Assorted Language Questions

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Not a language question, but something interesting I found in my X feed

https://twitter.com/x/status/1775531115874246837

I love that kind of analysis, especially when they use millions of words. ("Now try Hawaiian", snickered my wife.)
Trying to do the same with phonemes instead of written text is a lot harder. "Try Hawaiian", she snickered again. (People like her cause unrest.)
There are other techniques and mathematical "laws", e.g. Zipf's Law that are used to analyze word frequencies.

Zipf's law - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

There's a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Adelaide who recently solved a murder case from 1948. (I say "solved", but he "only" narrowed down the possibilities and then the internet flesh engine did the rest. )

His next "hobby" project is to try to solve the origin of the mysterious, and quite barmy, 15th-century codex called the Voynich Manuscript.

Voynich manuscript - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's still an open question as to whether it is a coded work, or written in some unknown language, or whether it's an elaborate hoax. Interestingly, the frequency and types of word groups seem to obey Zipf's law. From the wiki article:
"...suggesting that text is most likely not a hoax but rather written in an obscure language or cipher".

 

[Birdjaguar]

^^^ That is one of the most interesting unsolved puzzles. Let us know what he comes up with.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

^^^ That is one of the most interesting unsolved puzzles. Let us know what he comes up with.

I didn't realize that Derek Abbott et al have been working on it for a few years now!

The project description: Cracking the Voynich code

https://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/wiki/index.php/Cracking_the_Voynich_code

A youtube video:

An Honours thesis:

https://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/wiki/images/b/bd/Final_Seminar_Slides.pdf

A poster presentation:

https://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/wiki/images/4/44/Project_141_Exhibition_Poster.pdf

Final report for 2014:

https://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/wiki/index.php/Semester_B_Final_Report_2014__Cracking_the_Voynich_code

A masters thesis:

https://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/wiki/images/0/00/Masters_project_141_the_final_thesis_Ruihang_Feng_1674940.pdf

 

[Birdjaguar]

I tried to watch that video. The speaker's accent was a bit hard for my bad hearing, but the added music was just annoying and made everything even harder to understand. Vidos as entertainment are one thing, but when the goal is to inform, the entertainment aspects should be vetted. I'll try again later.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

I tried to watch that video. The speaker's accent was a bit hard for my bad hearing, but the added music was just annoying and made everything even harder to understand. Vidos as entertainment are one thing, but when the goal is to inform, the entertainment aspects should be vetted. I'll try again later.

I haven't watched it yet - so thanks for the warning.
I just bundled together some of the reports from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Adelaide Uni to show how they are analyzing the text.

 

[Gori the Grey]

The video gives away its secret at the very end.

They used Google Translate

Now why didn't I think of that?

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

The video gives away its secret at the very end.

They used Google Translate

Now why didn't I think of that?

You were probably preoccupied trying to recall an appropriate poem, under the misapprehension that:
Better the silver-tongued devil you know, than the silicon-tongued devil you don't.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Will American AI kill European culture?
BRUSSELS — Europeans are racing to create their own artificial intelligence chatbots to stop U.S.-made tech from gobbling up their economies, culture and even languages themselves.

From Madrid to Sofia, European Union countries have launched and supported a flurry of initiatives aimed at creating chatbots that are truly fluent in local languages.

The latest AI technology powering tools like the popular ChatGPT chatbot hinges on "large-language models" or LLMs — systems capable of eerily human-like conversation. Language is at the core of these innovations, and the EU — a Tower of Babel with 24 official languages, from Lithuanian to Maltese — wants the booming tech to click with its own cultural content and quirks.

“Mark Twain should not erase Stendhal,” France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said at a tech event in Cannes in February. “We don’t want to settle just for English … Going ahead, we don’t want our language to be weakened by algorithms and AI systems.”

Will American AI kill European culture?

EU is building chatbots to save its languages.

www.politico.eu

And that's why you need chatbots to protect your language?

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Cornish language revives on back of psych-pop and Covid

Significant rise in number of people taking lessons amid surge in interest in language declared extinct a decade ago

www.theguardian.com

An extinct language returns from the dead

 

[Gori the Grey]

Sorry for the double post, but I'm not sure everyone goes into "Questions not worth their own thread":

Are there corners of the globe where people use the word "bloke" unselfconsciously?

When an American says it, it is an affectation. It's not in general currency here.

But are there places where it really is the go-to word for fellow or chap or individual--and nobody bats an eye at its use?

And if so, where? England? Scotland? Australia?

And does it have any class marking? Rural vs urban? Higher economic class vs lower? Or where it's in use everyone can use it equally?

 

[bene_legionary]

I've heard "bloke" in NZ but it probably fights with "fella" in terms of being the go-to-word?

 

[Gori the Grey]

It doesn't need to be the absolute favored, as long as its fully viable in its own right. So thank you.

 

[PhroX]

Bloke is a perfectly normal way to refer to a man in England.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I posted my question in two threads, and in the other, Chukchi Husky posted a clip from a Bill Bailey standup routine, where he establishes that the men in the audience prefer it to "man," itself! Now I think he cheats a little. When he asks his first question "Are there any men in the audience?" I think the hesitation in responding is not because they're not comfortable with the term "man," but mostly because that's an odd question to ask at all. So it's like a "Of course, but what are you getting at?" hesitation.

But thanks for the confirmation, PhroX.

Now I've started wondering why it never did catch on in the US.

 

[Arwon]

Sorry for the double post, but I'm not sure everyone goes into "Questions not worth their own thread":

Are there corners of the globe where people use the word "bloke" unselfconsciously?

When an American says it, it is an affectation. It's not in general currency here.

But are there places where it really is the go-to word for fellow or chap or individual--and nobody bats an eye at its use?

And if so, where? England? Scotland? Australia?

And does it have any class marking? Rural vs urban? Higher economic class vs lower? Or where it's in use everyone can use it equally?

Bloke is used in Australia, yes. It's marked with connotations like simplicity and masculinity. We also use "blokey" which means something is basically just for or about men.

 

[sophie]

the words in US English that come to mind as equivalents are “guy” and “dude”

bro could be another subvariant, but if a more specific type of man.

we even have a similar usage to bloke in the use of dude (or dude variants) to characterize a particular type of behavior typical of, and generally exclusive to, men.

 

[Arwon]

I think, at least in Australian English, bloke is probably somewhere between the generalisability of guy and dude and the specificity of bro. It implies a sense of ordinariness, maybe something like describing someone as "just some guy" speifically. Depends to an extent how you modify and apply it.

To be a "good bloke" is a specific expression with a lot of nuance and cultural baggage behind it as well. Pople still use the term literally to say someone is generous/honest/friendly/etc but also you might hear people being defended or excused for wrongdoing based on character, and that can be derided as a "good bloke defence" (and invalid).

I also have a feeling we may use it a bit differently from the British or Irish?

 

[Gori the Grey]

the use of dude (or dude variants)

including dude-bro

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Do you pronounce "really" the way you pronounce "real" and add a "-ly" or do you pronounce the "real" in "really" differently from how you pronounce "real"?

If that makes sense

 

[Gori the Grey]

I say rilly.