Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 April 6

= April 6 =

Scannable / Scanable
Is a text you can easily scan through scannable or scanable? Thanks from Germany. --212.227.35.78 (talk) 09:05, 6 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The first one, scannable. Scanable would be the word derived from the verb "to scane", if such a word existed.  --    Jack of Oz   [your turn]  09:10, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Somehow not surprisingly, "scanable" turns up in many entries in Google, but Google also asks, "Do you mean scannable? [Hint, Hint]" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:48, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * It's a very common occurrence for people to just tack on -ence or -ance to the verb, without stopping to think about pronunciation and what effect that has. Maybe the pronunciation of the highlighted word has changed for some people, and it now starts off with what sounds exactly like occur.  But the standard pronunciation is a homophone of "a currents" (where the 'a' is not stressed), and must therefore take a double-r, hence -ence is not sufficient.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  09:05, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you! --212.227.35.78 (talk) 09:14, 6 April 2011 (UTC)


 * What to do with the end of words when appending suffices isn't consistant within English. Usually, the last letter is doubled if the preceding syllable has a short vowel, especially when there is ambiguity due to a "silent-e" modified word which is spelled similarly.  Thus the words "caned" and "canned" are derived from "cane" and "can" respectively.  There are some times when a short vowel does NOT cause the last letter to double, however, such as words that commonly end in "x", such as tax (taxed, but not taxxed), or words that already end in consonantal strings (like best/bested).  Sometimes these conventions can cause ambiguities, for example how do you make a distinction between the present participle of the verbs "to sing" and "to singe".  Common practice in that case is to retain the "e" on singe to create "singeing", but that violates the "drop the silent-e" convention usually present in english.  Then compare "singeing" to "cringing".  Cringing comes from the root "to cringe", and so if we obey the rules from "singeing" should keep the "e", but it does not.  Compare that to the word "Baste", which takes the participle "Basting" without the "e".  And then compare "baste" and "basting" to "last" and "lasting" (but not "lastting").  Just on these examples, we get the following rules:
 * For words with short vowels, double the last letter,
 * Unless the word ends in a consonant cluster or an x
 * For words with long vowels, do not double the last letter, and drop any silent e's
 * unless the word ends in the cluster "nge" then keep the e
 * Except in "cringe" where it is dropped for some reason.
 * Even so, for non-native speakers, there's the problem with how to deal with word pairs like "basting" and "lasting" and knowing intuitively the difference in vowel sounds. But these sorts of convoluted rules are true for ANY natural language, not just English.  Whats amazing is that native speakers of a language have little trouble assimilating all the rules and exceptions without much trouble.  -- Jayron  32  15:41, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Descriptivism compels me to note that ageing and eyeing are common, though I see no reason not to write aging and eying. —Tamfang (talk) 19:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Or the difference between "one who lies down" and "one who tells untruths." A lier vs. a liar.  They both should follow the convention of "person who does X is an Xer", but the dishonest person has a weird spelling.  They are pronounced the same, so that makes liar an outlier (haha) orthographically.  -- Jayron  32  19:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not so sure about your -nge- rule, Jayron. Another exception is lunging, not lungeing.  And ranging.
 * I've previously congratulated you on the consistency with which you spell consistent as consistant, and I do so again. :)  Seriously, that's one of those cases where there's no logical explanation, and you just have to remember, but memory has its limits, which differ for everyone.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:37, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I have a problem where I keep imagining that there is one spelling of consistency for the meaning "viscosity", and another for the meaning "steadfastness", kind of like the difference between discreet and discrete. I constantly have to look up "consistancy" to remind myself it doesn't exist. 81.131.0.64 (talk) 12:29, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
 * You have my sympathies. I have the same problem with neice/niece.  They both look wrong to me, and I always choose the real wrong one (whatever the wrong one is; I've looked it up countless times, but I still can't get it right).  After all, we have resistance, so consistancy and insistance and persistance and subsistance and existance all look like legit spellings.  But they're not: resistance seems to be the odd man out.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  12:55, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Malapropism or what?
Clifford Olson: "And then I had annual sex with her." "Once a year?" "No. Annual. From behind." "Oh. But she was dead!" "No, no. She was just unconscientious." About his many experiences, Olson said, "I've got enough antidotes to fill five or six books - enough for a trilogy." He was determined not to be an "escape goat" no matter what the "migrating facts." [Hare, Without Conscience] Kittybrewster  &#9742;  11:52, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * According to the malapropism article, some of these may be Eggcorns. That is, since the new sentance still makes sense (for example, having annual sex is still a reasonable thing someone may say).  However, the distinction is probably very minor, and if you called all of these malapropisms, you'd probably be fine.  -- Jayron  32  12:10, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * One may also apply the term "mondegreen"; though mondegreen is usually an error on the hearer's end, not the speakers. That is, the speaker uses the correct term, but the hearer misinterprets what they say.  -- Jayron  32  12:12, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * So ... they're not mondegreens, then. If this person misheard all these words when he was first exposed to them, then they'd have been mondegreens at that point.  But if he now regularly uses these wrong words in the belief they're the correct words, that is no longer a mondegreen but a malapropism.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  12:22, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Holy Moly, the Norm Crosby of serial killers. Crosby does it on purpose, for laughs. Is there any indication that the serial killer is saying this stuff on purpose? Intentional or not, though, "malapropism" would seem to be the correct term. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:30, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * A guy at work who is not a native English speaker, told me he went to the Ear/Nose/Throat doctor to have his sarcophagus checked. And a few years back, because of a cycling accident, had to have his knee cartridge replaced! Sandman30s (talk) 12:07, 8 April 2011 (UTC)