Language Overflow - 2016-03-20 (page 3 of 3)

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5:22 PM

1

Q: Why do people say "I am home" instead of "I am at home"?

Why do people say "I am home" in the meaning of "I am at home"? Here is the person who say "I am home" he is human being and not object as home. In addition, why people don't say "I am university" or "I am supermarket" etc?

^The tag says "prepositions", but comments and answers say "adverb". ;-)

(Of course, the OP might think of only "at" when tagging the question.)

Don't know whether the issue is on my end but yesterday also at this time I had problem loading SE chat from Firefox on my laptop running Windows 7. Today again same thing. But today morning I could access it from my laptop from the same browse.

Probably on your end.

Might be.

I sometimes use another browser or iPad when something seems wrong.

Yes safari is a good solution.

> I am home

Here people generally don't use at. Grammatically there shouldn't be any issue, but I think people will think it an error to have at there.

5:35 PM

Hmm... I'm at home doesn't sound particularly wrong to me.

Neither to me, but it's not very common I think.

It looks like "I'm at home" is not rare in Google Books.

(btw how do u like the 3D touch of ios, I haven't updated it yet)

@Man_From_India Me either. The last time I updated it, it broke some apps.

@DamkerngT. Ah I haven't checked there, but if I remember correctly in corpus it's not very common to have at in such sentences.

I think there is nothing new in 3D touch if you are familiar with Android.

To me it's just long press and access to some more options.

That's very much there in Android for a very long time now.

5:43 PM

I remember that I've read an article saying that hiding anything on small devices is not a good design idea.

But then again, Apple seems to ignore many of Jobs' ideas recently.

(E.g., Apple Pencil! Remember what Jobs said about stylus?)

@DamkerngT. this happened when some days back I updated my android device to Marshmallow. My keyboard app crashed. Later I found that that app doesn't support the latest OS.

user image

:D

Oh, I found a better picture!

@DamkerngT. I also think that. Not very innovative anymore like it used to be. I believe it wouldn't have been like this if Jobs were around. Totally my personal view.

nods -- Same here.

To be honest I hardly use stylus. I did most use only for a few days since I bought galaxy note when they launched it the very first time.

5:50 PM

@DamkerngT. This is why I never wanna be famous.

You know new device, innovative thing. A place to explore :P

Oh! So you just use your Galaxy Note without the stylus?

@IͶΔ Hehe!

@DamkerngT. to be fair, i only use it to watch movies :P and now I am tired of big displays. I am happy with my small sized iPhone :)

Hmm, I've been practicing a lot (not really), and

Funny that most people seem to think that a transparent phone is cool. I would say a screen that looks like and feels like paper is cool.

5:53 PM

Sawasdee khrap khun Damkerng

I hope I got it right.

@IͶΔ Sawasdee khrap, Khun MAR. :D

@IͶΔ Yes, you got it right!

Yay! I should award myself a "pentalingual" badge.

@DamkerngT. i saw a YouTube video where Samsung were telling about such paper-thin displays. I think that was at ths launch of their curved displays.

I'm a master of Thai language. ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

(I think most people would write Khun rather than khun because we sometimes use it the same way we use Mr. or such. For example, K. Nipon.)

@Man_From_India Oh, it's becoming the reality? That's good news!

pentalingual <-- just for you, @IͶΔ!

5:57 PM

@DamkerngT. not yet I think. But i think they are up to something similar or else they wouldn't have mentioned such things.

I kinda miss the beta design on meta.ELL.

When people were thinking that the end of Moore's Law is finally there, people came up with the idea of 3D transistors. The way technology is shrinking, who knows we might actually get a paper-thin display in near future.

Hullo @ecp89! Welcome to LO!

Playing Wordament

Don't ping me. A lot

@Man_From_India During my "Pad" design, I looked into fabric-like display technologies for a bit, but it was like unicorns back then. It seemed like some people had it in their labs, but nothing practical.

E Ink was cool, but it was so slow, and it had no colors.

(But Amazon had a nice way to use it in Kindles!)

ฉันกินกล้วยเมื่อวานนี้

I wonder if GM got that one right.

6:09 PM

I still wonder why nobody really put Mirasol's display technology into a real product, like a display monitor, or a tablet screen. (The watch is new, I think.)

@IͶΔ GM?

Google Mistranslate

You meant GT, I think. -- Oh!

GT usually gets simple, short sentences right.

I have never used kindle, i don't have any. But I have seen people read books on Kindle. A peek into their device make me realize it's cool, but again I'm not a big fan of ebook. In that respect u can call me an old school. :-)

@IͶΔ So, if you wanted to say, I ate banana(s) yesterday, you got it right!

@Man_From_India I still like paper better, anyway!

in g-block elements, yesterday, by IͶΔ

Hey, GM auto-mistranslated this chat, it looks funny.

6:12 PM

@DamkerngT. me too.

Read up from there.

LOL

Ok g2g. Good night, see u later.

cya later

See you!

@skillpatrol Oh, you're @skill patrol now!

6:14 PM

Lates

@DamkerngT. yup

@skillpatrol Oh, you're sensible now!

sensible?

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say ฉันกินกล้วยเมื่อวานนี้ in real life...

-1 general reference.

@DamkerngT. You guys lack bananas?

6:16 PM

But it sounds like a good example sentence in a book teaching Thai.

@IͶΔ It's not like that. It's just something that sounds a bit strange to say.

(Why would you have to tell someone that you ate some bananas yesterday?)

what kind of fruit did you eat yesterday?

Also, it's very rare for anyone to use ฉัน in a real conversation.

@skillpatrol Invariably, a Thai would simply answer: กล้วย (banana). :-)

right

Or กล้วยไง or ก็กล้วยไง or กล้วย ถามทำไมเรอะ (Banana. Why did you ask me that?)

sounds contrived anyway

6:21 PM

nods

7:06 PM

A strange thread of comments...

I wonder if either of them is wrong. It's "Date of Issue" on my passport, though. — Damkerng T. 3 hours ago

@DamkerngT. I think only Germans start the nouns in Uppercase. In English, it may be done for Emphasis, though — MAKZ 2 hours ago

@MAKZ, on my passport it says "Date of Issue". Capitals verbatim . — JavaLatte 2 hours ago

@MAKZ For your information, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Case_styles — Damkerng T. 2 hours ago

According to NGram, "Date of Issue" is significantly more common in the UK, but for our friends across the herring pond "Date of Issuance" comes a very close second. — JavaLatte 2 hours ago

@DamkerngT. yes, I am aware of the case convention. But since you said date of issue might be wrong, and Date of Issue is not, I only pointed out that it's a German rule to capitalise nouns. So Date of Issue is as correct as Date of issue in English, but not in German. And obviously in your passport, title case is used. — MAKZ 14 mins ago

@MAKZ But I didn't say that date of issue might be wrong, and I don't know why you'd think German has anything to do with our question, which is about English — Damkerng T. 2 mins ago

@DamkerngT. that was added as an additional information. Has nothing to do with English, I agree. — MAKZ 30 secs ago

possible mild tolling :)

I thought it was a naive comment at first. Now I'm not very sure.

I wonder if my saying that "I wonder if either of them is wrong" confused them.

nah, he went to wiki " For your information,..."

7:22 PM

Oh, this is funnier!

Nothing is as precious as unobtainium, isn't it? — MAKZ 15 mins ago

@MAKZ Unobtanium is the most precious thing, isn't it? Mrt's version is correct as written. — Jason Patterson 5 mins ago

eslbase.com/grammar/tag-questions

Thought this might be interesting for you: English grammar – Tag questions — MAKZ 16 mins ago

@DamkerngT. I OBJECT

> If the subject is nobody, somebody, everybody, no one, someone or everyone, we use “they” in the tag question.
Nobody asked for me, did they?
Nobody lives here, do they?

@IͶΔ You objected to whose comment?

Hmm... maybe I should've written: To whose comment did you object? :P

That Unobtainium is the rarest of them all.

But it's "Unobtain"ium!

I don't care.

7:28 PM

Hah!

You can never be as precious as astatine.

But astatine is real. (It's real, right?!)

It's irrational tho

Also, depends.

Do you call a few milligrams in a planet real?

real enough

@skillpatrol are skull petrols real?

7:33 PM

I hereby claim that the theoretically rarest element of them all is Unicornium.

:P

@IͶΔ that depends on what you mean by "real"

@skillpatrol Rational Excruciating Alliance Lagoon

get real ;)

How much does it cost?

reality has no price pal

7:38 PM

I guess Jupiter Jones can afford it, no matter how expensive it is. :-)

Yay! Drama in another chat

@IͶΔ Ugh!

link?

I'll send in skull petrol to save the day :D

No.

7:58 PM

Hmm... how should we cite this? issuu.com/hazirlik/docs/04.-tag-question--36---10.01.2004-

I think it's rather clear that the sentences in our answer are from the same source. (ell.stackexchange.com/a/85107/3281)

8:29 PM

@DamkerngT. Military was vs military were, which one is correct?

what's the sentence?

both can be used

The military were called out.

fine

Could you give me two different sentences so I can understand when to use "was and were"

unless you have more context?

quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/subjunctive-verbs

Basic English Grammar - "Was" and "Were"

8:37 PM

@user62015 Rule of thumb: Whenever you can replace military with "people", it's plural.

Whenever it's like an organization, use was.

@IͶΔ great.

3 hours later…

Anonymous

11:31 PM

@Man_From_India I'm at home sounds okay to me, though I'm home might be more common. I'm working from home is okay too, but never *I'm working home. But *I'm going to home is probably no good. I'm going home is the usual way to put it, where home constitutes a preposition phrase all by itself, maybe with locational meanings similar to to and at built-in?

Anonymous

How do they usually teach this?

Anonymous

In post-Jespersen grammar it's an intransitive preposition, and traditionally it's an adverb, which I'm sure you already know.

Anonymous

But how do textbooks teach when home can appear with or without a preposition?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Mmm, bananas!

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

11:52 PM

hi

Anonymous

Hello!

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

this is funny

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