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Raphael
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Post by Raphael »

I just caught myself almost writing "century" as "canterury". Any idea what may or may not have been going on inside my brain when I did that?
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Post by bradrn »

Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2026 11:11 am I just caught myself almost writing "century" as "canterury". Any idea what may or may not have been going on inside my brain when I did that?
Interference from ‘centenary’, maybe?
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Travis B.
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Post by Travis B. »

Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2026 11:11 am I just caught myself almost writing "century" as "canterury". Any idea what may or may not have been going on inside my brain when I did that?
The <a> could be from interference from German, since Germans commonly merge English /æ/ and /ɛ/?
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Post by WeepingElf »

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2026 1:05 pm
Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2026 11:11 am I just caught myself almost writing "century" as "canterury". Any idea what may or may not have been going on inside my brain when I did that?
The <a> could be from interference from German, since Germans commonly merge English /æ/ and /ɛ/?
Yes, most Germans pronounce English /æ/ as [ɛ], as Standard German and most German dialects don't have [æ] (though Swiss German does).
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Post by Travis B. »

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2026 1:09 pm
Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2026 1:05 pm
Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2026 11:11 am I just caught myself almost writing "century" as "canterury". Any idea what may or may not have been going on inside my brain when I did that?
The <a> could be from interference from German, since Germans commonly merge English /æ/ and /ɛ/?
Yes, most Germans pronounce English /æ/ as [ɛ], as Standard German and most German dialects don't have [æ] (though Swiss German does).
Interestingly enough, I instinctively hear a true front [ɛ] as /æ/, as it is the most common allophone of /æ/ in my native English. As I have mentioned on this board before, I have even learned a few words "wrong" in that I learned them as having /æ/, such as Star Tr/æ/k.
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Post by WeepingElf »

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2026 1:14 pm
WeepingElf wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2026 1:09 pm
Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2026 1:05 pm
The <a> could be from interference from German, since Germans commonly merge English /æ/ and /ɛ/?
Yes, most Germans pronounce English /æ/ as [ɛ], as Standard German and most German dialects don't have [æ] (though Swiss German does).
Interestingly enough, I instinctively hear a true front [ɛ] as /æ/, as it is the most common allophone of /æ/ in my native English. As I have mentioned on this board before, I have even learned a few words "wrong" in that I learned them as having /æ/, such as Star Tr/æ/k.
Some German varieties have no contrast at all between ä and e, while others do when the vowels are long, with ä being lower. In Swiss German, ä is [æ], both short and long, much more clearly distinct from e.
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Post by Man in Space »

Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2026 11:11 am I just caught myself almost writing "century" as "canterury". Any idea what may or may not have been going on inside my brain when I did that?
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Post by Richard W »

Yesterday I wrote the date of opening on a tetra pak as "1/6", but soon read it back to myself as sevenpence ha'penny (with syncopation). What psychiatric diagnoses should I make of myself?
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Richard W wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2026 1:43 pm Yesterday I wrote the date of opening on a tetra pak as "1/6", but soon read it back to myself as sevenpence ha'penny (with syncopation). What psychiatric diagnoses should I make of myself?
Slash Separation Ambiguity Syndrome?
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Post by bradrn »

Looks like Travis has become the first person here to reach 10,000 posts. (I believe the 10,000th was viewtopic.php?p=108618#p108618.)
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Post by malloc »

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2026 5:07 pmLooks like Travis has become the first person here to reach 10,000 posts. (I believe the 10,000th was viewtopic.php?p=108618#p108618.)
Congratulations to Travis then. Considering that there are roughly a hundred thousand posts on this forum, Travis has technically written 10% of them. Even given that only a dozen odd people post here regularly, that is still quite remarkable.
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Post by bradrn »

malloc wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2026 6:21 pm
bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2026 5:07 pmLooks like Travis has become the first person here to reach 10,000 posts. (I believe the 10,000th was viewtopic.php?p=108618#p108618.)
Congratulations to Travis then. Considering that there are roughly a hundred thousand posts on this forum, Travis has technically written 10% of them.
No ‘technically’ about it — if you click on his profile it says ‘10.07% of all posts’.
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Raphael
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Post by Raphael »

Aren't these products usually marketed at a more elderly target group?
wrong-demographic.jpg
wrong-demographic.jpg (61.72 KiB) Viewed 1538 times

(A business sign saying "KIND HÖRGERÄTE", that is, literally translated, "Child Hearing Aids". Yes, I know, "Kind" is presumably the owners' or founders' surname, but I still find it a bit weird.)
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Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Jun 04, 2026 3:16 am Aren't these products usually marketed at a more elderly target group?

wrong-demographic.jpg


(A business sign saying "KIND HÖRGERÄTE", that is, literally translated, "Child Hearing Aids". Yes, I know, "Kind" is presumably the owners' or founders' surname, but I still find it a bit weird.)
And 'hearing aids for children' (which are a real thing because there are children with hearing problems) would be Kinder-Hörgeräte, not Kind-Hörgeräte as on the shop sign. Indeed, this shop name never struck me as odd (Kind Hörgeräte is a large chain that has shops in many German towns).
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As someone who loves the first three Buffy seasons, all I can say is, RIP: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... ire-slayer
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How likely is it that alcohol consumption is positively correlated with HDI because it incapacitates addictive personalities who would otherwise be a serious threat to reckon with? https://youtu.be/07cVD3Em164
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Post by Travis B. »

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2026 2:38 am How likely is it that alcohol consumption is positively correlated with HDI because it incapacitates addictive personalities who would otherwise be a serious threat to reckon with? https://youtu.be/07cVD3Em164
If that were true, one would have expected a relative increase in the HDI of the post-Soviet states immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union as alcohol consumption skyrocketed there followed later by a relative fall in HDI as alcohol consumption was brought under control...
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Post by alice »

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2026 11:20 am As someone who loves the first three Buffy seasons, all I can say is, RIP: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... ire-slayer
Seconded. He's not the first actor from Buffy we've lost recently, either. Is this a case of supernatural chickens coming home to roost?
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Post by Torco »

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2026 11:31 am
rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2026 2:38 am How likely is it that alcohol consumption is positively correlated with HDI because it incapacitates addictive personalities who would otherwise be a serious threat to reckon with? https://youtu.be/07cVD3Em164
If that were true, one would have expected a relative increase in the HDI of the post-Soviet states immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union as alcohol consumption skyrocketed there followed later by a relative fall in HDI as alcohol consumption was brought under control...
yup. there are also a lot of simpler explanations for the correlation: mostly that alcohol costs money, but also that high HDI countries keep better statistics on the subject. i'm sure haiti and peru have a lot more unmeasured production and consumption of booze than, say, finland.

alcohol doesn't really incapacitate people who consume a lot of it. i don't know but i'd bet most alcoholics remain functional for a long time, maybe for their entire lives
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