Sanji comments on Little Johny Bayesian - Less Wrong

12 Post author: Darmani 18 March 2009 09:30PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 March 2009 08:37:50PM 0 points [-]

re-al = two syllables

THOUGHT that he was BRIGHT

Comment author: Sanji 01 December 2013 06:00:48PM 1 point [-]

In a lot of old poems, fire is just one syllable, and fiery two. I imagine real could be similarly condensed. In the most widely accepted english translation of the Kalevala (Finnish national epic), fire is never two syllables. I always found that strange because I pronounce it "fie-urr".

Comment author: [deleted] 01 December 2013 06:08:18PM 1 point [-]

I think one-syllable "fire" is more common in British English. (When I have access to a more convenient Web browser than my phone's, if I remember to, I'll dig up relevant posts from John C. Wells's blog.)

Comment author: [deleted] 15 December 2013 09:21:41AM *  0 points [-]

See here about words like “fire”. IIRC he also considers “real” to be varisyllabic; and probably there are people out there who pronounce “Bayesian” with two syllables, to rhyme with (young people's pronunciation of) “Asian”¹. (I can find many posts about compression and smoothing but none which summarizes it all.)


  1. I read that some old people pronounce “Asian” to rhyme with “nation”.