#grapheme clusters

[kawaoneechan]

Grapheme clusters? More like grapheme clusterfucks!

Nah, seriously.

Check out this sentence:

My sister is a scientist 👩🏽‍🔬

Let's assume you have a system where you can work with strings as raw code points. UTF-32. We're side-stepping the whole deal with UTF-8 and UTF-16 here, and ignoring byte order. It's handled by the system we're working with.

What do you suppose happens if you reverse the above?

🔬‍🏽👩 tsitneics a si retsis yM

What the hell, right? Grapheme clusters!

With a case like "åe" reversing to "e̊a", you might say "normalize it first to get rid of the combining ring above, then reverse it". But that won't work on zalgo, and it certainly won't work on these goddamn emoji.

(full disclosure: I have no sister and everyone in my family is white as hell.)

The system I assumed here works in raw code points. Not in grapheme clusters. So while you see a single brown female scientist, the system sees four things: a woman, a Fitzpatrick modifier, a joiner, and a microscope. You see a lowercase a with a ring above and a lowercase e, but the system sees a lowercase a followed by a combining ring above and a lowercase e.

And you know what?

Hot take perhaps but any programming language that can work with grapheme clusters (iterate, iterate backwards, reverse, stuff like that) is trying to fucking hard.

Also, any language that somehow knows to keep the presence or absence of the dot on an i is a tryhard. Fite me.

[littlegeniusacademy]

Essential Phonics Terms Children Need to Know

The key to developing strong phonemic awareness is understanding the basic phonics terminology. Knowing foundational terms such as phoneme, grapheme, morpheme, digraph, and diphthong can help kids enhance their ability to decode words and improve reading fluency. 

8 Phonics Terms Every Learner Should Understand

Phoneme: The smallest unit of sound in the English Language is known as phoneme. There are 26 letters which produce 44 sounds, these 44 sounds are phonemes.

Grapheme: A grapheme is a letter used to represent sound (or phoneme). It can consist of a single letter or multiple letters. For example, the phoneme “K” is represented by one grapheme in Cat and Kite, while by two graphemes in Duck, and School.

Morpheme: A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language that cannot be further divided. It could be a single-word morpheme or a part of a word. For example, Dog = dog + s (two morphemes), and Imported = im + port + ed (three morphemes).

Digraph: A digraph has two letters that together spell one sound; when two vowel or consonant letters combine to form one phoneme, they are known as a digraph. Sh, ch, th, wh and ph are consonant digraphs, while ai, ee, igh, oy, and ur are vowel digraphs.

Diphthong: When two vowels combine to produce one unique vowel sound, they are called diphthongs. For instance, oi in foil, au in caught, and ou in out. 

Syllable: A syllable is a speech unit that can be either a whole word or a component of a word that includes a vowel or vowel sound. For instance, “book” has one syllable and “phonics” has two.

Onset and Rime: Within a syllable, the onset refers to the consonant or consonant cluster that comes before the vowel. Rime is the rest of the syllable, which contains the vowel and the following sound. For example, fan = f-an, plant = pl-ant, the first part is called onset and the second part is called rime.

Vowel and Consonant: In the English language, the vowels are represented by the letters a, e, i, o, and u, while all other letters are classified as consonants. The articulation of vowels and consonants differs, particularly in the way they are produced in the vocal tract.

Little Genius offers English coaching with a focus on developing phonemic awareness to build a solid foundation for reading, speaking, and writing skills. Our English course is the elementary grammar course. If you want to improve your child’s language proficiency, please visit us here: https://littlegeniusacademy.co.in/.

[kaylaesquivel]

Readerly Exploration #6

October 23, 2023

Title: “Introduction”

Citation: Mesmer (2019), “Introduction,” (pp. XIV-XXIV)

Takeaway: The biggest takeaway from this reading is that children need a more in depth instruction of phonics, they need to know the structure and layers that each letter of the alphabet entails when it comes to adding them to reading and putting them in words.

Nugget: From this reading, a nugget of information is that young students need to be actively engaged with what they are learning and it should not be straight from a script.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Title: “Know the Code: Teacher’s Reference on How EnglishWorks”

Citation: Mesmer (2019), Chapter 1, “Know the Code: Teacher’s Reference on How EnglishWorks,” (pp.1-18)

Takeaway: In this reading, a valuable takeaway is that speaking words involves the way the voice is used, mouth is moved, and even the pace of how you talk.

Nugget: A nugget from this reading is that writing may connect with language when it applies to vowels (long and short), morphemes, consonants (blends, single, clusters), graphemes, and phonemes. It is our responsibility as teachers to form these processes for students who are receiving language acquisition.

Narration: For this particular reading, I wanted to reflect on my field experience during the fall semester of my sophomore year. There was a girl in the class who talked to me every day I was there. One day, she ended up giving me the sweetest note, telling me to have a good day at “colij”, which was her version of “college”. While this may not be the correct spelling, it shows the thinking that a young student typically infiltrates in the classroom. When we teach initial words, it may be difficult to have them understand how some letters have different pronunciation and how certain words may be spelled a certain way, but not said the way it is spelled. I found it intriguing that students learn from the alphabet sounds to try to put together words. And while they are just beginning to learn to write, it is fascinating that they spell it differently, yet, you may still understand exactly what they are writing. I believe that as teachers, it is important to correct a student, but at the same time, it is important to value the thinking that they have when they are first learning and to encourage them in discovering new ways to engage their mind. Many aspects of language are difficult at first, so we must be patient as educators and remember the time that we also learned how to speak and write for the first time.

Multimedia documentation: This is the cute little note!

[mourning-again-in-america]

Inspired by what I've seen elsewhere, while "hot" languages like Rust, Haskell, Racket, and Elixir draw most of my attention from the perspective of "what odd features do some languages offer, and how are they built?", I have to say, Swift seems really really cool, compared to "normie" languages.

I haven't used it at all nor read any code in it ~~so this is as educated a post as any HN commentator~~, but the bits I have seen that I've liked:

- The ABI for dynamic linking while dealing with generic objects in an FFI-friendly way

- Indexing into a string returning a grapheme cluster

- The protocol system

- The autodiff subsystem (iirc built off protocols? I should read more on it)

[synesthete-culture-is]

Welcome, folks, to yet another [blank]-culture-is blog! This one relates specifically to synesthesia, for all my fellow synesthetes out there. Now, for the basics:

About me

For the purposes of this blog, you can call me Hemlock. My pronouns are they/them. I'm a classical musician and writer with chromosthesia (sound-to-color/image synesthesia), grapheme-color synesthesia, and sort-of spacial sequence. (For all of these, I am the associative type, meaning I don't physically see my color and image associations - but I still know they're there!)

Also, here is a post with general information about synesthesia if you want to know more!!

Submission Rules

Submissions must begin with either "synesthete culture is..." or begin with a more specific type of synesthesia. For example, "grapheme-color synesthete culture is..."

Please use the askbox for submissions.

I will also take questions in the askbox! Feel free to ask me anything relating to synesthesia, because boy do I love this topic!

(Also, I am a minor, so please no nsfw-related posts :)

DNI

Racists, homophobes, transphobes/TERFs, ableists, etc, do not interact or you will be blocked. No bigotry on this friendly little sideblog, please and thank you.

This blog is, of course, inspired by all the other wonderful ___-culture-is blogs out there. I will tag all of them that I can under the cut!

@ndcultureis @adhd-culture-is @autigender-culture-is @autistic-culture-is @chronic-illness-culture-is @cluster-b-culture-is @disabled-culture-is @maddcultureis @ocd-culture-is @plural-culture-is @vss-culture-is @aro-culture-is @ace-culture-is @aroace-culture-blog @bi-culture-is @demi-culture-is @gay-culture-is @gray-culture-is @omni-culture-is @queerplatoniccultureis @agender-culture-is @bigender-culture-is @boyflux-culture-is @enby-culture-is @demiguy-culture-is @demigirl-culture-is @gendereuphoriahours @genderfluid-culture-is @non-binary-culture-is @transcultureis @trans-culture-is @transmasc-culture-is @xenogender-culture-is

If any of you wouldn't mind boosting this, that would be great, if not I don't mind at all!

[wilde-writing]

Easy Guide to Create your own Fantasy Language

It’s been an eternity since I announced I’d do a language post and guess what – I finally finished it. I had no idea how to properly tackle that topic and how to present my fantasy languages in a compelling way. So I decided to make a series of posts (you can thank @unfocused-overwriter​ for that :D) to hopefully help fellow writers who want to create their own languages.

Disclaimer: I’m not a professional linguist, so it’s possible, that I make mistakes. Feel free to correct me, I’m always happy to learn new things.

Part II, Part III

Part I: Phonology

1. Phonemes

Phonemes (basically the individual sounds of a linguistic system) are to most obvious difference languages have. If a non-native speaker pronounces a phoneme wrong, the reason why is probably that the it doesn’t exist in it’s mother tongue. So comparing your phoneme tables can also help you creating accents.

The most helpful tool for phoneme systems is IPA (= International Phonetic Alphabet). It’s a spelling system that shows how a word is actually pronounced. Wikipedia can help you figuring out the pronunciation of the symbols, Vulgar is a good tool to get your phonemes in a table (it actually creates whole languages, but if you use it for free it gives you too many restrictions for my taste and this side helps you write IPA.

A finished phoneme table might look something like this:

You actually don’t have to try too hard to give each of your languages unique phonemes. There are phonemes that are really common and appear almost everywhere like [k], [t], [m] or [n]. Especially when languages are closely related phonemes overlap a lot.

2. Length

Length can occur with vowels and consonants. It is a nice detail to individually shape your language.

Take my fantasy languages for my current wip as an example: Elikel and Watanè don’t differentiate between vowel length, although vowels in Elikel are preferably pronounced shorter and in Watanè longer. In Manthari vowel length can change the meaning of a word. However Elikel is the only language that also has consonant length.

Example:  German: Schal [ʃa:l] vs. Schall [ʃal] > scarf vs. sound

3. Diphthongs / Triphthongs

So what’s that? Most languages need at least least one vowel in each syllable. If a syllable has one vowel – monophthong. Two vowels – diphthong. Three vowels – triphthong. So which diphthongs/etc. does your language have? Are there any at all? 

Example:  English: shout [ʃaʊ̯t]

4. Syllable structure

To be more precise with the next to points let me give you a short roundup in syllable structure. A really basic structure looks like this: (C) V (C). The V (surprisingly) stands for the vowel. Like I already said, in most languages a vowel is obligatory. But how free is your language when it comes to its consonants (C)? Do your syllables have an onset (everything in front of the vowel)? Do they have a coda (everything after the vowel)?

Example: onset-less: ant coda-less: bee

4.a Consonant clusters

Means: At least two different consonants meet in the onset or the coda. Is that possible in your language? Take for example Japanese that is quite cluster-less.  

Example: Japanese: sakura  English: strong

4.b Restrictions

Do any of your phonemes only appear in certain positions? Or only with certain other phonemes? This also gets important if you want to create a writing system.

Fantasy Language Example: [ɲ] is word initial in Elikel [β] only appears in front of [i, e, a] in Watanè

5. Stress

Is there a rule where the stressed syllable appears in a word? First syllable, second, second to last… Are there exceptions? Or is there a marker in the orthography to show where the stress is.

Maybe you language doesn’t only have a primary stress but also a secondary stress.

5a. Tonal language

In tonal languages, like Chinese or Vietnamese, intonation is key. Depending on the intonation the meaning of a word changes.

Example: Chinese: mā – mother, mǎ – horse, mà – to scold

I’m not an expert here and there is probably a lot more to tell about tonal languages. But let’s leave it like this for the time being.

6. Graphemics

I love this category. Basically it’s about creating rules for your orthography. To make it short: Think about phoneme (sound) – grapheme (letter, sign) correspondence. What sound is represented by what kind of symbol? Maybe some phonemes share a grapheme or one phoneme is represented by multiple letters.

Example:  English: [ʃ] is <sh> German: <ch> can be [x] or [ç]

I’ll tag the people from my RotW tag list, even though this is only roughly wip related. So tell me if you don’t want to be tagged in the following posts.

@margaretcroftwrites, @kat2107, @kittensartsbooks, @oligopsalter, @siarven

[tanadrin]

What's your favorite phoneme?

It’s a three-way tie between the postalveolar voiced fricative, because I like the grapheme, the /tɬ/ cluster, because I like the sound, and the entire non-pulmonic section of the IPA chart, because who does that, honestly

(speakers of languages with clicks and ejectives, that’s who!)

[cryptotheism]

Yeah you nailed it!

There are a few special diacritics for common consonant-only digraphs like /nd/ and /st/ respectively. And three special glyphs for /the/, /of/, and /and/. But I enjoy how CCCVCCCC words create interesting visually complex symbols.

Consonant clusters are stacked vertically, top to bottom. However, /r/ is special, it can be denoted by putting a little accent on the end of any vowel OR consonant diacritic. Similar to how a dot makes a grapheme voiced, an /r/ dash makes a grapheme rhotic.

Also yeah I accidentally replaced the /and/ in the first line of Jabberwocky with an /in/ because to tell you the truth I am drunk as hell rn.

"Ma'am, your penis is barking"

[apolesen]

A phonological analysis of Cardassian

@illogicalbroccoli and I decided to sit down and analyse the Cardassian sound-system. This can serve as a guide for coining names and words. We have also included a description of what a Cardassian sounds like. 

Limitations

This analysis is based on the names of all named Cardassians in alpha-canon (i.e. the TV series) (with exceptions of names that are clearly names of the production team that are added in writing just as place-holders), taken from the category ‘Cardassians’ on Memory Alpha. We have also taken into account the names of the sectors of the Union Capitals and the fan-coined names for body parts: chufa, chula, chuva (the spoons), prUt, ajan, vit (genitals). (We have also gone through the Cardassian names in Memory Beta and have considered how they would fit in, but not used them as basis for our analysis.) This is a fairly good sample, but with any sample, some phonemes and combinations of phonemes might not be represented. 

We are treating the way these words are written as Federation transcription. That means that sometimes, we might find inconsistencies in it. We have tried to not invoke transcription errors too often, but at times we have simply to keep the system plausible. 

The final thing is that Cardassian vocal organs are probably different from human ones. Do Cardassians have an uvula, do their teeth look the same, what is the range of movement of their tongue? However, in this post, I am assuming that their vocal organs are close enough to ours that we can use the same terminology. 

Terminology

Stop - a consonant where the air-flow is completely cut off. These are /p, t, k, b, d, g/. If you can say it drawn out, it’s not a stop.

Fricative - another type of consonants where the air-flow is not completely cut off. If it’s a consonant you can say drawn out, it’s a fricative, such as /f/.  

Sibilant - sibilants are strictly a kind of fricative, but are worth mentioning in their own right. They are s-sounds. If it sounds like something a snake might say, it’s a sibilant. 

Affricate - a sound that starts as a stop and ends as a fricative, for instance English chap. 

Cluster - any sounds that commonly occur together. Here I specifically mean consonant clusters, such as /pl/, /gr/, /rm/ etc. 

Phoneme - a distinct sound in a specific language. Phonemes are identified by minimal pairs, words where the only thing that is different are the sounds we are investigating. For instance, English rent and lent are different words, and shows us that /r/ and /l/ are phonemes. 

Allophone - an allophone is how a phoneme presents. A phoneme might manifest differently depending on its position in a word. As with phonemes, there are specific to languages. What is allophonic in one language can be phonemic in another. 

Slashes are used for indicate phonemes, i.e. sounds. Angled brackets indicate graphemes, i.e. written signs. 

I have used some IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) signs in this post, but have endeavoured to give examples wherever I can. A good resource is the website internationalphoneticalphabet dot org, where you will find a link to “IPA chart with sounds”. You can simply click the sign in question and it reads it to you. 

The Cardassian phonetic system

We are proposing the following system: 

p - t- k - q - v

b - d- g - ɢ - f - θ - ʃ - j - h

ʧ - ʦ

r - l - m- n- ŋ - s - z

a - e - i - ɔ - o - u - ei

In the following sections, I will go through them and explain our reasoning and give examples. 

Stops

Cardassian has a balanced stop system, much like that of English: 

/p/ - Paldar

/t/ - Tain

/k/ - Kelas

/b/ - Belor

/d/ - Damar

/g/ - Garak

However, the voiceless velar /k/ causes us some problems. This sound is sometimes written with <k> (e.g. kanar), but sometimes it is written with <c>, e.g. Broca, Preloc, Crell, Lemec. However, <c> is also used for a sibilant in the names Ocett and Macet. We could put this down to an error in transcription, but that is a dull out. Let us take another piece of data into account - the <gh> in Ghemor. At first glance, this might be an aspirated stop (a sound that occurs allophonically in English and sounds a bit more ‘breathy’), but if so, we would expect more aspirated stops. We could say that the examples of <c> as a velar are aspirated, but it does not ring true to me. Therefore, I suggest that <c> and <gh> represent uvular stops: 

/q/ - Crell

/ɢ/ - Ghemor

The uvula is the thing that hangs down at the back of your mouth. In order to make this sound, you pronounce an ordinary velar (/k/ or /g/) but also bring up the back of your tongue and touch your uvula. These sounds do not occur in English, but does in Arabic and some Caucasian languages. 

It is worth noting that there is one Cardassian name with a <q> in beta-canon, Andrul Taqut. This might be another example of the uvular. 

Fricatives, affricates, liquids and nasals

The Cardassian fricative system is not as well-balanced as its stop system:

/v/ - Revok

/f/ - chufa

/θ/ - Thrax

/ʃ/ - Shoggoth

/j/ - Ziyal

It has both /v/ and /f/, but the latter only appears word-internally (e.g. chufa - there is a beta canon example of Fhret, but this is an odd cluster and I am going to put it aside). There is /θ/, transliterated <th> (like in English thirst), but no voiceless version (like English there). There is also /ʃ/ (English sheer) and /j/, (English yet).

As for affricates, there are two: 

/ʧ/ - chuva

/ʦ/ - Marritza

The sound /ʧ/ is that of English chap and /ʦ/ is Italian pazzo (a /t/ and /s/ sound very close together).  

The nasals, liquids and sibilants are much the same as in English: 

/r/ - Garak

/l/ - gul

/m/ - Mila

/n/ - Nor

/ŋ/ - Lang

/s/ - Silaran

/z/ - Ziyal

What about the times <c> is used for a sibilant? It is noticeable that it only occurs word-internally and between vowels. We have three names with <s> word-internally and between vowels: Rusot, Moset and Russol (assuming the gemination does not show it is something else). Both the first and last cases are flanked by back vowels, so I suggest that they can be disregarded. We are then left with Ocett, Macet and Moset. I will suggest that <c> is used (by a very sloppy transcriber) to present an allophone of /s/ which occurs when the phoneme /s/ follows after a vowel and precedes a /e/. Usually, allophones are not written in different ways, so we would be correct writing these names as Osett and Maset. 

Furthermore, there is a /h/, which often occurs within words. 

Vowels

With the vowels, we must note that there is a problem as English vowels are very messed up. Do we assume that the orthography or the pronunciation is closer to the Cardassian truth? Most of the time, we think the pronunciation is closer, but with some provisions for English lenition. We decided upon this system: 

/a/ - Garak

/e/ - Enabran

/i/ - Ziyal

/ɔ/ - Terok Nor (always transcribed with <o>)

/o/ - Ulani (sometimes transcribed with <o>, sometimes with capital <U>)*

/u/ - Dukat

*) We are assuming an inconsistency of transcription here, simply to allow for the orthography in prUt which does not occur in alpha canon.

There is also one diphthong (or at least one that we can find evidence of): 

/ei/ - Tain **

**) Even if this is written with an <a>, the first part of this diphthong is clearly an /e/. 

Notably, Cardassian does not have a schwa, /ǝ/, which is a sound in the very middle of the mouth like in chocolate. This occurs when an unstressed vowel is weakened to the extent that we don’t bother to put our tongue up or down but simply keep it in a fairly neutral position. Because 

Vowel length is marked, and appears to orthographically be shown by double vowels, as in Boheeka, Aamin. At least once, these are separated by an accent, Darhe’el. The accent also occurs in the name Pa’Dar, where it rather seems to show a shortening of the preceding vowel. I am going to chalk this up to a misunderstanding in the transcription. 

A note on the uses of <h> in beta canon

I have discussed <gh> in Ghemor. However, it is worth mentioning that there are some odd uses of <h> in beta-canon names: Khevet, Efheny, Rhukal, Rhemet, Mhevet. 

Most of these can, in my opinion, be dismissed. Khevet could be an uvular that has been written that way by influence of the transcription of Ghemor. Rhukal and Rhemet are probably examples of the phoneme /r/. It might be an allophonic variation not shown in names such as Rusot and Rugal (perhaps Bajoran doesn’t have this variation and that’s why Rugal’s name is written without it?). As for Efheny, I do not think that the <h> is there to show a change in the /f/, but that there is supposed to be a hiatus between them, Ef-heny. When it comes to Mhevet, I think we need to look at the character in question. Arati Mhevet is from North Torr, which is a poor and close-knit community, and precisely the kind that might have a distinct dialect. I propose that the <mh> represents a labial that is found in the North Torr dialect and not in ‘standard’ Cardassian. 

Permitted clusters

Languages are governed by some internal rules of sounds that can and can’t go together and only in certain positions. For instance, initial /ks/ is generally not permitted in English, which is why words such as xylophone and xenophobic are often pronounced starting with something like /z/. Similarly, English does not allow initial /pt/ and /ps/, which is why words starting with these, e.g. pterodactyl and psychologist, often are pronounced with the <p> silent. 

In Cardassian, we can see some general rules for permitted clusters. 

Clusters consisting of a stop plus /r/ are generally permitted. Liquid plus stop is rare, as are fricative-initial clusters. 

However, this obscures a lot. 

Stop-initial clusters: 

pr, tr, kr, br, dr

kl, gl

gn

-ks#

When it comes to stop plus /r/, all are permitted with the exception of /gr/. In the case of stop plus /l/, only velars, /k/ and /g/, are allowed. The only stop-nasal cluster allowed in /gn/. 

The hash indicates the end of a word; the combination /ks/ is only allowed at the end of words (there is a Cardassian name Thrax). 

Liquid-initial clusters are: 

rb, rd, rt, rl, rn, rm, rv 

ld, lt 

Liquid+stop clusters are generally rare, and /r/-initial clusters are far more common than /l/-initial ones.

Nasal-initial clusters are: 

nd, nt, np, mp

As for clusters starting in fricatives or sibilants, there are only two: 

θr, sk

A Cardassian Accent

What a person sounds like when speaking a language which is not their first language is down to what phonology they are used to. For instance, a native speaker of Hindi may pronounce sounds that are not retroflexed in English as retroflexed, as that is a common sound in Hindi. The allowed clusters in a language also often carries over. 

As we have established what sounds and clusters occur in Cardassian, we can extrapolate what a Cardassian-speaker might sound like if they were speaking English. The amount of accent one has depends on a great number of things - age of second language acquisition, previous bilingualism, general aptitude for language, amount of progress. In my opinion, someone like Garak would not have much of an accent, but people with less experience of other languages and less exposure to native English-speakers will have a more noticeable accent.

As there is no voiceless fricative /ð/, like in English there, so a Cardassian-speaker might say “dere”. The /f/ phoneme is never initial, so while a Cardassian-speaker might be able to pronounce English sofa well, they might struggle with foal and instead say “voal” (which might lead to interesting misunderstandings). They would have trouble with English diphthongs, of which there are a lot. They might also make distinctions that an English speaker would not, such as using an uvular velar in certain positions. 

As the consonant clusters that are allowed in Cardassian are fairly few, a Cardassian-speaker will struggle with some of the clusters in English. Words like star or morsel might cause them trouble. They might add a vowel in between - “satar” - or drop one of the segments “mosel”. 

We have not taken things like accenting patterns and word melody into account, as there is not really any data that allows us to reconstruct it, but that too would change how a Cardassian accent would sound. 

[sharplearners]

Advanced Phonics Skills Help the Children to Read

Children learn the connections between the sounds of spoken language and the written letters through phonics training. Children may use these patterns to both known and unknown words and start reading fluently after they learn that there are predictable correlations between sounds and letters. Providing children with regular opportunities to read words, phrases, and stories utilizing the letter and sound knowledge they have acquired. They will learn where to begin with each letter and how to form the letters in relation to one another. Graphemes are individual letters (or clusters of letters) that stand in for phonemes.

Visit us at: https://www.mioola.com/sharplearners/post/53773210/

[brainshock-alpha]

well i went with option 1, and here’s the revised chart. i switched the palatal stops to affricates cuz that seems to be more naturalistic? like this is a little bit just Armenian Lite now lmao

the bolded graphemes are ones that don’t appear in the source... i added <aa> since it felt kinda weird to not have it. why not a long schwa sound? well if i play around with the phonology and it turns out it makes more sense to have that sound, i’ll add it in.

hmm, what else... oh yeah! the starred phonemes are ones i think will be marginal, because otherwise i feel kinda weird having the set be completely airtight like that, u know? but i don’t think it’s impossible either so... idk i can go either way on these

ok now the elephant in the room of What A Hell Is Going On With Those <y> Graphs. first of all, assigning <y> to /j/ actually mitigated the <y> problem i was complaining about earlier, since my phonology (AS OF NOW) doesn’t allow /j/ to cluster or end a syllable. so now i’m pretty sure the only ambiguous positions for <y> are at the start of a syllable or between vowels. and because to english speakers /j/ is an intuitive sound for <y> to have, i wanted the vowel form of <y> to be distinguished, like as a way of signalling “watch out bro!! this letter doesn’t sound like what you expect here!” to that end, where the sound value of <y> is ambiguous, you indicate that it’s a vowel by adding a diaeresis or by appending an apostrophe; consonant <y> is left plain. thus, <yuf> is pronounced /juf/ while <ÿuf> or <y’uf> is pronounced /əuf/, and <fuy> is always pronounced /fuə/.

now you might be thinking this is absurd and terrible, and i agree completely. but this is the best solution i’ve been able to come up with, so far.

“why even bother with all this?” you may ask, “can’t you just commit to <y> being always a consonant or always a vowel?” i’d love to, but check out which words in the dataset even use it.

always-consonant <y> can’t work because i don’t allow that kind of clustering/palatalization. always-vowel <y> is... not impossible, but i’m reluctant to do it. honestly? i Really Don’t like reading yekh and yii without /j/ sounds lmao

[kawaoneechan]

I completely agree that fully supporting the weird intricacies of Unicode (thanks for the sour persimmons, grapheme clusters) to accept even an hour-long video about Unicode strings.

But this video is presented as specifically about Rust.

I could see a video about strings in C# taking twenty minutes where most of it's about format strings. And maybe a bit about immutability. But I don't know anything about Rust strings besides "apparently they fully support the weird intricacies of Unicode" to come up with such a justification for this video's length.

... it takes you twenty minutes to explain how Rust strings work?

[amyandroseblog]

What is Phonics? And how it helps your kid's reading and writing skills?

What is Phonics? And how it helps your kid's reading and writing skills?

https://amyandrose.com/blogs/parenting/what-is-phonics

Phonics is a method of teaching how to read and spell by relating spoken sounds called phonemes and written letters, letter clusters, or syllables called graphemes.

#phonics #amyandrose #amyandroseblog #blog #reading #writing #children #kidsreadingskills #childlearn #learn #baby #mom #parents #childlearning #kidlearn #kidread #childread #childwrite #whatisphonics #parentingblog #skills #childrenskills

[dreamcatch22]

Dream Blog: The Encounter with the Bald Man Again

September 6th, 2016:

I floated around in a white room, and I couldn’t hear a single sound. The knot in my stomach abandoned me. My headache ceased its throbbing. My sinuses cleared up. My body felt fully recharged. Then, I felt myself falling down, as if I was pushed off a cliff or a diving board. The speed of this free fall increased until I landed on a rocking chair. My impact didn’t break the rocking chair. I sat there. I didn’t blink, move, or even breathe. My whole body just froze. A table landed in front of me with an ear-piercingly loud thud, which echoed throughout the massive white room. A man sprinted towards me, and he looked familiar. Once I recognized this mad man, my face lit up out of a combination between excitement and fear. The bald man in a trench coat from Savannah, Georgia sprinted towards like a football player trying to score a touchdown. Although he appeared as if he was going to run straight through the table, he stopped at one of the edges. He looked at me and moved his head around to make sure that there was nothing with me. This bald guy from Savannah, Georgia screamed as loud as he could. Then, he grabbed wads of money from inside his trench coat and threw it in the air. Several hundred dollar bills fluttered past me. I still did not move, for I did not know what this guy was going to do next. The bald man then stood still and gave me a random lecture about The Shepheardes Calender. He cleared his throat and spoke eloquently.       

The bald man explained:

“Listen up. I’m about to make three crucial points about a work that I love reading over and over. It’s called The Shepheardes Calender. You will eventually have to read this masterpiece if you want to live. Your intellect is what will destroy the men, that Asian women, and all of their robots, so please, please listen to these three points.   

This is my first point. The title The Shepheardes Calender is at the top of the page. The is completely capitalized above the remaining title. There is also no apostrophe in Shepheardes in order to acknowledge the importance of possession. Most importantly, the title is misspelled as well. Some words are also misspelled such as containing or months. There is also the presence of a grapheme, which is æ. The book is dedicated to Philip Sidney, but I notice that his name is in a very small font compared to the words, noble and vertvous. Below Philip Sidney, there is also the symbol that resembles a face. The misspelling indicates the lack of a dictionary. The order of the front page is the title, what it contains, entitlement, square design and printing information. The publisher and its location are at the bottom of the page just like many books nowadays. There is also a mention of the 1579. 1579 is also in the smallest font along with Philip Sidney. “Printed by Hugh Singleton” is also the biggest font on the whole page. It is even bigger than the font for The Shepheardes Calender. In the middle of the page, there is also a square symbol with geometric designs throughout it. The name of the editor is never mentioned either on the first page. I am aware that Hugh Singleton printed this book in London. Books could have not acknowledged editors whenever a book was printed and released.

Here is my second point. The purpose of the book is explained in a lengthy letter, which is titled the generall argument of the whole booke. The letter is in very small print and hard to read. The words appear to be weathered and clustered. The first letter of the actual is decorated with a black box and a figure with wings. The letter from E.K. is also in the exact font, or style, of the argument. The whole introductory portion of the book does not change. The Shepheardes Calender gives an illustration and poems for each month of the year. Modern versions would bring different fonts for the title and the poems for each month of the year. There would definitely still be illustrations in the modern versions for the work. Januarye is illustrated with a picture of shepherd looking at a city in the distant lands as he herds sheep. There is also a god-like figure in the clouds. Some modern books do have an illustrative picture at the beginning of a chapter, in a fashion similar to The Shepheardes Calender. The text for Januarye is written in the same font and meter for each stanza. The first letter for each line also lines up vertically. 

And finally, here is my third point. As I think about the authority associated with the work of poems, I also take into considerations such as who is it written for, how the author approached this task or how was the calendar received. I feel that the original work belongs to the author Spenser since he did compose The Shepeardes Calender. He is the original source of credibility. Over time, technological advances such as a dictionary, typewriter or a computer have allowed people to amend in order for others to read and to understand what Spenser is talking about throughout the work. Nowadays, authority resides in the editors who make appropriate adjustments to styles such as the size or font of the text. The original work eventually becomes altered over time.

Good luck with your mission. The Board of the Vigil needs you to retrieve the remaining pillars. One is still safe in Miami, and another pillar is safe at Reverend Howard Nielson’s church. Several other pillars have been scattered throughout the world by the robots of Ewan Stodson and his associate, Matta. You will need your friends on this mission, even if you don’t always agree with them.”

The bald man looked up at the ceiling and evaporated.   

[argumate]

When you stare at a Unicode string you see bytes, code points, graphemes, grapheme clusters, words, paragraphs, all the way up. It’s like the Matrix.