"Sweep of the Blade (Innkeeper Chronicles)" by Ilona Andrews
https://www.amazon.com/Sweep-Blade-Innkeeper-Chronicles-Andrews/dp/108014398X/

Book number four of a six book paranormal fantasy romance science
fiction series. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on
demand) illustrated (kinda) trade paperback published in 2019 by the
author that I bought new on Amazon recently. Note that “Ilona Andrews”
is the pseudonym for a husband and wife writing team. And yes, this is
science fiction, there are spaceships, teleportation devices, beam
weapons, and space stations.

Dina Demille is an innkeeper in Red Deer, Texas. Only her Victorian inn
is not like a typical bed and breakfast, it is an intelligent magical
haven named Gertrude Hunt for aliens coming to Earth or using Earth as a
way station. Dina does have a permanent guest, a retired Galactic
aristocrat named Caldenia who is hiding from several bounty hunters, who
paid for permanent room and board.

There are many inns like the Gertrude Hunt on Earth, that is because
Earth has been designated as Neutral Ground for the various Galactic
races, many of whom don't get along. That's why Caldenia is safe within
the confines of Gertrude Hunt, the inn has many powerful weapons to
protect itself and guests. Several of the bounty hunters are still
chasing Caldenia for the massive bounty and have taken on the Gertrude
Hunt Inn to their dismay.

Dina rescued her sister Maud who had followed her exiled husband to the
closed planet Karhari being used as a penal colony with their daughter.
Any space ship shuttle landing on the closed planet without permission
would be shot down. And the Holy Anocracy (represented by House Krahr,
the space vampires) does not give landing permission to any one outside
their clan. So Dina got Arland, the Marshal of the House Krahr who owed
her a favor, to take her to the planet and help rescue her sister.

Arland is an unmarried man and Maud is a widowed woman with a half
vampire half human daughter. And Maud is a fighter who can hold her own
with any of the space vampires. So Arland invites her and her daughter
home to his planet to meet his family. His family occupies the entire
planet...

The authors have a website at:
https://www.ilona-andrews.com

My rating: 6 out of 5 stars (yup, I don't need a second read for this one)
Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (12,942 reviews)

Lynn

On Sunday, 15 October 2023 at 03:59:28 UTC+1, Lynn McGuire wrote:

> Dina Demille is an innkeeper in Red Deer, Texas. Only her Victorian inn
> is not like a typical bed and breakfast, it is an intelligent magical
> haven named Gertrude Hunt for aliens coming to Earth or using Earth as a
> way station. Dina does have a permanent guest, a retired Galactic
> aristocrat named Caldenia who is hiding from several bounty hunters,

"and"

> who paid for permanent room and board.

I'm assuming that the bounty hunters are not
guests and are not paying for Caldenia's room,
although it would mean that they know where
Caldenia is. And that Caldenia is not quite
successfully hiding.

With the discussion of phonics, I was already
thinking lately that the English language needs
redesigning - though I wouldn't enjoy that.
Perhaps we could remove gendered pronouns;
I don't have one for Caldenia, but that's initially
from an absence of information. It's SFF, maybe
they have several.

For that matter, how they retire from being an
aristocrat is slightly obscure, although the real
world has many people who are ethnic aristocrats
but who aren't living the lifestyle, often for lack
of money. Or is Cardenia still an aristocrat but
retired from being, say, a restaurant critic?

Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote:
>With the discussion of phonics, I was already
>thinking lately that the English language needs
>redesigning - though I wouldn't enjoy that.

I know! We could use Latin grammar rules! That would be consistent and
standard!
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 10/15/2023 3:35 AM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>
> With the discussion of phonics, I was already
> thinking lately that the English language needs
> redesigning - though I wouldn't enjoy that.
> Perhaps we could remove gendered pronouns;

Changing of the English Language

Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the
European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways of
improving efficiency in communications between Government departments.

European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is
unnecessarily difficult - for example, cough, plough, rough, through
and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes
to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be
administered by a committee staff at top level by participating
nations.

In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's'
instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would
resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k'
sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up
konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be
made with one less letter.

There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it kould be
announsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'.
This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty per sent shorter in
print.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are
possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters
which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is
disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ
as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins
the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as
replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken
on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze
unesesary 'o kould be dropd from words kontaining 'ou'. Similar
arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli
sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls,
difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems
of the Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On 10/15/2023 5:35 AM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
> On Sunday, 15 October 2023 at 03:59:28 UTC+1, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>
>> Dina Demille is an innkeeper in Red Deer, Texas. Only her Victorian inn
>> is not like a typical bed and breakfast, it is an intelligent magical
>> haven named Gertrude Hunt for aliens coming to Earth or using Earth as a
>> way station. Dina does have a permanent guest, a retired Galactic
>> aristocrat named Caldenia who is hiding from several bounty hunters,
>
> "and"
>
>> who paid for permanent room and board.
>
> I'm assuming that the bounty hunters are not
> guests and are not paying for Caldenia's room,
> although it would mean that they know where
> Caldenia is. And that Caldenia is not quite
> successfully hiding.
>
> With the discussion of phonics, I was already
> thinking lately that the English language needs
> redesigning - though I wouldn't enjoy that.
> Perhaps we could remove gendered pronouns;
> I don't have one for Caldenia, but that's initially
> from an absence of information. It's SFF, maybe
> they have several.
>
> For that matter, how they retire from being an
> aristocrat is slightly obscure, although the real
> world has many people who are ethnic aristocrats
> but who aren't living the lifestyle, often for lack
> of money. Or is Cardenia still an aristocrat but
> retired from being, say, a restaurant critic?

Sigh. I read and reread it out loud and still miss stuff.

Caldenia is the deposed leader of ???, probably one of the rampaging
hordes of the galaxy, that kept herself in power by poisoning everyone
that threatened her. She is still enamored of her poisons and keeps a
sample collection to date. Along with a few antidotes.

Caldenia introduces herself to one of her fellow inn guests by "I
poisoned your father, how is he doing ?".

Lynn

In article <51928f43-3365-4718-84bb-31d9bd4f7f40n@googlegroups.com>,
Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote:
>On Sunday, 15 October 2023 at 03:59:28 UTC+1, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>
>> Dina Demille is an innkeeper in Red Deer, Texas. Only her Victorian inn
>> is not like a typical bed and breakfast, it is an intelligent magical
>> haven named Gertrude Hunt for aliens coming to Earth or using Earth as a
>> way station. Dina does have a permanent guest, a retired Galactic
>> aristocrat named Caldenia who is hiding from several bounty hunters,
>
>"and"
>
>> who paid for permanent room and board.
>
>I'm assuming that the bounty hunters are not
>guests and are not paying for Caldenia's room,
>although it would mean that they know where
>Caldenia is. And that Caldenia is not quite
>successfully hiding.

She's not hidden, from bounty-hunters (or others), just unavailable.

>
>With the discussion of phonics, I was already
>thinking lately that the English language needs
>redesigning - though I wouldn't enjoy that.
>Perhaps we could remove gendered pronouns;
>I don't have one for Caldenia, but that's initially
>from an absence of information. It's SFF, maybe
>they have several.

She's definitely female.

>
>For that matter, how they retire from being an
>aristocrat is slightly obscure, although the real
>world has many people who are ethnic aristocrats
>but who aren't living the lifestyle, often for lack
>of money. Or is Cardenia still an aristocrat but
>retired from being, say, a restaurant critic?

Let's just say that her situation is made a lot more clear in the most
recent book.
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

In article <ugh5tv$jthj$1@dont-email.me>,
Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
>On 10/15/2023 3:35 AM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>>
>> With the discussion of phonics, I was already
>> thinking lately that the English language needs
>> redesigning - though I wouldn't enjoy that.
>> Perhaps we could remove gendered pronouns;
>
>Changing of the English Language
>
>
>Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the
>European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways of
>improving efficiency in communications between Government departments.
>
>European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is
>unnecessarily difficult - for example, cough, plough, rough, through
>and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes
>to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be
>administered by a committee staff at top level by participating
>nations.
>
>In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's'
>instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would
>resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k'
>sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up
>konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be
>made with one less letter.
>
>There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it kould be
>announsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'.
>This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty per sent shorter in
>print.
>
>In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
>expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are
>possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters
>which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.
>
>We would al agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is
>disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ
>as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins
>the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as
>replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken
>on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze
>unesesary 'o kould be dropd from words kontaining 'ou'. Similar
>arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
>
>Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli
>sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls,
>difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems
>of the Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.
>
>--
>I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
>dirty old man.
>

[Hal Heydt]
Good old "Maihem in ce Klasrum."

On Sunday, October 15, 2023 at 1:02:01 PM UTC-4, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
> On 10/15/2023 3:35 AM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
> >
> > With the discussion of phonics, I was already
> > thinking lately that the English language needs
> > redesigning - though I wouldn't enjoy that.
> > Perhaps we could remove gendered pronouns;
> Changing of the English Language
>
>
> Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the
> European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways of
> improving efficiency in communications between Government departments.
>
> European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is
> unnecessarily difficult - for example, cough, plough, rough, through
> and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes
> to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be
> administered by a committee staff at top level by participating
> nations.
>
> In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's'
> instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would
> resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k'
> sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up
> konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be
> made with one less letter.
>
> There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it kould be
> announsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'.
> This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty per sent shorter in
> print.
>
> In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
> expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are
> possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters
> which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.
>
> We would al agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is
> disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ
> as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins
> the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as
> replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken
> on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze
> unesesary 'o kould be dropd from words kontaining 'ou'. Similar
> arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
>
> Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli
> sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls,
> difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems
> of the Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.
>
Doesn't phonetic English go a long, long way back? I read a version of the "Canterbury Tales" with what appeared to be the original spelling, and it was incomprehensible if I just looked at it. If I sounded out the words, I could understand it quite easily.

John

On 2023-10-16, John Halpenny <j.halpenny@rogers.com> wrote:

> Doesn't phonetic English go a long, long way back?

It's the whole point of an alphabetic writing system. You spell
out the sounds of the language one by one.

Modern English spelling was codified in the late Middle English
period and represents Middle English pronunciation reasonably well.
However, languages change, sounds shift, and despite what you may
have heard in linguistics 101 about sound changes being exceptionless,
the reality is far more messy. "Mood", "stood", "blood" are spelled
alike because they rhymed at the time. Fast forward more than half
a millennium, and now they no longer do.

If the spelling isn't reformed regularly, it will fall behind and
become increasingly disconnected from the spoken language. English
is the poster child of this for languages written in the Latin
script; other languages saddled with a historic orthography include
Thai and Tibetan, IIRC.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On 10/16/2023 10:37 AM, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> On 2023-10-16, John Halpenny <j.halpenny@rogers.com> wrote:
>
>> Doesn't phonetic English go a long, long way back?
>
> It's the whole point of an alphabetic writing system. You spell
> out the sounds of the language one by one.
>
> Modern English spelling was codified in the late Middle English
> period and represents Middle English pronunciation reasonably well.
> However, languages change, sounds shift, and despite what you may
> have heard in linguistics 101 about sound changes being exceptionless,
> the reality is far more messy. "Mood", "stood", "blood" are spelled
> alike because they rhymed at the time. Fast forward more than half
> a millennium, and now they no longer do.
>
> If the spelling isn't reformed regularly, it will fall behind and
> become increasingly disconnected from the spoken language. English
> is the poster child of this for languages written in the Latin
> script; other languages saddled with a historic orthography include
> Thai and Tibetan, IIRC.
>
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow
words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways
to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -
James Nicoll

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On 16/10/2023 12.37, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> On 2023-10-16, John Halpenny <j.halpenny@rogers.com> wrote:
>
>> Doesn't phonetic English go a long, long way back?
>
> It's the whole point of an alphabetic writing system. You spell
> out the sounds of the language one by one.
>
> Modern English spelling was codified in the late Middle English
> period and represents Middle English pronunciation reasonably well.
> However, languages change, sounds shift, and despite what you may
> have heard in linguistics 101 about sound changes being exceptionless,
> the reality is far more messy. "Mood", "stood", "blood" are spelled
> alike because they rhymed at the time. Fast forward more than half
> a millennium, and now they no longer do.
>
> If the spelling isn't reformed regularly, it will fall behind and
> become increasingly disconnected from the spoken language.

I seem to recall that in Frankowski's "Crosstime Engineer" books, he
(well, technically it was Conrad Stargard) made the claim that Polish
is spelled exactly the way that it is pronounced; Poles never need to
look up a word to find its spelling.

It sounded bogus to me at the time; can anybody here show otherwise?

--
Michael F. Stemper
This email is to be read by its intended recipient only. Any other party
reading is required by the EULA to send me $500.00.

On Monday, October 16, 2023 at 4:35:48 PM UTC-4, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> On 16/10/2023 12.37, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> > On 2023-10-16, John Halpenny <j.hal...@rogers.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Doesn't phonetic English go a long, long way back?
> >
> > It's the whole point of an alphabetic writing system. You spell
> > out the sounds of the language one by one.
> >
> > Modern English spelling was codified in the late Middle English
> > period and represents Middle English pronunciation reasonably well.
> > However, languages change, sounds shift, and despite what you may
> > have heard in linguistics 101 about sound changes being exceptionless,
> > the reality is far more messy. "Mood", "stood", "blood" are spelled
> > alike because they rhymed at the time. Fast forward more than half
> > a millennium, and now they no longer do.
> >
> > If the spelling isn't reformed regularly, it will fall behind and
> > become increasingly disconnected from the spoken language.
> I seem to recall that in Frankowski's "Crosstime Engineer" books, he
> (well, technically it was Conrad Stargard) made the claim that Polish
> is spelled exactly the way that it is pronounced; Poles never need to
> look up a word to find its spelling.
>
> It sounded bogus to me at the time; can anybody here show otherwise?

Some native speakers of almost every language I have studied have told
me obvious untruths (1,2,3) about their language, in particular that, unlike
English, it is spelled perfectly phonetically.

If we are to take the number of spelling mistakes I made in exams as data,
German is phonetic, Latin less so, French is almost as bad, or perhaps
as bad, as English.

Polish, alas, I never got around to.

(1) As in the native speaker who told me there are no double letters in
Italian. I refrained from saying that Mussolini would have something
to say about that. Too soon. I did not know enough Italian at the
time to come up with an example which was not a proper noun.

(2) Or the native speaker who told me that in his language all words end
in a vowel. I held up the text we were using - "Conversazioni in Italiano"..

(3) I held similar incorrect ideas about English until corrected. Studying
other languages helped me understand my own. Plus the other options
were music, art, or shop, at all of which I was hopeless.

William Hyde

On 2023-10-16, Michael F. Stemper <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:

> I seem to recall that in Frankowski's "Crosstime Engineer" books, he
> (well, technically it was Conrad Stargard) made the claim that Polish
> is spelled exactly the way that it is pronounced; Poles never need to
> look up a word to find its spelling.
>
> It sounded bogus to me at the time; can anybody here show otherwise?

Let's call it embellished rather than bogus.

In the opposite direction it's close enough to true. Segmentation
issues aside[1], you can pronounce any word from its spelling.

However, there are a number of ambiguities where the same sound can
be spelled in different ways:
- u ~ ó
- sz ~ rz, ż ~ rz
- devoicing of word-final obstruents: -z ~ -s, etc.
e.g., you need to know that bez is not spelled *bes
- presumably ą ~ on/om/o, ę ~ en/em/e

Some but not all of this is deducible by probing...
- inflected forms: The city of Łódź might as well be spelled *Łuć,
but the genitive Łodzi can set you straight.
- related words: Dobrze "well" (adverb) is clearly connected with
dobry "good" (adjective), so it's dobrze and not *dobże.

[1] How do you pronounce <th> in English? Okay, how about "boathouse"?
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On Monday, October 16, 2023 at 6:30:09 PM UTC-4, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> On 2023-10-16, Michael F. Stemper <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I seem to recall that in Frankowski's "Crosstime Engineer" books, he
> > (well, technically it was Conrad Stargard) made the claim that Polish
> > is spelled exactly the way that it is pronounced; Poles never need to
> > look up a word to find its spelling.
> >
> > It sounded bogus to me at the time; can anybody here show otherwise?
> Let's call it embellished rather than bogus.
>
> In the opposite direction it's close enough to true. Segmentation
> issues aside[1], you can pronounce any word from its spelling.
>
> However, there are a number of ambiguities where the same sound can
> be spelled in different ways:
> - u ~ ó
> - sz ~ rz, ż ~ rz
> - devoicing of word-final obstruents: -z ~ -s, etc.
> e.g., you need to know that bez is not spelled *bes
> - presumably ą ~ on/om/o, ę ~ en/em/e
>
> Some but not all of this is deducible by probing...
> - inflected forms: The city of Łódź might as well be spelled *Łuć,
> but the genitive Łodzi can set you straight.
> - related words: Dobrze "well" (adverb) is clearly connected with
> dobry "good" (adjective), so it's dobrze and not *dobże.
>
>
> [1] How do you pronounce <th> in English? Okay, how about "boathouse"?
> --
> Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de

I've heard a claim that there are no spelling bees in Italy, since the spelling
of any given word is obvious.

Pt

On 10/16/2023 2:38 PM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
> On 10/16/2023 10:37 AM, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
>> On 2023-10-16, John Halpenny <j.halpenny@rogers.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Doesn't phonetic English go a long, long way back?
>>
>> It's the whole point of an alphabetic writing system.  You spell
>> out the sounds of the language one by one.
>>
>> Modern English spelling was codified in the late Middle English
>> period and represents Middle English pronunciation reasonably well.
>> However, languages change, sounds shift, and despite what you may
>> have heard in linguistics 101 about sound changes being exceptionless,
>> the reality is far more messy.  "Mood", "stood", "blood" are spelled
>> alike because they rhymed at the time.  Fast forward more than half
>> a millennium, and now they no longer do.
>>
>> If the spelling isn't reformed regularly, it will fall behind and
>> become increasingly disconnected from the spoken language.  English
>> is the poster child of this for languages written in the Latin
>> script; other languages saddled with a historic orthography include
>> Thai and Tibetan, IIRC.
>>
> "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
> English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow
> words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways
> to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -
> James Nicoll

Heh.

Lynn

On 2023-10-17, pete...@gmail.com <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've heard a claim that there are no spelling bees in Italy,

Among languages that use the Latin script, public spelling competitions
seem to be mostly an English and French thing, as you would expect.

> since the spelling of any given word is obvious.

I think this is largely true. Apart from the silent h- for a handful
of extremely common verb forms (ho, hai, ha, hanno) I can't think
of any systematic ambiguities in the direction of pronunciation to
spelling. Oh, right, there are also a few silent diacritics (là, lì).

Like other languages in the Latin script, Italian has some unassimilated
loanwords ("hockey") that don't conform to the native letter-sound
correspondence. Also, the orthography represents the standard
language, which may differ from a speaker's idiolect, but that is
a universal problem.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote:
>Like other languages in the Latin script, Italian has some unassimilated
>loanwords ("hockey") that don't conform to the native letter-sound
>correspondence. Also, the orthography represents the standard
>language, which may differ from a speaker's idiolect, but that is
>a universal problem.

Italian is a relatively recent language. It was still just one of many
dialects in my great-grandfather's day, and my grandfather never really
learned standard Italian. So you would expect since the spelling was
standardized pretty recently and pretty aggressively that it might be
more consistent.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 10/15/2023 1:43 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> In article <51928f43-3365-4718-84bb-31d9bd4f7f40n@googlegroups.com>,
> Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote:
>> On Sunday, 15 October 2023 at 03:59:28 UTC+1, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>>
>>> Dina Demille is an innkeeper in Red Deer, Texas. Only her Victorian inn
>>> is not like a typical bed and breakfast, it is an intelligent magical
>>> haven named Gertrude Hunt for aliens coming to Earth or using Earth as a
>>> way station. Dina does have a permanent guest, a retired Galactic
>>> aristocrat named Caldenia who is hiding from several bounty hunters,
>>
>> "and"
>>
>>> who paid for permanent room and board.
>>
>> I'm assuming that the bounty hunters are not
>> guests and are not paying for Caldenia's room,
>> although it would mean that they know where
>> Caldenia is. And that Caldenia is not quite
>> successfully hiding.
>
> She's not hidden, from bounty-hunters (or others), just unavailable.
>
>>
>> With the discussion of phonics, I was already
>> thinking lately that the English language needs
>> redesigning - though I wouldn't enjoy that.
>> Perhaps we could remove gendered pronouns;
>> I don't have one for Caldenia, but that's initially
>>from an absence of information. It's SFF, maybe
>> they have several.
>
> She's definitely female.
>
>>
>> For that matter, how they retire from being an
>> aristocrat is slightly obscure, although the real
>> world has many people who are ethnic aristocrats
>> but who aren't living the lifestyle, often for lack
>> of money. Or is Cardenia still an aristocrat but
>> retired from being, say, a restaurant critic?
>
> Let's just say that her situation is made a lot more clear in the most
> recent book.

Female, human ancestors, human variant, not born on Earth. Gene editing
will be common in the future.

Lynn

On 18 Oct 2023 20:16:55 -0000, kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

>Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote:
>>Like other languages in the Latin script, Italian has some unassimilated
>>loanwords ("hockey") that don't conform to the native letter-sound
>>correspondence. Also, the orthography represents the standard
>>language, which may differ from a speaker's idiolect, but that is
>>a universal problem.
>
>Italian is a relatively recent language. It was still just one of many
>dialects in my great-grandfather's day, and my grandfather never really
>learned standard Italian. So you would expect since the spelling was
>standardized pretty recently and pretty aggressively that it might be
>more consistent.

When I finally managed to see (stream) Argento's /The Five Days of
Milan/ (which is a historical film set, I think, in the unification of
Italy period), the subtitles frequently indicated the dialect being
used by the characters. I'm not sure why; perhaps it was to explain
why they didn't always understand each other very well.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

On 18 Oct 2023 20:16:55 -0000, kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

>Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote:
>>Like other languages in the Latin script, Italian has some unassimilated
>>loanwords ("hockey") that don't conform to the native letter-sound
>>correspondence. Also, the orthography represents the standard
>>language, which may differ from a speaker's idiolect, but that is
>>a universal problem.
>
>Italian is a relatively recent language. It was still just one of many
>dialects in my great-grandfather's day, and my grandfather never really
>learned standard Italian. So you would expect since the spelling was
>standardized pretty recently and pretty aggressively that it might be
>more consistent.

When I finally managed to see (stream) Argento's /The Five Days of
Milan/ (which is a historical film set, I think, in the unification of
Italy period), the subtitles frequently indicated the dialect being
used by the characters. I'm not sure why; perhaps it was to explain
why they didn't always understand each other very well.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

On Monday, October 16, 2023 at 8:47:00 PM UTC-4, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, October 16, 2023 at 6:30:09 PM UTC-4, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> > On 2023-10-16, Michael F. Stemper <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I seem to recall that in Frankowski's "Crosstime Engineer" books, he
> > > (well, technically it was Conrad Stargard) made the claim that Polish
> > > is spelled exactly the way that it is pronounced; Poles never need to
> > > look up a word to find its spelling.
> > >
> > > It sounded bogus to me at the time; can anybody here show otherwise?
> > Let's call it embellished rather than bogus.
> >
> > In the opposite direction it's close enough to true. Segmentation
> > issues aside[1], you can pronounce any word from its spelling.
> >
> > However, there are a number of ambiguities where the same sound can
> > be spelled in different ways:
> > - u ~ ó
> > - sz ~ rz, ż ~ rz
> > - devoicing of word-final obstruents: -z ~ -s, etc.
> > e.g., you need to know that bez is not spelled *bes
> > - presumably ą ~ on/om/o, ę ~ en/em/e
> >
> > Some but not all of this is deducible by probing...
> > - inflected forms: The city of Łódź might as well be spelled *Łuć,
> > but the genitive Łodzi can set you straight.
> > - related words: Dobrze "well" (adverb) is clearly connected with
> > dobry "good" (adjective), so it's dobrze and not *dobże.
> >
> >
> > [1] How do you pronounce <th> in English? Okay, how about "boathouse"?
> > --
> > Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de
>
> I've heard a claim that there are no spelling bees in Italy, since the spelling
> of any given word is obvious.
>

I've heard the same about Spanish, including from three of my teachers
and two of my friends. From what I can recall[1], except for a few loan
words here and there, there are very few places for spelling ambiguity.
- Tony
[1] Thanks to 5 years of school Spanish, followed by two years living
with native speakers, followed by 3 more years sharing an office with
a native speaker, I was decently fluent for a while - but sadly no more,
as that was all over 20 years ago.

Lynn McGuire wrote:

>"Sweep of the Blade (Innkeeper Chronicles)" by Ilona Andrews

>Dina rescued her sister Maud who had followed her exiled husband to
>the closed planet Karhari being used as a penal colony with their
>daughter. Any space ship shuttle landing on the closed planet without
>permission would be shot down. And the Holy Anocracy (represented by
>House Krahr, the space vampires) does not give landing permission to
>any one outside their clan. So Dina got Arland, the Marshal of the
>House Krahr who owed her a favor, to take her to the planet and help
>rescue her sister.
>
>Arland is an unmarried man and Maud is a widowed woman with a half
>vampire half human daughter. And Maud is a fighter who can hold her
>own with any of the space vampires. So Arland invites her and her
>daughter home to his planet to meet his family. His family occupies
>the entire planet...

>
>My rating: 6 out of 5 stars (yup, I don't need a second read for
>this one) Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (12,942 reviews)

I didn't like this one nearly as much as the others. The whole
semi-feudal/high-tech Vampire society was extremely uninteresting to me.

Brian

ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan wrote:

>In article <51928f43-3365-4718-84bb-31d9bd4f7f40n@googlegroups.com>,
>Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote:

>>For that matter, how they retire from being an
>>aristocrat is slightly obscure, although the real
>>world has many people who are ethnic aristocrats
>>but who aren't living the lifestyle, often for lack
>>of money. Or is Cardenia still an aristocrat but
>>retired from being, say, a restaurant critic?
>
>Let's just say that her situation is made a lot more clear in the most
>recent book.

Yeah, I was going to mention that. It's Sweep of the Heart - The
Bachelor: Interstellar Emporer.

Brian

On Sun, 15 Oct 2023 10:01:52 -0700, Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
| On 10/15/2023 3:35 AM, Robert Carnegie wrote:
|>
|> With the discussion of phonics, I was already
|> thinking lately that the English language needs
|> redesigning - though I wouldn't enjoy that.
|> Perhaps we could remove gendered pronouns;
| | Changing of the English Language
| |
| Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the
| European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways of
| improving efficiency in communications between Government departments.
| | European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is
| unnecessarily difficult - for example, cough, plough, rough, through
| and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes
| to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be
| administered by a committee staff at top level by participating
| nations.
| | In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's'
| instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would
| resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k'
| sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up
| konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be
| made with one less letter.
| | There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it kould be
| announsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'.
| This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty per sent shorter in
| print.
| | In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
| expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are
| possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters
| which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.
| | We would al agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag is
| disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ
| as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins
| the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as
| replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken
| on by 'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze
| unesesary 'o kould be dropd from words kontaining 'ou'. Similar
| arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
| | Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli
| sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls,
| difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems
| of the Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.

Looks like how the Jaegers talk in the Agatha Heterodyne, Girl Genius
universe.

--
Reverend Paul Colquhoun, ULC. http://andor.dropbear.id.au/
Asking for technical help in newsgroups? Read this first:
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#intro

On 2023-10-19, Tony Nance <tonynance17@gmail.com> wrote:

>> I've heard a claim that there are no spelling bees in Italy, since the spelling
>> of any given word is obvious.
>
> I've heard the same about Spanish, including from three of my teachers
> and two of my friends. From what I can recall[1], except for a few loan
> words here and there, there are very few places for spelling ambiguity.

Pfff.

All speakers:
* b ~ v
* silent h
* ge ~ je, gi ~ ji
* hi- ~ y- before vowel
* silent acute: se/sé, si/sí, el/él, ...

Pronunciation distinctions maintained only in some regional variants:
* ce ~ se, ci ~ si, z ~ s
* ll ~ y

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de