Comment Re:Simple explanation (Score 1) 201
So yeah, I realize that, despite having a bachelor's in English, I don't know much about it outside of its American and British dialects.
Congratulations for having surprised the old, blasé dog that I am.
Chez Henri" is pronounced "Shay Enri", which would normally be correct for each word but, when taken together it should be pronounced more like a single word "ShayzEnri"
It annoys you because you're not familiar with what the letter h actually does in French. Sometimes — remember, this is French, so you'll always have a nice list of exceptions to cram into your brain —, words that begin with an h (1) will mean that there is a glottal stop, word initially.
Try comparing the phrases "sept amis" and "sept héros" and you'll understand what I'm talking about. It's impossible for a native speaker to pronounce the latter "saitero" No, sir, they'll always say "sait'ero".(2)
That weird question mark-looking symbol is the glottal stop I mentioned above. Basically, you block the air going through your throat with your glottis, generating what is called a plosion in linguistics.
If that is still obscure, try comparing with how some English speakers pronounce the word "mutton." While most will say
I know... French is like, impossible to learn for foreigners. Good thin I'm a native speaker.
(1) Quite funny, huh? "An h..." no one would ever want to say "a h."
(2) Because I can't seem to make IPA work in the comments, Ichose to represent the glottal stop with an apostrophe.
From what I've seen France really sucks at integrating immigrants.
You're totally right there. For a long time, we have been completely ignoring migration waves.
By that, I mean that no measures were taken for migrants to be fully integrated in society. It's fine not to take care of integration while immigration is low, but when it happens en masse, you have to regulate. Instead, we decided that it was okay to let people enter our country without much regulation, which led to the creation of ghettos.
Basically, we're reaping what we once sowed.
"While gaming"....sigh. Who cares.
If you don't care, you shouldn't be trying to make a point.
If you read the quote in the grandparent post, you'll see that the wording makes you think the i3 matches the A4's power consumption while in games. Perhaps you're as good in English as you are in math.
amd cant compete on power consumption
... and that's exactly why AMD's CPU's power consumption in this article is lower. Now tell me, were you always this bad at math, or did it occur after an accident?
What's more, the Core-i3 matches the A4-5000 in power efficiency while its HD 4000 graphics completely outpace the APU.
Sure. Unless you're using the damn CPU at full speed.
What I'd be more interested to know though, is how expensive A4 5000 CPUs are. Do they cost as much as the Core i3 3271u?
What defined set of rules? English does not have any agency claiming to be the definitive controlling authority. The rules, such as they are are descriptive, not prescriptive and are compiled by many separate organisations. They do not always agree.
Well, that's what science is about, isn't it? It's always something like theory A, which seems to be right at first. Then someone comes up with theory B, that invalidates theory. After that, yet another guy finds out that his theory, B+, only partially invalidates B, and validates some of the points that theory A made in the beginning, but only in a different referential. And the quest for the best model goes on... Well, I'm sure you got the point already: it's an ongoing process, and we will never come up with something perfect.
I think we do need a scientific approach to understand what should and shouldn't be linguistically speaking. That's why I was talking about a set of rules in my previous post. Of course, we have to alleviate big agencies à la French academy — they come up with real shitty stuff at times.
But anyway, you already agree on needing rules while not interfering usage too much, so I don't need to go on.
My main gripe with "virii" is that it's a bad example. Supporting that word means adding complexity to the language. This is a definite case of good cause (simplifying/modernizing language), wrong argument (example is actually an exception).
P.S.: I think people who whine about split infinitives don't know that English is a Germanic language. That or they're delusional, infatuated elitists.
Apple's philosophy forces people like me to buy new hardware to stay up-to-date (since 10.6, 10.7 won't run on my too-slow Mac).
Or you can install a Linux distro on said machine. (Not agreeing with Apple's philosophy here; just stating a fact.)
Always look over your shoulder because everyone is watching and plotting against you.