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12:11 AM
Yay! I can get to the main site now!
 
Anonymous
12:41 AM
Yay!
 
12:52 AM
Right, I think they are interchangeable in OP's exact situation. They aren't interchangeable in: "I'm gonna go win that big stuffed animal at the penny toss booth." "Ok, lots o' luck with that!" you can't say, "Ok, a lot of luck with that!" — Jim 2 hours ago
I'm gonna go win that big stuffed animal at the penny toss booth. I see no problem with Okay, a lot of luck with that! This shows how interchangeable the two phrases are. There is basically no difference in lots of luck and a lot of luck. Both speak about a general quantity. One difference is that it is idiomatic to repeat lots but not a lot, as in I eat lots and lots and lots of pizza. But not I eat a lot and a lot and a lot of pizza.CarSmack 6 mins ago
Interesting! I tried saying "Ok, a lot of luck with that!" when I read Jim's comment and I felt awkward. I tried that again when I read CarSmack's comment and I felt less awkward.
6
Q: Singular tags to pluralize

chosterPer Should we prefer plural in tags?, for consistency with EL&U and other StackExchange sites, I believe the consensus was to use plural tag names for countables. In practice, we have something of a mishmash of singular and plural forms, particularly for terminology related to punctuation, senten...

Ah, finally, someone asked what I had had in mind.
 
Anonymous
1:16 AM
There are some tags that could use fixing
 
Anonymous
 
Anonymous
This tag is mysterious
 
Anonymous
 
Anonymous
Although I'm not aware of that as a class of constructions
 
Anonymous
I dunno.
 
Anonymous
1:17 AM
I had some others to point out, but I can't think of them right now and I'm not going to check at the moment
 
Like those time phrases? He can finish it in an hour.
 
Anonymous
It's just not a very good tag
 
Anonymous
 
Anonymous
That might be reasonable
 
Anonymous
4:37 PM
There are more tags I'd like to propose renames for
 
Anonymous
But I can't remember what they are anymore
 
Anonymous
And suddenly I'm too lazy to look and figure out what they were … :-)
 
Anonymous
Some of the more prominent users on ELL (notably StoneyB) are non-believers when it comes to the tag system, anyway
 
Anonymous
So things like presumably don't bother these folks
 
Anonymous
Otherwise, y'know, someone might've done something by now
 
Anonymous
4:38 PM
So it's probably not a big deal.
 
Anonymous
S'just tags.
 
Anonymous
One of the English TV shows I watch just ended. White Collar
 
Anonymous
I guess viewership had dropped off in a big way by the end of the series
 
Anonymous
Maybe people didn't like it anymore.
 
Anonymous
It was a good finale, though, I cried
 
Anonymous
4:40 PM
Now I'm sad it's gone
 
Anonymous
I don't watch too many English TV shows
 
Anonymous
The ones I do watch are mostly because I have friends who want to watch them :-)
 
Anonymous
So it's a social thing
 
Anonymous
It seems like most learners here have English TV shows they like :-) Judging by chat
 
Anonymous
I actually found out about White Collar from a Japanese speaker learning English
 
4:42 PM
Top o' the evening, @snailboat!
 
Anonymous
@CopperKettle Oh, is that a thing? Top o' the evening to you, too! :-)
 
Anonymous
I thought it might be "bottom of the evening" instead, but apparently not :-)
 
(0:
I thought "top" meant "the best"
 
Anonymous
Oh, does it?
 
Anonymous
I never knew
 
Anonymous
4:44 PM
It's mostly stereotyped speech, actually
 
The expression was initially "The top of the morning to you"
 
Anonymous
Oh yeah?
 
yep, I looked in Google Books
 
Anonymous
Neat :-)
 
Anonymous
I'm Irish, well, part Irish
 
Anonymous
4:45 PM
Or Irish-American, whatever you'd like to call it
 
That's great
 
Anonymous
I don't think Irish people actually say that phrase, though,
 
Anonymous
Occasionally it's fun to say anyway :-D
 
No, they don't say it (0:
I'm part Jewish, part Ukrainian, part Tatar, part Russian
And part English already, I guess
 
Anonymous
My grandmother was a Russian Jew
 
4:47 PM
Good evening, @DamkerngT.!
@snailboat Oh, great! My grandmother was a Belorussian Jew
 
Anonymous
There's some German on my dad's side of the family, too
 
Anonymous
I don't know my exact ancestry very well
 
On my dad's side, there were Ukrainians (probably migrated from Poland) and Nağaybäks
Nağaybäks are christianized Tatars who served as Cossacks
 
Anonymous
What does the breve over the 'g' indicate?
 
I've no idea (0: I copied that from Wikipedia. Could it be a softening mark?
Nağaybäk cavalry participated in the Napoleonic Wars and in the subsequent occupation of Paris. In 1842 they founded a chain of villages named after the battles of Napoleonic Wars, including present-day Parizh, named after the Battle of Paris, Fershampenuaz (after the Battle of Fère-Champenoise) etc.
 
4:53 PM
@snailboat I think it's on Fox channel here, too. I have never watched it, though. It looks like a long series thingy.
@CopperKettle Good evening!
 
@DamkerngT. How are you?
Parizh (Russian: Пари́ж, for "Paris") is a village (selo) in Nagaybaksky District of Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located on the south border of the district. Population: 2,390 (1997 est.). It was established as a Nağaybäk Cossack settlement in 1842 and soon after was given its name to honor the Battle of Paris. Several other villages named for Russian victories in Napoleonic Wars are located nearby: Fershampenuaz (the administrative center of the district), Leyptsig, Berlin, and others. In 2005, an Eiffel Tower 1:5 replica was constructed in Parizh to serve as a cellular network station....
 
@CopperKettle I'm okay. It's a little cold here. I feel like I were in Frozen. :D
 
My father's family had relatives in Pasizh (0:
 
Oh, there is another Paris in Russia too!
 
Yes, and an Eiffel Tower (0:
It doubles as a cell phone communication tower
 
4:57 PM
Nice idea!
 
(0:
the US has a lot of St Petersburgs, after all
 
A German I know calls the Eiffel tower a huge iron structure with no purpose. I think he would like this tower better than the other one. :-)
 
@DamkerngT. Oh, those practical Germans (0:
 
Indeed!
 
I wonder which is better: "My granddaughter's first day in / at school"
 
5:01 PM
Not sure, but I think I like in a little better.
 
I found a discussion of this issue at ELU, but the natives themselves have no clear-cut rules for this
7
Q: "In school" vs "at school"

NemodenI sometimes get confused whether to use in or at. For example, Children were not at school yesterday, because yesterday was a holiday. Children were not in school yesterday, because yesterday was a holiday. Is there a rule of thumb to not confuse in and at?

 
Anonymous
@CopperKettle Either's okay. At's more common.
 
@snailboat Thanks!
 
Anonymous
Consider of
 
"first day of shool"! nice! (or maybe "of schooling")
 
Anonymous
5:05 PM
My advice: skip the -ing
 
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. There's also Tokyo Tower! :-)
 
okay (0:
 
Anonymous
@CopperKettle Oh, um, do we? :-)
 
@snailboat Ah, I've seen Tokyo Tower in a lot of dorama and anime!
Also in some TV shows.
 
We have a concrete structure in Yekaterinburg that is surely a tower with no purpose
 
Anonymous
5:06 PM
@DamkerngT. "I feel like I'm in Frozen!" "I feel as if I were in Frozen!"
 
LOL
 
St. Petersburg is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. As of the 2013 census estimate, the population was 249,688, making St. Petersburg the 5th most populous city in the state of Florida and the largest city in Florida that is not a county seat (the city of Clearwater is the county seat). St. Petersburg is the second largest city in the Tampa Bay Area, composed of roughly 2.8 million residents, making it the second largest Metropolitan Statistical Area in the state. It is also a popular vacation destination for both American and foreign tourists. The city is often referred to by...
 
@snailboat TYftC!
 
"Like I were in Frozen" would mean "as if I attended the place called Frozen"?
Moscow (/ˈmɒskoʊ/ MOSS-koh) is a city in northern Idaho, situated along the Washington/Idaho border, with a population of 23,800 at the 2010 census. The county seat and largest city of Latah County, Moscow is the home of the University of Idaho, the land grant institution and primary research university for the state, as well as the home of New Saint Andrews College. Moscow is the principal city in the Moscow, Idaho Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Latah County. The city contains over 60% of the county's population and while the university is the dominant employer in Moscow, the city...
 
@CopperKettle Not sure, but I think "like" seems to want something real.
 
5:11 PM
Oh, I see
 
Anonymous
@CopperKettle I dunno.
 
Anonymous
If you Google the string "like I were in", you can find examples of people online saying it, but it sounds funny to me, and there's no examples in COCA
 
Anonymous
My first thought was that it was just ungrammatical rather than semantically strange
 
Anonymous
But now I don't really know
 
"I feel like I were an astronaut!" - yes, a bit strange
 
5:14 PM
Saying "as if" and "like" this way is similar to Thai's ราวกับ and อย่างกับ, ยังกับ, ยังกะ (in the sound degradation order).
And Thai has no tenses (if we talk only about forms), but the sense of one is more casual than the other one is pretty much the same as in English.
 
No tenses? Interesting.
 
So my thought could be expressed in at least six ways (both English and Thai counted), and I wanted to be a bit casual but I used the tense that would be more appropriated for "as if".
 
nods
I was watching (at?) them and thinking: "why do you drink"?
 
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Maybe if you think of it this way: like adds the un-real meaning, so the thing within it doesn't need it
 
@CopperKettle When being compared to English, Thai has almost no important features English has. It has no articles, no countability, no tenses, and we usually like to drop things that could be implied.
 
Anonymous
5:20 PM
"It's like I'm drunk" ← "I'm drunk" is false, but "like I'm drunk" is true (or part of the truth conditions for the sentence)
 
Anonymous
I get a fair amount of pushback 'round these parts when I use terms like irrealis, accusative, …
 
@snailboat nods -- I could tell that right away when you corrected me. It's strange that that hadn't crossed my mind when I had been saying that line.
 
@DamkerngT. oh. Russian has no articles, has countability, has tenses, and allows dropping a lot of things
 
Anonymous
People prefer unreal, objective, …
 
Anonymous
But I'm not sure why.
 
Anonymous
5:21 PM
@DamkerngT. Ahh, glad we're on the same page :-)
 
Yay! We are!
 
Anonymous
I'm always happy when someone agrees with me about how something works!
 
Oh, so "like I were" is a buttered butter (0:
 
United we stand :D
 
Nice expression!
 
Anonymous
5:23 PM
@CopperKettle What's a butter?
 
Anonymous
(A stick of butter?)
 
@snailboat Butter - a substance produced from milk (0:
 
Anonymous
That's butter, not a butter :-)
 
I thought it was a deliberated gibberish expression. :D
 
Anonymous
Actually, if you countify butter, you get a butter (meaning "a single type of butter")
 
5:23 PM
In Russia, we say "it's buttered butter" in such situations
 
Btw, hello @skullpatrol!
 
Anonymous
I only feigned ignorance because you can't typically refer to a stick of butter as simply a butter
 
Anonymous
Though informally people do countify things all the time … but it's non-standard in that sense
 
Hello @DamkerngT. et al :-)
 
But in "buttered butter" the second butter is a mass noun, AFAIK
 
Anonymous
5:25 PM
@CopperKettle Yeah!
 
Yes, good evening SkullPatrol!
 
Anonymous
That was my point. :-)
 
Oh, I interposed an a there by mistake, my bad!
 
Anonymous
Yeah! Bad interpolator!
 
Anonymous
No cookie.
 
5:26 PM
(0:
 
Doesn't "buttered butter" sound redundant to anybody?
 
I miss I See Your Point last-year hat.
 
Anonymous
Just kidding. You can have a butter cookie.
 
Anonymous
@skullpatrol That was the idea.
 
Anonymous
We were discussing redundancy
 
5:27 PM
@skullpatrol It's a Russian expression used to mock someone who has said something redundant
 
Anonymous
How do you say it in Russian?
 
Does "Unbuttered butter" exist?
 
@snailboat масло масляное
= Русский = === Тип и синтаксические свойства сочетания === ма́с-ло ма́с-ля-но·е, по-то-му́ что оно ма́с-ло Устойчивое сочетание (фразеологизм). Используется в качестве самостоятельной фразы. === Произношение === === Семантические свойства === ==== Значение ==== шутл. то же, что тавтология ◆ «Эротическое искусство» — это в каком-то смысле «масло масляное», поскольку искусство и эротика совпадают в главном своем «приёме», который, следуя Виктору Шкловскому, можно назвать остранением. Михаил Эпштейн, «Поэтика близости» // «Звезда», 2003 г. (цитата из Национального корпуса русского яз...
 
Anonymous
Maslo maslyanoye
 
yes (0:
"maslyanoye" means "buttered"
 
Anonymous
5:29 PM
Ahh!
 
Anonymous
A postmodifier :-)
 
Anonymous
Butter buttered!
 
it's an adjective (0:
yes (0:
 
user116848
Hello all!
 
Anonymous
Somehow butter buttered is more fun to say than buttered butter
 
5:29 PM
No hell hath fury as a butter buttered!
 
Anonymous
Hello! We're discussing butter.
 
Hi pal @Farooq
 
Hi @Farooq!
 
user116848
Hey :-)
 
user116848
I have been kind of busy lately.
 
5:31 PM
Redundancy can be cognitively helpful.
Especially with subtle ideas in math etc.
 
@Farooq Studying? That's great!
 
user116848
@CopperKettle Yeah, study etc. I sometimes read the chat transcripts though :-)
 
Anonymous
@skullpatrol Redundancy is very common in natural language.
 
Anonymous
Certain forms of redundancy are considered nonsensical or ungrammatical, while others are used every day
 
Anonymous
It's kind of arbitrary.
 
5:34 PM
@snailboat Yes. In Russian we sometimes call a pricelist "a prietzcurrant of prices" (prietzcurrant is a German loan word meaning "a pricelist")
 
We were arguing about using QED and the tombstone yesterday.
 
user116848
I read chat transcripts without entering chat sometimes.
 
Anonymous
@skullpatrol Would you care to elaborate?
 
Anonymous
I'm in chat too often to read chat transcripts
 
user116848
@DamkerngT. Hi
 
5:35 PM
@Farooq I lurk sometimes too (0:
 
Hi!
 
user116848
@snailboat Yes, it is fun to read transcripts.
 
user116848
@skullpatrol Nice gravatar!
 
One should only use one and not the other @snailboat because they mean the same thing but I said what is so wrong with saying "that which was to be show, end of proof"
Thanks @Farooq
 
I don't know what languages have this feature: using the same word repeatedly in normal speech, the repeating sound can sound a little differently. An example in English is "very, very good" but that's quite an emphasis. In Thai, saying ดีมาก ๆ (reads "dee-mak-mak") [good-lot-lot], will suggest just "very good" (or somewhere between "very good" and "very, very good").
 
5:40 PM
(1.5)very :-)
 
@skullpatrol Hehe, I think I've gotten an ELL reply in which another user made a point and ended their comment with "finish". :-)
@skullpatrol Not quite, but not very far from that. :D
 
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Fin!
 
Exactly!
 
@DamkerngT. There is an expression malym-malo in Russian, a colloquial adverbial meaning "very little", like "I had very little sleep"
 
Anonymous
おしまい
 
Anonymous
5:41 PM
完。
 
@DamkerngT. And "svetlym-svetlo", an adjective meaning "very bright": it is very bright in the room
And "temnym-temno" = very dark
 
@CopperKettle Nice!
 
@DamkerngT. I never thought of this until you mentioned the Thai word (0:
 
Anonymous
That's called reduplication
4
 
These words in Russian are kind of poetic in style. Used in fairy tales, in songs, poems
 
5:44 PM
In "malym-malo", does each of the words have its own meaning?
 
Anonymous
See? Bold gets the job done every time.
 
Anonymous
Star, star, star.
 
@snailboat Very effective!
([effective-lot-lot])
 
@DamkerngT. malym has no standalone meaning, malo means "little" (of something) by itself, but in this specific expression the stress falls on o, not on a, as when it's used on itself
Word stress is a headache in Russian
 
@CopperKettle Ah, the mechanism seems to be pretty similar to the way Thai does it.
 
Anonymous
5:46 PM
@CopperKettle Tougher to learn than in English?
 
@DamkerngT. nice (0:
 
The other extreme of brevity and terseness has some Greek name ...
 
@snailboat In English, stress tends to fall on the beginning of the word
In Russian, it's all way around (0: any vowel can be stressed
 
Spartan?
 
@snailboat Like, all newscasters in English tend to say "Vladimir Putin"
 
Anonymous
5:48 PM
@CopperKettle Ah, it's true!
 
@snailboat But it's actually "Vladeemir (0:
 
@CopperKettle Oh, indeed!
@skullpatrol 300?
 
Anonymous
English speakers learning other languages tend to use that as their default intonation pattern, I think :-)
 
@DamkerngT. 300 what?
 
5:50 PM
@skullpatrol A movie about Spartans. :D
As the legend goes, it was 300 men against 300,000 men!
 
Yes, exactly.
But they used spars language too @DamkerngT.
 
Oh, I didn't know that!
 
Very few words
Consise
 
I like concise!
 
But they were too concise.
 
5:54 PM
Oh!
 
Anonymous
Maybe they need a little redundancy.
 
Ah, back to redundancy, what sound does a cat make (in various languages)?
 
@DamkerngT. мяy (myau)
 
Is it "miew" in English?
 
Anonymous
にゃん (nyan)!
 
Anonymous
5:56 PM
@DamkerngT. Meow
 
Ahh...
 
Anonymous
Of course there are variants in various languages
 
Anonymous
Cats not only meow, they also mew!
 
Anonymous
Meow-meow
 
In Thai, it's either เมี้ยว-เมี้ยว (meow-meow) or แง้ว-แง้ว (ngaew-ngaew).
 
Anonymous
5:57 PM
Dogs go bow-wow
 
A POET had a cat.
There is nothing odd in that—
(I might make a little pun about the Mews!)
But what is really more
Remarkable, she wore
A pair of pointed patent-leather shoes.
And I doubt me greatly whether
E'er you heard the like of that:
Pointed shoes of patent-leather
On a cat! 10
 
@snailboat They go "bok-bok" in Thai!
 
Anonymous
@CopperKettle 10…?
 
@snailboat It's formatting at Bartleby:
 
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. In Japanese, it's wan wan!
 
5:58 PM
A remember now it is not Spartan. It is laconic @DamkerngT.
 
Anonymous
@CopperKettle Oh, phew, I was afraid it was a part of the poem I just didn't understand :-)
 
@snailboat Ah, that must be a large dog. It's "hong-hong" in Thai. :D
@skullpatrol Ahh
 
In Russia, dogs do "гав-гав" (gav-gav)
 
@snailboat Another mystery has been solved!
 
Anonymous
5:59 PM
@DamkerngT. What does kyan kyan make you think of then, if wan wan makes you think of a large dog?
 
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