Spoiling the ship

The ha'p'orth of tar in this case was the cost of a plane ride from Nantes, to Cardiff. On board was Cardiff's new signing, the young Emiliano Sala.

According to the French site https://fr.distance.to/ it is just under 400 km as the crow flies from Calais to Cardiff, and just under 500 km from Nantes to Calais. It is also as it happens just under 500 km as the crow flies from Nantes to Cardiff, passing over Guernsey. And more than 200 km of that route is over  the cold deep Atlantic

You can probably guess where I'm going with this.

A BBC News report from over 3 years ago quoted an  aviation expert

Flying alone across the Atlantic Ocean in a tiny, single-engine plane at low altitudes, sometimes in extreme weather conditions, is not for the faint-hearted. Things can and do go wrong.

This is not news. In 1931 Antoine de St-Exupéry published Vol de Nuit, based on his experiences extending  the Aéropostale route from Dakar over the Atlantic to Natal, then South past Buenos Aires and then along the coast of Patagonia to Punto Arenas. If anyone knew about night flying over the Atlantic in light aircraft it was St-Exupéry  (who took his expertise to an early and watery possibly suicidal...

<ducking_and_covering>
Speculation is still going on, more than 70 years after the event; some people think they know but others aren't so sure. It happened during what he knew was to be his final sortie (as a result of demobilization rather than death). It seems possible that he picked a fight against impossible odds out of a sense of invulnerability. His commander regrets not grounding him.
</ducking_and_covering>

...grave).

The editor of the Heinemann edition of Vol de Nuit writes of the reasons for extending the Aéropostale service to South America:

The air transport companies, through being grounded at night, were  losing most of the advantage over other methods of transport which they gained by day.

That is, there was money to be had by taking risks involving night flying.  You can probably guess where I'm going with this.

In a World Service interview on Tuesday evening [about 33'30" into that programme] Alastair Rosenstein, an experienced pilot and now an aviation consultant, says

...[l]et's say they were crossing at 10,000 feet [he has already mentioned a report that they were much-lower; and they had requested air traffic control at Guernsey to drop further still] , it would give them about 15 minutes of gliding time. It narrows the risk period that they are unable to reach land, and at this time of year you absolutely have to reach land in a single-engined aircraft... 

I used to cross the Channel myself in light aircraft and I'd always choose the Dover-Calais route, because it's only 20 miles and if you go high enough there's a very very short time period right in the centre of the Channel where you wouldn't be able to reach land. But at night, low level, over the Channel, it's not advisable.

In a final, horribly prescient voice message the young Argentine footballer said

If in  an hour and a half you have no news  from me I don't know if they are going to send someone to look for me; because they cannot find me. But you know...Dad*, how scared am I.

Whatever turns out to have been the reason for this sorry tale, regardless of the air-worthiness of the aircraft (which that voice message calls into question) or the suitability of the pilot, or questions about licensing, or who paid for the flight, it's obvious that money comes into it somewhere. Spoilt ships and ha'p'orths of tar spring to mind. After lashing out a mind-boggling transfer fee, a Euro or two more spent on a reliable aircraft/route would have been a wise investment.

Radix malorum est cupiditas, as Chaucer's Pardoner used to say; the love of money is the root of all evil. Here endeth today's lesson.

b
Update: 2019.01.27.19.15 – Added footnote.

* At first I lazily accepted the "translation" provided by Facebook. (In all honesty I thought Dad was pretty improbable, but the subtitle lasted longer than the recording, so I couldn't check.)  I  think, in the circumstances, he‘s  more likely to have said Mi Padre (that is, God); in fact  I once knew an Argentine student who habitually invoked the deity in Italian. If this practice is common in Argentina  it could  have been Padre Mio. The translation would still be God, but as I said the recording is cut off.

Update: 2019.02.04.16.00 – Added PS

PS

A  week later, the crash site has been found: here are the BBC's and Global News's reports. David Mearns, leader of a privately-funded search for the aircraft, said he found it on Sunday. The BBC report says:

Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme on Monday, Mr Mearns said: "We located the wreckage of the plane on the seabed at a depth of about 63m within the first couple of hours [of searching]." 

He said the plane was identified by sonar, before a submersible with cameras was sent underwater and was able to confirm it was the plane.

Words "we" mispronounced

When, in the late-noughties (at the 2008 or 2009 Language Show) I first saw Babbel's offering my lip curled. A whois search shows that they were first thought of as early as 2000:

But Wikipedia claims that they were founded much later, in 2007:

The company was founded in August 2007 by Markus Witte and Thomas Holl.^[4][5] In January 2008, the language learning platform went online with community features as a free beta version.

And who am I to question Wikipedia ? Perhaps Messrs Write and Holt met earlier and registered the domain name in 2000, but didn't get around to monetizing their idea (if you'll pardon the verb) for another seven years.

Anyway, this lip-curling I mentioned. They were touting  a way of transcribing English using unmodified spelling...

<apologia>

Beginning of list there are many
more subjects on offer

I  may be misrepresenting them. The problem is that their web site is so constructed that it is impossible to get details of their transcription system without signing up for a course. And my interest in that is attenuated by the dropdown list of languages they offer, which starts like this: 

Whatever that may be, I'm not in the  market for it. 

</apologia>

My attention was recalled to this way of representing the sounds of English by a BBC article on the words "we" (whoever that is) mispronounced in 2018. After the main text (which I'll get to, honest) were the words Pronunciations provided by Babbel. I imagine this was meant to imply some sort of suggestion of gratefulness; but what should I be grateful for: For being confused? For being misinformed?

After the piece there was a reference to last year's words, which included the surname of EU Council President Donald Tusk (toosk). Oh yes? is that "oo" as in book or tool or blood...? I've said before that "sounds like" models of pronunciation are questionable (and I apologize for using them just now to make a point; I've heard Mr Tusk's name pronounced with all three of the pronunciations I mentioned (/ʊ/, /u:/, and /ʌ/); I suspect he pronounces it with a wholly different vowel: [y]?)

In an earlier post I ranted thus:

<rant flame="simmer">
 I have ranted about this before, somewhere  in the UsingEnglish forums, but I can't find where. So some readers may get a sense of déjà-lu – but probably not. (And I did mean -lu.) Anyway, here I go again. 

When you know your audience (and that word is crucial  –  when people can hear you) it's OK to say things like 'lear sounds like leer'. 'Sounds like' is meaningful only if there's a known sound to compare. But when you're writing – say, in an online forum – it's not so easy. What  if one of your readers has just learnt bear, pear, tear (NOT the lachrymal sort) or wear, so that the /eǝ/ sound is uppermost in their short-term memory of English sounds? You've told them that leer is pronounced  /leǝ/. 

Or suppose one of your readers mispronounces law as /lǝʊ/  –  a common enough mistake in an ESOL classroom   –  and you write that a word  'sounds like law'. Again, you've misinformed them. And I don't think that's too strong a word, at  least not in a language-teaching context.  If the teacher wants to communicate something, it's part of the job to make sure it's understood correctly. 

... </rant>

And I went on to say how easy and efficient IPA phonemic symbols are – particularly with reference to English. You can see the whole rant in its natural habitat here.

But I really must address those words "we" mispronounced in 2018. There weren't many in the BBC article, which referred to "A survey by the British Institute for Verbatim Reporters (BIVR) " but the link is just to the BIVR site, so one is none the wiser.

Entries include electronics firm Huawei (WA-way), specific (spe-SI-fik) and papoose (pa-POOSE).

OK, Huawei is a fair cop (though does "way" mean /weɪ/ or /waɪ/?).

<inline_PPPS>
And I'm not so sure about  the "WA" either. now I come to think of it. The H suggests that we may be dealing with the unvoiced bilabial frictionless continuant /ʍ/ (not unlike the sound at the beginning of "which" as heard in Edinburgh.

<autobiographical_note>
Which recalls to me a spelling test we were given in primary school by Miss O'Malley – a Scot, who expected us to distinguish between Wales and whales, not knowing (or perhaps not caring) that Received Pronunciation of British English uses /w/ for both (although some native speakers of British English do make a distinction between /ʍ/ and /w/  – as a matter of either regional pronunciation or just pure pedantry [encouraged by the Miss O'Malleys of this world].).
</autobiographical_note>

</inline_PPPS>

 But in nearly seventy years (OK, say 58 as an observer of language...

<autobiographical_note>
Really starting so young? Well yes. Before my tenth birthday, during a trip to Italy, I remember marvelling at the gratuitous mischievousness  of a language that marked a hot tap with a C.
</autobiographical_note>

...  I've never heard any native English speaker mis-stress specific. And pa-POOSE: whatever the vowel may be, does it end with /s/ or /z/?

The BBC article ends

The survey was commissioned by language learning app Babbel. [HD: Aha. Cui bono?} Their director of didactics, Miriam Plieninger, says the reason for the mispronunciations is pretty straightforward - many of the words on the list aren't English.

Gosh – wish I'd thought of that. But Babbel makes an awful lot more money than I have ever done; and Ms Plieninger ends with this unarguable point:

"If you understand what the other person meant, it's usually fine. As long as you get your message across, it's all good."

Right. Back to the land of the living.

b

PS
And here's a rather easy (but fairly neat, I think) French-based crossword clue.

• The workshop more recently Frenchified (1'7)

Update: 2019.01.19.15:20 – Fixed a bunch of typos.
Update: 2019.01.21.11:10 – Added PPS

PPS
And while we're on the subject of mispronouncing. the recent TV dramatization of Victor Hugo's The Glums (and I'll keep cracking that joke until somebody laughs [except that maybe it's not that funny..?] OK Les Misérables ) is a generous source...

<historical_phonological_change>
(The thing is, as I said once of Pizarro, one mustn't expect modern pronunciations in a period piece. I remember being told by the late Joe Cremona [philological non-pareil, mentioned from time to time in this blog] that when Louis Numéro-quelconque said "L'état c'est moi" the moi would have been pronounced [mwɛ].)
</historical_phonological_change>

.... But as the mispronunciation that irks me is a current mispronunciation in English speakers (I often hear it on The Great British Bake-off in the word mille-feuilles) I'm not sure how forgiving I should be.

The problem word is Montreuil,  whose last syllable several actors give a very English /ɔɪ/. And, in the light of the mess Javert made of  "prognathous" (I wrote about actors needing to understand the lines they learn here), I'm inclined to think the worst.

But I must go. If you read that  Pizarro, post you may have noticed (tucked away in a footnote) mention of Simon and Garfunkel, who are the subject of a jaunt I'm off on.

Update: 2019.01.24.12:35 – Added inline PPPS

Update: 2019.09.10.10:05 – Added P⁴S

P⁴S That clue: l'atelier

Professor Vanman, Facebook, and stress

Stress is a good thing.

Perhaps that needs some qualification: stress is a good thing in the appropriate context and  to an appropriate level. In a situation that calls for Fight or Flight, a surge of cortisol makes you fight harder or longer and run further or faster. But inappropriate levels of stress can bring a Fight-or-flight situation to the boil. If the stuff of 21st century life ratchets up the stress even before the stressee has to deal with a trying situation, Fight or Flight may become the default options – rather than, say, compromise, reasoning, counting to ten, backing-down, doing something else, clarification ...

<digression>
(That's a good one; it tends to crop up, for some reason. with respect to Northern Ireland. In the early days of the Good Friday Agreement the IRA kept asking for it. And now, in what one hopes (vainly) will be the dying days of the Brexit shenanigans...

<meta_digression>
(to use an arguably-Irish-based term, [and you can check out the other possibilities here])
</meta_digression>

... it has cropped up again as what Mrs May hopes to get over the EU's possible enforcement of The Backstop [a whole 'nother diet of worms])
</digression>

... or whatever. Sometimes taking the hit and then sending a sweary text to an innocent bystander does the job.

That was the stress relief I used the other day after  the <expletive_deleted> machine dispensed The Wrong Ticket. [In fact it had dispensed what I asked for, an Off-Peak Single, rather than what I wanted – an Off-Peak Return. Garbage In Garbage Out.

Back at the ranch, I logged in to the National Rail site, fearing that my mistaken order might be preserved for posterity as a Favorite. and while I was there I let off a bit more steam on their Feedback form:

<feedback>
The Favorites feature is counter-intuitive at best, and probably useless. My "Favorite" journey (which I haven't done for years, and was never a Favorite – I did it 2 or 3 times) is Reading-Swindon. I tried to remove this, but can't.

I wanted to change my Favorites because yesterday I accidentally ordered a single when I wanted a Return – and I wanted to avoid this option popping up in future.

Surely it's not beyond the wit of a web developer ...

<free_advice>
(I'll tell you for free: it'd be easy)
</free_advice>

 ... to have a check-prompt such as this: "Are you sure you want a single, when you could have a return for the same price? There's surely no downside to leaving your options open.")

But, returning to the Favorites list, it should have checkboxes and buttons for Remove and Add. I can't think how any developer could FAIL to offer these simple options.

</feedback>

On the bus home from the station, I  picked up a copy of Metro. which is worth every penny of its cover price (non-Londoners note: it's free). My eye was caught by an article with the headline Does a Facebook Diet Work? – based on some research led by the splendidly named Professor Vanman. It was probably too much to hope that his first name might be Dwight (geddit? or rather  geddit?).

I did some research (naturally the Metro article gave no clue), and found that the study in question was done at the University of Queensland nearly a year ago.

“People have long reported in other research that Facebook can make them feel bad about themselves or that it stresses them. Many people quit Facebook permanently because of it. Others take ‘Facebook Vacations’, in which they either deactivate or quit Facebook for a few days, weeks, or even months,” Vanman told PsyPost.

“Our research shows that ‘quitting’ Facebook for just five days is enough to reduce one’s levels of the stress hormone cortisol. The control group, who didn’t give up Facebook, did not show this.”

But there's a catch. Professor Vanman (not Dwight, I'm afraid, but Eric) goes on:

“We also found, however, that people who were instructed to give up Facebook for 5 days were less satisfied with their lives. Many were openly happy when the study was finished because they could return to Facebook,”...

[I]t could be that being off Facebook for the first few days reduces stress, but, the longer one feels like he or she is missing out, cortisol starts to increase again. We also don’t know if this would apply to giving up other social media like Twitter or SnapChat. We suspect these effects aren’t unique to Facebook.”

The Metro article sums up with a quote from another of the University of Queensland researchers: "There may be a sweet spot in terms of time spent on social media".

Moderation in everything: sounds about right. But where there's a catch (there may be a downside to total abstinence) there's often a counter-catch (rebuttal). The PsyPost article reporting on the study was dated 1 April 2018.

That's all for now

b

<noticed_in_passing>
PS Prize for  inappropriate register-selection in a translation
At the end of what was  on the whole a rather good mini-series (Manhunt aired recently on ITV) a bereaved father speaking in fairly good but hesitant English, when told  that his daughter's death could have been avoided but for a simple  bureaucratic slip on the part of a team investigating an earlier murder, says with a Gallic shrug  "Mistakes get made".  

Surely not. "People make mistakes" or the less fluent "One makes mistakes" (echoing a construction with on), or the rather better "Everyone makes mistakes".... But the extremely colloquial medio-passive ...

<ducking_and_covering>

(technical grammar knowledge Best Before November 2009, when I last taught) 

</ducking_and_covering>

 ...seems to me most unlikely... 

<clarificatory_ps>
(not wrong, but too right).
<clarificatory_ps> 

.... 

</noticed_in_passing> 

Update 2019.03.15.15:30 – Added inline PS.