English questions

[Travis B.]

“Apartmentmate” sounds quite awkward so speakers of US English don’t use it

my apartmentmates

GODDAMMIT.

I have never seen someone use the word "apartmentmate" before myself.

[zyxw59]

I think I'm definitely a lot less likely to produce 'apartmentmate' in speech or casual text, generally using 'housemate' to refer to the other people who live in my apartment. But in a non-real-time medium like this forum, I for some reason decided I needed more specificity, hence 'apartmentmate'. I also think that '-mate' is somewhat productive in this usage?

[Linguoboy]

Thank you! I was a bit confused a while ago when you used the word flatmate in a post on this board, given that you're not British.

Yeah, I started using that because--as I think I've vented here before--too many people seem to think "roommate" is a euphemism. He's literally just a friend who lives in a room in my apartment.

"Flat" is a word most NA English speaker recognise though and it's actively used by realtors and in compounds. For instance, "two-flat" is a designation that anyone who's done apartment hunting in Chicago will know, even if we still say "I found a nice apartment in a two-flat". For good measure, I just searched "granny flats chicago" and found that we have a company by that name which provides "coach houses, granny flats, accessory dwelling units (ADU’s), carriage Houses... whatever you call them". [Personally, I would call them "coach houses". To me, a "granny flat" is a small separate apartment in a rowhouse, typically a "garden unit" {at or below ground level} in a two-story building, whether this is all one living space or not.]

[quinterbeck]

Despite the fact we live in a flat above a shop (UK), I often refer to my flatmate as my 'housemate', probably because I'm more used to sharing a house than a flat.

[Raphael]

I just saw the following claim on Twitter:

In the past, you could be reckful (considerate) as well as reckless. People were also gormful (careful); feckful (responsible), ruthful (compassionate), wieldy (agile), ept (adroit), and definitely gruntled.

Bring back the lost positives.

Is that true?

[Travis B.]

I just saw the following claim on Twitter:

In the past, you could be reckful (considerate) as well as reckless. People were also gormful (careful); feckful (responsible), ruthful (compassionate), wieldy (agile), ept (adroit), and definitely gruntled.

Bring back the lost positives.

Is that true?

Well searching for "reckful" primary gives results on the late gamer, but "ruthful" definitely gives results, albeit not ones that necessarily mean "compassionate" per se. "Wieldy" gives results that indicate that seemingly someone uses it in the sense mentioned. "Feckful" also gives results, albeit with the note that it is "mostly Scottish". I get results for "gormful", but they don't really indicate that it is a word that anyone has actually used. Apparently "ept" is a backformation from "inept", though. And Oxford Languages says that "gruntled" is "humorous".

[Raphael]

Thank you!

[Richard W]

Apparently "ept" is a backformation from "inept", though.

Indeed. The positive form is "apt".

[anteallach]

This World Wide Words article makes it pretty clear that gruntled as a positive has only ever been a humorous backformation from disgruntled, and the OED confirms what it says about the etymology of the latter. (And this one talks about some of the other examples.)

gormless is also curious as an example of a word where an unetymological r has been added following the conventions of non-rhotic dialects; it was originally gawmless or gaumless.

[Raphael]

Sorry for asking yet another question in this thread, but how would you describe a landscape that consist of fairly low hills, and the "valleys" (for lack of a better word) between them? That is, just a bit to uneven to count as "flat"? "Hilly"? "Rolling"?

Here's an example of what I have in mind:

Ackohnschn1.jpg (84.06 KiB) Viewed 17424 times

[Travis B.]

I would go with "rolling".

[linguistcat]

I would go with "rolling".

I agree. That was the first thing that came to mind.

[Raphael]

Thank you!

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Being very used to hilly terrain, I think I would (personally, apparently unusually) be a little wordier, and say, "mostly flattish, but with a hill rising into the distance".

[Linguoboy]

Being very used to hilly terrain, I think I would (personally, apparently unusually) be a little wordier, and say, "mostly flattish, but with a hill rising into the distance".

I’m assuming this is not the only hill in sight, just the only one captured in this particular view.

Your description reminds me of the maths joke that ends with the punchline “There is at least one cow in that field which is black on at least one side.”

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Perhaps, but I was going on what I could see.

[Travis B.]

Being very used to hilly terrain, I think I would (personally, apparently unusually) be a little wordier, and say, "mostly flattish, but with a hill rising into the distance".

I’m assuming this is not the only hill in sight, just the only one captured in this particular view.

I also assumed there was more than one hill, and we just happened to see one of them, which is implied by the description of "rolling".

[Moose-tache]

I thought people might enjoy this video about US English dialects from 1957. It's been over half a century, so it's not surprising that things have changed a bit.

It opens with the merry-marry-Mary vowels, and I was surprised to see the 3-way split still dominant on the east coast. I would guess that today most speakers outside New Jersey no longer keep all three vowels distinct, but I could be wrong. And then it just gets more interesting from there.

For me personally, the lady from Wisconsin was an eye opener. I speak General American, and I've been told my whole life that GA is basically a standardized "Midwestern" dialect. But I'm from nowhere near the Midwest, and when I talk to people from the Midwest, they don't sound like me. But hearing the lady in this video from Wisconsin was uncanny. It felt like someone had dubbed over the video with my own voice; really, it felt like it wasn't part of the same audio as all these "old timey" dialects. So I guess GA today is what Midwesterners spoke three generations ago.

[Travis B.]

I thought people might enjoy this video about US English dialects from 1957. It's been over half a century, so it's not surprising that things have changed a bit.

It opens with the merry-marry-Mary vowels, and I was surprised to see the 3-way split still dominant on the east coast. I would guess that today most speakers outside New Jersey no longer keep all three vowels distinct, but I could be wrong. And then it just gets more interesting from there.

For me personally, the lady from Wisconsin was an eye opener. I speak General American, and I've been told my whole life that GA is basically a standardized "Midwestern" dialect. But I'm from nowhere near the Midwest, and when I talk to people from the Midwest, they don't sound like me. But hearing the lady in this video from Wisconsin was uncanny. It felt like someone had dubbed over the video with my own voice; really, it felt like it wasn't part of the same audio as all these "old timey" dialects. So I guess GA today is what Midwesterners spoke three generations ago.

My parents were both born in southeastern Wisconsin in the 1950's and grew up there, and their speech, while more conservative by the speech of myself or my daughter, already indicates some noticeable departures from GA, e.g. having aspects of the NCVS and having significant consonant elision (both of /b ð v/ and of /t d n nt nd/), l-vocalization, and /t/ palatalization. However, the individual from the video was from Green Bay, which may have had a more conservative dialect even in the 1950's than Milwaukee and Kenosha.

[mèþru]

NCVS notably never started in some parts of the Midwest. I wonder if people from Kansas City today speak identical to GA or did they have a separate divergence?

Also I'm from New Jersey and I've never heard any example of someone distinguishing all three of merry-marry-Mary, regardless of which dialect region in New Jersey they are from. On the other hand Wikipedia tells me New York City and Philadelphia both contrast all three, so I guess I just have a bad ear for these things. I personally merge all them but my English is distincly foreign.