Diamine Celadon Cat

[Mercian]

On 10/14/2024 at 9:55 PM, yazeh said:

It was inspired after a Celadon ceramic cat

 

I had to look that up...

 

 

...the ink seems to be a fair reproduction of the colour of the eponymous ceramic glaze

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

→ The Chaos ←

  That's what we get for trying to be accepting of all them foreigners.  If we'd just stuck to our own words, I'm sure English would have made more sense!

 

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

To be fair, when a torrent of words is clamouring (the British-English spelling, so obvsly just has to be spelled more-confusingly) to come out, one could also think of it as 'Claymore-ing' to come out.
The metaphor works equally-'well' whether one is alluding to a large Scottish sword, or to an American landmine 😉

 

[yazeh]

11 minutes ago, LizEF said:

  That's what we get for trying to be accepting of all them foreigners.  If we'd just stuck to our own words, I'm sure English would have made more sense!

Ah but them English were foreigners too  

[LizEF]

41 minutes ago, yazeh said:

Ah but them English were foreigners too  

Well, I meant way back when English was still English and there weren't any Americans or Canadians to call the English foreigners, you know?  (Of course, for all I know, there never was a pre-foreigner English - indeed, it seems unlikely.  Ergo, we shall have to return to the Tower of Babel and get our old language back! Or maybe track down Adam and Eve so they can teach us how to speak pre-foreigner.   This is beginning to seem like an impossible task. )

[yazeh]

7 minutes ago, LizEF said:

Well, I meant way back when English was still English and there weren't any Americans or Canadians to call the English foreigners, you know?  (Of course, for all I know, there never was a pre-foreigner English - indeed, it seems unlikely.  Ergo, we shall have to return to the Tower of Babel and get our old language back! Or maybe track down Adam and Eve so they can teach us how to speak pre-foreigner.   This is beginning to seem like an impossible task. )

i.e. if they can agree  

[LizEF]

33 minutes ago, yazeh said:

i.e. if they can agree  

Fabulous!

[Mercian]

2 hours ago, yazeh said:

Ah but them English were foreigners too  

 

Indeed.
Even better, we English are (as far as I know anyway) the only 'people' in the world whose conventional/cultural demonym is an amalgamation of the names of two sets of foreign immigrants!

[knarflj]

On 10/25/2024 at 8:58 AM, Mercian said:

 

Rule? 😁
English is a language that has at least five 'mothers', and it is also the only language that is known to follow other languages down dark alleyways, hit them on the head, and then rifle-through their pockets and bags for any interesting words that it can steal.

 

As for the 'rules' of English spelling/pronunciation, I always recommend that anyone who is interested in attempting to learn them should attempt to read the following poem, out loud, without reading it through first.
It will defeat native speakers of English (it certainly defeated me, hilariously and joyously), so I have no idea how non-native learners of English could be expected to cope!

→ The Chaos ←

 

The poem was written by Gerald Nolst Trenité, a Dutch writer and teacher who learned English, and in 1920 published a book of exercises in English pronunciation. This poem appeared in it.

 

Whew!  That's a doozy, thanks for the link.  I don't think I missed too many, although there were a couple words unfamiliar to me, and I was too lazy to get up and fetch the dictionary to check on them.  And of course it doesn't help that Americans don't pronounce all these words the same way the English do.

[Mercian]

29 minutes ago, knarflj said:

 And of course it doesn't help that Americans don't pronounce all these words the same way the English do.

 

The poem was written so that it 'works' when spoken aloud in the accent that is taught in the more 'reassuringly-expensive' fee-charging schools here.
It's based on the accent of the well-to-do† in south-eastern England in the early twentieth century, or what used to be called 'Received Pronunciation' (because it was the only English accent that the BBC would broadcast).

 

Never mind Americans, Oceanians, etc, I'm English - and most of us don't even pronounce all of those words in the same way that the poet intended!

 

† So, not e.g. the accent of 'Cockneys', or of farm labourers in rural Kent or Essex.

[inkstainedruth]

On 10/14/2024 at 10:19 AM, yazeh said:

If the scan look blue, it's not. It's definitely green. Check comparison colour with Jacques Herbin Les toits de Paris on the Iroful scan. 

 

It definitely looks bluer on some papers in the scans than others -- at least on my screen. 

When I first saw this ink advertised, I thought it looked a little pale to be legible on the page, and for the most part it seems I was right.... 

But thank you for the comprehensive review.  This is one I can DEFINITELY pass on....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[yazeh]

13 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

It definitely looks bluer on some papers in the scans than others -- at least on my screen. 

When I first saw this ink advertised, I thought it looked a little pale to be legible on the page, and for the most part it seems I was right.... 

But thank you for the comprehensive review.  This is one I can DEFINITELY pass on....

It's my pleasure to help you wallet  

[yazeh]

20 hours ago, knarflj said:

 

Whew!  That's a doozy, thanks for the link.  I don't think I missed too many, although there were a couple words unfamiliar to me, and I was too lazy to get up and fetch the dictionary to check on them.  And of course it doesn't help that Americans don't pronounce all these words the same way the English do.

Actually in the link there are two audio /video versions. One is in American English, one in British English. 

 

@Mercian It would be fun to hear that in Glaswegian brogue  

[Mercian]

5 minutes ago, yazeh said:

Actually in the link there are two audio /video versions. One is in American English, one in British English. 

 

@Mercian It would be fun to hear that in Glaswegian brogue  

 

Oh yes! 😊

 

I would love to hear it spoken in the dialect of Walsall.

I grew up less than 25 miles from Walsall, but I find much of the dialect/accent of its inhabitants to be absolutely unintelligible (especially if the speakers are excited/laughing, and/or have 'dined well').

[yazeh]

12 hours ago, Mercian said:

 

Oh yes! 😊

 

I would love to hear it spoken in the dialect of Walsall.

I grew up less than 25 miles from Walsall, but I find much of the dialect/accent of its inhabitants to be absolutely unintelligible (especially if the speakers are excited/laughing, and/or have 'dined well').

 

[InesF]

On 10/25/2024 at 2:58 PM, Mercian said:

→ The Chaos ←

 That was funny! Thank you for bringing a bit of chaos to the parity party with parrots and parents!  

As a non-native speaker I had "no problem" reading until about paragraph 25 or so. Then I got a bit distracted 🙄. However, not knowing it better and without a correction instance besides me, whatever I pronounced must had been right! 🤭  

[InesF]

On 10/25/2024 at 5:37 PM, LizEF said:

[...] to call the English foreigners, you know?

After learning English in school, then many years not intentionally speaking or reading a single English sentence, I started practising English in conferences where some 25 people sat around a table and spoke "English" as their foreign language. Very funny!

I think this is the disadvantage of having "World-English" as an almost global language for communication.

[LizEF]

6 hours ago, InesF said:

After learning English in school, then many years not intentionally speaking or reading a single English sentence, I started practising English in conferences where some 25 people sat around a table and spoke "English" as their foreign language. Very funny!

I think this is the disadvantage of having "World-English" as an almost global language for communication.

Funny is a disadvantage? I hear laughter heals.  Seems like that would be an advantage!

[knarflj]

On 10/26/2024 at 3:17 PM, Mercian said:

The poem was written so that it 'works' when spoken aloud in the accent that is taught in the more 'reassuringly-expensive' fee-charging schools here.
It's based on the accent of the well-to-do† in south-eastern England in the early twentieth century, or what used to be called 'Received Pronunciation' (because it was the only English accent that the BBC would broadcast).

 

It's still called that, at least around American community theatres.  

 

On 10/26/2024 at 3:17 PM, Mercian said:

 

Never mind Americans, Oceanians, etc, I'm English - and most of us don't even pronounce all of those words in the same way that the poet intended!

🤣

 

23 hours ago, yazeh said:

Actually in the link there are two audio /video versions. One is in American English, one in British English. 

 

Thanks!  I'll have to go back and check that out one of these days.

 

23 hours ago, yazeh said:

 

@Mercian It would be fun to hear that in Glaswegian brogue  

 

Oh my gosh, yes!  (Lived on the other side of the Clyde for a couple years a few decades back....)

[inkstainedruth]

Now I'm thinking about a documentary I saw a few years ago on PBS, about a "Shakespeare in the Park" production of The Taming of the Shrew (I wish they had done a video of the production itself, because the few clips of performances made it look WONDERFUL).  At one point, they are interviewing Raul Julia (who played Petruchio in that production) and he said that when he was in drama school, he thought you had to do Shakespeare with an English accent.  But then realized that he could do it with his Puerto Rican accent -- because, as he said, "The language is that good!"

Of course I'm also now thinking of a story a friend (who is half Spanish) told when she was taking some French class in college.  She was apparently driving the teacher crazy because she was doing the French with a "Spanish" accent -- even though she was born in the US!  And also of the story my mom told me about a couple of her co-workers, one of whom was born in IIRC Germany.  The two women went on a trip to Paris, and the German-born woman did all the talking for stuff like hotels and restaurants, so the locals would not realize that they were Americans!

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth