Didactic Thumbs (Pedantry Corner)

[tberton]

  On 2/13/2015 at 9:51 AM, brkl said:

Huh, you have to stretch the definition of a syllable pretty far for that word to be more than two.

 

As far as I'm aware, there's not actually a super great linguistic definition of "syllable."

[Merus]

It's easier in Japanese because phonemes almost never run together the way they do in English. Each Japanese character is one phoneme, as are things like 'ryu' and 'kyo'. (Tokyo's pronounced To-kyo, for instance, not To-kee-yo like English speakers do.)

[tberton]

I've got a friend who always nags me about the Tokyo pronunciation.

[syntheticgerbil]

But Tokyo needs that extra syllable for this song:

[Merus]

that song's in English

 

we've covered this

[syntheticgerbil]

I know it was just a bit of fun. No more fun in this thread then, sheesh.

[Badfinger]

  On 2/15/2015 at 3:16 AM, syntheticgerbil said:

I know it was just a bit of fun. No more fun in this thread then, sheesh.

 

He was being a pedant! That is this thread's equivalent of fun!

[Ninety-Three]

Well as you know, fun is zero sum. If you're having less fun, then I must be having more fun!

[miffy495]

  On 2/18/2015 at 9:57 PM, Dewar said:

Ah, I have signatures turned off or I would have probably seen that

 

I'll take a peak tonight.

 

Is "take a peak" a common thing to say rather than "take a peek"? I googled it because I wasn't sure and it seems like people actually use it, but to me it sounds like a vague threat to steal a mountain.

[Twig]

I think it's just something people say when they misspell "peek". Like "for all intensive purposes", except "peak" at least sounds the same.

[miffy495]

"seeming as though"

 

ugh.

 

EDIT: For the record, this is replacing "seeing as though" in colloquial speech, not when something actually seems like something else.

[Deadpan]

  On 2/19/2015 at 12:55 AM, miffy495 said:

Is "take a peak" a common thing to say rather than "take a peek"?

 

There is this at least.

[Ninety-Three]

I encountered a language problem today, and I wondered if any of my fellow Idle Pedants had a solution.

 

How do you describe something which is hidden, but not particularly resistant to being found in a search? I found myself describing something as "poorly hidden", but I realized that implied the hider intended to hide the thing better, which wasn't the case. Phrases like "lightly hidden" just feel strange, is there a clear and concise way to convey this concept?

[tberton]

What specifically was hidden? I think the answer would vary depending.

[Ninety-Three]

  On 2/24/2015 at 1:57 AM, tberton said:

What specifically was hidden? I think the answer would vary depending.

 

Right, context. One of the songs on an album is, for no apparent reason, nothing but white noise. There's a "hidden" message which is not heavily obfuscated: If you open it in an audio editing tool, the visualization of the song contains readable text. The message is hidden, not difficult to find when searched for, and intentionally so. How would you describe that concisely?

[Badfinger]

Easily found?

[Merus]

Buried?

[SuperBiasedMan]

Easter egg?

[Ninety-Three]

Easter egg is probably accurate to this example, but in general I quite like "buried" to describe this. It describes obfuscation, without any implication of being difficult to find. Thanks folks!

[Dewar]

  On 2/19/2015 at 12:55 AM, miffy495 said:

Is "take a peak" a common thing to say rather than "take a peek"? I googled it because I wasn't sure and it seems like people actually use it, but to me it sounds like a vague threat to steal a mountain.

 

I looked at that sentence for some time trying to figure out why it felt wrong. I have been very tired lately.

[Dewar]

  On 2/23/2015 at 11:22 PM, Ninety-Three said:

I encountered a language problem today, and I wondered if any of my fellow Idle Pedants had a solution.

 

How do you describe something which is hidden, but not particularly resistant to being found in a search? I found myself describing something as "poorly hidden", but I realized that implied the hider intended to hide the thing better, which wasn't the case. Phrases like "lightly hidden" just feel strange, is there a clear and concise way to convey this concept?

 

I don't think that "poorly" in this case implies that the hider intended to do better, I think it's more a comparison to what a reasonable person would consider to be sufficiently hidden.

[miffy495]

Thinly veiled? Minimally concealed? If we're speaking about things that aren't physical objects, subtextual? 

[Gormongous]

  On 2/24/2015 at 2:34 AM, Ninety-Three said:

Right, context. One of the songs on an album is, for no apparent reason, nothing but white noise. There's a "hidden" message which is not heavily obfuscated: If you open it in an audio editing tool, the visualization of the song contains readable text. The message is hidden, not difficult to find when searched for, and intentionally so. How would you describe that concisely?

 

"Superficially hidden" is what I would say, but that's a bit weighty of a phrase if you're looking for something truly concise.

[Twig]

 

  On 2/25/2015 at 7:56 PM, mikemariano said:

It also features the acronym WKLP which I didn't understand.  Googling it reveals: Who Killed Laura Palmer.

 

That's an initialization!!! Acronyms are pronounced as words! How would you pronounce WKLP? Wekelp?!

 

ahem hem

[Mangela Lansbury]

  On 2/25/2015 at 8:02 PM, Twig said:

That's an initialization!!! Acronyms are pronounced as words! How would you pronounce WKLP? Wekelp?!

Yes, with the first e pronounced like the second e in elephant and kelp pronounced as usual. Just so no one with you thinks you're accusing them of kelping.