Alexander Thomas

He/him.

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@topazlabs Does Photo AI include all the same models as Gigapixel?

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@iwsfutcmd What criteria would lead you to define Lisu as more SEA and Yi as less so? (This question sounds like a gotcha but I know very little and have only vibes to go on)

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@iskdin Would it have undergone that same change with the /m/ right after it though? I imagine /aβm/ would be unlikely to change into /aγm/. Perhaps it went to a glottal stop first.

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@azforeman Yes, it's watch these street interviews on repeat and copy out everything they say: https://t.co/XyMqef7UG9

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@oli_0331 There's a letter quoted in Empires of the Plain that touches on this, that many academics back then also resisted sharing what they worked on. I struggle with that myself too!

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@pretentiouswhat Another marvelous thread. I spent a lot of time (relative to my baseline) in smaller cities in Sichuan this year. I visited one county-level city for the first time in seven years and it's basically just as you described the 3/4 tier ones, just on a smaller area.

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@amazonmilkfrog yeah "have to" is always with /f/ and means "must" or "need to," if you voice it it's just "have" as in "possess."

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@avzaagzonunaada @azforeman Wow, I didn't know that at all, I don't think I detected it in the slightest.

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@avzaagzonunaada @azforeman Can you do a recording of the way you do the Seoul contrast? I spent a year in Yogyakarta and took a few Javanese classes. I did a simple dental/retroflex contrast. Never spoke with any fluency but the teachers liked my pronunciation in the classroom at least!

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@gwoyeuromatzyh @azforeman But there's also an aspiration distinction with s/ss when in initial position, right?

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@azforeman I may be just telling tales out of school, but I would be surprised to hear casual speech from millennials and younger in Seoul actually producing the distinction you see in textbooks.

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@azforeman Are you sure you're not being misled by the difference between prescribed Korean and what everybody speaks in Seoul?
The "tense" ones are never aspirated, the "normal" ones are aspirated only word-initially, and the "aspirated" ones are always aspirated.

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@speechleyish I went right to the library and did the readings.

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@speechleyish Whenever I hear about professors having this problem, I remember the shame I felt at 20 years old when the professor said "Raise your hand if you did the readings." (3/25 raise hands) "Okay. I'm not going to lecture if you're not going to do the readings." Class dismissed.

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@egasmb I've had the interesting experience of watching Mandarin native speakers used to using English loans in their speech (beyond those mentioned in the article) speak with others who weren't. They pause, shift gears, and return to the topic with equal fluency using only Mandarin.

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@harostudies Why give up? Shoot for the moon, and if you miss, you fall among the stars.

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@maxdubler That's crazy how little it really is, it seems like new 400-700 unit complexes are going up everywhere now in the South Bay. Still a lot of room for improvement, I guess.

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@orikron I'm really surprised I haven't heard this before. Do you know if there's any other source for this? It's so clear that I almost wonder if it's someone doing an imitation.

[Alexander Thomas @RantaSosite]

@djokerovic @orikron There is no real comparison with modern accents in England. The words are Mandarin but the tones, intonation, consonants, and vowels are almost all very different from Standard Mandarin. Kind of like a German person reading English very fluently with German spelling rules.