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Supergrunch

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  1. Supergrunch
    A meme in it's original sense (from The Selfish Gene) is more like an idea of sorts, that is capable of transferring from one mind to another, but in the modern internet 4chan sense the term refers basically to a kind of in-joke that spreads through the internet. So 4chan memes are a proper subset of traditional memes I suppose, but anyhoo. "Could of" isn't a meme but a variant way of writing "could've," that was initially just misinterpretation of the contraction, but is becoming so widespread that it arguably isn't really an error any more, but it still annoys lots of people when you use it. And of course it's still wrong when typing in standard written English. I guess people here generally use a pretty informal version of that, unless you're ReZ or something.
  2. Supergrunch
    Happy birthday peoples.
  3. Supergrunch
    Very big fan of these three, especially the third. You have to read it multiple times to get a proper impression of it, but it's really good the first time all the same. Atonement starts out utterly brilliant, and tails off a bit as it goes on, but is still very much worthwhile. And Wind up Bird is just... insane, but in a good way.
  4. Supergrunch
    Happy b-dayness!
  5. Supergrunch
    You aren't, not on my J700 anyway. Just press sideways on the text melody selection screen and you can go to sound clips you've downloaded to the phone and recordings and so on.
  6. Supergrunch
    Happy birthday!
  7. Supergrunch
    Not too surprising, things get locked by mistake sometimes. It's an easy problem to resolve.
  8. Supergrunch
    It says Gameboy and has a picture of a DS... fail. I've only ever had 3 phones - Nokia 3210, Motorola W220, and Samsung J700.
  9. Supergrunch
    Not entirely, the last two (out of four) are switched round. Hmm, looking forward to relaxing once they're over now.
  10. Supergrunch
    And it's done, went okay. Next hardest is tomorrow morning though...
  11. Supergrunch
    Hmm, first (and probably hardest) one tomorrow afternoon. Feeling the nerves a bit now.
  12. Supergrunch
    That's the one I saw when I watched the episode again - I noticed that too, it was "I'll be there with bells on!" for something that was more like "I'll definitely make it!" I'm a fan of creative translation though, as long as it's not too out of hand. :p
  13. Supergrunch
    Kyon is just as hard, to be honest. He always uses crazily complex grammatical constructions along with sly references to all sorts of obscure things. Was a nice episode, anyway. Though much more so when not RAW.
  14. Supergrunch
    HAppy birthday dude.
  15. Supergrunch
    I suppose another point here is that there's a distinction between the accents of people speaking English as a second language, and those who have it as a native language. Native accents arguably serve as a kind of identity definer, and are extremely complex, whereas the accents of non-native speakers are probably going to be approximations of a mixture of native accents. And they'll contain some elements that aren't in any native accents, which may or may not result from the speaker's own native language. (With respect to the colour thing? Well, it's arguable either way, but I was implying that colour is nothing implicit in the physical world, but merely categories our brain assigns to objects in the visual field, and so in the sense of human interpretation, no one "colour" is any more a colour than any other.)
  16. Supergrunch
    Well, the colour of an object is determined by the frequencies of light that it absorbs - everything not absorbed is reflected, and this is what you actually see. So, for instance, something appearing red in fact absorbs all frequencies of light but those which we percieve as red, and so on. Things appearing black absorb all visible frequencies, and things appearing white reflect all visible frequencies. But our brain still assigns a "colour" to them - black is only really an absence of colour if we define colour in terms of light itself. Anyhoo, this is getting far too far away from the topic.
  17. Supergrunch
    Meaning, er, white eyes? White's still a colour... :p Well, I wasn't necessarily talking about humans - animals like rabbits and guinea pigs which we pure-breed albino lines of usually have red eyes. And some albino humans also have red eyes, although the greater amount of (colourless) pigment present usually means they come out as pale blue or white, simply because it blocks light passing through. Either way, the point stands as these are all actual colours of eyes. The only way your eyes can have no colour whatsoever is if you don't have eyes, the equivalent of not speaking, which of course makes the question of accent meaningless. [/needless diversion to defend my analogy]
  18. Supergrunch
    Then your eye is red, unless you also have no blood. This is why albinos have red eyes. To make things more clear for people: Crystal's Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics defines accent as "the cumulative auditory effect of those features of pronunciation which identify where a person is from, regionally or socially," while Matthews' Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics defines it as "a variety of speech differing phonetically from other varieties." Note that with either definition, there's no way you can't have an accent - even if your accent sounds nondescript to you, it will have specific features that are different to those of other accents, and so is an accent in itself.
  19. Supergrunch
    There's a big difference between having an unmarked accent, and having no accent at all. The first is perfectly possible, the second is as meaningless as not having an eye colour.
  20. Supergrunch
    Er, yep the Japanese is fine, and native as far as I can tell. Vowel devoicing isn't present in all dialects, and even in dialects that do have it, it doesn't necessarily apply in 100% of relevant environments. If you really think nobody says "desu," try watching Rozen Maiden, or generally listening to anyone with a Kansai dialect. Edit: Does anyone even says "desu" in the advert? Didn't notice it, but I may have missed an instance.
  21. Supergrunch
    Oh wow, I forgot how hard the Japanese in Haruhi is...
  22. Supergrunch
    So me and my friends intend to do a mock Come Dine With Me in a couple of weeks or so. I shall try and post pictures of my concoctions at least.
  23. Supergrunch
    Last time a psychic tried to read me they mistakenly thought I was going out with the friend I was with, then when I told them I was doing linguistics they said it didn't suit me. Heh, you have to love it when cold reading fails.
  24. Supergrunch
    I like all accents really. Yours is an interesting mix of stuff actually. Yes you do, some form of received pronunciation I think. Everyone has an accent.
  25. Supergrunch
    A hole has worn all the way through the sole of my right shoe, causing my socks to also get holes in the same place. And I don't have the time/ability/money to buy new shoes for another couple of weeks. Good day other than that, yay for how interesting Japanese phonology is.
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