Language Overflow

I should've said: "Good Morning All!" @CowperKettle @Woodrow and everyone who can read me :D

good morning

What does it say in that Longman Book @CowperKettle?

Hi @Woodrow, anything about English I can learn (from you)? :)

anything is pretty broad, anything specific?

Q: Strict with or strict about

@Student I was amazed at the preciseness of Snails' answer. I've got no copy of the book at hand..

0

How would the meaning change if we changed the propositions in the following sentences. This company is very strict about punctuality. ( with) The Trumps are very strict with their children. (about)

prepositions

5:23 AM

anything that covers every single thing :) @Woodrow

It's interesting that we can use "strict with X" where X is some abstract notion.

> " The government in Uruguay has been very open and strict with this issue, " says Mr. Aguirre. (COCA)

But "This company is very strict with punctuality" sounds weird.

It's weird, I've never been asked before.. let's see. maybe I'll just use some interesting rhetoric and vocab. English has many intricacies, acquired through exposure, practice, and study. It can be fun to look at the rhetoric of unique people, and even of different generations, like autobiographies of people in the 1800's. @Student

Anonymous

5:47 AM

Hi @Woodrow, welcome to ELL chat! :-)

Anonymous

I remember talking to you in Japanese.SE chat, too.

hey @snailboat long time :)

Anonymous

These are the two rooms I go in most :-)

@snailboat @Woodrow ah, you both have known each other :)

@snailboat I've been still searching for "Mrs. Must" :D

Anonymous

I'm sorry, I don't think I recall what the "Mrs Must" thing is in reference to.

Crazy Ninja

6:03 AM

smartenergygb.org/en/about-smart-meters/what-is-a-smart-meter

Anonymous

I want these guitar picks.

Crazy Ninja

:D

Hi, everyone. My special greeting for Snailboat.

Anonymous

Hi, @V.V.! Welcome back to ELL chat :-)

6:08 AM

Promise to show me some pictures some time.

Anonymous

Of my hamsters?

Of course. How do you know?

Anonymous

The hamsters are doing well. They can be a little silly sometimes.

Anonymous

The girl with the darker fur has a purple plastic igloo, but rather than make a nest in it, she likes to keep it flipped over upside down.

Anonymous

Which is of course her hamster prerogative :-)

Anonymous

6:12 AM

She made her nest in a pasta box.

Anonymous

Hamsters are very particular about where they make their nests and where they keep their food and such.

Anonymous

These particular hamster sisters prefer not to come out until we turn out the lights, so we don't have a lot of good opportunities to take pictures.

They seem to be naughty, right?

Anonymous

I've taken pictures when they're in their little temporary homes during the day (so their cages can be cleaned), but they're not generally very happy when those pictures are taken. They don't like being in the temporary homes.

Anonymous

Oh, well, they're hamsters, they do as hamsters will :-)

Anonymous

6:16 AM

They've actually both become very nice while living here.

Anonymous

They don't bite at all, even if they're unhappy.

How many hamsters have you got?

Anonymous

Just the two right now.

One was brown and the other?

Anonymous

She's a bit lighter colored, more of a beige.

Anonymous

6:19 AM

I still don't have very many pictures, but I can show you the ones I have :-)

Hamster dance; youtube.com/watch?v=1qN72LEQnaU

Anonymous

@snailboat He's looking at us!

Anonymous

Oh, where's she sitting?

Anonymous

6:22 AM

That's a little green plastic igloo. It's supposed to be a place she can feel safe and make her nest.

Anonymous

See, that way there's one little tube where she can crawl in.

Looks like a castle.

Anonymous

But she filled up the tube with bedding so no one could get in, then she made a tunnel under the back side to go in and out :-)

Anonymous

This is the other sister.

Anonymous

6:23 AM

You can't tell from this picture, but her cage is very long.

Anonymous

Here she is in her temporary home, poor thing.

Anonymous

She's not happy at all in that picture.

Cute!

(0:

Anonymous

6:25 AM

Unfortunately, hamsters do need to get their cages cleaned on a regular basis.

Anonymous

We can put them in larger temporary cages, but the size isn't really the problem. It's just that it's not her home, and she wants to go back.

Is she a big one I saw earlier?

Anonymous

She's about the same size, but she's a different hamster.

Anonymous

These are the two hamsters we have right now.

Anonymous

The other picture was from a few years ago, and hamsters only live for two years on average.

Anonymous

6:27 AM

I do have a very large number of pictures of other hamsters :-)

How long do snails live?

Anonymous

That depends on a lot of things, most importantly which species of snail.

Or rather the big one?

The ones you have...

Anonymous

Also, when snails seal themselves off in their shells and wait for better conditions, they slow down greatly and age very slowly.

Anonymous

6:29 AM

Sometimes a snail can wait a very long time to come back out of their shell and still be alive. There are reports of snails lasting for years in that state.

Anonymous

My snails probably live a couple years on average.

Interesting.

Anonymous

Snails can last a long time in harsh conditions if they aestivate or hibernate, but not all of them survive.

Anonymous

I keep my snails in good conditions with food and water all the time, so they don't hide in their shells for long periods of time :-)

Anonymous

One stayed in their shell for a week once, though.

6:31 AM

The snail in your profile pic is pretty exotic, is that a random internet pic?

Anonymous

I think sometimes they just want to take a break.

Anonymous

@Woodrow Yes, it's a picture from online, I can't have that sort of snail here.

Anonymous

It's a Polymita picta.

Hullo @Woodrow! Welcome to LO!

I've not actually participated in tag policing on any of the Stack sites before, so I hesitate to cast a vote, but a look through the tagged questions does seem to indicate that this tag is simply fluff. The questions tagged solely with it can be retagged with more specific tags without trouble. Well, not trouble with choosing a new tag, anyway. Apparently you can't just edit a question and remove/add a tag - you need to make at least 6 characters worth of changes to the text as well. Lord knows why. Also, yay triangles. — Damien H 5 mins ago

Anonymous

I used it as a temporary profile picture when everyone was changing their profiles to rainbow-colored things, but @CowperKettle said he liked this one better, so I kept it :-)

Anonymous

6:33 AM

They're very colorful snails.

Anonymous

Thanks @I

Oooh, that's even blacker than yours.

Anonymous

But they're endangered.

Indeed those are beautiful colours :)

6:34 AM

It is pretty

@snailboat Yes, the other picture, with Bean, was unclear. When I first saw it, I could not understand what it depicted. (0:

Anonymous

@IͶΔ Look up Victaphanta compacta.

Compact, ha

Anonymous

This was my pet snail Bean :-)

6:36 AM

Yes, this one. It is hard to understand what the whitish stuff is. (0:

Anonymous

I still think it's the cutest snail picture I've taken.

Anonymous

@CowperKettle The slice of banana?

Yes. (0:

Carnivorous giant snails can be the subject of a blockbuster horror movie.

Eating?

6:38 AM

Sorta like "The Blob" @IͶΔ

Anonymous

That's Luna as a baby :-)

@snailboat How many years before he eats that lettuce?

Anonymous

Hehe! My new snail can eat one of those leaves in a single day. But she's much bigger.

BTW @all ELU is being hit with a spam wave.

Anonymous

6:39 AM

I noticed that earlier. I flagged a couple spams with Chinese.

Orly?

Anonymous

Are there more?

Anonymous

Ah, it looks like they've been taken care of already.

They are.

Thankfully there's no shortage of spam flaggers.

6:52 AM

Thank you, Snailboat. Your lovely pictures give energy for the coming day.

Anonymous

7:23 AM

I've recently encountered a use of the slang expression for reals that is new to me: for reals as an attributive modifier

Anonymous

If you could earn a living as a for-reals ninja...

Anonymous

We're at a for-reals speakeasy!

The sounds like hippy talk :)

Anonymous

Compound adjective? It looks like it has the form of a preposition phrase, but it appears in attributive and predicative position and it seems to be gradable.

Anonymous

People say things like very for reals.

Anonymous

7:26 AM

Slang is funny.

Anonymous

@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ I do live near San Francisco :-)

Nope, why?

bjb568

@snailboat South bay?

Anonymous

Yeah, Los Gatos.

Anonymous

The cats!

bjb568

7:27 AM

:D

¡Los gatos son los mejores animales! :3

2

Anonymous

@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ I'm sorry, I'm not sure what question you were answering.

The 49ers are our enemy

Anonymous

@bjb568 It used to be La Rinconada de Los Gatos.

Rancho Rinconada de Los Gatos

The league has banned preseason games between us because of rioting

Anonymous

I don't know much about sports.

bjb568

7:31 AM

El Rancho Rinconada de los Gatos was a 6,631-acre (26.83 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Santa Clara County, California made in 1840 by Governor Juan Alvarado to Jose Maria Hernandez and Sebastian Fabian Peralta. Located in the southern San Francisco Bay Area, the grant included present-day Los Gatos and Monte Sereno, along with about a third of Campbell. It also included small sections of present-day San Jose, Saratoga and unincorporated Santa Clara County. Los Gatos Creek flowed through the center of the rancho. The name means "corner of the cats" and is derived from the cougars that are...

Anonymous

losgatosca.gov/515/About-Los-Gatos?NID=515

linear-algebra logic algebra-precalculus arithmetic education matrices reference-request

please delete me

1.2k 1 13

@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ ?

Jasper again

8:27 AM

> The trouble is, most of these rules are wrong. “I’ve never seen a book so bad on my subject,” says Pullum of Gwynne’s Grammar. “It’s the familiar old nonsense, modified through 200 years of rubbish, from teachers who didn’t quite understand it to students who understood it less.”

> telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10692897/…

Pullum on a bestseller in the history.

@DamkerngT. Which book is he talking about?

Gwynne’s Grammar

I found it while searching for a post on Language Log about using who/that as a relative pronoun for a person or people.

(Because it looks like we're going to close ell.stackexchange.com/questions/85425/who-vs-that-correct-use as a duplicate of ell.stackexchange.com/questions/40654/…. And I think we need a better answer.)

The current answer is based on a post on Grammar Girl, and it highlighted the part that is only just her "opinion".

I was thinking about to upvote CarSmack's comment, but I don't want to say Grammar Girl is rubbish. I think her site is quite good, though it looks like she may be wrong this time.

And as usual, I found something else. (^_^)

@Sᴋᴜʟʟᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ Hah!

};-) @DamkerngT. Not to mention stabbings etc

Q: Why can meta sites be parents of chatrooms?

0

Not sure if it counts as a bug or not, but some per-site metas can be the parent sites of chatrooms. This room is a living example, where the parent site is MathOverflow meta. Here is a beautiful screenshot: 10 meta sites are selectable as the parent site, 2 of which are beta sites. As choosi...

bug chat meta

@IͶΔ I ran into some of such chat rooms. IIRC, the Den is a meta chat room.

8:39 AM

@DamkerngT. Meta.SE is a pretty different place.

It has its own domain.

I'm not talking about that.

Note that I'm not talking about meta.SE chats which have their own domain. — IͶΔ 8 secs ago

@snailboat A-ha! You painted it, right? :P

BTW, nice hamster pics!

@Student Oh, iced tea! I like it, too! -- (BTW, good afternoon!)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I think I'd shared most of them already, but I like the hamsters :-) I just haven't had too many opportunities to take pictures of them.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Nature is really good at painting snails.

@snailboat I remember that I've seen most of them, but not all of them. :D

Question of the day: how many cats are there in Los Gatos? :-)

Anonymous

Answer: Corners!

Anonymous

8:50 AM

(Wait a minute!)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Have you seen the endangered Hawaiian tree snails?

Are they the snails you mentioned up there?

Anonymous

google.com/search?q=oahu+tree+snails&tbm=isch

Oh! They look like beads!

Are the poisonous ones the most colourful?

Anonymous

8:53 AM

The Oahu tree snails don't really have any defenses against predators.

Anonymous

They also had fairly narrow natural ranges and reproduced slowly, which is why they went extinct or nearly extinct when predators and competitors were introduced.

Aww

Anonymous

But they had (have in some cases) really beautiful shells.

Anonymous

From Wikipedia:

Anonymous

8:54 AM

That's a lot of snails!

Anonymous

Here's a picture of a live one from the Google image search:

Anonymous

See, the shell goes the other way around from most snails.

Wow! Nice gold color.

I used to think that all snails would look like that. :-)

(Because of an illus in a children book.)

Anonymous

8:56 AM

They're breeding them at the University of Hawaii so they can be reintroduced into the wild.

Anonymous

www2.hawaii.edu/~trsnlab

For some reason, I think Hawaii is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Maybe the tree snails choose to live there by choice. :-)

(Stumbled upon: archives.starbulletin.com/98/04/14/features/story2.html)

Anonymous

I've heard even in positions like What even is this? enough now that it's starting to sound normal to me.

Anonymous

You know, we never really lose our neuroplasticity. We can keep adapting to language as it changes throughout our lives, barring degenerative disorders or such.

Anonymous

It's just that we tend to establish our existing language processing really well as children, and we get really efficient at it through practice.

Anonymous

9:09 AM

My mother is still picking up new languages in her 70s :-)

@snailboat Pretty awesome!

@snailboat Your whole family is amazing

Word of the day: belt-and-braces.

> You should draw the dots showing the interesting electrons. The half arrows show where they go. This is very much a "belt-and-braces" job, and the arrows don't add much.

Anonymous

What does it mean?

"being extremely scrupulous"

Probably a Britishism

9:16 AM

Belt and braces... Hmm... what does it allude to?

> From the literal belt and braces for holding up a pair of loose trousers

> oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/belt-and-braces

Anonymous

Oh, I see! They call suspenders braces over there.

Q: Difference between a pale and a light color

nods -- I didn't think it'd be that either!

0

In LDOCE, 'light' is considered a synonym of 'pale' which means having more white in it, as usual, and I also thought pale and lights are interchangeable when it came to colors. I'm reading 'English Vocabulary in Use', intermediate level, which is based on British English, in which there is a no...

collocation

This is probably subjective, but I don't think "pale" is just "light" either.

But it's hard to describe colors in words.

A-ha!

> nonstopparty.co.uk/images/_lib/…

> s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/5k5PORx1CmMUHRxbvap1qA--/…

Anonymous

That's a very bright, saturated color, the second one.

A pale blue that's not light, and a light blue that's not pale.

@snailboat Would you call it "light"?

Wow, ELL gets some quality edit suggestions today.

It feels nice that something is working on the main site.

Anonymous

9:25 AM

@DamkerngT. Umm, I wouldn't say it's not light, but my first choice is probably 'bright'.

nods -- Agree. I think either bright or light works fine for me.

Anonymous

I dunno. Those terms aren't necessarily well defined. I tend to use terms like saturated which are.

> en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Cambridge_blue

> Cambridge blue ‎(plural Cambridge blues)
1. A light, bright blue.
Cambridge blue colour:

Anonymous

Ha.

Anonymous

I would have said sky blue.

9:28 AM

#99CCFF

Anonymous

I guess it's a little different from sky blue.

nods

Oh, we have some more blue colors!

> Cerulean blue is a light, bright blue that is popular for skies and atmospheric effects.

> The white was replaced by a glossy, slightly 'off-white'shade, whilst the blue was a comparatively light blue, which can best be referred to colloquially as a 'light bright blue', the reason for its use presumably being to make the roundel stand out ...

For one thing, it seems like bright can go with light in colors, but bright pale?

Okay, I give up! People do use bright, pale yellow!

bright pale? @DamkerngT.

pale is not bright, as far as I am concerned.

Yes! It seems like people really use bright, pale SOME-COLOR sometimes.

Anonymous

I do tend to think a pale color is desaturated.

9:35 AM

@Student Maybe it's common in our region that pale doesn't go well with bright.

The analogy is "you looked pale"; you are not "bright".

Anonymous

People use subjective terms to describe colors differently from one another. You can't expect everyone to use them the same way. I think that what exactly they communicate isn't necessarily very precise or well defined.

Anonymous

You should hear how people describe sounds.

nods

Anyway too many colours in 'it' :D

Anonymous

9:37 AM

At least half the time, the terms people come up with to describe tonal qualities seem to mean nothing in particular.

Eww! I really like Crayon colors!

Anonymous

I learned color names from crayons!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. And now you think they're gross?

@snailboat It was a positive Eww. :-)

O_o

Thai "eww"

Anonymous

9:38 AM

Oh! I haven't heard of a positive eww before.

I did! But, when I looked at it, wow superb! :)

Probably! Over here, when we see a very cute baby, we say, "So ugly!"

Eww = Aww? @DamkerngT.

Anonymous

Yeah, I thought it was aww :-)

I really say Eww! :D

Anonymous

9:39 AM

But you should probably spell it differently.

Or, Amazing! :)

Anonymous

Wait, what do you say in IPA?

Evw

It's one of my idiosyncrasies, don't worry. :D

Ewwew

Euw

9:40 AM

Ewwhh is not huftssss, I believe :)

@snailboat Hmm... it's more like "Uww", but English doesn't have Uww, so I used Eww instead.

Anonymous

Maybe Ooh? :-)

Oh Gosh! ?

Oww

Hmm... Lemme see if I can find it on YouTube.

@Student Yes, approximately!

9:41 AM

OMGROFLMAO also would work in an internet context.

Anonymous

I see Japanese speakers say oww and eww inappropriately all the time.

Anonymous

I always wonder why they're hurt or disgusted.

Anonymous

Like: "Oww, that's a great song!"

Anonymous

"I'm sorry the song hurt your toe!"

No worries @DamkerngT., it's common here too "eww" :D We express it in a flat tone usually.

9:42 AM

LOL I see.

Hehe!

Anonymous

Ohh, I see! That's pretty different.

It looks like they feel surprised about something, yes?

It's funny that this kind of sound doesn't align well across languages. :D

Anonymous

9:44 AM

forvo.com/search/eww

@Student A bit surprised, a bit awe, a bit joyful!

@snailboat The typical English Eww is like when a kid see their parents kissing each other, I think. :-)

Okay, from now on, I will write Thai Eww as Uww, to make things clearer. :D

Anonymous

Uww!

Anonymous

It's interesting because it sounds more like Ohwee to me!

You got the "ee" part at the end right!

Anonymous

Ad hoc transcriptions are so confusing.

Anonymous

9:48 AM

I don't understand how the "ww" is like "ee".

Anonymous

"w" is like "u".

Pale yellow is unmellow yellow? :D @DamkerngT. @snailboat

@Student I can't tell it from the lemon yellow!

I like the sound of it, though "pale yellow is unmellow yellow", aww.... :)

Anonymous

I should just use IPA :-)

9:49 AM

haha

@snailboat Hehe!

Anonymous

My brain is broken, and it needs sleep to be repaired!

Aww

I guess my Uww hurt you a bit. :D

Anonymous

Uww!

Anonymous

Wait, @DamkerngT., is Uww supposed to indicate the first half of what they say in the video or the whole thing?

9:54 AM

Yes! There are several implications of this set of sounds. (Some are more like Uww, some are like Uyee.)

It can come it different tones, and it can suggest several meanings!

Anonymous

I was trying to match up "Uww" with the whole thing!

Anonymous

And I got confused :-)

Anonymous

I could totally imagine "uww" being the first half. Uww!

I found a complete Uww, but apparently most of the examples link to inappropriate things.

(อูว์)

Anonymous

Oh no!

Anonymous

9:56 AM

ja.forvo.com/word/…

So, the example above is not ideal, but it's close enough.

Haha! I like that dish!

Anonymous

The end sounds like eww!

Anonymous

Well, y'know, kinda. :-)

I see!

John Clifford

ohai

9:57 AM

see-eww ~ soy sauce.

Hi! @JohnClifford

What's in your avatar?

Anonymous

Hi, person who lives in the future!

John Clifford

I finally have an avatar on SE. XD

Clifford the Big Red Dog.