "Standard Swedish" -- traditional Swedish dialects seem to me to vary far more than typical modern Swedish regiolects. Claiming that there is no such think as "Standard Swedish" is like claiming there is no such thing as "Standard English" just because there is not a single standard variety of English.

I think with English there's the extra dimension of the language being the standard languages of different countries, that are also quite seperated geographically. What it would be like is as if English was only spoken in the UK, and RP wouldn't exist. But I'll ask my sister, who's a teacher of Swedish, what the actual situation in Sweden is.

Ok, I asked, and I'm right and you're wrong. There's something called "rikssvenska", which is a standardized middle-ground variety that nobody actually speaks. The Stockholm dialect, and perhaps the Västerås dialect are closest to that, and it's the variety that SFL speakers get taught. However, every Swede speaks its own dialect, no matter how far removed from rikssvenska, whether IRL, on tv (even news readers), radio etc. Additionally, there's no such thing as "traditional dialects" and "modern regiolects", because these are typically associated with countries where there is a national standard, and people are taught this standard in school, and the "traditional dialects" aren't spoken anymore and "regiolects" start to appear. But this is explicitly not the situation in Sweden, where everyone, as said, just speaks their own dialect.

From what I remember from a Swede on Unilang (as I remember a native speaker of jämtska) ages ago is that "dialect" in NGmc linguistics specifically denotes a variety directly descended from ON without interference from the likes of rikssvenska while a "regiolect" is essentially a regional accent of a variety like rikssvenska and that many Swedes today speak such regionally-accented rikssvenska. Note that traditional dialects, depending on where you are, vary between vibrant on one extreme and nearly extinct on the other.

EDIT: One final note, Swedish dialects differ mostly in pronunciation, not so much in grammar (though there are exceptions). Each dialect has their dialect-specific words, and dialect speakers are mostly aware of which they are, and will substitute them for broadly-understood words.

Apparently many traditional dialects of Swedish have features like not merging the masculine and feminine genders into a common gender or preserving the dative or even the accusative case outside of pronouns.

[Raphael]

I wonder if the English word "child" might have had a somewhat different meaning in the past than it has now.

These days, in most or all varieties of English, the word seems to be used to mean "everyone under 18", because that's how laws across the English-speaking world define it as a legal term. But I've sometimes seen some uses of it in some contexts that give me the impression that there used to be an older meaning of the word as something like "pre-adolescent person", and that in some places, that meaning survived until fairly recently.

I'm very embarrassed to say this, given how much of a shithead JK Rowling showed herself to be later, but I first noticed this when reading one of the original Harry Potter books. In one of them, at one point, one character tells another character something like (quoting from memory) "You talk to Harry as if he's a child. He's thirteen!"

That makes it sound to me as if there used to be colloquial variants of English in which the meaning of the word "child" was so limited that even someone at thirteen didn't count as a "child" any more. Any information on that?

[Travis B.]

I wonder if the English word "child" might have had a somewhat different meaning in the past than it has now.

These days, in most or all varieties of English, the word seems to be used to mean "everyone under 18", because that's how laws across the English-speaking world define it as a legal term. But I've sometimes seen some uses of it in some contexts that give me the impression that there used to be an older meaning of the word as something like "pre-adolescent person", and that in some places, that meaning survived until fairly recently.

I'm very embarrassed to say this, given how much of a shithead JK Rowling showed herself to be later, but I first noticed this when reading one of the original Harry Potter books. In one of them, at one point, one character tells another character something like (quoting from memory) "You talk to Harry as if he's a child. He's thirteen!"

That makes it sound to me as if there used to be colloquial variants of English in which the meaning of the word "child" was so limited that even someone at thirteen didn't count as a "child" any more. Any information on that?

Conversely, someone can refer to their child as a their (adult) child even if they are 18 or over in modern English.

[Raphael]

Conversely, someone can refer to their child as a their (adult) child even if they are 18 or over in modern English.

Of course. The other meaning of "child", aside from "young person", is "first generation descendant". That wasn't really my question, though.