Random Thread ~Usagi-Chan ☮ Tūsurī~

[Zunu]

None of those girls use the same kanji for "REI" as in Reiwa, though. Besides, Japanese people seem to be mostly taken by the WA 和 character, because it means peace and harmony. And H!P's current leader, WAda Ayaka, has the character in her name. Very auspicious!

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I've never owned an iPhone before. My first smartphone was something called a Palm Treo, and since then, only Samsung Galaxy Notes: 1, 3, 4 (5), 8 and now 9. Five was the explodey one, had to send it back.

[TotallyUncool]

I use Windows, Android, and Linux, but I notice that I seem to put Mini vMac on just about everything, and I keep a working version of SheepShaver with System 7,5,3 and all of my old applications and files on my main desktop machine. It's nostalgia more than anything, but I do find myself drawn back to the stripped-down, utterly basic simplicity of MacWrite (I'm using version 1.0 to write this) and MacPaint.



And as an added bonus, here's a (very crude) greeting from late Showa to pre-Reiwa (skipping over Heisei so the current emperor can continue planning the business of becoming the traditional power-behind-the-throne).



I'll leave lingustics up to the experts (and there are some seriously good ones here), but the discussion does remind me that as I'm exposed to more languages, I'm struck by how approximate all language is in so many ways.

Aaaannnnd… I was actually able to open the saved MacWrite 1.0 file in Libre Office 5!

[Moh]

My first phone (10 years ago!) was some kind of QWERTY slider from Net10. Texting was a breeze with it at the time.
My first touchscreen was a Microsoft Kin 2, which was also a slider. That was an awful phone. I'd have to reset it every other week because I wasn't able to receive any texts.

My first smartphone was some kind of Sony Xperia that I got from YesAsia of all places. It was a nice phone at the time! My first smartphone that I actually loved was the first gen Motorola Moto G.
I'm now on a Samsung Galaxy J7 Refine, and it's my favorite phone so far. The 13 megapixel front camera was a big bonus for me, lol.

I have a Windows 7 desktop. I'd like an all-in-one someday so I can save space on my desk, but only if I can get a 7. I hate dealing with 10.
I recently got an Acer R 11 Chromebook and might be in love with it. It's so fast! And I like that I can go from laptop to tablet in no time.

[JonCC]

When it come to plain mobile phones (forget the 'smart' part) my first was the Siemens A35 in 2000.

Switched to the Nokia 3310 about a year later, then one Samsung feature phone after the other, before the iPhone 3G in 2008 as my first smartphone.

Desktop-wise it's always been Windows, first version was 95. Put together a couple of PC's myself years back. These days I just buy my desktops from a decent boutique vendor.
Tried to use a Macbook Air for a while, but personally just bounced off that user experience.

[esm]

My Macbook Pro is my first Apple laptop/computer and the first laptop/computer I've ever owned that is still perfectly useable without being slow or anything after 3 years. It's a little over 4 years old now. It does random stupid things like opening iTunes and then later playing a song out of nowhere (sometimes as I'm literally closing the lid & then music would still play with the lid closed), but I've muted iTunes a while ago.

I have an all-in-one PC that really has no excuse for being so damn slow because I only bought it to be kind of like a small TV and I otherwise barely use it. Well, I also torrent a bunch of stuff on there rather than my Macbook so.

My current phone is an iPhone 8, and it's only my 3rd smartphone. But back in college, before I had a smartphone I had an iPod touch, and there was wifi all over campus, and I was basically more responsive to emails and all than pretty much anyone else (my laptop then was huge and I avoided taking it around unless I was really planning on doing work). I got my first smartphone only in like 2012 or something.

[boinsie]

We had an Apple II when I was really young, then got some other variety of Mac in maybe 1994? Possibly a Performa 630. I seem to recall it had 4MB of RAM. Then We got a Win '95 COMPAQ. When I was 14 I bought my own desktop computer that was a custom built Windows PC (Win '98), and since then I've built all of my desktop computers piece-by-piece. I'm currently still getting away with Windows 7 on the main desktop, and have Linux Cinnamon Mint running on the media tower. Laptops are of course another story--in '03 I bought an 11" Averatec for college, then I've gone through an Acer and an Asus netbook (I like my portable computers small). My current laptop-answer is a Surface 3, which we got a little under 2 years ago used on eBay.

For phones!!!

Samsung A660 > LG UX245 > Sony Ericcson W580i > Nokia XpressMusic 5800 > Galaxy Nexus > Moto X > Nexus 5x > Moto x4
I got my first cellphone in 2003 for college, it was a Samsung A660 clamshell. This was followed up by an LG UX245 (I don't remember when I got it, but it's what I had for my 2007 trip to Japan). Then I got a Sony Ericsson W580i. My first semi-smart phone was the Nokia ExpressMusic 5800 (which I still use as my alarm clock), but I didn't have a data plan, and it used the Nokia app store so... that's why I say semi-smart. When we moved to Seattle in 2013 we decided it was time to get actual smart phones with data plans so we didn't get lost in the new big city, thus the Galaxy Nexus. At some point I switched to the Moto X for more storage space & so on. Then I switched to Project Fi for my carrier which only allowed 2 or 3 specific phones at that point, so I got a Nexus 5x... and when that cataclysmicly died twice (only once within the warranty period), I got a Moto x4!

(Happy April Fools' Day--boinsie's actually posting on the forum! )

[erilaz]

I'm not even addressing the other elephant in the room over there, namely "It's a perfectly phonetic language (zero exceptions)." What does that even mean?

Lol, that really doesn’t mean anything. Writing transcribes phonemes rather than phones in a language because that is what’s mentally real to native speakers, so you’re almost going to see any sort of writing or spelling system that is “perfectly phonetic.” I mean, one could make up these systems, like writing everything in IPA with as many diacritics as possible, but it’s going to be unnatural for speakers and basically just slow down the acquisition of literacy.

When people who have never taken a course in linguistics say "phonetic", they mean "phonemic" more often than not. I've come to terms with that, though it still makes me wince from time to time.

I think I've conjured up an interpretation of "It's a perfectly phonetic language (zero exceptions)" that would make it a completely accurate statement, to wit: "Spoken Japanese is comprised of strings of phonetic units, each of which is pronounced exactly as it is pronounced (zero exceptions)." This applies strictly to surface-level phonetic realizations, with no reference whatsoever to any sort of phonological system or written representation. By such an interpretation, however, every spoken language is "perfectly phonetic".

In other news, one of my co-workers asked his brother who lives in Tokyo what music he's been listening to. My co-worker was expecting J-pop, K-pop, or something of the sort, but he nearly disowned his brother when he heard the reply, "Nickelback."

I had to comment that they're called Five Yen Back over there.

2000th post!

[Celedam]

is comprised of

<wince>

[erilaz]

Fair enough. But https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... of-grammar.

[Zunu]

I think when people say Japanese is perfectly phonetic, they're referring to an idea that the morae enumerated in the kana chart correspond exactly to the sounds of spoken Japanese and that each kana has a single invariant pronunciation. That is, if you were to write out the English word "mother" with a phonetic transcription, you're going to get a vastly different result based upon the origin of the speaker. There's no official, canonical way to say the word. Whereas, in Japanese, haha is haha, period, or so the belief goes.