Language Overflow

Anonymous

4:00 AM

Man, I hated that class. No offense to MAR.

Anonymous

Other people are allowed to love chemistry, of course :-)

Anonymous

But me, I was okay with the textbook stuff . . . it's just the labs that I was awful at.

Damkerng T.

Sometimes we had to buy such a book, too, but it was much cheaper, like maybe $8.

Anonymous

Oh, my. That's. Um. That's a lot cheaper :-)

Damkerng T.

Still a bit expensive for students back then.

That's true!

Anonymous

4:01 AM

Guess they haven't figured out the textbook racket yet.

Anonymous

Hmm, that spam answer still isn't deleted.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat It was a lab class that hurtled me to the (infamous) legendary status. :P

@snailboat The one on ELL?

Okay, I deleted it.

I wasn't sure if it was spamming at first.

I mean, people post answers with links all the time.

Anonymous

Well, if it wasn't spam, it was Very Low Quality.

Anonymous

I 'protected' the question just now. Look how many deleted answers there are on it!

Damkerng T.

Oh, indeed. (Just noticed that!)

Anonymous

4:05 AM

@DamkerngT. Uh oh! How did you acquire legendary status? :-)

Anonymous

Either the question is a Very Low Quality magnet, or a Spam magnet, or just a Someone Likes To Delete Stuff magnet.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat The legend which went on for maybe a decade (and heaven knows it may still be around!) was that there was an undergrad who could've graduated with honor easily if he didn't fail a lab chem class. :D

Anonymous

Oh no! :-)

Anonymous

Stupid labs.

Damkerng T.

Indeed!

Anonymous

4:09 AM

Hey, as long as I'm just chatting about random stuff . . .

Anonymous

amazon.com/gp/product/B000USRG90

Anonymous

Ever consider getting something like these?

Damkerng T.

Sounds like the Eagle Eyes Glasses.

Anonymous

They're s'posed to help with circadian rhythms by blocking out blue light (whether artificial or natural), assuming you wear them in the evening.

Damkerng T.

Oh, that blue light thing.

Anonymous

4:10 AM

Kind of like running f.lux.

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure if it's just a myth or a scientific fact.

Anonymous

Oh, I think it's fairly well demonstrated, actually.

Anonymous

Just a moment . . .

Damkerng T.

Hah, they even have this:

amazon.com/Feit-Electric-BPESL13T-13-Watt-Fluorescent/dp/…

Anonymous

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831986

Damkerng T.

4:12 AM

I was considering to buy a new monitor (Ben-Q) once.

Anonymous

> A parallel line of research, meanwhile, delved into the qualities unique to blue light. From 1995 until 2001, Brainard and his colleagues tested 72 healthy men and women in more than 700 experiments to determine the strongest wavelength for suppressing melatonin secretion. The result confirmed a slightly earlier Japanese study on mutant mice, showing that the blues are the most important wavelengths for entraining the circadian system.

Anonymous

> Cones, the color receptors, have a peak sensitivity in the greens, at 555 nm. For the rods, the peak comes at 507 nm. Across 10 published studies on humans, rodents, and monkeys, the peak sensitivity of the melanopsin receptors appears to span 459–485 nm, says Brainard.

Damkerng T.

Ahh... and we purposely make lots of cool looking stuff blue these days.

Anonymous

If you stay away from artificial light―especially bright computer monitors, tablets, and phones―in the hours before you want to sleep, it can help.

Anonymous

But many of us don't want to.

Damkerng T.

4:14 AM

I'm actually one of those "us". :D

Anonymous

So the idea is, blocking blue should at least be helpful :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Same!

Anonymous

It's not like we're all using computer and artificial lighting after sunset by accident.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

It's a very cool perk of modern life. But it does appear to have an unintended side effect!

Anonymous

4:15 AM

Where I live, the sun has already set, and f.lux has turned my monitor yellowish.

Anonymous

I'm curious to see if those orange glasses have any noticeable effect for me.

Anonymous

I wonder if they're a pain to wear, though.

Anonymous

I figure at $9, it's worth a shot :-)

Damkerng T.

nods -- I expected it was more expensive than that before clicking the link.

Anonymous

Some people take melatonin.

Anonymous

4:17 AM

I never have.

Damkerng T.

Oh, me either!

Anonymous

But the mechanism for blue light delaying REM sleep appears to be melatonin suppression.

Damkerng T.

I found that tea and herbal tea work for me.

Anonymous

So supplementing it artificially (which seems to be fairly safe) could potentially have the same effect as avoiding blue light.

Damkerng T.

But I don't have the best sleeping cycle in the world anyway.

Anonymous

4:18 AM

I don't really want to supplement it, though.

Damkerng T.

Is Chrysanthemum tea popular over there?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. People are always asking me if I ever sleep.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I'm not sure. I love herbal tea! But I don't have that sort.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Hehe! Same here!

I guess there might be a chance because Chinese people love Chrysanthemum tea.

Anonymous

Chrysanthemums are culturally important in Japan.

Anonymous

4:21 AM

And also have a name that's easier to remember: kiku!

Damkerng T.

Oh! That's new to me.

A-ha!

Anonymous

But I don't think chrysanthemum tea is popular in Japan like it is in China.

Anonymous

I could be wrong.

Anonymous

菊花茶 (júhuāchá) ← I love when words have the 艹 radical across the top of each character like that

Damkerng T.

I can't exactly remember it. Is it from "flower"?

Anonymous

4:24 AM

'grass'

Damkerng T.

A-ha! Thanks!

Anonymous

I only know the Japanese names of the radicals

Anonymous

This one is くさかんむり in Japanese (lit. 'grass crown')

Anonymous

The かんむり 'crown' part of the name refers to its position in the character

Anonymous

I don't know what they're called in Chinese

Damkerng T.

4:25 AM

I think Chinese fan (rice) has it too. Can't recall the character, thought.

Anonymous

Hmm, well...

Anonymous

It's 飯 in Japanese / Traditional Chinese or 饭 in Simplified Chinese

Damkerng T.

Eh? That doesn't look anything like "grass" at all.

Anonymous

That's fàn 'meal; rice'

Anonymous

In Japanese the word is go-han 御飯

Damkerng T.

4:27 AM

Maybe I misremembered the character.

Anonymous

In Japanese はん can't function as a word on its own, the ご part is built-in to the word now

Damkerng T.

BTW, a funny translation of the day:

> 菊花茶
くさかんむり

> Chrysanthemum tea
Connecticut ri ka ku san む

Anonymous

Wow! :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh, I see what happened! I let Google detect the language and it thought it's all in Chinese!

Anonymous

Well, 菊花茶 is Chinese. In Japanese, it's just 菊茶.

Anonymous

4:30 AM

Japanese 菊茶 is きくちゃ

Anonymous

Oh, maybe you can say 菊花茶 in Japanese, too.

Anonymous

It's not very common, in any case.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

I don't know if 菊花茶 in Japanese would be perceived as basically a Chinese word.

Anonymous

I'm always curious how people think about loanwords.

Anonymous

4:33 AM

Like, a lot of English speakers think of rendezvous as a basically French word, even though they learned it in English and use it in English and don't know French.

Damkerng T.

I think after a generation or two, it would become part of the lexicon of most people.

Anonymous

They don't consider it to have really become an English word. It's very interesting to me how people think about loans.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Rendezvous has been around for centuries in English.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Oh! That's interesting. Maybe it's because of the pronunciation?

Anonymous

It does look and sound like a French word.

Anonymous

4:35 AM

In French, it would be rendez-vous.

Anonymous

But the pronunciation would be fairly similar.

Anonymous

I think the biggest difference would be the French /r/ and the vowel in vous?

Anonymous

Oh, and the nasal vowel.

Damkerng T.

I think it's the "vu" sound.

How many English words are like that?

Anonymous

Not very many, and they might all be from French :-)

Anonymous

4:37 AM

Deja vu

Damkerng T.

It's funny that ELL says there are 5 posts awaiting for review for me, but when I click the link, there are none left. :D

Anonymous

John McWhorter claims in The Power of Babel that 99% of the words in the OED are loanwords in origin, and a mere 1% are native vocabulary

2

Anonymous

A huge portion of our everyday vocabulary is borrowed from French.

Anonymous

I doubt many English speakers could go more than a sentence or two without using French vocabulary, if challenged to do so :-)

Anonymous

But we don't think of most of these words as conspicuously French. We don't think of them all like rendezvous.

Anonymous

4:44 AM

A lot of English speakers still feel like rendezvous fundamentally belongs to the French language in a way that the other 45% of our vocabulary derived from French does not

Anonymous

That sort of attitude toward vocabulary fascinates me

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Oh, but what about Germanic words?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Words like must? :-)

Damkerng T.

nods -- and word. :D

I guess that except for Germanic itself, words in But what about Germanic words? are all Germanic.

Anonymous

Didja just look 'em all up? :-)

Anonymous

4:48 AM

Uncleftish Beholding

Uncleftish Beholding (1989) is a short text written by Poul Anderson. It is written using almost exclusively words of Germanic origin, and was intended to illustrate what the English language might look like if it had not received its considerable number of loanwords from other languages, particularly Latin, Greek and French. The text is about basic atomic theory and relies on a number of word coinings, many of which have analogues in modern German, an important scientific language in its own right. The title "uncleftish beholding" calques "atomic theory". The text begins: For most of its being...

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Not really, but I looked up word. :-)

Huh? Around is from Old French?

Anonymous

I'm not terribly familiar with the numbers myself, but I do know that a lot of the native vocabulary we do have is extremely frequent

Anonymous

I don't know if the 99% number is accurate

Damkerng T.

Did he count Anglo-Saxon origin words as non-native words too?

Anonymous

I don't know.

Anonymous

4:58 AM

I'm not sure what he categorized as what.

Damkerng T.

I think 99% is extremely high.

Oh, look! Anglish!

Linguistic purism in English

Linguistic purism in the English language is the belief that words of native origin should be used instead of foreign-derived ones (which are mainly Latinate and Greek). "Native" (inborn) can mean "Anglo-Saxon" (Engelsaxish) or it can be widened to include all Germanic (Theedish) words. In its mild form, it merely means using existing native words instead of foreign-derived ones (such as using begin instead of commence). In its more extreme form, it involves reviving native words that are no longer widely used (such as ettle for intend) and/or coining new words from Germanic roots (such as wordstock...

(In Thai, the word for English อังกฤษ is pronounced "ang-krit".)

(But because many of us use a defective /r/ in real-life, so "ang-krit" would become "ang-klit", basically the pronunciation we would use for Anglish.)

Anonymous

Because you have no coda /ʃ/?

Damkerng T.

Yep!

Anonymous

I'm really interested in loanword phonology

Damkerng T.

/ʃ/ can only be at the beginning of a syllable.

Anonymous

5:03 AM

A-ha!

Damkerng T.

And it's not a true /ʃ/, but you already know that.

Anonymous

Well, sometimes /ʃ/ is used in a rather broad sense

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

It's used for Japanese sometimes even though Japanese clearly has no [ʃ]

Anonymous

Personally, I prefer not to do that

Damkerng T.

5:05 AM

It's /t͡ɕʰ/ (it's a good thing Wikipedia is around. :-)

Anonymous

I think the key part for our discussion is the ɕ

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Wait.

Anonymous

Can ɕ only occur following t?

Damkerng T.

Ideally, it is so.

But I think like younger Japanese people, younger Thais seem to deviate from the ideal a bit.

And their pronunciations become more English like.

Anonymous

5:08 AM

The Japanese ɕ is interesting

Damkerng T.

Traditionally, Thai has only 9 final consonants, two of which are semi-vowels, and one is the glottal stop. So basically, we have only 6 true final consonants, which is not a lot. :-)

@snailboat Eh? Do they really classify the sound as /ɕ/?

Anonymous

For some speakers, there's a neutralization between し [ɕi] and ひ [çi]

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yes

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

That doesn't mean it's necessarily exactly the same as a ɕ in another language

Anonymous

5:10 AM

There's only so many symbols to go around :-)

Damkerng T.

nods

Hehe!

Anonymous

But Japanese phoneticians are generally happy calling it alveopalatal (= alveolo-palatal)

Anonymous

But the neutralization I mentioned above is interesting

Anonymous

To put it simply, some speakers replace し with ひ, and some speakers replace ひ with し

Anonymous

Which sound wins depends largely on where the speaker is from

Damkerng T.

5:14 AM

Oh!

Let's say, what is happening in Tokyo (I'm thinking of NHK)?

Anonymous

On the NHK, you're likely to hear Standard Japanese, with trained speakers pronouncing each sound distinctly

Anonymous

But in Tokyo し tends to win over ひ

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

You can think of the NHK as something of a prescriptive language body.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Hmm... isn't that a bit more English like?

Anonymous

5:16 AM

@DamkerngT. I don't follow

Damkerng T.

I mean, I think it's in the same direction that Thai language seems to go.

Anonymous

English-like, to me, would be ʃi

Anonymous

Japanese speakers don't usually say [ʃi]

Anonymous

I think し and ひ are similar sounds to begin with, though, so it's not that surprising they aren't always distinguished

Anonymous

し [ɕi] and ひ [çi]

Damkerng T.

5:18 AM

Traditionally, Thai has only /t͡ɕʰ/, and as a final consonant, it'll become just /t/. Nowadays, some Thais tend to pronounce /ʃ/ as the final consonant when they see the consonant for /t͡ɕʰ/.

Anonymous

Ah! That's interesting.

Damkerng T.

And a lot of singers mutate the /t͡ɕʰ/ sound to English /ʃ/ in their vocalization.

Anonymous

Japanese ち is [cɕ]

Anonymous

Which is very similar to writing [tɕ]

Anonymous

It is basically not aspirated (or only very weakly so) most of the time

Anonymous

5:20 AM

(And that little tie bar joining the two symbols is optional)

Damkerng T.

Ahh... I think I confused myself because I thought it was like this: し [ʃi], ち [ɕi], and ひ [çi].

Anonymous

I had chocolate chip ice cream for the first time in maybe fifteen years today.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. A-ha!

Anonymous

し [ɕi], ち [cɕi], and ひ [çi]

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Fifteen years! -- gasp

Anonymous

5:24 AM

In Hepburn romanization, that's shi, chi, and hi. Can you see why I sometimes use IPA instead of Hepburn? :-)

Damkerng T.

Yes!

Anonymous

Unfortunately, IPA can be difficult to follow for many people, because they're learning it and using it at the same time.

Damkerng T.

10:10 AM

0

Q: What would be the passive version of "I am having the knowledge"?

This question was asked in some exam. I am not sure whether "Have" should be converted to "had" or the sentence itself has no passive form. I think, Active: I am having the knowledge. Passive: The know ledge is being had by me. -- Incorrect. I think is and had can't go together.

passive-voice

Interesting.

Have (stative) is a transitive verb, yet passivizing it mechanically will get weird results.

Why is it weird?

I don't know. I just know that it's weird.

> A car is had by me.

^What?!

Maybe it's because it will sound like I'm eating the car.

Damkerng T.

12:04 PM

0

Q: a question from the GMAT test

From the GMAT test: Gall's hypothesis of there being different mental functions localized in different parts of the brain is widely accepted today. A. of there being different mental functions localized in different parts of the brain is widely accepted today. B. of different mental functions ...

meaning

I can see why, but Catija would be able to answer this better than I can. :-)

Damkerng T.

1:08 PM

Mu (negative)

The Japanese and Korean term mu (Japanese: 無; Korean: 무) or Chinese wú (traditional Chinese: 無; simplified Chinese: 无) meaning "not have; without" is a key word in Buddhism, especially the Chan and Zen traditions. == The word == The Chinese word wú 無 "not; nothing" was borrowed by East Asian languages, particularly the Sino-Xenic "CJKV" languages of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. === Pronunciations === The Modern Standard Chinese pronunciation wú 無 historically derives from (c. 7th century CE) Middle Chinese mju, (c. 3rd century CE) Late Han Chinese muɑ, and reconstructed (c...

Hah! I think it's cognate with a word in Thai for not (ไม่, which is pronounced as "mai").

Damkerng T.

1:24 PM

To everyone, it's worth noting that in GMAT sentence correction questions, the test requires the test taker to "choose the answer that produces the most effective sentence; this answer should be clear and exact, without awkwardness, ambiguity, redundancy, or grammatical error." It's easy for a learner to fall into a common misconception that the answer is the only (grammatically?) correct choice, while in fact, the test wants "the most effect sentence". My maxim for this is "GMAT is about the best, not the correct answer." — Damkerng T. 2 mins ago

Damkerng T.

1:39 PM

^ *"the most effective sentence"

Argh! Making typos is my expertise!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

\o

Damkerng T.

o/

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

1

Q: Does "gone astray" mean the same as losing the way?

If I walk along a hiking path and I lose my way somehow, can I say that I am gone astray?

meaning understanding

Since when is this a HNQ?

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I think it's not. Is it a HNQ?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I reached it through an ad.

Damkerng T.

1:43 PM

Oh, I see. It could be, even with just 13 views.

There are two answers, each with at least one upvote.

And the OP's already accepted an answer!

Someone should've said something about that, but I'm too lazy, and I don't want to upset anyone.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Y U ACCEPT SOON? ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Like that?

Damkerng T.

Basically that, but most users would phrase it a little better than that. :D

I remember ColleenV, Ben Kovitz, TJY, and many others usually keep telling that to our OPs.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

TJY?

Oh, Tyler James Young.

I didn't know you two were so close.

Damkerng T.

He was a regular in our chat room.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Wow . . . So much ~~crap~~ proofreading on ELL today.

(It could be proofreading crap tho')

Damkerng T.

1:51 PM

Um... ~~Huh?~~ Yeah.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Darn!

I wrote a good answer yesterday; I could get the populist badge and nice answer for it; I got neither.

Damkerng T.

I thought I wrote a good answer yesterday too, but no upvotes. Quite naturally on ELL. :P

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Gimme da link.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M It's all right. Let's keep it at 0.

0

Q: Didn't existed or hadn't existed?

I come across this in todays New Yorker: Birkenstocks, like an iPad, or an eight-dollar bottle of cold-pressed juice, are the covetable answer to a need that hadn’t existed before they came along. Isn't this just a past tense and shouldn't be written as: Didn't existed ? Would that be wrong?

grammar verb

At first glance, I thought it was migrated from another stack!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

"didn't existed" sounds like a worthy adversary for "hadn't existed".

Damkerng T.

2:08 PM

Not really about language, but could be interesting:

Microsoft Universal Windows App in Windows 10 are deeply flawed - Business Insider

> Nobody uses Windows on phones

Isn't that hurt a bit?

> Microsoft's mobile share is less than 3%, and the fact that the company has recently restructured its phone division and taken a massive write-off on its Nokia acquisition doesn't give developers a lot of hope that the company's going to make a big new push in mobile.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

So that's why my Win8 updates are making it crappier and crappier.

Damkerng T.

4:53 PM

1

Q: What does this phrase mean? "Trust me to"

Trust me to open my mouth, now everybody knows Trust me, now I've let you down (Squeeze - Trust Me To Open My Mouth Lyrics) I have found this phrase "trust me to get haunted by the flakiest ghost in the world", but I cannot understand its meaning and I googled it and found the song...

meaning-in-context

And interesting trust someone to do something pattern.

> Trust me to get haunted by the flakiest ghost in the world.

IMHO, it's not quite like Trust me to open my mouth.

It's not quite like Trust you to do something stupid! either. (Then again, Trust you to do something stupid! is closer to Trust me to get haunted by [the ghost].

It's interesting because it's Trust me, but it's to get haunted by a ghost, which is not by "me"'s choice.

Anonymous

5:14 PM

@DamkerngT. = "Getting haunted by the flakiest ghost in the world is just the sort of thing you'd expect to happen to me."

Damkerng T.

Interesting. I'm not used to this usage.

Trust me to open my mouth is okay, because it's me who opens my mouth.

(Same for Trust you or Trust John in FF's example.)

It looks like we can always paraphrase Trust someone to do something as "You can trust that someone will/would do something".

(Originally, I was thinking of paraphrasing it as "You can trust someone that that someone will/would do something".)

So I guess FumbleFingers' paraphrase works too.

"It's typical of me to get haunted by the flakiest ghost in the world."

@snailboat Another mystery of English solved! Thanks!

2

A: The correct way to say easier

In modern English, it's easier. The form more easy used to be fairly common but it has just about disappeared. British English and American English evolved very similarly on this issue. Usually, when adding -er results in at most two syllables, the single-word comparative is preferred, while m...

Hmm...

Sometimes I wish to be able to see the exact count of the returned results on Google Ngram.

"more easier" - about 90 pages (10 results a page) on Google Books.

"more easy" - 100+ pages

easier - 100+ pages (of course!)

Hmm...

"more easy" (21st century) - 100+ pages too!

It's curious that Eat, Pray, Love is among the results.

So, even though I agree that people use easier way more often than more easy, I doubt whether "The form more easy used to be fairly common but it has just about disappeared." is really true.

Note to self: Come to think of it, I think paraphrasing 'Trust someone to do something' as "You can trust someone that that someone will/would do something" is also not very far off.

It works with the example sentence, 'Trust me to get haunted by the flakiest ghost in the world', too. -- 'You can trust me that I'd get haunted by the flakiest ghost in the world'.

Damkerng T.

5:55 PM

1

Q: Is "come in" a phrasal verb in "Can I come in?"

Is "come in" a phrasal verb in "Can I come in?". Any suggestion appreciated. Thank you!

grammar

Hmm... what's phrasal verb?

Do all dictionaries use the same definition?

(Also, I'll wait for perhaps 20 more hours. If there wasn't anything added to the question, maybe I should close-vote it.)

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