American ´Sean Nós´

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benhall.1
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Re: American ´Sean Nós´

Post by benhall.1 »

an seanduine wrote:Having been called to account by benhall for my idiotosynchratic spelling of cœur, I have endeavo(u)red to correct my ways, but cannot edit all of them :oops:

:D Bob :D
Hey, look at you! You've even got a diphthong! :) :thumbsup:


Phew! I've edited the rest. Including the "de". Sorry Bob. I'll calm down soon, I'm sure. :boggle: :sniffle:

The good news is that I'm really enjoying this thread. :D
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Re: American ´Sean Nós´

Post by Nanohedron »

benhall.1 wrote:I'll calm down soon, I'm sure. :boggle: :sniffle:
An excitable lad.
benhall.1 wrote:Hey, look at you! You've even got a diphthong! :) :thumbsup:
Now it's my turn to get a burr under my saddle. Yes, yes, yes, I see that according to some dictionaries, glyphs like Œ can supposedly be called diphthongs, but I call that erroneous; properly, it's a ligature. The former is sound, whereas the latter is orthography. According to what I was taught, Œ isn't properly a diphthong when it indicates only a single vowel sound, and in English that is usually the case. The OE/Œ in "phoenix/phœnix" is expressed as a single EE sound - no diphthong, IOW - whereas the OE in "poet" forms an actual diphthong: po-et. The word "I" is only one letter, but in so-called standard pronunciation it realizes as a diphthong which sounds an A that glides into an E or I sound. The vowels in "rain" and "coat" form digraphs, but not diphthongs, because in execution they sound only one vowel.

That's my understanding, and I'm sticking to it. I urge everyone else to steer clear of the undertow, too. The dictionaries have failed us on this one, I say. There comes a point where a dictionary's description of a usage just because it's somehow become popular, without clarification that it is in fact erroneous, is either uninformed, lazy, or worst of all: cowardly. Say, it's been a season for mob rule; let's burn the dictionaries! :twisted:

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Re: American ´Sean Nós´

Post by an seanduine »

benhall.1 wrote:
an seanduine wrote:Having been called to account by benhall for my idiotosynchratic spelling of cœur, I have endeavo(u)red to correct my ways, but cannot edit all of them :oops:

:D Bob :D
Hey, look at you! You've even got a diphthong! :) :thumbsup:


Phew! I've edited the rest. Including the "de". Sorry Bob. I'll calm down soon, I'm sure. :boggle: :sniffle:

The good news is that I'm really enjoying this thread. :D
That´s just about the only ´thong´ you´ll see me with :D

:lol: Bob :P
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Re: American ´Sean Nós´

Post by benhall.1 »

Nanohedron wrote:
benhall.1 wrote:I'll calm down soon, I'm sure. :boggle: :sniffle:
An excitable lad.
benhall.1 wrote:Hey, look at you! You've even got a diphthong! :) :thumbsup:
Now it's my turn to get a burr under my saddle. Yes, yes, yes, I see that according to some dictionaries, glyphs like Πcan supposedly be called diphthongs, but I call that erroneous; properly, it's a ligature.
I think this is another difference between usage in the US and usage in the UK. I've only ever heard Americans call those things "ligatures". In the UK, it's a diphthong.
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Re: American ´Sean Nós´

Post by an seanduine »

Properly, an Orthographic Ligature :)
Otherwise I am brought to mind of something like a crime scene report: ¨there was no sign of the ligature used to strangle her¨, which, by the way is the first example given for its definition as a noun :shock:

Dipthongs, the only kind of thongs I generally get close to :D unless they are triphthongs :) do not necessarily take the form of a glyph. The romance languages are full of them without putting scads of graphemes in bondage. And of course, the New Orthography completely eschews such glyphs in Modern Irish.

Bob
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benhall.1
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Re: American ´Sean Nós´

Post by benhall.1 »

an seanduine wrote:Properly, an Orthographic Ligature :)
Otherwise I am brought to mind of something like a crime scene report: ¨there was no sign of the ligature used to strangle her¨, which, by the way is the first example given for its definition as a noun :shock:

Dipthongs, the only kind of thongs I generally get close to :D unless they are triphthongs :) do not necessarily take the form of a glyph. The romance languages are full of them without putting scads of graphemes in bondage. And of course, the New Orthography completely eschews such glyphs in Modern Irish.

Bob
I'm afraid that has pretty much gone over my head. In fact, I was trying to work out how to post an "over my head" GIF, but I can't work out how to do it ...

What's a triphthong? I agree with you about ligature, though: I associate the word either with crime, staunching blood after an injury, or something rather more salacious altogether. :shock:
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Re: American ´Sean Nós´

Post by busterbill »

Check out "Fire on the Mountain: HIllary Klug and her dance mentor" for some old time American fiddle and dance. The Irish and the Scot influence in Appalachian music and dance is well documented, and pretty clear here. It's also just pretty cool.
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Re: American ´Sean Nós´

Post by Nanohedron »

benhall.1 wrote:What's a triphthong?
Three vowels pronounced in gliding succession. In English, examples can be found where the R is non-rhotic: "hour" = a-u-ə. You see it in the surname Baio: ba-i-o.

Apparently there is such a thing as a teraphthong, but I should think it would be seldom at best.
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Re: American ´Sean Nós´

Post by an seanduine »

Actually triphthongs are rather thin on the ground in English. An example given to me was the word ´fire´, as having three blended vowel sounds. An example in French might be the [/i]eau[/i] sound. This really isn´t tough for English speakers since we already have the sound in our pronunciation ´tool-kit´ with the word ´bow´.
Ideally your alphabet, the graphic representation of your speech, is a good fit. Not always the case, as when the English have taken over the nominally Roman alphabet and try to shoehorn every other language into its confines. . . :lol: That´s why we have the IPA.
Chinese is another bucket of fish, since it is logographic with essentially a received ´pronunciation´ for each logograph in any given dialect.
Irish has sounds that are rather far afield from Standard English. The original alphabet supplied by the monks was tailored to these sounds. Economics made a special set of type out of the question for written modern Irish, so the Republic chose to institute the ´New Orthography´, with designated combinations of letters standing in for these unique vocalizations. Chairman Mao settled for the same sort of compromise when he settled on the Pin-Yin system for ´romanizing´ written Chinese.
Pre-literate folks just keep talkin´ and grinnin´ . . . :lol:

:D Bob :D
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Re: American ´Sean Nós´

Post by Nanohedron »

an seanduine wrote:An example in French might be the [/i]eau[/i] sound.
I must disagree, here. "Eau" forms a trigraph, but not a triphthong, for it is pronounced "O". Since we are airing out our phthongs, the O sound is a monophthong. "Aim" is another good example: its A and I constitute a digraph, but its sound is a monophthong. Conversely, the I in "ice" realizes as a diphthong.
benhall.1 wrote:I think this is another difference between usage in the US and usage in the UK. I've only ever heard Americans call those things "ligatures". In the UK, it's a diphthong.
I'm sure that this error is found leftwards of the Pond, too; on the extremely rare occasion that my fellow Yanks and I would ever bring it up in casual conversation - I can't say that we even have, to adult memory (so I'm unwilling to take at face value your suggestion that "ligature", as an orthographic term, is particularly American) - you can take it to the bank that I would be just as hair-splitting and taxingly pedantic among them, too. And I'm quite certain they would be just as unwilling to accept it, and wearily accuse me in turn of being an Anglophile. Or worse. :wink:

Normally I'm fine with the idea that usage determines meaning, but this isn't one of those cases. I have to call for better rigor in this one. People can call digraphs and ligatures "diphthongs" if they like, and I can't force them to change this, but I will have my say, because without digging deeper one can't really know what's meant when technical terms are used so loosely (if, that is, one can tell that wires got crossed - if not, at best you have a comedy of errors).

OTOH it fuels conversation, so I suppose it's all good. Either way I have provided a service, so you're welcome. :wink:
"If you take music out of this world, you will have nothing but a ball of fire." - Tribal musician
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