English Language Learners

Redupliciation! Yaaay! I researched that in approximately .. hmm.. 2000, when one of my friends in Brooklyn related that her nephew had said something cute: "Oh!!! You live in a house-house." (Not an apartment.)

Damkerng T.

Looks like this cute little guy lives in water.

user116848

@snailboat Nice pic.

Anonymous

1:07 PM

You can hail stuff, but if you heil stuff people might get the wrong idea.

Jim Reynolds

O.o

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds :D

MARamezani

@snailboat For once, I gotta admit I saw something beautiful. Even more beautiful than Arrowfar!

Anonymous

There are some other pretty topsnails

Jim Reynolds

@MAR hahaha!

user116848

1:08 PM

@MARamezani Thanks hon!

Anonymous

@MARamezani If you'd like to see some really striking mollusks, you might consider checking out this series on sea slugs in National Geographic: ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/06/nudibranchs/…

Damkerng T.

Snails must be very important. I typed all hail sn and Google suggested all hail the snail!

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. Heh. Snailor just hacked Google.

Anonymous

Or how about Glaucus atlanticus?

Anonymous

Damkerng T.

1:12 PM

Fits all sci-fi genre movies!

user116848

@snailboat Spikey!

MARamezani

@snailboat The first pair of snails seem like blankets.

@snailboat NICE!

If you wouldn't have told it snailor, I would've thought that's a shark.

Anonymous

Gastropoda have more variation than almost any other sort of animal, with over sixty thousand species

Damkerng T.

Coming soon in Avatar 2.

user116848

What's with the egg on the main site? I am trying to play the game but I am not winning. I feel dumb.

user116848

1:13 PM

Star that ^

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. I'll make sure I watch that!

@arrowfar APRIL FOOLS! Happy birthday!

Anonymous

Oops, "over two hundred thousand" is for all of Mollusca

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Ahh

Anonymous

@arrowfar Your wish is my command

user116848

@MARamezani Yeah.

user116848

1:14 PM

@snailboat Thanks! :-)

MARamezani

Well it's apparently March fools, but no one understands the SE fools.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. They're really tiny, though. :-)

Anonymous

Nature's real-life slug dragons fit in the palm of your hand.

Damkerng T.

That makes them kinda cute!

MARamezani

@snailboat That's even more sci-fi!

@DamkerngT. I think I remember someone say the cutest size for pets is the palm of your hand.

user116848

1:16 PM

Cute!

Damkerng T.

Couldn't agree more!

MARamezani

Oh boy, talking about cuteness, I'll repost this:

Anonymous

@MARamezani That's how big all my snails are.

Anonymous

Luna is the biggest, and when she's all stretched out she's the length of a pinky finger.

MARamezani

Then there's silence...

Anonymous

1:19 PM

Damkerng T.

It's broken!

Anonymous

This snail lives in extreme conditions, deep in the sea near thermal vents

Damkerng T.

I wonder why the body isn't pink.

Anonymous

It has metal plating (it's iron sulfide)

MARamezani

@snailboat Yeah. weird.

Damkerng T.

1:19 PM

Ahh

An armored snail!

Anonymous

We find life in extreme conditions with extreme adaptations

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. Reminds me of 18th century knights.

Jim Reynolds

Using their razor-sharp teeth, dragon slugs can eat through the palm of your hand and run away from you before you even know what has happened.

Damkerng T.

lol

MARamezani

@JimReynolds Yeah. That. Then the romance fades away....

Jim Reynolds

1:21 PM

I guess I didn't think before I wrote, huh?

user116848

Coming here sometimes I think I should have a degree in Conchology.

MARamezani

@JimReynolds :O What is thinking?

Jim Reynolds

O.o

Damkerng T.

Right now, I still can't decide what over the course of the year exactly means.

Anonymous

@JimReynolds They don't bite, but they do have an extremely potent venom

Jim Reynolds

1:23 PM

course essentially means period of time

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. Hmmmmmm, I broke.

Jim Reynolds

usually the period of time it takes something to happen.

A year's course takes about ... <<thinking>>

MARamezani

@JimReynolds Makes sense, but of course, you're wrong.

Damkerng T.

Yes. So if we say that now (March), will the January and February last year be counted?

Anonymous

They feed on venomous creatures and save the venom, concentrating it and delivering an even more powerful sting themselves

Jim Reynolds

1:24 PM

Sounds like @MAR , really.

And he wonders why he has tummy aches.

MARamezani

@snailboat I remembered sea-snails were awesomely poisonous.

Anonymous

@MARamezani Venomous, in this case, rather than poisonous

MARamezani

@JimReynolds I did in the morning. But I don't, now. Maybe I've eaten some of your relatives...Oh that your job.

Jim Reynolds

o.o

Unhand my sister's hand.

MARamezani

I thought that was your mother....

Jim Reynolds

1:26 PM

O.O

Damkerng T.

Should I flag it?

MARamezani

Nah, that wasn't offensive....I hope.

Damkerng T.

I don't know. With my limited English, it sounds offensive. But I don't know much about English.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. A very good question!

Jim Reynolds

It depends. Are you talking about the implication that MAR was eating my mother's hand, or is "flag it" a euphemism for masturbation?

Damkerng T.

1:30 PM

@JimReynolds Well, apparently, I don't have to flag anything!

Jim Reynolds

Haha

Anonymous

Think of the course of a river. A course is a path that something takes. And now extend this figuratively to time.

Jim Reynolds

Oh, I am laughing a lot the past 20 minutes.

Anonymous

Imagine a timeline with the past on the left and the future on the right.

Jim Reynolds

You people make me feel 70 years younger.

MARamezani

1:30 PM

Donchuget it! I meant something else by something else....

Anonymous

And imagine time flowing along that timeline for a span of, oh, say, a year.

MARamezani

@JimReynolds You mean 7000000000000000 years, right?

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds Back to the future to the past!

@snailboat I have no problems with the course part. The problem is about the year part.

Anonymous

And over the course of that year, things happen. Things change over time, right? Over the course of a year, probably a lot of things happened as time took its path.

MARamezani

I'm disappointed...Only 70 years?!

Damkerng T.

1:31 PM

I think it sounds vague (when it begins and when it ends), but maybe it's not very vague.

Jim Reynolds

:-)

Anonymous

So there's emphasis on both the entire length of time, and emphasis on the idea that things were changing over that period of time

MARamezani

@snailboat So, that means from the last year's March till now?

Jim Reynolds

Any one-year period.

12 months.

Anonymous

Literally, yeah, though when people say things like year it can be a bit vaguer than that

Jim Reynolds

1:32 PM

And I'd say that it's generally used in an approximate sense in that expression, though not always.

Great minds think alike!

MARamezani

@JimReynolds Yeah but, over the course...Oh I get what you mean.

Anonymous

But there's that idea of how things change over time that I think is implicit in the expression

Jim Reynolds

You got that "over" means essentially "during" in that expression, right ?

Damkerng T.

I roll my eyes every time I hear ในรอบปีที่ผ่านมา (which approximately means "over the course of the (last) year") on news.

MARamezani

@JimReynolds Right.

@DamkerngT. How is number one written in Thai?

Damkerng T.

1:34 PM

1 or ๑

Anonymous

Anyway, that's about the best I can do as an explanation off the top of my head. I'm sure other people would have other explanations to bring to the table over on ELL proper

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Thanks!

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. Hmm, so I conclude it isn't phenomenal... I mean, in English it's 1, and in Persian/Arabic it's ۱, so I thought most languages would have something close to a vertical line as the number.

Damkerng T.

I thought of that expression (over the course of the year) because I saw it in this answer: ell.stackexchange.com/a/53876/3281.

Jim Reynolds

Chinese -

Damkerng T.

1:36 PM

@MARamezani I'm not sure but I think Thai digits were adapted from some language in India.

Jim Reynolds

Vertical my a@@

Well my a@@ is | if I'm standing up. Or rather ( | )

That's vertical.

Are you flagging it @Dam ?

Damkerng T.

Not yet. Not just yet. :P

Anonymous

@JimReynolds Yeah, or more precisely, 一

Anonymous

Though if you go back to oracle characters

Anonymous

You find something very interesting: pictograms apparently written sideways!

Anonymous

1:39 PM

So for example, the modern character 马 (or traditional 馬) was originally:

Anonymous

Jim Reynolds

Maybe those ancient peoples had no legs, so they wrote stretched out on the ground?

Anonymous

A sideways horse.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat A dragon! Oh, no. That's a horse.

user116848

Nice horse!

Anonymous

1:40 PM

@arrowfar It was carved thousands of years ago.

Jim Reynolds

Yeah!

user116848

@snailboat Wow! :)

Anonymous

It's hard to recognize 马 as a horse today

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds No, they just used their chi to control a huge brush to write characters on paper!

MARamezani

@snailboat Gives me a fox-like feeling. Oh, speaking of fox...

Damkerng T.

1:42 PM

Hey, fox could be an answer to that question!

Anonymous

To what question?

MARamezani

To that...

Damkerng T.

What'd be a good term for a female correspondant to “a stud”?

MARamezani

Wait, which question?

@DamkerngT. I'm a natural answerer.

Damkerng T.

> Stack Exchange: We are currently offline for maintenance

Is that because of April Fool's?

Jim Reynolds

1:43 PM

/#channel=private #direct @Damkerng T. #lang=natural %cmdline instruction: Compile comprehensive personality assessments on MARamezan and snailboat using all available data + send report Jim Reynolds transtype=gmail

OMG!

Whoops.

Can I delete that?? FAst

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds You should've as least encrypted it!!!

Anonymous

But characters like 马 'horse' were probably written sideways because of the medium making it difficult to write them the other way

MARamezani

@JimReynolds Fat chance! I read it! You're dead. :P

Jim Reynolds

You know I'm not much of a computer guy, seeing as I lived 95% of my life before the UNIVAC.

Anonymous

So when we look at simple characters like 一, we tend not to find that they were written sideways

Anonymous

1:45 PM

So it wasn't a rotation of a vertical line

Anonymous

And this explanation is all for nothing. :-D

Damkerng T.

I think there is a Chinese character that looks like a vertical line.

Anonymous

You mean 丨?

Anonymous

Of course, that's just a radical.

Jim Reynolds

broodmare is a mare used for breeding

Damkerng T.

1:46 PM

Not sure! Probably just a radical.

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. Of course there is! Is there a Chinese character that something isn't likened to?

Anonymous

@MARamezani I'm having trouble thinking of how to answer that question

Damkerng T.

The most famous UNIVAC product was the UNIVAC I mainframe computer of 1951 (2015 - 1951)/0.05 * 1.0 = 1280.

@JimReynolds Ahh, I know you are over a thousand years old.

MARamezani

@snailboat I don't get my question now.

Anonymous

Well, now we've confirmed that Jim Reynolds is vintage.

MARamezani

1:47 PM

@DamkerngT. Thousand? They've been lying to you Dam.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I've been thinking between vintage and relic. The latter seems more likely! :P

Jim Reynolds

I eat my own stem cells.

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds Cool!

MARamezani

@JimReynolds So you're apparently immortal too, huh?

Jim Reynolds

It didn't start out that way. It started out by sticking my finger into my naval and then smelling it. Harmless enough.

Damkerng T.

1:50 PM

Eww

Jim Reynolds

Don't judge meeeee!

MARamezani

You don't need judging.

Anonymous

@MARamezani Have you ever read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

Anonymous

The author explains how to fly.

Jim Reynolds

I didn't say it smelled good. Wait. That makes it worse, doesn't it?

MARamezani

1:51 PM

@snailboat Nah.

Jim Reynolds

Can you summarize, snail?

MARamezani

But I saw their wikipedia once.

Anonymous

@JimReynolds Sure. It turns out to be rather simple.

MARamezani

It was funny gibberish.

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds Eww eww. (That's a good us eof contrastive focus reduplication)

Anonymous

1:51 PM

First, you get into the air somehow. For example by jumping or falling.

Anonymous

Now, here's the tricky part, where most people mess up.

Anonymous

You have to miss the ground.

Anonymous

Most people don't know that, you see.

MARamezani

@snailboat Then you fly. I think it works, somehow.

Jim Reynolds

hehe

Anonymous

1:52 PM

Living forever is a lot like missing the ground.

Anonymous

The secret is not dying.

Jim Reynolds

O.0

MARamezani

@snailboat Really? Really really?

Is that something they wrote?

Damkerng T.

I wonder if acoustic levitation will ever powerful enough to let us fly (or float) without harming us first.

Jim Reynolds

By number of cells, we are more non-human than human.

Anonymous

1:53 PM

@MARamezani Apart from my butchering of it in the retelling!

Anonymous

I suggest reading the original

MARamezani

@DamkerngT. Can it harm robots?

Damkerng T.

Probably! I have too many delicate parts.

Jim Reynolds

o.0

MARamezani

Oh oh! I was so tempted to star that!

Jim Reynolds

1:54 PM

Use your mantle to make a shell cover.

MARamezani

No one's spamming ELL! What is this world coming to?

Anonymous

@Man_From_India Do you feel you understand what an attributive modifier is?

Man_From_India

Yes now I do :-)

MARamezani

Oy.

Hello MFI!

Man_From_India

Hello MA

Jim Reynolds

1:56 PM

Hi Man who is of India

Anonymous

I've noticed a lot of people lately who are a bit frowny when it comes to grammar

Damkerng T.

Hello @Man_From_India!

MARamezani

@snailboat Who? Oh wait, is that sarcastic?

Jim Reynolds

Like not wanting to hear fine descriptions or principles?

Man_From_India

Hi Super/ultra - man @JimReynolds

HI @DamkerngT.

MARamezani

1:57 PM

@Man_From_India man? MAN?

Jim Reynolds

Haha. It leaves scope for Super/Ultra-wife. I know.

Man_From_India

;-)

Damkerng T.

From the stud question, I'm thinking, maybe fox or vixen.

Jim Reynolds

But even over the course of a year, I'll never really understand that.

How about robots?

Damkerng T.

A robot is painfully hatching a (fake) SE site.

Man_From_India

1:59 PM

Oh about this from nima's question?

> And, would this one be incorrect?I hope to visit you in your near home. [near cannot be used before a noun to refer to distance]

Anonymous

That is, people who aren't terribly happy with the idea of explicitly teaching grammar with all those fancy words like apodosis, tmesis, mediopassive, optative, boulomaic, abessive, phasic, hodiernal, and those other words linguists secretly make up just to see students suffer

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