Please just stop

Hear, hear! No need to detract from an otherwise enlightening conversation.

I can do it. I think. Sort of like the God who wasn't there. The troll who wasn't there.

Ah, c'mon, don't be so entirely dismissive. Speculatively speaking, we can't entirely rule out that they might, just maybe, be there.
We just don't have the remotest shred of respectable evidence for their existence.
(Unlike the aforementioned turds, for example, they don't even squelch underfoot. And while there is a distinctive smell in the air, that can happen--even to the nicest people--and even at weddings.)
That alone entitles us to ignore them.
Their existence would require us to accept all kinds of novel foolishness. Ergo, the burden is entirely upon them to convince us to pay any attention to them.
Whoever "they" are...
And whatever it was that we were talking about.
Before that rude smell interrupted us.

Thank you, PZ. I really don't understand what people hope to accomplish by continuing to engage with these bizarro Elizas.

S, gss tht mns y wn't nswr hw y gt yr flthy lttl mtts n tht CRS nwslttr rtcl. Gsh, wndr why... Cldn't b tht y gt t thrgh lss thn hnst mns, cld t?

nd wldn't t b fnny f y wr brkng thr cpyrght rls by pstng t...

That is by far the most coherent post I've ever seen from Jinx. Bravo.

swivel-chair, they do it for the same reasons Steve Irwin does. "Croiky, that li'l bugger almost spit 'is poison in me eye! Ain't that a hoot!"

You know, as far as Jason is concerned, you could just disemvowel him all the time...

Just saying...

I can respect that. I mean, who wants to read posts from people you can't stand? Are you able to ban by IP? Might be worth looking into because this editing/deleting their posts will probably get tiring.

Petersen:

Do you think Jason should answer these questions about his religious beliefs that he refuses to answer?

"There is far too much attention being paid to a pair of obnoxious trolls in the comments. Ignore them."

With pleasure.

The point isn't that they disagree, with PZ or the rest of us.

The point isn't even that they are disagreeable, though that's also certainly true.

The point is that they're almost always excessively disagreeable without honestly attempting to make any other halfway worthwhile point.

I support just ignoring them. Free speech is important even in private forums. Please don't delete anything unless it is absolutely necessary.

Everyone ignore the trolls and they will go back under the bridge.

Uh, that is, whoever, hypothetically, we're talking about.

Or not.

Correct. I think M Petersen is an incredible dumb ass, but because he is just expressing his point of view, no matter how stupid it is, he isn't at risk of being banned. The two named trolls are just here to stir the pot and raise a stink and distract everyone from actually discussing anything of substance.

Interesting, your disemvowelling program doesn't recognize 'y' as a vowel... :-)

Do you think Jason should answer these questions about his religious beliefs that he refuses to answer?

I really couldn't say George. Everyone is entitled to their privacy. I guess you could extend PZ's point here to that situation. Just ignore him, or are you interested in what he has to say?

He/they will say that PZ's posters were not able to refute their claims and participate in discourse, so elected to simply ignore the (evolution) skeptics.

I think if it's on topic with valid references/links and argumentation, I'm going to have a very difficult time NOT CALLING OUT THEIR BULLSHIT.

That being said, very seldom it happens that one comes across valid references/links and argumentation from those people. They use dishonesty in liberal amounts.

they do it for the same reasons Steve Irwin does

Oh. Thanks, stogoe. That makes sense: it's for "sport". I actually thought people were hopelessly trying to reason with them.

Has the old vowel-rule I learned in school been latterly overruled: A, E, I, O, U, and "sometimes" Y and W?

Isn't "y" in "lying" a vowel?

(And my example word was absolutely NOT prompted by Those O Whom We Aren't Talking.)

Dis-voweling a post is like God telling Eve NOT to eat from that one tree of knowledge. So now you have hundreds of expensive scientists furtively hiding their laptops at meetings, wondering if 'brkng' was 'barking', 'borking', 'brooking', or 'breaking'.

Oh. Thanks, stogoe. That makes sense: it's for "sport". I actually thought people were hopelessly trying to reason with them.

It starts off with trying to reason with them, but once it becomes apparent that they're not actually open to reason, and weren't interested in a reasoned debate in the first place, "sport" is all that's left...

Perhaps here is where I can say, without being entirely off-topic, that the name O'Brien reminds me of 1984. I don't know why; it just does.

As a "jason" who happens to enjoy your work and agree with you 99% of the time, I hope you're very specific about which "jason" to disemvowel.

Never argue with a fool, they lower the discourse to their level, then beat you with experience.

If you really can't resist, try agreeing with a insignifigant aspect, e.g. I agree, including famous qoutes like "Penny wise, pound foolish" helps me to understand your position.

Reminder: the killfile vorks vonderfully.

As a "jason" who happens to enjoy your work and agree with you 99% of the time, I hope you're very specific about which "jason" to disemvowel.

Yikes. If you're not Jason McHue the petulant wingnut troll, it'd probably be a real good idea for you to slightly modify your title somewhat to make sure people don't confuse you with him. He's kind of ruined that name here.

Isn't "y" in "lying" a vowel?

Yup. And in the post of The Beast Who Must Not Be Named above, the vowel 'y' in 'why' and 'funny' was untouched.

I'm told there exist disemvowelling programs that can delete y's when they function as vowels and leave them when they're consonants.

I hope you're very specific about which "jason" to disemvowel.

Props to Daniel for his killfile script--I just installed it, and haven't had a chance to test it out yet, but that was one specific test case I was going to look for.

It's blocking you-know-who while letting you through, which is exactly the functionality I'd expect, but wasn't taking for granted until verifying it. I anticipate that it's going to improve the comments-reading process immensely. Thanks, Daniel!

it's fun hitting trolls with word-bats. they get all persnickety and jumpy, and you can make them squeak. like angry guinea pigs.

no offense to guinea pigs.

I don't really understand why people would want to killfile certain commenters. I mean, yes, some commenters annoy me, but never to the point that I cannot stand even reading what they have written. Could someone explain?

Sven, RavenT, Jason (the good one)

I just installed the script. It works like a charm and removes the bad jason while leaving the good one. This is nice.

I love the script's notification when you 'kill' someone, it says, "Dumb comment removed."

Cool

I WAS ignoring them, I think, but let me direct a little residual anger toward the truly awful shit who has wasted our time here with a truly exceptional blend of utter stupidity (without the least trace of interest) and smallness of spirit:

n lst fckff t Jsn: y r th mnst, dmbst prsn n ths plnt.

j
I can't vouch for others, but for me the temptation to respond to a troll is pretty high.

But if the troll is out of my sight, that temptation is a lot less.

I don't really understand why people would want to killfile certain commenters. I mean, yes, some commenters annoy me, but never to the point that I cannot stand even reading what they have written. Could someone explain?

It is a quandary. On the one hand, you don't have to be annoyed by the person's asinine comments and raise your blood pressure unnecessarily, but on the other hand if everyone does it, the troll in question gets off scot-free, without his richly-deserved pounding and humiliation. It's a tough call.

Here's a question: if a troll says something stupid and everyone killfiles him, does he still make a noise?

It's for people like me who really can't resist. It's not the reading of their comments that's the problem... it's my need to feed the poor creatures that's the problem.

I don't really understand why people would want to killfile certain commenters. I mean, yes, some commenters annoy me, but never to the point that I cannot stand even reading what they have written. Could someone explain?

Just a function of not having enough time to read everything--if someone never contributes anything constructive to the discussion, it's more efficient to block their comments than to bother separating the wheat from the chaff.

That doesn't mean you block everyone who ever disagrees with you, of course, but some people make it very clear that they don't ever have anything interesting or useful to add. In the absence of a 180-degree turnaround, there's no point in wading through more of the same from them.

j,
It's because they have the tendancy to steer the thread, not only way off topic, but into perpetual circular argumentation. Those not yet familiar with the attention junkies (i.e. trolls) are lured into pointless discussions under the guise of rational debate and infect others in the thread by trying to include them in the discussion. For blatent dim-wits like Jason, sometimes killing his posts is best for all. He hasn't brought anything new to this board since his 4th or 5th posting...and certainly never anything of substance.

you don't have to be annoyed by the person's asinine comments and raise your blood pressure unnecessarily

Exactly why I do it. While I'm still young at 27 and my blood pressure is naturally low (sometimes too low), why damage my arteries? I need them, you know.

...

...

This was my recent comment to blogger Alon Levy, who said on his new blog that he "didn't intend to delete comments."

Lots of bloggers have said the same thing. But there is a particular kind of poster who might change your mind: the troll.

This type will come into your room, post vigorously and often, and do it SPECIFICALLY to insult both you and your other commenters in the most hurtful and mindlessly vicious way.

You may find you yourself can take it. But you'll also find your other commenters won't, and will start to desert the site, simply because the most innocuous comment leads every time to outrageously aggressive responses from this guy.

There's a point at which -- the point where your other commenters, and even you, are no longer enjoying visiting your site -- you'll understand that the freedom of speech, exercised in this most extreme and mean-spirited way, and literallly at your expense, needs a bit of ... adjudication.

Sure there's a danger in banishing people who don't agree with you. But seems to me PZ is erring WAY on the liberal side of allowing them to leave their turds on what is, in the end, HIS lawn.

...

...

Heh. I saw that disemvoweled comment by Jason, and I thought he was trying to be all Y-generation cool by sending comments in text-messaging vernacular.

The problem with the killfile is that it only removes the original posts. The 50+ responses the trolls often spawn will remain, and it's those that clutter up the place.

I don't really understand why people would want to killfile certain commenters

Good point. I don't read the bathroom walls either, but I'm probably missing out on the best jokes.

"...gss tht mns y wn't nswr hw y gt yr flthy lttl mtts n tht CRS nwslttr rtcl. Gsh, wndr why... Cldn't b tht y gt t thrgh lss thn hnst mns, cld t?

nd wldn't t b fnny f y wr brkng thr cpyrght rls by pstng t..."

Ia! ia! Cthulhu f'taghn!

I think that the troll-feeding posts should be disemvowelled, and also have some kind of explanation ("This person responded to a troll, and should have known better.")

Remember that Simpsons Halloween episode where the giant billboard logos rampaged through Springfield, and the solution was for the whole town to ignore them? Just don't look!

Heh. I saw that disemvoweled comment by Jason, and I thought he was trying to be all Y-generation cool by sending comments in text-messaging vernacular.

He has been known to throw around the word 'shizzle'. I think that's his way of signalling that he's one of those hip Young Republicans who's up on the current 'youth slang'.

If this kind of thing can lead to a comment as amusing as nemo's, I guess there might be something redeeming even in a troll.

As a "jason" who happens to enjoy your work and agree with you 99% of the time, I hope you're very specific about which "jason" to disemvowel.

Hear Hear!
As another "Jason" in the same boat as you, it brings a tear to my eye to see such a magnificent name sullied by such a no-account jerk.

Here's a question: if a troll says something stupid and everyone killfiles him, does he still make a noise?

When I'm catching up on a long thread, it's absolutely delightful to see an obvious trolling comment in the middle, with no response from the other commenters.

So yes, there is a noise, but it's just me laughing.

The jokes, however, have been great.

Am I the only one who got stuck on Steviepinhead's vowels? W? Really? Maybe in Welsh or something, but I've never seen it anywhere else. Perhaps it's a mondegreen, because of the chant "sometimes y is a vowel too" sounding suspiciously like "y and W too". Try vowel boot camp:
http://pbskids.org/lions/songs/vowelboot_rp.html

i was modding a hobbyist board (tarantulas!) and one of the other mods was just acidic and rude. he'd act as if every newb who asked what an urticating hair was had personally insulted his mother and go on long personal rants. he directed them at other mods, as well. i eventually quit going to the site altogether, even tho I'm technically a mod still.
the internet is weird.

Joe wrote:

I support just ignoring them. Free speech is important even in private forums. Please don't delete anything unless it is absolutely necessary.

Quick Note: deleting their posts would have nothing to do with any violation of freedom of speech: PZ isn't the government, and he can't stop them from trying to publish their "material" elsewhere. This is his blog, and he can do with it what he wants - including having the whole thing deleted - if that were his choice. However, absent foul language, I believe the best policy is just to leave their material up - as it demonstrates what kind of people they are. It would be both kind and charitable to take their posts off. I prefer justice. Leave it for the world to see.

Everyone ignore the trolls and they will go back under the bridge.

Agreed. It would be better to engage CW.

Whee! Great link to vowel boot camp.

But I'm not about to give up a W that easily.

How about "hew" and "chew"? Certainly, these words would be pronounced with different vowel sounds, absent the "w" ("he" and, uh, "Che"--Castro's buddy?). So, if the "w" isn't acting as a vowel, you'd have to argue for it's being a very soft whispery little wimp of a breathy little consonant.

I'm sticking with vowel. And, no, my bowels aren't stuck as a result. Yet...

I hope, if you disemvowel, that you have software to do it. I looked up and down for some and just couldn't make the plug in work.

I have no problem whatsoever with the idea of banning serial trolls. Between their own rants and the attempts to respond to same, they can easily bury a thread in crap, making it difficult to pick out real responses to the article. That sort of thing is exactly why I quit reading Panda's Thumb. Frankly, I've been amazed, and sometimes irritated, at PZ's tolerance for their provocations. (Ditto for Orac "next door".)

I'm just using grep in my texteditor to do it. In the past, when we've had these flare-ups of trolling, it hasn't taken too many examples to end the problem.

Bravo, PZ! Trolls add nothing to the conversation, and their deplorable tendency to boil, roast or otherwise kill and consume hobbits no doubt contributed to the extinction of homo floriensis.

And every time you feed a troll, god kills a kitten.
http://www.emezeta.com/weblog/troll-gatito.jpg

Okay, so I don't really believe in God. But the picture's sooo cuuutte.

"How about "hew" and "chew"? Certainly, these words would be pronounced with different vowel sounds, absent the "w" ("he" and, uh, "Che"--Castro's buddy?)."

Ah, but that's actually more "proof" that W is a consonant. The E in both would be pronounced as E if the next letter was a vowel, but if the next is a consonant, it's pronounced as a soft e. See the two vowels go walking rule:
http://pbskids.org/lions/songs/two_vowels_rp.html

Which, by the way, was one of those things that made me slap my forehead and say "Why didn't anyone teach me this when I was 5???"

I love me some PBS. Interesting aside - when the big hooplah was going on about PBS being too leftist a couple of years ago, I was watching the show these clips are from with my kids and saw a very funny bit on the actual set of The Daily Show. No, no lefties here! :)

Cwm, pronounced "coom", meaning a type of valley. It's from the Welsh, but has been taken into English. It's in the dictionary, and Jon Krakauer used it in 1996 in Into Thin Air.

So cwm is a word without a vowel, like nth. As I recall, crwth was another one, but that word has alternate spellings.

My opinion is that you disemconsenant the serial trolls' posts, not disemvowel them.

No, j, if you sound them out, "cwm" and "nth" both have vowels--"oo" and "e", respectively.

I had to look up "crwth", but according to the dictionary it's the same "oo" vowel. I'm not sure you can even pronounce words without vowels at all, although Russian and some Pacific NW native languages (such as Lushootseed) make a good try at it.

I assume 'W' is also being used as a vowel in Qwghlm, even if it's never said out loud.

I looked up "vowel"; the word can refer to a type of speech sound or a letter that represents such a sound. I should have said that cwm, nth, and crwth lack vowel letters, not vowel sounds.

There's an entire class of words like that in English, if you don't consider Y a vowel: rhythm, try, cry, sly, glyph...

Prsnlly, cn't s wht th fss s ll bt - ddn't mnd tht thrd whr Rbrt 'Brn nvkd Plt t rg tht rlty s fr wmps, fr xmpl.

...such a magnificent name sullied...

Sort out the Jasons fron the ArgueNaughts, sure. But guess who gets called "Sully" now and again.

Hmph.

Also, I note that Robert O'Brien claims to be afflicted by an impersonator. PZ, your logs ought to let you determine the truth about that. Either way, I'd say there's good cause to IP-block someone there....

I support just ignoring them. Free speech is important even in private forums. Please don't delete anything unless it is absolutely necessary.

Quick Note: deleting their posts would have nothing to do with any violation of freedom of speech: PZ isn't the government, and he can't stop them from trying to publish their "material" elsewhere. This is his blog, and he can do with it what he wants - including having the whole thing deleted - if that were his choice.

Speaking of frustrating, try having to explain to grown adult after grown adult that what one is allowed to do has, in general, no bearing on what one ought to do. Any blog owner is entitled to run it the way he or she sees fit, but this does not mean that every thing he or she might see fit is reasonable, justified, wise, or anything else in that vein--merely that he or she is permitted to do so. I believe the position you're taking issue with is Joe(?)'s assertion that while freedom of speech is not binding in the private sphere it nevertheless ought to be respected. Since you seem to feel that the fact that it is not binding is relevant to whether it ought to be respected, would you mind explaining why?

As for the trolls, I personally find using them for scratching posts or soccer balls rather amusing (and, on principle, long lists of post after post of people vocally and unconditionally agreeing with a moderator/administrator/what-have-you's decisions nauseating--if all you have to say is "[edit: BLOODY HELL! THE FLAME WARRIOR ROSTER IS NOT A FRICKIN' SPAM LINK! PZ, can't you turn the spam filter down a little? Or at least make sure there's actually a "nospam.cgi" page for it to find; the file not found messages make it even more irritating]yes sir, [edit: everyone put "flame warrior roster" into Google and find the "big dog and me-too" and "sycophant" pages; each "yes sir" was supposed to be a link to one of those]yes sir, you're totally right," even if you're sincere, then really, why say anything?). However, despite the convenience of kicking trolls around for my amusement and my general fondness for arguments, I empathize with people who find the altercations tedious and frustrating to wade through (though, except in cases of people like PZ who have a good reason for checking every comment, I tend to think they're disappointingly thin-skinned). I can't shake the feeling that a compromise solution is possible, but I can't think of what it would be...

It would be nice if we could have a show when the Troll is being "punished" for trolling.

1) Perhaps the words of his/her post(s) could fizzle into nothingness, or
2) The comment could turn lighter and lighter before disappearing, or
3) A big ax could come out of the border regions of the Blog and hack the poor Trolls comment to bits, OR
4) A little animated PZ man (or better yet, a Humboldt squid!) could shimmy over to the comment and stomp it/chew it to bits.

I fear that all this talk of how much Jason sucks is going to have some kind of subconscious effect on me, even though I'm a completely different Jason. Thank trout I have a good nickname to fall back on.

So you think trolls have a (right) on this blog? Let them get their own and drive their own traffic to it. Here is what a determined troll can do when they are left to freely comment. The normal volume for a post is 20-50 comments over 2-3 days. This troll, Javier, manipulated this blog for about a month with different names. And man was he an IDiot.
http://www.atheists.org/nogodblog/index.php/2006/07/02/in_facts_we_trus…

I'm still in Maui, but am really glad I caught this posting. Hallelujah! Now I can finally relax!

(Yup, I brought along a laptop for work. Nice, eh?)

Seriously, Jason was driving me nuts, especially with this pi thing of a week or 10 days ago. That was enough right there.

Personally, the trolls don;t bother me. They can even be entertaining to read in a "water can't go up trees!" kind of way.

The real problem is the people who get into long harangues with them. I mean, how new to the internets are you? If you need a lesson about trolls, go pick a fight on the fuckedcompany.com message boards.

You KNOW the trolls aren't even going to say "Ok, you're right, you win, I give up." You know they aren't even going to address your argument in any way at all. So if you insist on turning every thread they appear in into an "I'm not touching you!" endless spat, you're becoming a troll yourself.

Bottom line is, its not the trolls who cause threads to degenerate into 200-post-long idiot contests.

I say this with all due respect. No offense intended.

*I* find arguing pleasurable, whether the other person ever concedes or not.

What might be effective - haven't seen it anywhere - would be if certain contributors and/or messages could be marked by the mod as trollish and thus not to be served, with an on-site option to let individual users choose whether to see such things anyway. A server-side kill script with by-client override.

That way, new and lazy readers get the site as the mods would wish it to be seen, but nobody's being silenced. Personally, I'm happy with a two-drools-and-you're-out rule, but while there is a tradition on other sites of vaping comments and users for questionable reasons it may be helpful to come up with a smarter way of managing vandals who would otherwise claim parity.

R

In British English (the only variety that really matters), Y is never a vowel, even when it "acts like" one. "rhythm" and "syzygy" are well known as the longest words without a vowel.

W isn't a vowel in English, at all. In Welsh, it's equivilent to OO, but I've always thought that their insistence on using W as a vowel as a proof of the pointlessness of learning Welsh. Though, now I think about it, might it be connected to Ï? Especially seeing as Welsh only got a written form when Latin and Greek were de rigeur amongst linguists.

In Czech, apparently, you can write whole sentences without vowels - "StrÄ prst skrz krk" ("put your finger through your throat") or "Smrž pln skvrn zvlhl z mlh" ("morel full of wet fog spots") are classic, if somewhat meaningless examples.

So there you go.

I'm not sure you can even pronounce words without vowels at all, although Russian and some Pacific NW native languages (such as Lushootseed) make a good try at it.

The Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary 3rd Edition (it's what I have at hand, and it's derived from actual respectable dictionaries) lists BRR, HM, MM, PFFT, PSST, SH, and TSK, as well as variants of those. I can see an argument for a vowel sound for BRR and TSK, but the others don't seem to have identifiable vowel sounds, or at least they don't the way I pronounce them.

y isn't a vowel, it just plays one on TV sometimes? please.
the mighty-few words one might use that were borrowed from Welsh could use w as a vowel...but it really isn't one? uh huh.
as for "tsk," I believe that this is comicstripspeak for that disapproving suck-in-while-you-pull-your-tongue-off-the-roof-of-your-mouth thing; it is NOT pronounced "tisk" (although you now hear people say 'tisk' all the time...), thus no vowel.
However, my judgment would be that single-sound expressions like brr, hm, psst, tsk, etc. are not really words (though they do communicate info)...I don't know why...

Serious suggestion. Add threaded comments to the site. Put a "reply" link next to each comment and allow threads of comments to grow with "reply to #xxx" tags in them.

There would ne no need to add a threaded view, but it would allow entire troll-generated threads to be expunged in one swift mouse click.

parkrrrr, your handle reminds me also that when Mr. Raven and I play "bears" and growl at each other ("rrrrrrrrr")*, there are no vowels there either, sensu strictu. I forgot about "s", "l", and "r".

* as a professional informaticist, I recognize that this may be Too Much Information...

In British English (the only variety that really matters), Y is never a vowel, even when it "acts like" one. "rhythm" and "syzygy" are well known as the longest words without a vowel.

Sigh. No.

Of course those words 'have vowels'. All English words have vowels. The letter 'y' is *functioning* as a vowel there. As someone pointed out above, one has to distinguish between vowel LETTERS and vowel SOUNDS. Sometimes 'y' serves as a vowel, other times it's a consonant. Every word in English (with the exception of exclamations) has at least one vowel letter and at least one vowel sound. It's absurd to say that there's 'no vowel' in a word like 'sky'.

W isn't a vowel in English, at all. In Welsh, it's equivilent to OO, but I've always thought that their insistence on using W as a vowel as a proof of the pointlessness of learning Welsh.

Different languages have different rules for spelling. Not every language is spelled like English. I hope this isn't news.

Though, now I think about it, might it be connected to Ï?

yes.

Especially seeing as Welsh only got a written form when Latin and Greek were de rigeur amongst linguists.

Welsh has been written for several centuries. It got its *standard* form with the translation of the Bible in 1588, the same way written German became standardized, tho it was written for several centuries before that. Old Welsh is primarily documented from the 9th to the 11th century. Welsh has been written about as long as English has.

the mighty-few words one might use that were borrowed from Welsh could use w as a vowel...but it really isn't one? uh huh.

Before the borrowing of a tiny handful of Welsh words like 'cwm', the letter 'w' did not serve as a vowel in English, since unlike 'y' it couldn't be the only vowel in a word.

'Tsk' is a conventionalized way or writing what linguists call a 'click'. There are dozens of such sounds in African languages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_consonant

Carlie: I remember that my grade 2 phonics workbook said the "sometimes y and w" thing. I think what they were referring to was dipthongs using w. For example, "wash" uses a consonant w, whereas "cow" uses a vowel one.

RavenT: There are no languages without vowels, which is not to say that all written languages make use of them.

can see an argument for a vowel sound for BRR and TSK, but the others don't seem to have identifiable vowel sounds, or at least they don't the way I pronounce them.

Posted by: parkrrrr
What about Mrs? ;^)

"y" in orthography can function as a representation of a vowel. However, both "y" and "w" usually function as representation for the glide half of a dipthong (a combination of a vowel and a glide)

Cow and wash are using the same glide sound of the "w". What changes are the vowels aroung the consonant sounds which can affect the sound of a consonant.

Since this has become a "linguistics" thread..it's cute to see all the folk theories of vowels being proposed here. But what are you calling a "vowel"? Some of you are referring to graphemes (the letters that have the shapes 'A', 'E', etc.), some are referring to phonemes (the sounds 'aah', 'eee', etc.), and some are using both interchangeably. I'm not going to give a lecture here, but I will note that there is a rich literature in phonetics and other subjects on the web available to the learned Pharyngulati who wish to avoid sounding like, well, like linguists on a linguistics blog saying some animals don't have genes, or something like that. And why am I so cranky?

I understand your crankiness completely.

Yeah, linguistics is, like, a whole science with research, peer reviewed articles and books and everything. All those things Intelligent Design doesn't have. :-)

No offense, but it's long been noticed that linguistics seems to suffer especially badly from people with no training in it making pronouncements on it. Your average, say, astronomer wouldn't think of making pronouncements on, say, biology, OR vice versa, but for some reason it's not hard to find, say, biologists or physicists or geneticists or astronomers (or engineers!) who consider themselves completely qualified to make pronouncements on language in the complete absence of any training or even READING on the subject. I think the rationale is that since everyone speaks some language or other, everyone is equally qualified to talk about Language. So some remarkably daffy generalizations about language can be made by people who can be quite well informed on other scientific subjects.

Its just too bad some mechanism does exist to leave the comments, but collapse them, sort of like:

continuing to engage with these bizarro Elizas.

Posted by: swivel-chair | August 21, 2006 04:13 PM

Troll talk [+]
Posted by: Jason | August 21, 2006 04:21 PM

That is by far the most coherent post I've ever seen from Jinx. Bravo.

That way, you could skip over the gibberish, but clueless people that want to read it can still do so.

Frankly, the only thing more insane that these people was one that I saw recently who showed up on a usenet server (and not one that has a broad range of topic, but one that has a "specific" category. This one troll on there constantly posts the latest "news" on everything going wrong in the world, especially if it somehow involves Bush (Basically a copy and paste of articles of some place like Democratic Undergroud or something), and has ***never*** posted anything on topic, save on the rare occation that someone dragged his thread back on topic, albeit temporarilly. The new arrival, which I mentioned in the first sentence, was so incoherent that it was hard to find a point in their sentence, a believer in uiji boards, psychic phenomina and animal spirits (ok, we have some that believe in the later, its a furry forum.., but most are marginally more sane than this person is). Seems, this (in this case "left wing") nut has chosen to claim the troll has his/her mentor... He/She could have picked dozens of people, but picked the one clueless moron that is the left wing equivalent of the right wing nuts that show up here.

Just goes to show you that no side has a patent on blind stupidity, trolling or bizarre needs to follow the biggest fruitloop in the box.

PZ, how about surrounding troll comments in tags which make the text the same colour as the background? anyone could then highlight the post if they wanted to read it, but it would discourage other users from getting drawn into discussions that never go anywhere?

What's funny is that "the troll" not only draws attention when he posts in a given thread, but he now has a full thread devoted (mostly) to him! If he was just trying to get attention, he succeeded. I also checked out Jason's blog, which he links when he posts here, and he is spending a considerable amount of time "exposing" PZ. All in all, you are all spending way too much time on each other <=b.

PZ was just asking for us to stop the madness.

For example, "wash" uses a consonant w, whereas "cow" uses a vowel one.

Around where I grew up, "wash" also had an invisible "r" added, pronounced but not spelled. How's that fit in? :)

Oh, god. I'm the one who started the linguistics tangent. Am I an unwitting troll?

PZ, how about surrounding troll comments in tags which make the text the same colour as the background?

Even better: is there some way to switch on the Mr. Gumby background for troll posts...?

Oh, god. I'm the one who started the linguistics tangent. Am I an unwitting troll?

Nah, that's not trolling--the difference is like night and day. But Pete and George, I don't understand why you're so cranky about our not being professional linguists. If we were setting ourselves up as authorities on it, and publishing our "theories" and advocating replacing real linguistics in schools with our limited understanding--that I would get as a source of irritation to you.

But a group of non-specialists collegially chatting about something Carlie asked, comparing language data, correcting each other's assumptions and modifying our preconceptions as we go along--that seems like the scientific and/or learning process in action to me. I'm not sure why that would make you both cranky, as you've indicated.

Yeah, George, a linguist friend of mine likes to point out there's a big difference between knowing a language and knowing about a language - and that can cover a lot of ground, from phonetical to historical aspects.

I'm not a linguist myself, so I can't say much more about that. :-)

I've studied a bit of Russian, though, and yup, there are words that have no vowels - and more to the point, no vowel sounds - but as far as I know, that phenomenon is limited to the single-letter prepositions like "s", "k", and "v". There are instances when a word combination will result in a vowel sound being incorporated into the spoken version of one of these prepositions (and sometimes the vowel is officially added, and so appears in the written version) but for the most part they are truly voweless.

It's interesting, and presents a tongue-twisting challenge for an old anglo-speaker like me. When I was first started learning, I couldn't believe that this hard-to-pronounce word - здÑавÑÑвÑйÑе (zdravstvuitye) - simply meant "hello." Egads! The number of English words that start with "zdr" can be counted on the fingers of one ear! (Fortunately, the first "v" is silent.)

The Cyrillic letter than provides the glide - the equivalent of the Latin "y" in words like boy and may - is the letter й, which is always considered a consonant. Unlike our "y", it never appears on its own without an associated vowel. (AFAIK). Cyrillic is a larger alphabet, so its letters are less likely to be called upon to do double duty.

As far as trolls go, I'm from the "Starve The Cat" school. Feed'em, they keep coming back. Starve'em, and eventually they stop scratching at the back door and go elsewhere.

I think the rationale is that since everyone speaks some language or other, everyone is equally qualified to talk about Language.

Isn't this a little like saying that everyone who grew out of an embryo is qualified to discuss embryology? And everyone who synthesizes proteins is qualified to discuss molecular biology? And we all know that not everyone who belongs to a species that evolved from single-celled organisms understands evolution.

Anyway, Pete's point about the difference between the letter and the sound is pretty obvious, but you can hardly expect software to understand pronunciations; providing it with a fixed list of "letters that conventionally represent vowels" (or whatever you want to call it) is about as much as you can do.

The number of English words that start with "zdr" can be counted on the fingers of one ear! (Fortunately, the first "v" is silent.)

Heh. That reminds me of one of my favorite bit from Friends, in which Ross is having a grant interview (absurd and not realistic, but funny) with his girlfriend's ex (courtesy of an online transcript):

Ross: Wha...? Wait, wait, wait, just a minute. None of my questions have anything to do with Paleontology.

Benjamin: You're right, I apologize. Scratch the last question. Spell "Boscodictiasaur".

Ross: (annoyed) um... I've never heard of a "Boscodictiasaur".

Benjamin: Yeah, I just made it up. Spell it.

Ross: (stares at him angrily) Ok. (determined to spell it correctly) B - O - S ...

Benjamin: No, it starts with a silent "M".

Ross: Oh come on!!

Later, to girlfriend:

Ross: If you don't believe me, let's go talk to him, okay? I'm telling you, he didn't ask me one paleontological question.

Charlie: Seriously?

Ross: Oh, I'm sorry, no. He did ask me one. Uhm... How do you spell Mboscodictiosaur?

Charlie: Well, if it's like the lake Mbosco in Congo, then M-B-O...

Ross: Damnit!

I'd just like to point out that the script linked to above is not my script, but the creation of Stan Dyck.

My script, which owes its existence to the wonderful example Stan provided, is at:

http://snowplow.org/martin/greasemonkey/killfile.user.js

Note that my script works here, on the Panda's Thumb, and elsewhere. (livejournal, haloscan comments, pandagon, etc.)

I confess to running roughshod over the difference between graphemes and phonemes. I thought it was obvious (woops :)) that I was talking about the latter ...

As for those Russian words, how are they pronounced? For example, in English if we are asked to pronounce "k", say, people will say "kay" (the name of the letter), usually. Or sometimes "kuh", which still includes a vowel sound.

Somehow, this entire brouhaha puts me in mind of the fish-slapping dance.

That would be PZ on the left, naturally.