h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Have just got up nastily early to watch the Grande Prix in Melbourne, Aus tralia. Nice to see green grass and summer. Hi Cafram

Not enough sleep last night at all as stayed up late watching some British comedy written by Ben Elton, in which hee seems to have extended his superlative smear test sketch into a whole film.

It also has Emma Thompson in a cameo role of Solnushka when she is 50, although it's not as good as the Solnushka in her 30s she does in Peter's freinds.

I am wired on coffee.

I'm on T's side in this one. Leaving Linus/Linux aside, it would be nice if the English speakking world could make a stab at pronouncing foreign names/words correctly just, maybe, once. I always thought Peking/Beijing were different places, till I realsied that someone had sheepishly updated the pron. If the Chinese language and tones is an excuse, you'd think we'd manage Paree or Moskva, or Deutchland or whatever.

.........would you wonder what's going on if:

1) you came back to your computer to find all the settings changed and the volume REALLY loud
2) your roommate, who left before you got up, is still absent when you got back, and hasn't touched her computer in 14 hours.

i agree it's a possibility that she went home, but she usually takes the computer with her, and it's sitting on her desk and it's ON. plus, all of her miscellaneous food stuff that she brings home is still under her bed.

something's not quite right.

Linus/Linux: When Linus first moved to America he pronounced his name in the Finnish way with a long i ('ee'), but he got so tired of people mispronouncing it that he eventually relented and now uses the American pronounciation. As far as I can recall, Linux itself although derived from Linus, has always been pronounced with a short i, but with a distinct 'u' although it frequently gets corrupted to sound like the -ix in unix.

Wow! Quite a discussion!

So he gave up, did he? No wonder, I'd say... Aha, I see - there were some old material in the documentary then... Couldn't get those sound files to work, Phil

As for the letter 'i' being pronounced short in Linux (like in 'hit') Linus in Finnish is also pronounced short, otherwise it would be spelt Liinus, while in Swedish Linus is pronounced Leenus. I'm not sure which of the two languages that were spoken in Linus' home - his parents seemed to be pretty fluent in Swedish, although with an accent.

Finnish is actually one of the (to my knowledge) very few, if not only, language where each letter is pronounced separately, the same way every time. Finnish does not contain any sh- or ch- or j- (like journal) sounds. It does not, originally, contain the letter C - who needs it if one can use K or S instead?

And it has no prepositions, but uses postpositions - the case is expressed by adding to the end of the word - that's why you'll sometimes see words that seem like a mile long in Finnish!

And then there are sort of 'umlaut' - but with consonants! The combination 'nt' changes into 'nn' if the syllable is a 'closed' one, 'mp' into 'mm' and so on.

Altogether, it made me give up studying Finnish - I speak it, but don't make me write it! Like in German, if you're speaking people won't notice *all* of your grammar mistakes...

End of today's language lesson

We pronounce it linnux (short i) in the computing department here... and everywhere else I've ever discussed operating systems, for that matter.

Today, I'm going to go shopping. I need some new clothes and I'm going to go to the farmer's market that I failed to get to last month because of the tetany in my leg muscles.

And then I'm going to sit and fret about tomorrow. Anyone with the time to spare to hold my hand might want to head over to the Get Well Soon thread.

T the soundfiles are unix .au format. They run under quicktime (or at least did when I tried it running windows last night when I found them). Although Linus is Finnish he is from the ethnic swede part of the finn population and in the soundfiles pronounces Linus as leenus.

That is of course exactly what I meant (but forgot to mention ).

[Affy]


Can someone tell me if Metric Time has already been invented? I was bored last night and felt like doing something stupid, and well....so far I've worked it out from the length of a day to the "base-unit" (the Metric Deca-Second is about 8.64 normal seconds).

Anyway, does anyone know if this has already been done somewhere? If not, I'm going to make a metric clock. Just for show.

I am for correct pronounciation if there is a chance to find out how it is supposed to do. Linux must be pronounced with i like in hit.
And in Finnish there is not much postpositions, it has a lot of cases (15 as far as I remember, Estonian has 14) and these additions in the end of the word belong to the case. Like an 's' in English genitive.

I'm back from my shopping trip. I bought loads of things.

Good morning y'all.

My point about the light bulb ad is that it seemed even more dishonest than most ads. If the selling point of the bulb is that it enhances natural tones, then they should should two pictures that depict the difference, not jigger into the picture with photoslop or whatever.

And on the matter of proper pronunciation, I heard (on tv) several black actors remarking on the fact that Denzel Washington's name is regularly mispronounced.

But everyone should know it's pronounced way-shy-ng-ton!

*rolls her eyes* Well, did you know that the accent is on the second syllable of his first name, not the first? I think the actors' indignation is a little misplaced, since the name is unique, and there's no precedent to go on.

Anyway, the name Cecil is another one that mutates on its trip across the Atlantic, from having a short 'e' in England to a long 'e' in the US.

Meanwhile, I'm waiting for my hot water heater to thaw out so I can have a bath.

Maybe you could thaw it in the microwave, Lil.

And I would have mispronounced Denzel if I had ever had a need to say it out loud.

Huh. I've been pronouncing Denzel Washington's name wrong all this time. Guess I'll just have to adjust.

[WM]

sea, please give us an update on the roommate mystery.

*Wonders if said roommate is acquainted with any congressmen, by any chance.*

[op]

Washington should be pronounced using a British accent. Let's face it, George was a Pom.

Ooops, how wrong can you be. Please ignore the above. After doing a bit of research, I discovered George, his parents and at least one set of grandparents were all born in Virginia.

[montana]