English Language Learners

@arrowfar Because their power doesn't match up mine?

Sometimes I wonder if we're serious or not though

user116848

Hey, I am dead serious here today.

user116848

Tell me why?

@arrowfar Hmm, let me think. Dead serious = alive not serious. Works for me.

@arrowfar Didn't I already?

user116848

4:13 PM

@MARamezani Already what? Enough is enough pal. Trust me.

user116848

Don't talk to me like that next time.

Like what next time? No really. I'm getting serious too. What did I say that I shouldn't have?

user116848

Just remember next time don't argue with me like that. I'll flag all your messages including your previous posts. Trust me, you don't wanna pick a fight with me here. This is not a threat of course, why should it be? Just a warning.

Okay I'm afraid. I should check my diapers maybe. Seriously, what message really got you? I know behind this you're pulling my chat leg though

user116848

Then why do you act all tough and pull everyone’s leg here. If you wish to do that then be prepared to take some harsh talk/fire here as well.

user116848

4:17 PM

This is a public chat room after all. Try to be nice with everyone here. You are not sitting in your drawing room here. Or you want me to flag you?

user116848

Because if I happen to get flagged by talking to you then I might make it very difficult for you. And by that I mean I’ll be contacting a community moderator regarding your behavior here. Because the mods here seem to take no notice apparently.

user116848

Now you may want to call that a harsh talk or a threat. Whatever you prefer meanie.
Like I said the other day I don’t handle jokes too well sometimes.

user116848

Bye!

Squinting you really typed that fast. Where did you copy it from?

@arrowfar You haven't seen Jim yet.

user116848

Just relax. Be nice to everyone.

4:19 PM

Oh hey, jokes are jokes. I understand what happens if something that isn't serious is taken as serious.

user116848

This is me when I pull people's legs. Welcome to the real world pal

@arrowfar Wait, guys.

First, calm down.

@arrowfar You almost had me there, buddy.

user116848

@DamkerngT. He was out of line today.

I've noticed that there was something going on between you two on the other day, but I couldn't figure it out.

4:20 PM

Yeah. What happened to that highfiving lemor?

@arrowfar Could you be a little bit more specific?

@DamkerngT. Well, I've seen so much I wonder what's going on, really.

@arrowfar That Persian thing is a proverb. Nothing personal.

I believe that it was likely just a misunderstanding.

@MARamezani's jokes are not the simplest ones, I admit.

It's a proverb. @arrowfar

user116848

Relax. I am good. Just try to be nice.

4:22 PM

@DamkerngT. Nothing is simple in this chatroom.

@arrowfar IT'S A PROVERB!

@MARamezani Probably true.

I think things went south after this message:

1 hour ago, by MARamezani

How can you see me?

Dunno.

Let me check back.

Detective work shows that things got outta hand here:

1 hour ago, by MARamezani

@arrowfar No wonder coming from a filthy ELU chatter! (FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!)

And still @arrowfar thinks I meant that.

Dude, I don't!

That's mostly a quote.

Let me think.

I don't know what that proverb means but I can feel that it's not very nice, but I think you used it to counter the message before (which by then, things already looked not too good).

@DamkerngT. That proverb is much later. I'm pretty sure things got sour from there.

I wasn't taking things seriously, but @arrowfar interestingly was.

And I didn't think.... Gosh.

@arrowfar I realized you were serious. Accept my apologies.

@arrowfar I don't want to be losing friendships because of petty arguments. Seriously, SORRY!

Heyo!

4:34 PM

Hi!

Hi!

Chat's gone hot!

How are we all? :)

;P

Not fine.

^

4:34 PM

No? :o

Why not? D:

I mistakenly attacked @arrowfar with harsh words.

Or he did.

I don't know. Something.

I think it was just a misunderstanding, and MARamezani already made an apology. I hope we are fine now.

@DamkerngT. But I don't feel fine yet.

@arrowfar Sorry!

Yeah. Better.

Not good yet.

He's left the room. I think he will understand when he comes back.

We've all made our share of mistakes in a chat!

4:36 PM

I should be buying something for him from a confectionery.

True!

Hehe!

@Iplodman Eh, still, we're not happy when we do.

@arrowfar? Really mad.

@MARamezani Of course not, but if you learn from it, then you shouldn't feel bad.

4:37 PM

Oh, hmm... that shop's kinda thoughtful.

Dammit. Can't be serious for two minutes

@MARamezani ;)

@Iplodman I didn't learn from it....

Well, you didn't mean to cause harm in the first place, so I'm not sure you could learn more c:

A: Question-like structure (word order) in non-question sentences

0

Both forms are correct, but mean different things! Not only is this true in this case, but ... Means "This is true in this case. And somthing else. . ." Not only this is true in this case, but ... Means "This is not the only thing that is true in this case, the other thing is. . ." T...

Hmm... I think both readings are available for both alternatives.

4:46 PM

What? Unstar that man!

Iplod it was you starring them?

Please undo that.

Starring what now?

Those messages from me.

Star my apology instead. That way @arrowfar'll know I've realized my mistake.

I've only starred @snailboat's:

> No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man

I didn't star anything of yours!

WHO IS STARRING MY MESSAGES? Is it you @DamkerngT.?

I can cancel some stars.

@MARamezani I'm doing the opposite.

4:49 PM

@DamkerngT. What do you mean?

You know, my name is in italic.

Okay. damkerng Please unstar them.

When you asked Iplodman to unstar your message and Iplodman said that he didn't star it. I think I knew what happened.

Hmm, what?

There are two left now. Would you like all of them gone?

4:53 PM

Yes. Dam if you wanna star, please star my apology. I wanna remember some good behavior from myself.

Thanks.

@DamkerngT. What do you think happened?

It's not very often that I exercise any room owner thingy!

@Iplodman We can star messages via the chat log.

Chat log? Isn't that just the usual chat?

@DamkerngT. Hmm, a room owner can delete messages?

So technically, we can star a message without having to enter the room.

@MARamezani ~~Yes.~~ No, just stars.

4:55 PM

Oooh, right.

@DamkerngT. Oooh, shiny. I'll try to be the owner of somewhere else.

@MARamezani By we, I meant anyone.

Just out of interest (there needs to be an acronym for that. JOOI?), what do room owners do, and how do you become one? I assume that they moderate rooms and are chosen by owners though.

@Iplodman Really, nothing much! And yes, I think they are chosen by current owners or mods.

Thanks c:

4:58 PM

Welcome!

So, what's good about being an owner?

@MARamezani Probably nothing! :P

No likey. Disappointed. Not worth the effort to become one. :P

:-)

@MARamezani Well, I'm not sure it takes too much effort c:

Just being around often, right?

5:00 PM

Hehe! That's probably true, too!

@Iplodman Still not worth the effort.

:}

;P

Whoa, could you lend in a hand here @DamkerngT.? Close votes pending review.

In our review queue?

Yes.

Q: Let pets "get near" vs "come close to" you

5:09 PM

Got it!

Eh? This one?

0

Which one's correct? E.g. if one's too scared and won't even pat them.

I was expecting that the reason would be "duplicate", but it's "providing more context"!

I think "if one's too scared and won't even pat them" is a good enough context from the OP.

Hmm, on second thought,

I think you're right.

Let's go answer-hunting.

I'm pretty sure it's a duplicate.

Really? Let's go dup-hunting then.

Q: How to tell animals to go away?

Oh, it's not!

I was thinking of this one:

8

In my language we have separate words to chase off each (common) animal, like "tchibe" for dogs, "sheetz" for cats, and "ish" for birds. I can think of only one corresponding word in English: one time I saw Marge from "The Simpsons" telling her cat to "shoo". Is that the word I'm looking for? Cou...

word-request

Cool toy.

5:16 PM

Air guns, right?!

Also cool.

Yup!

Airsoft, more specifically.

Oh boy, I can access youtube?

Why wouldn't you?

It's supposed to be censored here.

Meh. It's loading.

Ah.

5:18 PM

@Iplodman Geographical difficulties?

Where's here? ;P

@DamkerngT. Maybe so, although he may have been at school.

Indeed.

@Iplodman I'm not that nerd!

;)

Q: What 's the meaning of this sentence?

5:32 PM

0

They have as much as 50 times the incidence of people over 90. They have less cancers and so forth than the rest of China. What is the meaning of first sentence? What is the meaning of "over 90" and "incidence of people"? Thank you.

grammar

The use of incidence is very curious!

It makes "people over 90" sound like a bad thing!

Hmm, I remembered this:

google.com/…

I meant the wikipedia article. Let me make it appear.

Incidence (epidemiology)

Incidence is a measure of the probability of occurrence of a given medical condition in a population within a specified period of time. Although sometimes loosely expressed simply as the number of new cases during some time period, it is better expressed as a proportion or a rate with a denominator. Incidence proportion (also known as cumulative incidence) is the number of new cases within a specified time period divided by the size of the population initially at risk. For example, if a population initially contains 1,000 non-diseased persons and 28 develop a condition over two years of observation...

That's more like the incidence I'm used to!

Hmm... maybe be it's ellipsis. "people over 90 who are at risk ..."

It's 90 years old, isn't it?

I couldn't think of anything else.

So there's no need for an ellipsis to be there.

5:36 PM

It should be as high as 130 or 140 if it were a blood pressure problem.

It might just be a sentence of an article.

@MARamezani Eh? I think of people who are "90 years old" as a good thing.

In which the risk is mentioned in some other part of it.

@DamkerngT. I think it's a medical article.

Let's go article-hunting.

Could be. Or it might be a population study.

Have fun: google.com/…

5:38 PM

So it's just here, and nowhere else!

Yeah.

Let me ask the OP.

A: A way of saying debased food?

1

Try: Sustenance **sus·te·nance* /ˈsəstənəns/ noun: food and drink regarded as a source of strength; nourishment. More literally "that which sustains". This is not "substance" - stuff, material - it's a thing whose job is to "sustain". Which seems like what you need, just as a "veh...

Hey, sustenance made it to the question!

AHAHAHAHHHA!

Q: Talking of inanimate objects in plural: they or it

5:55 PM

0

Should I say: Wash some apples and put them into a vase. or Wash some apples and put it into a vase. Is it correct to use they with inanimate objects?

grammar prepositions

Oh, is this a popular thought among learners?

Hmm, some languages treat objects as singular. Arabic is one of them.

Causing lots of confusion.

Oh!

Star that. :P

Okie, dokie!

Arabic is actually a very interesting language. Very sophisticated rules of grammar (just like English), but the difference is that Arabic has exceptions way more than the norm of languages.

Exceptions are so much, they have rules for themselves!

5:58 PM

I think Arabic is one of the top three of the most widely used languages.

@DamkerngT. The question of "what is the top language?" is very vague. IMO it should never be asked.

@MARamezani It's interesting that you mentioned "rules".

@MARamezani I made it clear about the "most widely used" part.

But apparently some ranking says 1. English 2. Arabic 3. Turkish

lol

@MARamezani Somehow I have a feeling that I shouldn't trust that...

@DamkerngT. There are 22 Arabic speaking countries. So I guess so!

@DamkerngT. 1. English 2. Turkish 3. Thai better?

6:01 PM

nods -- I thought it would be even more than 22.

@MARamezani lol

That would be nice, though very unlikely!

Anonymous

Turkish more widely used than Mandarin?

@DamkerngT. I know, right!

They have exceptional verbs named معتل which have a separate grammar for themselves.

@MARamezani Kinda like the name of a class of verbs?

@snailboat That isn't the "commonly used" ranking. It's some ranking I can't remember.

@snailboat Isn't it very surprisingly?

Anonymous

6:03 PM

Like, some person's favorite languages? They made a blog post once about them and you're remembering it?

(I don't know why I used surprisingly this time. Must be because of the question I read a few days ago.)

@DamkerngT. They're defined as verbs which have a vowel as one of the main participants.

@snailboat No. A ranking of languages. Like "most something".

Anonymous

It'd be better without -ly

@snailboat I thought that too.

@snailboat I normally used surprising, but that post made me think surprisingly is even more correct (though both are acceptable).

6:05 PM

@snailboat I see "English" as #1. So there may be some truth to this.

Anonymous

With -ly, it's got to be an elliptical it-cleft or it's ungrammatical

Oh, it's really hard to search for anything on ELL!

Anonymous

And it didn't seem like you intended that

Anonymous

So it sounded ungrammatical to me

nods

Anonymous

6:07 PM

What post?

Maybe I misunderstood that comment (by FF, iirc) in that question.

@snailboat I'm still trying to find it!

Anonymous

Oh, I can see an alternative parsing now

Anonymous

But I'd still recommend against it

Where was I? Oh.

Got it!

Argh! I couldn't find it! (sad)

Anonymous

6:11 PM

Oh no!

Anyways, a plural objects is considered a she in Arabic, and I guess that Q's OP had the same dilemma.

@snailboat But I found this post by StoneyB instead: ell.stackexchange.com/a/36511/3281. He basically says the same thing you just said. :-)

That isn't true in Persian, and it's causing me a lot of exam marks and confusion.

@MARamezani Oh, so "things" is singular, but objects are she?

Hmm... those are not really in conflict with each other.

@DamkerngT. Let's look at it this way. Trees is a she.

6:13 PM

Hmmmm......

And a verb that applies to Sara applies to trees, in case they do something similar like breathing.

If you were trying to give me an idea that Arabic is difficult, it was a great success!

(Arabic still looks like fun for me, though.)

@DamkerngT. I realize when someone's studying something, they really want others to think what they're studying is very hard.

Like when a 11th grade student speaks with a 10th grader.

@MARamezani Quite reasonable!

@JimReynolds I've quitted being funny in chat. Its consequences are undesirable. I'm wondering what you will be doing when you're alone about that.

6:59 PM

@talles: I don't know what you're trying to say there. You'd need to explain the exact context in which you might be uncertain about which word to use. In most cases if you give a full sentence, only one would be valid, or the meaning would change according to which word you used. — FumbleFingers 31 mins ago

I think this is universal for all synonyms.

Yes.

Wow, I had been in chemistry for 110 days consecutive. Yay!

Is it 100 or 200 days for that badge?

100.

Oh! Yay!