I woke up this morning thinking about how the word 'comfortable' is pronounced. Yes, I know it's an odd thing to wake up thinking about, but really, relative to the things I dream about, it's actually quite standard.
Anyway, I was wondering whether my pronunciation was a product of my growing up in Israel, and whether I'd never noticed anyone else pronouncing it differently. So I did the sensible thing - I Googled it. I guess I'm not alone in pronouncing it as 'comfterble'. It seems like most people from the US do (At least according to the comments on http://spacefem.livejournal.com/359969.html).
It's funny, because the syllables actually switch places, rather than some sound just being dropped out. It's sort of like 'interesting', which, while I pronounce it 'itresting', I've heard people around here pronounce as 'inneresting'.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Copenhagen part 3: readying to leave
Before I leave, I wanted to say a thing or two about the bikes in Copenhagen.
I have never seen so many people using bikes for transportation as here. Just looking at the Copenhagen Business School entrance (wish I had a photo), you see rows and rows of bikes just parked there. Everywhere you look on the streets, there are just as many bikes as cars (if not more), and bikes parked practically everywhere. Mind you, the Danes have an interesting way of securing their bikes - when they do at all: They have a lock on their rear wheel, so that you can't bike away with the bike. That doesn't actually stop you from picking it up and leaving with it, but that doesn't seem to concern anyone. I guess it's somewhat suspicious to be carrying around a bike rather than riding it. It's still very strange to me not to have bikes connected to anything permanent. You quite often see bikes that have fallen over just lying on the ground somewhere.
And people ride in their best clothes - I don't understand how they manage it. Regardless of whether the streets are wet, people don't seem to get their clothes dirty while riding, or at least it doesn't seem to bother them. Women in heeled shoes and skirts, men in suits, just biking around. Perhaps more interesting are all the people riding around talking on their cellphones - I guess it's not just a car thing, although I'd think it would be harder to do on a bike.
There are so many bikes that there are some roads that have two (marked) bike lanes in each direction, and special traffic lights especially for bikes. You have to cross these to get on and off buses, and although the bikes usually stop when there is a bus stopping, it's still necessary to look before getting on and off the bus so an especially aggressive bike doesn't hit you. I suppose that to Danes this post may seem quaint (if not condescending), but it's all quite different to me. Impressive - admirable even, but different nonetheless.
Overall it's been a fun visit. It was nice spending time with Tsvi and Lei, and Yvonne is so adorable. If you have the address, you can see pictures of her on my Picasa web albums.
I have never seen so many people using bikes for transportation as here. Just looking at the Copenhagen Business School entrance (wish I had a photo), you see rows and rows of bikes just parked there. Everywhere you look on the streets, there are just as many bikes as cars (if not more), and bikes parked practically everywhere. Mind you, the Danes have an interesting way of securing their bikes - when they do at all: They have a lock on their rear wheel, so that you can't bike away with the bike. That doesn't actually stop you from picking it up and leaving with it, but that doesn't seem to concern anyone. I guess it's somewhat suspicious to be carrying around a bike rather than riding it. It's still very strange to me not to have bikes connected to anything permanent. You quite often see bikes that have fallen over just lying on the ground somewhere.
And people ride in their best clothes - I don't understand how they manage it. Regardless of whether the streets are wet, people don't seem to get their clothes dirty while riding, or at least it doesn't seem to bother them. Women in heeled shoes and skirts, men in suits, just biking around. Perhaps more interesting are all the people riding around talking on their cellphones - I guess it's not just a car thing, although I'd think it would be harder to do on a bike.
There are so many bikes that there are some roads that have two (marked) bike lanes in each direction, and special traffic lights especially for bikes. You have to cross these to get on and off buses, and although the bikes usually stop when there is a bus stopping, it's still necessary to look before getting on and off the bus so an especially aggressive bike doesn't hit you. I suppose that to Danes this post may seem quaint (if not condescending), but it's all quite different to me. Impressive - admirable even, but different nonetheless.
Overall it's been a fun visit. It was nice spending time with Tsvi and Lei, and Yvonne is so adorable. If you have the address, you can see pictures of her on my Picasa web albums.
New technologies
Now that I've got the new blog set up, I'm trying to get the feed from it to display in my website to replace the previous version. As usual, whenever I discover a new way to store my data (such as this Blogger account) I take waaaaaaaaay too long to figure out the intricacies of how to use it.
Friday, September 14, 2007
IAMT in Copenhagen
It's now the last day of the IAMT conference in Copenhagen. Google was kind enough to send me, as I was a co-author of one of the papers presented here: Lexical Translation with Application to Image Search on the Web, which describes the early days of the panimages project. I also took the opportunity to visit with my brother Tsvi and sister-in-law Lei, and their new baby daughter Yvonne.
The conference has been fun. It's my first time at a conference, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. The first day was a half-day tutorial about machine translation on the web. The topic was interesting, but the contents were a little 'soft'. I got to meet a bunch of interesting people, though, which was a plus. The second day was a full-day workshop, where much of the presentations were very technical and went over my head. A number of them were interesting, though, and it's nice to see what people are working on and what the industry is arguing about. There was a long 'discussion' at the end of the day between the SMT (Statistical Machine Translation) people, and the NLG (Natural Language Generation) people, who seem to be somewhat at odds about where the field should be going and what their counterparts should be doing.
The last three days of the conference have been quite interesting. There have been three tracks of talks, and all of them have been interesting. Most of those I attended haven't been too technical, but have covered a breadth of subjects that are being worked on currently. It's nice to be able to keep an eye on what current research is about even without being too deeply involved with the field.
It's literally been years since I posted, and I'm trying out posting on Blogger now - hopefully improving the ease of posting and increasing the frequency.
Until next time.
The conference has been fun. It's my first time at a conference, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. The first day was a half-day tutorial about machine translation on the web. The topic was interesting, but the contents were a little 'soft'. I got to meet a bunch of interesting people, though, which was a plus. The second day was a full-day workshop, where much of the presentations were very technical and went over my head. A number of them were interesting, though, and it's nice to see what people are working on and what the industry is arguing about. There was a long 'discussion' at the end of the day between the SMT (Statistical Machine Translation) people, and the NLG (Natural Language Generation) people, who seem to be somewhat at odds about where the field should be going and what their counterparts should be doing.
The last three days of the conference have been quite interesting. There have been three tracks of talks, and all of them have been interesting. Most of those I attended haven't been too technical, but have covered a breadth of subjects that are being worked on currently. It's nice to be able to keep an eye on what current research is about even without being too deeply involved with the field.
It's literally been years since I posted, and I'm trying out posting on Blogger now - hopefully improving the ease of posting and increasing the frequency.
Until next time.
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