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Started by Korea, March 10, 2009, 06:24:26 AM

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Admiral Yi

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 04, 2023, 05:02:24 PMI feel like that works with almost any other nationaliy/language but French :lol: :P

I don't think that's true, at least for the languages I'm familiar with.  Definitely not for Spanish and Korean.

It is ironic that the lingua franca has such bizarre spelling/pronounciation rules.  Or lack thereof.

HVC

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 04, 2023, 05:02:24 PMI feel like that works with almost any other nationaliy/language but French :lol: :P

French has their own pronunciation rule problems too :D

 
Being lazy is bad; unless you still get what you want, then it's called "patience".
Hubris must be punished. Severely.

Sheilbh

Quote from: HVC on February 04, 2023, 05:18:07 PMFrench has their own pronunciation rule problems too :D
That's my point - Spanish, for example, is say what you see. The spelling and pronunciation are aligned, same with Italian.

French on the other hand :hmm: :lol: There's a reason they need the dictée.
Let's bomb Russia!

Josquius

French is a pronunciation rule problem.
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viper37

I don't do meditation.  I drink alcohol to relax, like normal people.

If Microsoft Excel decided to stop working overnight, the world would practically end.

Syt

Socialist big-government nanny state trampling on individual freedoms once again!  :mad:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/washington-woman-tuberculosis-treatment-court-orders-rcna69090

QuoteA Washington woman with tuberculosis refuses treatment, so authorities got court orders

When a person with active tuberculosis does not accept medication, public health officials can take legal action as a last resort.

The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department in Washington has obtained multiple court orders requiring a Tacoma resident to get treatment for her active tuberculosis, officials told NBC News on Friday.

The woman has thus far refused to isolate or take the necessary medications, according to Nigel Turner, the department's division director of Communicable Disease Control.

"The court order is in place ordering isolation and quarantine," Turner said. "We're working with her on assessing the compliance with that."

The News Tribune, a local news outlet, reported on Friday that over the past year, the health department has repeatedly sought and been granted court orders compelling the woman to isolate and get treated for tuberculosis. According to the Tribune, legal petitions from the department said the patient had not abided by previous orders, and had at one point started but discontinued medication. The health department confirmed the Tribune's reporting to NBC News.

A judge issued the latest order on Jan. 20, granting the department the authority to test, treat and detain the woman, starting next week.

The department announced Monday that it was monitoring the case and said at the time that it was working with the woman's family to persuade her to accept treatment.

The department declined to offer information about why the woman has refused treatment.

Under Washington state law, public health officials have the legal authority to seek a court order when a person's refusal to take medication poses a threat to the public.

Tuberculosis can rise to that level because it can be deadly if left untreated, and infectious people risk spreading the disease further. The bacteria that causes tuberculosis can spread through the air when a person with an active case coughs, sneezes or speaks.

The treatment process can take three to nine months, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People who discontinue medications before treatment is complete can also develop antibiotic resistance.

When it comes to taking legal action, Turner said, "it's very reluctantly that we do that because obviously we're balancing people's civil liberties against protecting the health of the public."

In the past 20 years, the department said, it has had to enlist the help of law enforcement to detain three people who refused tuberculosis treatment until they were no longer infectious. Turner said the department typically exhausts other measures before seeking a court order, such as enlisting family members, medical providers or infectious disease experts to reason with a patient.

Treatment for tuberculosis generally consists of antibiotics taken daily or weekly for a period of months. People with infectious tuberculosis must be isolated during that time, until they're no longer capable of spreading the disease to others. The vast majority of cases can be cured with medication, according to the World Health Organization.

Turner said the length of treatment or possibility of side effects from the antibiotics may deter some people from accepting medication. People who don't have reliable access to food or housing may also be reluctant to follow isolation guidelines, he said, so the health department may provide them with those resources.

In regards to the current patient, he said, the department is "really looking for every opportunity for them to comply with and work with us to resolve this as soon as we can."

The Tribune reported that a January legal filing from the health department said the woman had previously gone to the emergency room following a car crash but had not disclosed her tuberculosis diagnosis to staff. Chest X-rays taken during the visit showed the disease's progression, the petition said, according to the Tribune. The Tacoma health department confirmed the report to NBC News.

Symptoms of active tuberculosis include a bad cough that lasts three weeks or longer, chest pain or coughing up blood or phlegm, according to the CDC.

Nationally, the number of tuberculosis cases has declined steadily since 1992, according to the CDC. The U.S. recorded around 7,900 active cases in 2021. Tuberculosis vaccines are not widely administered in the U.S. because the disease is not prevalent and the shots are not highly effective in adults.

Pierce County sees about 20 cases of active tuberculosis per year, the health department said.

But some people live with latent tuberculosis infections, meaning the bacteria is inactive and the host isn't contagious and doesn't have symptoms. The CDC estimates this affects up to 13 million people in the U.S. Around 5% to 10% of those latent cases, if left untreated, will develop into active disease at some point in people's lives.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

celedhring

#87411
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 04, 2023, 05:13:48 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on February 04, 2023, 05:02:24 PMI feel like that works with almost any other nationaliy/language but French :lol: :P

I don't think that's true, at least for the languages I'm familiar with.  Definitely not for Spanish and Korean.

It is ironic that the lingua franca has such bizarre spelling/pronounciation rules.  Or lack thereof.

I remember when I visited the UK for the first time. I was 12 and the only person in the group that "spoke" any English. Trying to buy train tickets to "Leicester" (as opposed to saying "Lestah") got me completely a blank face from the ticket lady. THAT'S HOW YOU WRITE IT FER CRISSAKES.

Anyway, outside of that, the advantage of English, besides cultural/economic dominance, is that it's actually a rather simple language to learn.

Admiral Yi

Quote from: celedhring on February 05, 2023, 04:07:52 AMAnyway, outside of that, the advantage of English, besides cultural/economic dominance, is that it's actually a rather simple language to learn.

Really?  A million irregular verb conjugations, a massive vocabulary, a mountain of new slang generated every day, and at least for the American version an R sound designed to torture the larynx. I've always thought the reason people pick it up is because of entertainment.  But I don't have your ESL perspective.

Threviel


celedhring

Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 05, 2023, 04:55:50 AM
Quote from: celedhring on February 05, 2023, 04:07:52 AMAnyway, outside of that, the advantage of English, besides cultural/economic dominance, is that it's actually a rather simple language to learn.

Really?  A million irregular verb conjugations, a massive vocabulary, a mountain of new slang generated every day, and at least for the American version an R sound designed to torture the larynx. I've always thought the reason people pick it up is because of entertainment.  But I don't have your ESL perspective.

English verb conjugations are a couple orders of magnitude simpler than verbs in romance languages. In high school I was having an easier time with English verbs than I did with Spanish/Catalan ones, and it's not hyperbole.

Other advantages are lack of grammatical gender, less grammatical redundancy, less vestigial traces of decension, etc... English grammar is very easy to get a basic grasp of and immediately be able to communicate semi-effectively, the ony BUT is, as noted, the lack of consistent pronounciation rules.

Of all the languages I have attempted to learn (which includes German and Czech) English is by far the easiest. And that's not a bad thing.

Richard Hakluyt

I thought the consensus was that the early and medium stages of learning English are pretty easy, maybe due to the lack of rules/focus on grammar, but that mastery is very difficult also for that very reason  :hmm:

Duque de Bragança

Quote from: Sheilbh on February 04, 2023, 05:26:05 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 04, 2023, 05:18:07 PMFrench has their own pronunciation rule problems too :D
That's my point - Spanish, for example, is say what you see. The spelling and pronunciation are aligned, same with Italian.

French on the other hand :hmm: :lol: There's a reason they need the dictée.

Dictée is not that common nowadays, unfortunately, but don't let facts influence you.  :P

Castilian has its troubles, with the distinction between "ll" & "y" getting blurry (bloody yeistas!), b and v mixed up since the beginning, and "h" always silent unless part of a digram, of course.

Plus, tense agreement is compulsory in Castilian and Portuguese, unlike French where it is only for literary levels.
 
Italian spelling is not that simple with the double consonants, unlike Castilian. Not to mention some Italian grammar rules made their way into French and not for simplification (ask Goupil Gris about the past participle agreement  :P).

Romanian adds neutral to the genders, closer to Latin.  :D

OTOH, not distinguishing between é and è is really failing at a very basic level, which brings a lot more problems; future vs conditional, imparfait vs passé simple (written/formal level in French but common level in Castilian and Portuguese).
Yet that lack of distinction is part and parcel of some dialects. Same goes with the different between o and ô. Connes et cônes pronounced the same way makes for some funny misunderstandings.

All in all, French spelling is still easier than English spelling, the latter still often relying on old medieval unreformed French spellings.  :P Damning with faint praise I know.

PS: I see Anglos agree about the relative difficulty of mastering English. Pidgin-like level is easy to learn, of course.

The Larch

English is piss easy to learn to a basic-mid level. Taking it to an advanced level takes a bit more, mostly of practice rather than pure learning.

Sheilbh

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on February 05, 2023, 07:35:23 AMI thought the consensus was that the early and medium stages of learning English are pretty easy, maybe due to the lack of rules/focus on grammar, but that mastery is very difficult also for that very reason  :hmm:
That's my impression too - and my impression is also that it's similar to Spanish. Easy to get to a level of communication but mastery is more challenging because there's lots of exceptions or variations on rules. For some reason I think I've heard German is the opposite - there are lots of rules to learn that are necessary at the start but are then applied relatively consistently as you learn more.

Friends from other countries who speak English as a second language have complained to me that they don't get corrected by native speakers. I think for two reasons - one is politeness it seems rude to correct if you understand them even if their precise phrase wasn't correct; and the other is that (certainly in the UK for my generation) we didn't learn English grammar, so I might not what's right but I don't know why. I also wonder if that's why people are more comfortable picking up on errors in pronunciation v grammar.

But from the perspective of trying to learn/improve/master another language I can understand why it's frustrating that people aren't flagging when you're wrong and what's correct. Having been told this by a few people I'm not so sure it is as polite as we think or that correcting is as rude - obviously context matters, I don't think anyone should be correcting randos or someone in a cafe :lol:
Let's bomb Russia!

Tamas

Yes. English is the bass guitar of languages.