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   myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Friday, 06-Dec-2024 19:21:24 JST myrmepropagandist

   Oh god not another one:

   hemiptera

   I thought it was "hemi pet tera"

   (hemi, like the motor)

   no. It's "he mip ter a"

   I give up. I doubt I know how to say any of these obscure bug words.

   • GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Dec-2024 19:21:23 JST mcc

     in reply to

     @futurebird *The left side only of a cat walks by. It seems unbothered and perfectly able to keep its balance* Entering my hemi pet era… :O

   • Embed this notice
     Nicovel0 🍉 (nicovel0@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Dec-2024 19:40:54 JST Nicovel0 🍉

     in reply to

     • Limnobotanik

     @Limnobotanik @futurebird as someone who attends scientific conferences regularly I can assure you that scientists will mispronounce at least one technical word in each presentation they give, and the incidence goes up whenever there’s Greek/Latin

   • Embed this notice
     Limnobotanik (limnobotanik@norden.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Dec-2024 19:40:55 JST Limnobotanik

     in reply to

     @futurebird A botany professor of mine told us of his first oral exam at university, for which he had prepared exclusively with books. His examiner gave him an A but afterwards asked, whether he had attended any of his lectures, as he had mispronounced the word phloem (sth like Flow-éhm) as "Flöm" (one syllable, with the German letter ö, which can be written as oe, if your keyboard doesn't have an "ö") throughout the exam.

     Rocketman repeated this.
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     David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*) (david_chisnall@infosec.exchange)'s status on Friday, 06-Dec-2024 20:54:34 JST David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

     in reply to

     • Negative12DollarBill

     @negative12dollarbill @futurebird

     This is one of my favourite linguistic quirks and relevant to the other thread about hyphenation from yesterday. In English, you hyphenate based on root words, so helico-pter is the correct hyphenation, but in American you hyphenate based on syllables and so heli-copter is correct. I prefer the American rules because they give a pronunciation hint, whereas the English rules are just there to let you say 'Oh, you don't speak Latin / Greek / French / Celtic / Proto-Germanic / ... ? Peasant!'.

     This makes quad copters a silly word, they really should be quad pters or similar.

     Mind you, that's nowhere near as meaningless as 'quad bike', a noun phrase that just means four two. It's lost the cycle (bi-cycle: two wheels) but kept the root word that describes the one bit that it's changed. And I will insist on referring to them as quadracycles.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 06-Dec-2024 20:54:34 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Negative12DollarBill
     • David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

     @david_chisnall @negative12dollarbill @futurebird And in English that's not actively hostile to second language readers, readers with visual, perceptual, tracking, etc. difficulties or disabilities, YOU DON'T HYPHENATE AT ALL.

   • Embed this notice
     Negative12DollarBill (negative12dollarbill@techhub.social)'s status on Friday, 06-Dec-2024 20:54:35 JST Negative12DollarBill

     in reply to

     @futurebird Did you know that helicopters aren't heli-copters but helico-pters?

     Rocketman repeated this.
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     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 06-Dec-2024 20:56:40 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Negative12DollarBill
     • David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

     @david_chisnall @negative12dollarbill @futurebird Hyphenation is an elitist ableist practice that should have been abolished long ago. Especially since we don't format text as 3 cm newsprint columns anymore. It has no value but does lots of harm.